2025 Readings 62

                   There are twin Gates of Sleep.

One, they say, is called the Gate of Horn 

and it offers easy passage to all true shades.

The other glistens with ivory, radiant, flawless, 

but through it the dead send false dreams up toward the sky.

And here, Anchises, his vision told in full, escorts 

his son and Sibyl both and show them out now

through the Ivory Gate.

Virgil, Aeneid

I just finished another reread of Virgil's Aeneid, which is partially in service to the Epics book but also simply because it's a book I love. As I sit here (with my writing assistant, Mollie), surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of books, it pains me to think of how many I'm going to have to get rid of when we move overseas. There are some simple decisions, however, in constructing my "take" pile, and that would include Virgil. As is the case with all great literature, I glean more and more with each reread. While students, mainly in high school, still read Homer (usually the Odyssey - my theory is because it has more family-friendly monsters and sex - as compared to the clearly superior Iliad), it seems that no one reads the Aeneid anymore, which is a pity. The passage above is one of the great overlooked sections, and I have to admit that I didn't grasp it on my first read years ago. These lines are found at the end of Book Six, when Aeneas has gone to the underworld to track down his father and thus receive prophetic news about the pending greatness of Rome. It's a key section, and I certainly make great use of the vision of Roman ascendance in the Epics books. However, here at the very end, Virgil tells us that there are "twin Gates of Sleep," and one, the Gate of Horn, offers "easy passage to all true shades," while the other, which "glistens with ivory, radiant, flawless," the Gate of Ivory, allows the dead to "send false dreams up toward the sky." And then Aeneas and the Sybil depart through the Ivory Gate. It's easy to miss the line as your head is absolutely full of information and ghostly images from the trip to the underworld, and you're finishing the first half of the epic and gearing up for the endless wars and confrontation with Turnus that make up the second half. Virgil gets a lot of criticism, I would argue most of it unwarranted, for simply being a propagandist for Augustus (which is a grossly overly simplistic reading of the Aeneid), but isn't Virgil clearly telling us that the legend of Rome and its role in providing law and order for the world isn't that simple? It nicely sets up the famous final scene when Aeneas brutally kills Turnus, who has already surrendered. Yes, Aeneas saw a belt that Turnus had taken from Pallas after killing him, but it also speaks to the fact that Rome may provide many things, but there's a dark side to their rule. It's often pointed out that Virgil showed tremendous sympathy for the defeated in the Aeneid, which comes through very clearly with his portrayal of Dido, and I think the other side of that is not steering clear of commenting, even obliquely, on Roman brutality.