Father Tiber has appeared to Aeneas and advised him to ally himself with King Evander of the Arcadians, and has stilled his flow to allow Aeneas with two ships to row upstream against the current to Evander’s humble city of Pallanteum. Aeneas is well-received by Evander, whom he finds celebrating a festival to Hercules, commemorating the Demigod’s destruction of Cacus, a thieving ogre. The tale is told and the feast concluded, and Aeneas is entertained as a friend (The Arcadians are of course Greek, but that awkwardness is dealt with by demonstrating that Aeneas and Evander have ancestors in common). Now Evander shows Aeneas around Pallanteum, which is none other than the future Rome. Every site and every name on the tour makes a clear topographical reference to the Rome in which Virgil and his contemporary audience lived. It is as if a modern Londoner were shown a forest on the site of Buckingham palace and cattle grazing on the site of Big Ben.
See the illustrated blog post here.
To follow the story of Aeneas in sequence, use this link to the full Pantheon Poets selection of extracts from the Aeneid. See the next episode here.
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