cahn

Hm. So -- if this isn't a terrible barbaric thing to say (I'm sure it is a terrible barbaric thing to say, lol) -- I think I actually like the Aeneid less now that I've read the Odyssey -- because the Odyssey does cool things that the Aeneid doesn't do. Like, where are the awesome Penelope-types in the Aeneid?? We get Dido, who does start out being awesome but then it all just goes sideways from there, we get Lavinia who may or may not get two words in the entire thing?? The Odyssey has cool puzzles, like Penelope's loom and the tree-bed! The Odyssey has these (small, but tantalizingly still there) parts that don't glorify war, like Achilles' words in the underworld, which I don't remember in the Aeneid...

But maybe this just means I don't remember the Aeneid well enough and I need to read it again? :) Like, I thought the athletic games were cool in the Odyssey because they were saying things about Odysseus as well as his hosts, whereas I found the athletic games in the Aeneid deathly boring, but that may have been a factor of having read the Aeneid ten years ago more than anything else?