All’s Hair in Love and War! Aeneid X, Part 1 (Ad Navseam, Episode 113)

Ad Navseam

This week Jeff and Dave are back at the Aeneid, wading into some deep waters murky and redolent with the unfulfilled wishes of Jupiter. As full-scale war erupts on the Latian plain, Venus and Juno bring their high-pitched quarrel to the king of Olympus, whose own hands, it turns out, are tied by the Parcae. As the Fates roll around in their El Camino, cutting short the threads of numerous heroes Sarpedon-like, men are dying on the field of battle like a scene straight out of the Iliad. But it's not just questions of fate, of popsicle sticks, glue, and Fort Ticonderoga that occupy our sally into divine destiny. Along the way there is also room for Vergil's frowzy digression on Ascanius' lustral locks. What is he, a trichologist? Perhaps our poet was himself glabrous, and that explains his odd obsession with the young Iulus' quiffs and frisettes? We comb through the evidence, attempting to answer this, and more.