The Market, Energy, Political Page, T+65 -- October 18, 2018

Jobs: link here --

• forecast: 215
• actual: 210
• keeping America great

Khashoggi: pretty much off the front pages.

Global warming smacks the US continental underbelly. From iceagenow ....

16 Oct 2018 – “High temperature of 50°F (at midnight) in Dallas-Fort Worth is really sad, says meteorologist Dr Ryan Maue. “It’s also a super record … Coldest daytime high on record for any day up until October 20th.” was the chilliest so early in the season by a full week (besting Oct 22, 1936).

It was the chilliest in Dallas so early in the season by a full week (besting Oct 22, 1936).

“Second day in a row Kansas City has broken the record low,” says Joey Marino. “Currently 28° at KMCI. Old record was 29° set back in 1976!”

“Two records were set today in Oklahoma City,” says Asst professor of meteorology Jason Furtado. “Record low of 35 F (Previous record: 38 F in 2001) – Record low maximum of 50 F (Previous record: 54 F in 1914).”

Comment: Now, if the rain would turn to snow, life would be perfect.

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So True

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The Literature Page

Virgil's Aeneid, a translation by Frederck Ahl, c. 2007

I've never "understood" Virgil or the Aenied. There was an essay in the current issue of The New Yorker on the Aeneid -- gave me an opportunity to take another look.

First, from wiki, Virgil:

• Publius Vergillius Maro but his friends called him "Virgil" apparently
• lived a few years before Christ, 70 BC to 19 BC, best estimates
• wrote three of the most famous poems in Latin, including the Aeneid

It seems every country, except perhaps the US, has its national epic -- Rome had it Aeneid

• Greece, of course, the Odyssey and the Iliad
• Norway, Iceland, et al: The Icelandic Saga, et al
• England: Beowulf, Lord of the Rings

Now the book.

• I will read the introduction (33 pages? xlv -xii); and just parts of the poem --
• 12 books
• 327 pages
• family diagram
• explanatory notes, often the best part of a book: 111 pages
• index: 26 pages

A  little bit of background:

• Homer mentions Aeneas, a prince and a warrior, in his Iliad
• Virgil depiction of Aeneas much, much different than that of Homer's
• Caesar had a portrait of Aeneas on the reverse of the country's silver denarii but the uneducated would not have known of him; the educated would have known of Aeneas through their reading of the Iliad
• Rome's Octavian
  powerful Roman ruler
• Virgil's patron
• descendant of Aeneas
• soon to be Rome's first citizen and commander-in-chief, Augustus

From wiki:

• born Galus Octavius Thurinus: Octavius
• maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar assassinated in 44 BC
• Octavius named in Caesar's will as his adopted son and heir
• Mark Anthony, Marcus Lepidus, Octavius: the Triumvirate to defeat the assassins of Caesar
• Octavius survives the three and becomes sole leader in 31 BC -- Augustus
• restores the outward facade of the free Republic
• Aeneid: written between 29 and 19 BC 

That's the background and where we will stop for today, except to say that if he wrote it before 29 and 19 BC, and died in 19 BC, it was his last opus.

So, here we go, a Trojan prince and warrior founds Rome. It was Virgil who told us that Romulus and Remus were both descendants of Aeneas through their mother Silvia, making Aeneas the progenitor of the Roman people.

It is purely coincidental and serendipity that the second of two consequential books I am reading this week is the biography of Primo Levi, an Italian Jew (Turin).

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Learning Bells