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  One of the stories in Hindu mythology that demonstrates the idea of how some people value wealth more than relationships is of Sunahshepa whose poor father, Ajigarta, sells him to King Harischandra. The king wants an adopted son whom he can sacrifice to the gods in the place of his real son, Rohit. The priests refuse to do human sacrifice and so Ajigarta offers to behead his own son if given more cattle. This story comes from the Aitreya Brahmana composed around the time of Homer’s Iliad.

  Euripides’s Greek tragedy Hecuba, written around 460 BCE, tells us the tragic story of Polydorus. Here, Hecuba (Hecabe) avenges her son’s death by attacking and blinding Polymestor.

  In Hyginus’s Fabulae, Polydorus is sent to his older sister, Iliona. Not trusting her husband, Polymestor, she raises her own son as her brother and her brother as her son. After the Trojan War, Agamemnon offers Polymestor the hand of his daughter Electra if he kills Priam’s son and daughter. Polymestor does so, thus accidentally killing his own son.

  Polymestor denies Polydorus burial rites by throwing his corpse into the sea. Aeneas conducts the proper funeral rites so that the ghost of Polydorus can be at peace and travel to the land of the dead across the Styx.

  Andromache

  His journey in search of a homeland took Aeneas to Epirus in Greece, where he found a city that looked very much like Troy, a diminutive double with much diluted grandeur. On enquiry, he learned that Helenus, son of Priam, known for his prophetic ability, and his queen, Andromache, widow of Hector, were its king and queen.

  Helenus explained, ‘After my father gave Helen to my brother Deiphobus instead of me, I left Troy and went over to the Greeks and revealed all the secrets that would enable them to bring down Troy. For my favours, I was spared. I joined Achilles’ son, Pyrrhus, and travelled with him to Epirus, for I divined that one day I would be master of all that was his.’

  Andromache added, ‘I was concubine to Pyrrhus. He was not interested in home or kingdom.

  He loved conquest and felt he should claim the hand of Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen, in marriage; but she was betrothed to wed her cousin, Orestes, son of Agamemnon. A duel took place between them in which Orestes prevailed. With Pyrrhus gone, the people chose Helenus as king, for he was of royal blood and an able ruler, and he chose me as his wife. So you see, the gods have ensured that at least some Trojans rule over some Greeks.’

  Andromache provided Aeneas with supplies he would need for his voyage. And Helenus made a prediction: Aeneas would establish a new city in the land that was once home to those who built the city of Troy. At the destined spot, he would find a giant sow suckling thirty white piglets.

  These stories reveal how the consequences of war are blurred in the long run, for in some instances, the conquerors end up being ruled by the vanquished.

  In 280 BCE, Pyrrhus of Epirus won a war against the Romans in which his own ‘victorious’ army suffered so many losses that he feared another such victory would see him returning to Epirus alone. The phrase ‘pyrrhic victory’, a victory where the losses sustained makes it as good as defeat, comes from here.

  Dardanus

  Where did the people who built the city of Troy come from, Aeneas wondered. His father, the oldest Trojan on the ship, remembered the stories he had heard as a child and said, ‘It must be Crete, for Teucer came from Crete.’

  Teucer left Crete after it was struck by famine. He came to Asia and the oracles told him to settle down in a land where he would be attacked by creatures born of the earth. On his first night, mice, who are ‘creatures born of the earth’, attacked his tent. Thus, Teucer made his home there and established the worship of Apollo who helped him rid the region of the rats.

  Aeneas sailed east to Crete, but his crew suffered great sickness on landing on its shores.

  ‘Then it must be Italy, for Teucer’s son-in-law Dardanus came from Italy,’ said Anchises, regretting his earlier decision.

  This westward journey meant travelling through unknown waters where he encountered the Cyclopes, Scylla and Charybdis, and the Harpies who told Aeneas, ‘When you and your sailors eat your plates along with the food on it, know that you have found your home.’

  These adventures proved too much for Anchises, and he died before the ship reached Italy.

  The theme of heroes and kings establishing cities is a common theme in Greek mythology, but not so much in Hindu mythology. The great cities of mythology such as Ayodhya and Hastinapur seem to have always existed. Kubera does establish Lanka and after being cast out by Ravana, moves north and founds Alaka. Krishna too establishes the city of Dwarka after Jarasandha burns down Mathura. But these are exceptions rather than the rule.

  Virgil clearly wants the journey of his hero to include encounters of other heroes, from Jason who travels east, to Odysseus who gets lost in the west. And so Aeneas encounters both the Cyclopes as well as the Harpies. Like these past heroes, Aeneas also travels to the land of the dead across the Styx.

  Pygmalion

  The journey to what would eventually be his home was not an easy one for Aeneas, since the goddess Hera was still angry with the Trojans, smarting from the fact that Paris had judged Aphrodite more beautiful than her. And the fact that Aeneas was Aphrodite’s son and a Trojan only served to compound her hatred. So she asked the wind god Aeolus to cause the Trojan ship to crash against the rocks.

  The sea god Poseidon did not appreciate Hera’s interference in his realm. So he countered Aeolus’s move and ensured Aeneas’s ship did not crash. Instead it reached Carthage, a city on the northern shore of Africa, ruled by the lovely Dido.

  Dido, princess of Phoenicia, and her brother, Pygmalion, were supposed to jointly rule the kingdom as per their father’s wishes. But an ambitious Pygmalion had claimed the throne for himself and then killed Dido’s husband, hoping to lay his hands on his hidden treasure. Guided by her husband’s ghost, Dido found the treasure and sailed with it, and her many followers, to Africa.

  The rulers of Africa told Dido that for her wealth they could give her as much land as could be enclosed by the hide of a bull. So Dido sacrificed a bull, got its hide cut into thin strips and joined the strips end-to-end to enclose a vast tract of land.

  The Africans were impressed by Dido’s intelligence and let her stay. Her kingdom, Carthage, became a major trading port, rivalling, and even overshadowing, the ancient trading ports of Phoenicia.

  The more famous Pygmalion is a sculptor who carves a statue of what he considers to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and falls in love with it. Amused, the Olympians give the statue life and a name, Galatea, and she marries her creator.

  The story of Dido claiming land using strips of hide has given rise to a perimetrical problem in mathematics popularly known as ‘the Dido problem’: What is the closed curve which has the maximum area for a given perimeter?

  Carthage and Rome were rival cities that were competing for control over the Mediterranean.

  Hannibal, a great general of Carthage, took a roundabout route to cross the Alps and enter Italy with elephants; he conquered and occupied Italy for fifteen years. He was eventually defeated by Scipio, a Roman general who incorporated Hannibal’s war strategies and acknowledged him as one of the greatest generals in the world after Alexander and Pyrrhus.

  In the ancient world, there was no such entity as Europe. Civilization thrived around the Mediterranean, with ancient cultures such as the Greek and Roman in the north, Carthage and Egypt in the south, and Phoenicia in the west. The creation of Europe, Asia and Africa happened much later in history, probably with the rise of Islam which led to the Arabs occupying much of Africa by the eighth century. Their northward march was resisted by a united Europe, led by kings of what is now France and Germany, whose ancestors were considered barbarians by the Romans and the Greeks.

  Dido

  On his arrival, Aeneas told Dido his story, and Dido told Aeneas hers. They spent hours telling each other about the tragedy of losing old homes and seeking new ones; o