PHANTOM LEADER: An Historical Novel of War and Politics (Wings of War Book 3)

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He is then brought to green fields of Elysium. There he speaks with the spirit of his father and is offered a prophetic vision of the destiny of Rome. Upon returning to the land of the living, Aeneas leads the Trojans to settle in Latium , where he courts Lavinia , the daughter of King Latinus. Although Aeneas wished to avoid a war, hostilities break out. Juno is heavily involved in bringing about this war—she has persuaded the Queen of Latium to demand that Lavinia be married to Turnus , the ruler of a local people, the Rutuli.

Juno continues to stir up trouble, even summoning the fury Alecto to ensure that a war takes place. Seeing the masses of warriors that Turnus has brought against him, Aeneas seeks help from the Tuscans, enemies of the Rutuli. He meets King Evander of Arcadia , whose son Pallas agrees to lead troops against the other Italians. Meanwhile, in book 9, the Trojan camp is attacked, and a midnight raid leads to the deaths of Nisus and his companion, Euryalus. The gates, however, are defended until Aeneas returns with his Tuscan and Arcadian reinforcements.

In the battling that follows, many are slain—notably Pallas a close friend of Aeneas , who is killed by Turnus, and Mezentius , Turnus's close associate. Mezentius, who has allowed his son to be killed while he himself fled, reproaches himself and faces Aeneas in single combat —an honourable but essentially futile endeavour. In book 11, another notable, Camilla , a sort of Amazon character, fights bravely but is killed. She has been a virgin devoted to Diana and to her nation; Arruns, the man who kills her, is struck dead by Diana's sentinel, Opis.

Single combat is then proposed between Aeneas and Turnus, but Aeneas is so obviously superior to Turnus that the Italians, urged on by Turnus's divine sister, Juturna , break the truce. Aeneas is injured, but returns to the battle. Turnus and Aeneas dominate the battle on opposite wings, but when Aeneas makes a daring attack at the city of Latium causing the queen of Latium to hang herself in despair , he forces Turnus into single combat once more.

Turnus's strength deserts him as he tries to hurl a rock, and Aeneas's spear goes through his thigh. As Turnus is begging on his knees for his life, the epic ends with Aeneas first tempted to obey pleas to spare Turnus's life, but killing him in rage when he sees that Turnus is wearing his friend Pallas's belt over a shoulder as a trophy.

Critics of the Aeneid focus on a variety of issues. Virgil makes use of the symbolism of the Augustan regime, and some scholars see strong associations between Augustus and Aeneas, the one as founder and the other as re-founder of Rome. A strong teleology , or drive towards a climax, has been detected in the poem.

The Aeneid is full of prophecies about the future of Rome, the deeds of Augustus, his ancestors, and famous Romans, and the Carthaginian Wars ; the shield of Aeneas even depicts Augustus' victory at Actium in 31 BC. A further focus of study is the character of Aeneas.

As the protagonist of the poem, Aeneas seems to constantly waver between his emotions and commitment to his prophetic duty to found Rome; critics note the breakdown of Aeneas's emotional control in the last sections of the poem where the "pious" and "righteous" Aeneas mercilessly slaughters the Latin warrior Turnus. The Aeneid appears to have been a great success. Virgil is said to have recited Books 2, 4 and 6 to Augustus; [12] the mention of her son, Marcellus, in book 6 apparently caused Augustus' sister Octavia to faint.

The poem was unfinished when Virgil died in 19 BC. After meeting Augustus in Athens and deciding to return home, Virgil caught a fever while visiting a town near Megara. Augustus ordered Virgil's literary executors, Lucius Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca , to disregard that wish, instead ordering the Aeneid to be published with as few editorial changes as possible. However, the only obvious imperfections are a few lines of verse that are metrically unfinished i. Other alleged "imperfections" are subject to scholarly debate. The Aeneid was written in a time of major political and social change in Rome, with the fall of the Republic and the Final War of the Roman Republic having torn through society and many Romans' faith in the "Greatness of Rome" severely faltering.

However, the new emperor, Augustus Caesar , began to institute a new era of prosperity and peace, specifically through the re-introduction of traditional Roman moral values. The Aeneid was seen as reflecting this aim, by depicting the heroic Aeneas as a man devoted and loyal to his country and its prominence, rather than his own personal gains. In addition, the Aeneid gives mythic legitimization to the rule of Julius Caesar and, by extension, to his adopted son Augustus, by immortalizing the tradition that renamed Aeneas's son, Ascanius called Ilus from Ilium , meaning Troy , Iulus , thus making him an ancestor of the gens Julia , the family of Julius Caesar, and many other great imperial descendants as part of the prophecy given to him in the Underworld.

The meter shows that the name "Iulus" is pronounced as 3 syllables, not as "Julus". Despite the polished and complex nature of the Aeneid legend stating that Virgil wrote only three lines of the poem each day , the number of half-complete lines and the abrupt ending are generally seen as evidence that Virgil died before he could finish the work. Because this poem was composed and preserved in writing rather than orally, the Aeneid is more complete than most classical epics. Furthermore, it is possible to debate whether Virgil intended to rewrite and add to such lines.

Some of them would be difficult to complete, and in some instances, the brevity of a line increases its dramatic impact some arguing the violent ending as a typically Virgilian comment on the darker, vengeful side of humanity. However, these arguments may be anachronistic—half-finished lines might equally, to Roman readers, have been a clear indication of an unfinished poem and have added nothing whatsoever to the dramatic effect.

The perceived deficiency of any account of Aeneas's marriage to Lavinia or his founding of the Roman race led some writers, such as the 15th-century Italian poet Maffeo Vegio through his Mapheus Vegius widely printed in the Renaissance , Pier Candido Decembrio whose attempt was never completed , Claudio Salvucci in his epic poem The Laviniad , and Ursula K. Le Guin in her novel Lavinia to compose their own supplements. Some legends state that Virgil, fearing that he would die before he had properly revised the poem, gave instructions to friends including the current emperor, Augustus that the Aeneid should be burned upon his death, owing to its unfinished state and because he had come to dislike one of the sequences in Book VIII, in which Venus and Vulcan have sexual intercourse , for its nonconformity to Roman moral virtues.

Essentials

The friends did not comply with Virgil's wishes and Augustus himself ordered that they be disregarded. After minor modifications, the Aeneid was published. The first full and faithful rendering of the poem in an Anglic language is the Scots translation by Gavin Douglas —his Eneados , completed in , which also included Maffeo Vegio's supplement. Even in the 20th century, Ezra Pound considered this still to be the best Aeneid translation, praising the "richness and fervour" of its language and its hallmark fidelity to the original. Most classic translations, including both Douglas and Dryden, employ a rhyme scheme; most more modern attempts do not.

As with other classical Latin poetry, the meter is based on the length of syllables rather than the stress, though the interplay of meter and stress is also important. Virgil also incorporated such poetic devices as alliteration , onomatopoeia , synecdoche , and assonance. Furthermore, he uses personification , metaphor and simile in his work, usually to add drama and tension to the scene. An example of a simile can be found in book II when Aeneas is compared to a shepherd who stood on the high top of a rock unaware of what is going on around him.

As was the rule in classical antiquity, an author's style was seen as an expression of his personality and character.

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Virgil's Latin has been praised for its evenness, subtlety and dignity. The Aeneid , like other classical epics, is written in dactylic hexameters: This epic consists of twelve books, and the narrative is broken up into three sections of four books each, respectively addressing Dido; the Trojans' arrival in Italy; and the war with the Latins. Each book has about 1, lines. The Aeneid comes to an abrupt ending, and scholars have speculated that Virgil died before he could finish the poem. The Roman ideal of pietas "piety, dutiful respect" , which can be loosely translated from the Latin as a selfless sense of duty toward one's filial, religious, and societal obligations, was a crux of ancient Roman morality.

Throughout the Aeneid , Aeneas serves as the embodiment of pietas , with the phrase "pious Aeneas" occurring 20 times throughout the poem, [18] thereby fulfilling his capacity as the father of the Roman people. His father's gratitude is presented in the text by the following lines: However, Aeneas's pietas extends beyond his devotion to his father: Aeneas is consistently subservient to the gods, even in actions opposed to his own desires, as he responds to one such divine command, "I sail to Italy not of my own free will. In addition to his religious and familial pietas , Aeneas also displays fervent patriotism and devotion to his people, particularly in a military capacity.

Aeneas is a symbol of pietas in all of its forms, serving as a moral paragon to whom a Roman should aspire. One of the most recurring themes in the Aeneid is that of divine intervention. Divine intervention occurs multiple times, in Book 4 especially. Aeneas falls in love with Dido, delaying his ultimate fate of traveling to Italy.

However, it is actually the gods who inspired the love, as Juno plots:. Dido and the Trojan captain [will come] To one same cavern. I shall be on hand, And if I can be certain you are willing, There I shall marry them and call her his. A wedding, this will be. Juno is speaking to Venus, making an agreement and influencing the lives and emotions of both Dido and Aeneas. Later in the same book, Jupiter steps in and restores what is the true fate and path for Aeneas, sending Mercury down to Aeneas's dreams, telling him that he must travel to Italy and leave his new-found lover.

As Aeneas later pleads with Dido:. The gods' interpreter, sent by Jove himself — I swear it by your head and mine — has brought Commands down through the racing winds! I sail for Italy not of my own free will. Several of the gods try to intervene against the powers of fate, even though they know what the eventual outcome will be. The interventions are really just distractions to continue the conflict and postpone the inevitable. If the gods represent humans, just as the human characters engage in conflicts and power struggles, so too do the gods. Fate , described as a preordained destiny that men and gods have to follow, is a major theme in the Aeneid.

One example is when Aeneas is reminded of his fate through Jupiter and Mercury while he is falling in love with Dido. He was to be ruler of Italy, Potential empire, armorer of war; To father men from Teucer's noble blood And bring the whole world under law's dominion. It is important to recognize that there is a marked difference between fate and divine intervention, as even though the gods might remind mortals of their eventual fate, the gods themselves are not in control of it.

Later in Book 6, when Aeneas visits the underworld, his father Anchises introduces him to the larger fate of the Roman people, as contrasted against his own personal fate to found Rome:. So raptly, everywhere, father and son Wandered the airy plain and viewed it all. After Anchises had conducted him To every region and had fired his love Of glory in the years to come, he spoke Of wars that he might fight, of Laurentines, And of Latinus' city, then of how He might avoid or bear each toil to come.

From the very beginning of the Aeneid , violence and conflict are used as a means of survival and conquest. Aeneas's voyage is caused by the Trojan War and the destruction of Troy. This violence continues as Aeneas makes his journey. Dido kills herself in an excessively violent way over a pyre in order to end and escape her worldly problem: Queen Dido's suicide is a double edged sword. While releasing herself from the burden of her pain through violence, her last words implore her people to view Aeneas's people with hate for all eternity:. This is my last cry, as my last blood flows.

Then, O my Tyrians, besiege with hate His progeny and all his race to come: Make this your offering to my dust. No love, No pact must be between our peoples. Furthermore, her people, hearing of their queen's death, have only one avenue on which to direct the blame: Thus, Dido's request of her people and her people's only recourse for closure align in their mutual hate for Aeneas and his Trojans.

In effect, Dido's violent suicide leads to the violent nature of the later relationship between Carthage and Rome. Finally, when Aeneas arrives in Latium, conflict inevitably arises. In the ensuing battles, Turnus kills Pallas, who is supposed to be under Aeneas's protection. This act of violence causes Aeneas to be consumed with fury. Although Turnus asks for mercy in their final encounter, when Aeneas sees that Turnus has taken Pallas' sword belt, Aeneas proclaims:.

You in your plunder, torn from one of mine, Shall I be robbed of you? This wound will come From Pallas: Pallas makes this offering And from your criminal blood exacts his due. This final act of violence shows how Turnus' violence—the act of killing Pallas—inevitably leads to more violence and his own death.

It is possible that the recurring theme of violence in the Aeneid is a subtle commentary on the bloody violence contemporary readers would have just experienced during the Late Republican civil wars. The Aeneid potentially explores whether the violence of the civil wars was necessary to establish a lasting peace under Augustus, or whether it would just lead to more violence in the future.

Written during the reign of Augustus , the Aeneid presents the hero Aeneas as a strong and powerful leader. The favorable representation of Aeneas parallels Augustus in that it portrays his reign in a progressive and admirable light, and allows Augustus to be positively associated with the portrayal of Aeneas. In the Aeneid , Aeneas is portrayed as the singular hope for the rebirth of the Trojan people.

Charged with the preservation of his people by divine authority, Aeneas is symbolic of Augustus' own accomplishments in establishing order after the long period of chaos of the Roman civil wars. Augustus as the light of savior and the last hope of the Roman people is a parallel to Aeneas as the savior of the Trojans.

This parallel functions as propaganda in support of Augustus, [43] [44] as it depicts the Trojan people, future Romans themselves, as uniting behind a single leader who will lead them out of ruin:. New refugees in a great crowd: Later in Book 6, Aeneas travels to the underworld where he sees his father Anchises, who tells him of his own destiny as well as that of the Roman people. Anchises describes how Aeneas's descendant Romulus will found the great city of Rome, which will eventually be ruled by Caesar Augustus:.

Turn your two eyes This way and see this people, your own Romans. Here is Caesar, and all the line of Iulus, All who shall one day pass under the dome Of the great sky: Virgil writes about the fated future of Lavinium , the city that Aeneas will found, which will in turn lead directly to the golden reign of Augustus. Virgil is using a form of literary propaganda to demonstrate the Augustan regime's destiny to bring glory and peace to Rome. Rather than use Aeneas indirectly as a positive parallel to Augustus as in other parts of the poem, Virgil outright praises the emperor in Book 6, referring to Augustus as a harbinger for the glory of Rome and new levels of prosperity.

The poem abounds with smaller and greater allegories. Two of the debated allegorical sections pertain to the exit from the underworld and to Pallas's belt. Aeneas's leaving the underworld through the gate of false dreams has been variously interpreted: One suggestion is that the passage simply refers to the time of day at which Aeneas returned to the world of the living; another is that it implies that all of Aeneas's actions in the remainder of the poem are somehow "false".

In an extension of the latter interpretation, it has been suggested that Virgil is conveying that the history of the world since the foundation of Rome is but a lie. Other scholars claim that Virgil is establishing that the theological implications of the preceding scene an apparent system of reincarnation are not to be taken as literal.

It is the first book in the Kingsbridge Series - the others being a sequel, set years later, entitled World Without End , [2] and A Column of Fire set in Elizabethan England. In the preface to The Pillars of the Earth , Follett tells readers that he grew up in a Puritan-based family, whose worship space was very spare. In preparing for writing, he was reading about medieval architecture, and:. The novel's Kingsbridge is fictional. Follett set it in Marlborough, Wiltshire ; he chose that location because the cathedrals of Winchester , Gloucester , and Salisbury could be reached from there within a few days on horseback.

Kingsbridge Cathedral as described is based on the cathedrals of Wells and Salisbury. Henry's nephew Stephen of Blois and Henry's daughter Maud fight for the throne. Ambitious nobles and churchmen take sides, hoping to gain advantages. The novel, which is divided into six sections plus a prologue , explores themes of intrigue and conspiracy against historical events. A red-headed man is hanged for theft after being condemned by a priest, a knight, and a monk.

His pregnant lover curses the men who condemned him, declaring that their children will be hanged, their enemies will prosper, and that they will live the rest of their lives with regret and sorrow. Circumstances leave mason Tom Builder and his family destitute and starving. After his pregnant wife Agnes dies in childbirth, Tom abandons his newborn by his wife's grave in the snowy woods, having no way to feed the infant.

He later has a change of heart and returns, but finds the baby missing. After meeting up with an outlaw named Ellen and her son Jack, whom they had first met earlier, the group discover that Tom's infant has been taken to a monastery cell belonging to the Kingsbridge Priory. Knowing that he will be charged with abandonment if he says the baby is his, and confident that the monks will be able to look after him, Tom decides to leave the infant to the monastery.

After several unsuccessful attempts to find work, Tom convinces Bartholomew, Earl of Shiring, to hire him to repair the walls of the Earl's castle. Philip, the leader of the cell, is visited by his brother Francis, a priest, who warns him of a plot by Earl of Shiring Bartholomew and the Earl of Gloucestershire against King Stephen. Philip tells Waleran Bigod, the ambitious archdeacon to the Bishop of Kingsbridge, of the plot, and travels to Kingsbridge Priory where the previous manager, Prior James, has died only a few days before. Waleran promises to make Philip the bishop's nomination for prior, practically guaranteeing Philip's election, in return for Philip's support to later make Waleran bishop though Waleran conceals that the bishop is also already dead.

Philip agrees as the priory has become financially and spiritually destitute under Prior James, and he believes he can correct that. He wins, making enemies of the rivals for the post, in particular the sub-prior Remigius. Tom's infant, now named Jonathan, is sent to live with Philip at the priory.

Mark Berent

Unsure of the validity of Philip's words, Waleran goes to the Hamleighs, a noble family who have been enemies of the Earl of Shiring ever since the earl's daughter, Aliena, rejected a marriage with William, the only son of the Hamleighs. Seeing this as an excuse for them to take their revenge, the Hamleighs take Bartholomew's castle and arrest the earl, forcing Tom and Ellen, now lovers, and their children into homelessness once again.

They eventually settle in Kingsbridge, Tom hoping to get a job rebuilding the cathedral there. The family sees Jonathan during this time, although only Tom and Ellen know that he is Tom's son. To ensure that Tom will have work, Jack burns down the old Romanesque cathedral, telling no one else of his actions.

After some convincing, Philip hires Tom to build the new cathedral. Tom's strong son Alfred physically bullies smaller and weaker Jack through repeated acts of battery which creates friction with Ellen as Tom sees no fault in his son and never disciplines him. Brother Remigius, who is opposed to Philip as prior, charges Ellen and Tom with fornication.

Waleran, who was cursed by the woman at the hanging, orders Ellen to live apart from Tom. Outraged by Tom's willingness to accept this, Ellen returns to the forest with Jack. Philip and Waleran go to King Stephen in the hope of convincing him to give Bartholomew's estates, including a huge limestone quarry, to the church, so that they can be used to pay for the new cathedral's construction. Initially believing that Waleran will be loyal to him as a fellow cleric, Philip learns from the Hamleighs that Waleran intends to use the earldom solely to boost his own position.

Realising that the Hamleighs are trying to divide him and Waleran so that they can take the earldom for themselves, Philip secretly conspires with the Hamleighs. They agree that Kingsbridge Priory will be given the quarry and some other lands with the rest of Shiring going to the Hamleighs, but the Hamleighs betray this deal and are given ownership of the quarry with Philip getting rights to, not ownership of, the stone.

Furious at being foiled, Waleran vows to never let Philip build his cathedral. He mutilates the boy to coerce Aliena into not resisting as he rapes her brutally, leaving Aliena traumatized. Homeless and destitute, Aliena and Richard travel to Winchester in the hope of receiving compensation from the king, and visit Bartholomew, now dying in prison. The former earl demands they swear an oath to work to regain the earldom. Aliena supports Richard financially by becoming a wealthy wool merchant by, as described in the book, the hitherto unheard of act of buying wool from the farmers on their farms and selling it at market rather than the farmers having to travel to market themselves, saving them time and effort with the help of Philip, who agrees to buy her wool at a fair price when other merchants refuse to do so, and the two siblings settle in Kingsbridge.

The Hamleighs attempt to barricade the quarry against the priory, but Philip foils them by having his monks travel there under cover of darkness and pose as ghosts, scaring off the Hamleighs' men at arms. In retaliation, the Hamleighs work with Waleran to try to have the cathedral moved to Shiring, thus depriving Philip of the properties tied to it, by claiming that Kingsbridge lacks the resources and manpower to build a cathedral. At the advice of his allies, Philip calls across the county for volunteers to work on the cathedral as penance for their sins.

On the day of an inspection by Bishop Henry of Blois that Waleran had arranged, they arrive en masse, and Henry is convinced to not move the cathedral. William's father, Percy Hamleigh, passes away, and William learns that the earldom will either go to him or Richard, now a knight, since they are both sons of an Earl of Shiring. In order to restore his fortunes so that he can raise an army with which to impress King Stephen, William leads an attack on the quarry, which the Hamleighs had unsuccessfully attempted to barricade against Philip, killing and expelling the priory's quarrymen.

Tom befriends Prior Philip and, when Ellen returns, he persuades Philip to allow them to marry. After some time, Alfred proposes to Aliena, but she turns him down, she also strikes up a friendship with Jack, with whom she falls in love, now working as an apprentice mason at Tom's suggestion, but she shuns him after Alfred catches the two of them kissing, being reminded of WIlliam's attack on her. The two stepbrothers continue to be at odds, and Alfred later claims that Jack's father was hanged for thieving, starting a fight that leads to damage and a loss of construction materials.

Jack is expelled from the cathedral construction, but Philip contrives a new construction overseer position for Jack that he can have, on the condition that he becomes a monk. Jack reluctantly agrees to this, in order to stay in Kingsbridge. Later on, Ellen claims that Jack's father was innocent. William proves a hapless and merciless lord who mishandles the earldom financially and routinely rapes any peasant women he wishes. Attempting to restore his fortunes, William leads an attack that burns down Kingsbridge and kills many people including Tom Builder. In the chaos, Aliena's entire stock of wool, in which she had invested all her money, is destroyed in the fire.

After losing her fortune again, Aliena agrees to marry Alfred if he supports Richard. Jack, who has been confined for continued infringements largely fraternizing with Aliena breaks his confinement in an attempt to talk to her, but is ultimately locked in the obedience room of the monastery. The next morning, Ellen breaks into the room, revealing that Jack's father had once been imprisoned there after he was framed for theft by three men.

Freed by his mother, Jack and Aliena make love on the morning of her wedding, and he tries to convince her to leave Kingsbridge with him, but she refuses to do anything that would require her to break her vow to support Richard. Jack attempts to persuade Alfred to call off the marriage, but discovers that Alfred plans to marry her solely to keep her from Jack, and intends to mistreat her to further spite him. Ellen curses the wedding, seemingly leaving Alfred impotent, and he and Aliena never consummate their marriage.

Jack leaves Kingsbridge to find out about his father. After years of putting off the decision following the death of Earl Percy Hamleigh, Stephen finally gives the earldom to William. Alfred persuades Philip to replace the wooden roof of the cathedral with a stone vault, but fails to reinforce the structure at the higher levels. This causes the cathedral to collapse during a service, killing many people.

Aliena gives birth to a red-headed son, and Alfred abandons her, having realised that the child is Jack's. On Ellen's advice, Aliena leaves with her son to find Jack, and follows evidence of Jack's sculpture through France, finding him in Paris, where they reconcile. Jack helps to calm a riot at a nearby cathedral using the "Weeping Madonna", a wooden statue of a woman he was given by a spice merchant he befriended that appears to weep when taken from a hot place to a cold place.

The statue is viewed as a miracle, which Jack leverages for financial support to rebuild the cathedral in Kingsbridge. As he travels home, Jack makes his way to Cherbourg where he is mistaken for the ghost of his father, Jacques Cherbourg, before meeting his grandmother and other relatives, who reveal that Jacques had supposedly died in the sinking of the White Ship, of which he was a passenger.

Returning to Kingsbridge, Jack convinces Philip and the clergy to make him the cathedral's new master-builder, drawing up a new design for the cathedral based on his observations in France and Spain. His relationship with Aliena is discovered by the monks during the negotiations, and Philip orders them apart until Aliena's marriage to Alfred is annulled. Wanting more information on his father, Jack questions Ellen, who has continuously kept the truth from him out of fear that he would devote himself to a life of revenge against those responsible for his father's death.

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