Monday, April 4, 2016

The Most Gruesome Death Scene in Literary History...

While teaching some Vergil to my Latin IV this morning, I made the assertion that the following is the most gruesome death scene in literary history:

illum expirantem transfixo pectore flammas
turbine corripuit scopuloque infixit acuto.
With a whirlwind she snatched him up, breathing out flames
from his pierced chest, and impaled him on a sharp crag.
(Aeneid 1.44-45)
Here he is prior to his richly deserved impaling

The backstory is that Minerva used her father Jove's thunderbolts and took vengeance on a man who raped her priestess Cassandra.

There's no good classical artwork that truly depicts this death scene in all its gory detail. Shame. There should be.





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