Gyas, a character in Virgil's Aeneid, features most extensively as one of the captains in the boat race in Book 5. He also appears (briefly) in Books 1 and 12. He was claimed as the eponymous ancestor of the Gegania gens, a patrician family of the Roman Republic.
Gyas is introduced to the reader after Aeneas has landed on the coast of Libya, after the storm dispersed and, he fears, wrecked his fleet. "Intrepid Gyas" is one of the captains whose presumed death he mourns (Aeneid 1.222).
Gyas is one of the four captains in the boat race in Book 5 of the Aeneid; he commands the Chimaera, and after gaining an early lead, at the halfway point he orders Menoetes, his helmsman, to steer in tightly, but Menoetes, afraid of hitting the reef, takes a wider turn and the Chimaera is passed on the inside by Cloanthus in the Scylla. In anger, Gyas throws Menoetes overboard, to the amusement of the spectators.
Gyas flew out to see first, slipping by others
in all the noise and confusion.
...
...Reaching the marker,
the leading captain, Gyas, seawater swirling
around him, called to the ship's helmsman, Menoetes:
"Why so far to starboard? Alter your course there,
hug that rock....
...
...he grabbed a fretful Menoetes,
forgot good grace and the safety of crewmen,
and threw him headlong down from the high stern in the water. (Aeneid 5.151-152; 159-63; 173-175.)
Gyas, through his "extraordinary" and "ill-considered" action, forces himself to take up two roles: captain and helmsman. In doing so, he prefigures Aeneas, who will have to do the same thing at the end of Book 5, after Palinurus falls overboard and drowns. [1] According to Joseph Farrell, the comparison favors Aeneas. [2]
The swimming ability of "old man" Menoetes to swim to shore fully clothed, and without the assistance of a magical veil, contrasts with Odysseus's swim to shore and avoidance of the sort of rocks at Phaeacia that Menoetes clambered up onto unaided. [3]
Gyas was considered the eponymous ancestor of the Gegania gens (the link was made by Maurus Servius Honoratus, a fifth-century grammarian and commentator of Virgil [4] ), but Virgil lists the other three captains (Mnestheus, Sergestus, Cloanthus) along with the families they supposedly founded (the Memmia gens, the Sergia gens, and the Cluentians, respectively), the Gegania, which would have been much less familiar to Virgil's audience than the other families, [5] get no such credit, which John Conington found "singular". [6] David Ross, professor of classics at the University of Michigan, also noted Gyas was not directly connected to a gens, and also characterized the description of the Chimaera as "decidedly odd", seeming to be "an aircraft carrier, racing against destroyers". [7]
Joseph Addison wrote in issue 279 of The Spectator that "Sentiments which raise laughter can very seldom be admitted with any decency into an heroic poem [...] I remember but one laugh in the whole Aeneid, which rises in the fifth book upon Menoetes, where he is represented as thrown overboard, and drying himself upon a rock.". [8] [9] David Ross observed that it is, however, "the laughter of mockery and derision". [7] Professor of Latin at University College London M. M. Willcock concurred that it is "insensitive" and that "[t]o laugh at the unmerited misfortune of another human being is not the highest moral reaction", observing that Menoetes had done nothing deserving of such a reaction from spectators. [10] Addison's recollection notwithstanding, a second instance of the same mocking laughter occurs when Sergestus brings his boat in. [7] [10]
Through the word "clavus" meaning both tiller and club, the "huge" namesake in 10.317–322 who lays his foes low with a club that belongs to Hercules is linked by scholars to the ship's captain. [11]
In Book 12.460, Gyas beheads Ufens (Aeneid 12.460).
In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite. His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas a second cousin to Priam's children. He is a minor character in Greek mythology and is mentioned in Homer's Iliad. Aeneas receives full treatment in Roman mythology, most extensively in Virgil's Aeneid, where he is cast as an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. He became the first true hero of Rome. Snorri Sturluson identifies him with the Norse god Víðarr of the Æsir.
In Greek mythology, Aeolus or Aiolos is a name shared by three mythical characters. These three personages are often difficult to tell apart, and even the ancient mythographers appear to have been perplexed about which Aeolus was which. Diodorus Siculus made an attempt to define each of these three, and his opinion is followed here.
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his authorship of these poems to be dubious.
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. Written by the Roman poet Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, the Aeneid comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.
Penthesilea was an Amazonian queen in Greek mythology, the daughter of Ares and Otrera and the sister of Hippolyta, Antiope, and Melanippe. She assisted Troy in the Trojan War, during which she was killed by Achilles or Neoptolemus. The asteroid 271 Penthesilea, discovered in 1887, was named in her honor.
In Roman mythology, Caeculus was a son of Vulcan, and the legendary founder of Praeneste.
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The Vergilius Vaticanus, also known as Vatican Virgil, is a Late Antique illuminated manuscript containing fragments of Virgil's Aeneid and Georgics. It was made in Rome in around 400 CE, and is one of the oldest surviving sources for the text of the Aeneid. It is the oldest and one of only three ancient illustrated manuscripts of classical literature.
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In Greek and Roman mythology, Nisus and Euryalus are a pair of friends serving under Aeneas in the Aeneid, the Augustan epic by Virgil. Their foray among the enemy, narrated in book nine, demonstrates their stealth and prowess as warriors, but ends as a tragedy: the loot Euryalus acquires attracts attention, and the two die together. Virgil presents their deaths as a loss of admirable loyalty and valor. They also appear in Book 5, during the funeral games of Anchises, where Virgil takes note of their amor pius, a love that exhibits the pietas that is Aeneas's own distinguishing virtue.
Messapus, a character in Virgil's Aeneid, appears in Books VII to XII of the Latin epic poem. He was a son of Neptune, a famous tamer of horses, and king of Etruria, known for being one "whom no one can fell by fire or steel".
Ucalegon was one of the Elders of Troy, whose house was set afire by the Achaeans when they sacked the city. He is one of Priam's friends in the Iliad, and the destruction of his house is referred to in the Aeneid.
The gens Gegania was an old patrician family at ancient Rome, which was prominent from the earliest period of the Republic to the middle of the fourth century BC. The first of this gens to obtain the consulship was Titus Geganius Macerinus in 492 BC. The gens fell into obscurity even before the Samnite Wars, and is not mentioned again by Roman historians until the final century of the Republic.
In Greek and Roman mythology, Salius is an Acarnanian who in one alternative tradition was the legendary founder of the ancient Roman priesthood of the Salii.
Palinurus (Palinūrus), in Roman mythology and especially Virgil's Aeneid, is the coxswain of Aeneas' ship. Later authors used him as a general type of navigator or guide. Palinurus is an example of human sacrifice; his life is the price for the Trojans landing in Italy.
In Virgil's Aeneid, Iopas is a bard at the court of Dido. He appears at the end of Book 1, where he sings the so-called "Song of Iopas", a creation narrative, at the banquet given for Aeneas and his Trojans.
The Aeneid has been analyzed by scholars of several different generations and schools of thought to try to determine the political commentary that Virgil had hoped to portray. The major schools of thought include the overarching idea that Virgil had written a story that parallels Roman history at the time it was written as well as messages both in support of and against the rule of Augustus Caesar. Finally, it has been argued that Virgil had a stance on geopolitics which he conveys in the actions of Aeneas and his crew.
Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid is an academic monograph by the American Latinist W. R. Johnson. Published in 1976 by University of California Press, the book presents an interpretation of the Aeneid, an epic by the Roman poet Vergil. Claiming to abandon previously dominant historical-political reading, Johnson argues that the poem is at its heart concerned with the darkness of the human condition.
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