Divine Beings in Religion and Belief
Divine beings in religion or belief are the things believed to originate from the supernatural deity like supreme human beings, gods, celestial beings and the spirits which are termed as holy and sacred. Likewise, the world often regards the godly perception as the divine literally. However, the thematic aspect based on these human and divine being is presented in the two books; The Aeneid by Virgil and The Inferno by Dante. These two books will focus on the themes and how the authors explain the nature of them in them.
Themes in The Aeneid by Virgil
To start with, The Aeneid by Virgil is a poetic book with an epic poem regarding the 14th century which explains about the pathway journey of VIR to Hell guided by the Roman poet in the ancient times called Virgil. In the book, the hell is set for the people who have despised the values of the spirits through violence or intellect’s pervert over their fellows. However, as a figurative aspect, the theme of divine comedy signifies the religion and the personal salvation as depicted in the poem. According to Dante, he focuses on the self-discovery journey, they toured many places of strangeness and that astonishes. In the verge of anticipating what is required and acceptable, each one is given exceptional which he or she might come across the inner demons that Dante being a writer as well as a character sets out to get through the inferno (Lambardo).
Imagery and Symbolism in The Aeneid
The imagery of Lost in “the dark hood” gives a clear picture of the ignorance that an individual pass due to lack of God’s faith and the radiance in love of God. Here, Dante uses the symbolism of dark hood to show his challenge of fear in God while the “right road” depicts the confidence that he has in God. He believes that the journey is the one that every human being is set to go through so that they can acknowledge their sins and obtain peace from God. Notably, there are several religions as well as the divine beings which are still under worship currently and are also the view relating to spiritual peace and the personal salvation that is still applied in the variations. The journey of Dante for saving his soul shows the link between the sin on earth and the Hell’s punishment. For instance, the Sullen who was choked on mud, the Gluttonous who was forced to consume excrement and the Wrathful who engaged in violence over one another. According to the context in Canto 3, the consignment Hell’s gate outlines that God set the Hell with its punishment through motivational justice (Hardie and Philip, 2009).
The Principle of Punishment and Justice
Additionally, on a different perspective, it is clearer that the principle of the punishment is regarded to be one of balance and justice. The poem indicates that the progressive change of minor sins into the bigger ones depict the end result being into Hell and right close to Satan. However, Dante retains the unfriendly execution for the offenders and those who are linked with the offence such as friends or family. In the poem earlier on, Dante explains the fear regarding impersonality injustice of God and the sympathy for the human that he feels for the souls around. As approve of it, Dante pointed out that the offender will be punished in the divine portion for that and to feel for their suffering is to showcase absence of acknowledgement.
The Nature of Indecisive Beings
The author added that the souls who never committed sin will meet with the misery of the angels who are neutral; those who were partially in God’s side and also partially present in Satan’s side in the heaven. “Death had undone many, I had not dreamt”. Here, Dante meant that current readers will experience a challenge in agreeing on the nature of the indecisive beings.
Themes in The Aeneid by Virgil
On the other hand, the book “The Aeneid” is written by Virgil between 19th and 29th BC narrating the Aeneas story of heroism. He is a Trojan who went to Italy and become the Roman ancestor. However, the epic poem presented the aspect of humans and divine humans. The Aeneid presented the irreplaceable vital role of the gods. He described that they establish the mortals’ destiny with the inclusion of Aeneas who acquires the Gods attention due to the fact that his mother Venus, is a goddess. Jupiter, who is the king of gods and he is able to give powers due to his supremeness to any god. More ever, others cannot forfeit his will as the king since he supports the destiny. The only thing that other Gods can do as unplanned by the king is just to postpone the outcome of which it is a temporal basis. They are likely to wrangle among themselves but unite the humans into their challenges in a way of assisting or destroying mortals for the purpose of avenging their enemies (Torjusen and Sundel, p. 68).
The Role of Juno in The Aeneid
The Aeneid book incorporates a lot of divine approaches which are visible at the beginning of the poem. In referring to the context of the poem, Juno has been hating the Trojan right from the incident of “golden apple” in Paris such that Jupiter was to choose the best woman amongst Venus, Juno and Minerva. In response to that, he picked Venus who is the mother of Aeneas promising Jupiter to be the beautiful mortal woman. The struggle between these gods as a result of despise from Juno, Juno developed an anger foreseen in the destruction of Carthage which is a city that Juno loved most as explained in the quote “more even than Samos”. Her fury was as a result of the upcoming race originating for the Trojans that will build up and destroy the Carthage (Clay and Diskin, p. 195). The book indicates the thematic aspect of the human and the divine beings in a manner that Juno is represented in the book to explain the experience of humans as uncounted in the grounds of divine deity control (Margolis and Maxin, 2015)
Conflict and Protection of Enemies
The Juno’s fury led him to send the storms due to her own selfish interest as indicated in book 1 and 4. In reference to book 1, the storm was meant to destroy the Aeneas journey to Italy and he is subjected towards the cost of Africa and Carthage. On the other hand, book 4 Juno send another storm when Aeneas and Dido were on hunting hence making them secure themselves in cafes. There a clear indication that throughout the book, Juno is protecting the enemies of Aeneas. Due to these violations, Aeneas responded by threatening Juno after giving her responsibility of saving Turners by giving her a war. However, the humanlike is displayed by all these gods in a way that it aims to reflect the battle on earth as the mortals and with the pettiness of them. According to William, he noted that in the quote “the presence of Olympians was meant to promote and at the same time respect the human scene”. This shows that the achievement is met by neglecting the nature of trivial of their petty wrangling in heaven due to the fact that the god of Olympia bothers the insignificance of the immortals (Farkas and John, 2014).
Conclusion
To sum with, the representation of gods by Virgil in the book is less the same as pantheon representation in the book “the Homer” but every god plays a different role in the journey of Aeneas. However, as the role of the King father who is Aeneas is to empower and control other gods. The role of Jupiter in the book does not differ much with that of Venus and Juto in opposing the challenges to dwell on either side. To add on the Aeneid, the story of gods depicts that gods themselves care for Aeneas but the joy of Aeneas does not relate to them in any case. Similarly, according to the book “The Inferno” by Dante, it is a real sense that there are many religions in the world and the beliefs hence the punishing idea of pagans is unfair. If the souls were not aware of the religion, to be specific; Christianity, why should they be punished like the Christians? This is an instance of a common theme on Christianity in the inferno and this is the main reason readers currently consider it challenging to relate to Dante’s Hell. The noted challenge that Dante outline in the book is the lack of tolerance among readers nowadays.
Work Cited
Lombardo, Stanley. Aeneid. Hackett Publishing, 2005.
Dante, et al. Inferno. Hackett Publishing Company, 2009.
Horsfall, Nicholas. Virgil," Aeneid" 6: a commentary. Walter de Gruyter, 2014.
Hardie, Philip R. Virgil's Aeneid: cosmos and imperium. Oxford University Press, USA, 2009.
Clay, Diskin. "The Archaeology of the Temple to Juno in Carthage (Aen. 1. 446-93)." Classical Philology 83.3 (1988): 195-205.
Margolis, Maxine L. The Inferno of Dante. Princeton University Press, 2015.
Farkas, John M. "Twice-Made Men: The Journey to the Afterlife and Back." (2014).
