Latin Haiku

Subridens, Jovis
aperiet arcana
placare Venum




Smiling, Jupiter
reveals the secrets
to calm Venus

Page 63 Question

The great man in verse 151 reminds me of Aeneas because of the way he has power over the feelings of his men. When Aeneas and his men are stranded in Africa he makes a speech to console them after all the things that they had in the past and just recently gone through. He eases their minds, just like the great man (and the girl in the purple shirt) eased the minds of the rioters. He his his own grief to make them feel better, which shows that he is really the great man.

Haiku

Est exitium

Neptunus est iratus

Vult pacem mare

The Aeneid Haiku

The storm scares them all

The ropes creak and the men call

"Why couldn't we've died?"

Modern Day Epic

Harry Potter has come to be one of the very famous modern day epics. It is a series of 7 books, each one an epic initself, and the first six have been made into movies. First of all, each book is very lengthy, which is a characteristic of an epic. It is about a young wizard, Harry, who after losing his parents finds out that he is a wizard and an evil wizard, Voldemort, is set out to kill him. This may seem silly to some people, but in the book it is a very serious situation. It is life or death and it has national significance to the wizarding community. If Voldemort is not stopped he will kill Harry and anyone else who is not a pureblood wizard or witch. In the last book there is a huge war in which the hero, Harry Potter, ends up winning. It is also composed of many individual fights between Harry and Voldemort. Harry Potter is considered an epic because of all these characteristics.

Pyramus and Thisbe

pg 55 # 2

Ovid ends the story with, "for the color of the fruit, when it ripened, was black, and that which remains of the funeral pyre, rests in one urn." The color of the fruit is dark, which also represents their death. Throughout the story darkness has not really been considered a bad thing, it conceals them so that they can be together. When Thisbe leaves the walls of the city she is concealed by the night and soon will be concealed by the shade of the tree where they were going to meet. The dark gives them a chance to be together as they never could in the light. Darkness also represents death, and as they are together in darkness, they are together in death. Light doesn't serve as something good in this story either. Light represents life, and in life Pyramus and Thisbe would never have the chance to be together. Life meant living without the person you loved so both Pyramus and Thisbe killed themselves. With the fruit dark and them dead, they were together at last.

Pyramus and Thisbe

pg 49 #1

Ovid's graphic depiction of Pyramus' death is essential to the story because it is from his collection of metamorphoses. If it weren't for the extreme amount of blood, it wouldn't explain the change in color of the mulberry tree's fruit. The blood had to spurt high into the air so that it would be able to reach the fruit in the tree. It also soaked into the roots. He used the simile of the bursted lead pipes to show how messy the situation actually was, and that the blood would inevitably lget on the tree. This also shows the naivety of young Pyramus, he did not wait to see if what he believed to be really was. He had a deep love for Thisbe, this is why he went to such grusome measures, but if he had been older this would not have been the case. This fits the story completely because he was young and in love and had not yet experienced heartbreak.