I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble -Augustus Caesar (63 BC - 14 AD)Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get the original essay In his essay, Titus Andronicus and the Mythos of Shakespeare's Rome, Robert Miola uncovers and explores the myths that Shakespeare uses as the foundation of the background and plot. from his first Roman tragedy, Titus Andronicus. Most notably, Miola discusses two Ovidian myths, The Rape of Philomela and The Four Ages of the World. The Rape provides Shakespeare with his stock characters and the events involving Lavinia, his Philomela, while Ovid's Fourth Iron Age describes Shakespeare's physical Rome, "an iron city par excellence," writes Miola, "an establishment military protected by walls and filled with swords. carrying soldiers” (Myth 91). The ancient Roman myth of the god Saturn, who devoured his children to remain in power himself, must be another story used by Shakespeare to develop his Roman characters in Titus, says Miola. As clear proof, he cites the name of the emperor, Saturninus, and the macabre final banquet during which this emperor literally eats his sons-in-law. Miola also cites Virgil's Aeneid as one of Shakespeare's main influences. “Shakespeare's Rome, like Virgil's,” says Miola, “was constructed over time by the play of poetic imagination on various materials” (Myth 95). Miola's discussion of the different sources that Shakespeare brought together to create the Rome he illustrates in Titus is compelling. Thus, his final words on the subject: "The eternal city [Rome] is made of an ephemeral mixture of Roman things... Any approach which seeks to adapt... Shakespeare's Rome to one... reads made violence to the heterogeneity of the origins and character of the city", are those that I respect. In this essay, I wish to explore the human character that Shakespeare gives to "Rome itself" (V.iii.72) through its consistent personification of the city and its simultaneous dehumanization, or characterization of its obviously human characters Rather than being a "singular" interpretation, I think my reading directly supports the "heterogeneity of the city's character" that Miola speaks of. .All the people Shakespeare portrays in Titus are two-dimensional, good or evil. The dividing line is between those who support Titus, the tragic warrior hero, and those who side with Tamora, the evil queen-empress. are noble and altruistic, demonstrating Roman pietas, while the latter are ignoble and selfish. In Jack E. Reese's essay, The Formalization of Horror in Titus Andronicus, he points out that the allegorical disguise of Tamora and her sons as "Revenge, Murder, and Rape" can be seen as a symbol of the characterization of entire work. " (Horror 79). In this scene, they are as they are, the symbol is exactly the same as the person. The only two characters who could be said to escape the dichotomy are Titus and Aaron the Moor. In Rome, Titus “sacrifices” his son and daughter, Miola says, “on the altar of his personal honor” (Family 67) It is fair to say that personal honor is his concern for killing his offspring, for). Mutius represents shameful filial disobedience (or mutiny) and Lavinia represents his failure to protect her and is a reminder of a shameful act committed not only towards her, but also to her entire Andronici family. It is also obvious, however, that his true motivation. was to act as altruistically as possible and that his “pride and misguided zeal”simply led to commit “several tragic errors” (Horror 79). He kills his son to show that he loves Rome more than his own blood. He kills his daughter so that she will not live in "shame" (V.iii.40), showing that he loves her honor more than his desire to keep her alive. Likewise, Aaron argues that, unlike all of Titus' other parents, who do everything from selling their children for gold, to killing them out of pride, to eating at banquets, an insurmountable desire to preserve the life of his illegitimate son. Again, however, the possible complexity that this wish implies is undermined when we examine his motivation, a selfish desire to make himself immortal and unaging through the instrument of his son, "This myself, vigor and l 'image of my youth' (IV.ii.107-8, emphasis mine). In fact, the only "character" who possesses a range of emotions worthy of an artistic and serious depiction of a human is not a human at all. It is the city, Rome itself. The adjectives Shakespeare uses to describe her run the gamut. Starting from the negative side: according to Demetrius, she is “ambitious” (Ii132), later, Lucius finds her “proud” (III.i.289). At other times, she is "contemptuous" (IV.ii.113), "ungrateful" (IV.iii,17, IV.iii.33, Vi12) and capable of being "abandoned and desperate" (V. iii.74). ). On the other hand, she has “hope” (IV.ii.13), she can be “kind” (Ii165), and she can even “reward” her disciples “with love” (Ii82). Likewise, his way of dressing, like any person, varies according to his mood, both decorative and practical, beautiful and sad. Sometimes she wears the “Gracious Lavinia” as a “rich ornament” (Ii52) on her “glorious body” (Ii187). Then, at other times, she shows respect for her dead warriors by wearing “mourning herbs” (Ii70). Rome is unique in being able to reach the full spectrum of human emotions in this way, from the diabolical feeling of "ingratefulness" to the holy acts of being "loving" and "kind." Now that Titus' central, most human personality has surfaced, we must wonder about his evolution. What does this complex human do throughout the play? Although his name is repeated repeatedly to punctuate lines and give authority, Rome debuts in the first act as "headless" (Ii186). She remains this way even after Saturninus becomes emperor because he is not strong enough to rule, as evidenced by Tamora's power to effect change in the state. In the second act, the manifestation of Rome's terrible dismemberment is seen in the loss of her senses of hearing and sight in relation to those who should concern her most: the Empress, the princes and the princess when they are in the forest. “The palace,” the seat of power in Rome, Shakespeare tells us… is equipped with “eyes and ears” (II.i.128). But Rome is deaf and blind, it must be, it is headless, to the rapes and murders that are happening. But at the end of the second act, the dismemberment of Rome stops and only continues on the bodies of its inhabitants. First, and most heinous, we find Lavinia mutilated and raped. Having lost her tongue and hands, she perfectly complements Rome's loss of human senses. Where Rome became deaf and blind, Lavinia lost taste and contact. A scene later, she depicts the loss of the last sense, smell, upon meeting her father, Titus, who compares her to an "almost withered lily" (III.i.113). In the next scene, Titus himself cuts his hand. Next comes the presentation of the heads of his two youngest sons. The boys imitate Rome's current helpless state. Finally, the dismemberment carried out on its inhabitants goes beyond the compromised position of Rome., 21 (1970), 77- 84.