honorable new years

I don't have a lot of good formal education, well, I didn't until I went to law school, which is like a rather drawn out, painful version of trade school and thus doesn't count. However, I read a lot, and I read a lot of stuff that educated people read, discuss, write on and sweat over in the hallowed halls of high hierophancy (I just used hierophancy for the alliteration, sorry. It's not really appropos. I meant "high learnin'" lest there be confusion...).

I'm now reading Virgil's Aeneid, and, apart from it being a jolly good read (filled with battles, tears, love, passion, compassion and the wicked doings of nasty people AND nasty gods/giants/monsters/mountains/trees, whatever, they all seem to get a hand in against poor Aeneas and co.), some questions occur. To be right with the gods seems only to require constant sacrificing of handsome young bulls, yet Aenaes is a compassionate, ethical, and courageous person (except, perhaps in the eyes of the handsome young bulls). It would seem then, that (ok this is probably quite elementary for those of you who've studied classics) ethics has nothing to do with devotion to a deity. Now, being of the non-theistic persuasion myself, this comes as no surprise, but I wonder if I'm reading the Aeneid correctly. To the Romans then, was there a notion of divine reward for being courageous and ethical, or was acting in an ethical way on earth reward enough?

And, for another example of honor and dishonor, read Archilochus 6th (8th?) century BC greek poet. He wrote poetry joking about his running away from a battle and leaving his prized shield behind for the enemy to take. In the days of "return with your shield, or on it" I assume he was pretty radical. Western culture's first anti-hero... By the way, this paragraph has nothing to do with the first. It was just in my mind.

The mind is a terrible thing.