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 Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In his essay, Titus Andronicus and the Myths of Shakespeare's Rome, Robert Miola discovers and explores the myths that Shakespeare uses as the basis for the background and plot of his first Roman tragedy, Titus Andronicus. In particular, Miola discusses two Ovidian myths, The Rape of Philomela and The Four Ages of the World. The Rape provides Shakespeare with his key characters and events involving Lavinia, his Philomela, while Ovid's Fourth Iron Age describes Shakespeare's physical Rome, "a city essentially of iron," writes Miola, "a military establishment protected by walls and full of firearms carrying soldiers" (Mythos 91). The ancient Roman myth of the god Saturn, who devoured his children to stay in power himself, must have been another story Shakespeare used to develop his Roman characters in Titus, Miola says. As clear evidence, he points to the emperor's name, Saturninus, and the macabre final banquet during which this emperor literally eats his stepchildren. Miola also cites Virgil's Aeneid as a major influence on Shakespeare. “Shakespeare's Rome, like Virgil's,” Miola parallels, “was built over time by the play of the poetic imagination on different materials” (Mythos 95). Miola's discussion of the various sources 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 composed of an ephemeral jumble of Roman things... Any approach that seeks to fit... Shakespeare's Rome into a single... read ago violence to the heterogeneity of the origins and character of the city", are the ones I respect. In this essay, I want to explore the human character that Shakespeare gives to "Rome itself" (V.iii.72) through his consistent personification of the city and his simultaneous dehumanization, or characterization of its manifestly human characters. Rather than this being a "singular" interpretation, I think my reading directly supports "the heterogeneity of the character... of the city" that Miola speaks of. All the people Shakespeare describes in Titus are two-dimensional, good or bad. The dividing line falls between those who support Titus, the tragic warrior hero, and those who side with Tamora, the evil queen-empress. The former 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 children as "Vengeance, murder, and robbery may be seen as symbolic of the characterization of the 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" both his son and his daughter, Miola says, "on the altar of his own personal honor" (Family 67). It is fair to say that personal honor is his concern in killing his offspring, for Mutius represents shameful filial disobedience (or mutiny). and Lavinia represents his inability to protect her and is a reminder of a shameful act done not only to her, but also to her entire Andronici family. It is also evident, however, that her true motivation was to act in the most selfless manner possible and that his "pride and misguided zeal" simply caused him to make "several tragic mistakes" (Horror 79).Rome more than its own blood. He kills his daughter so that she cannot continue to live in "shame" (V.iii.40), showing that he loves his honor more than his desire to keep her alive. Likewise, Aaron maintains, unlike all of Titus' other parents, who do everything from selling their children for gold, to killing them out of pride, to eating them at banquets, an insurmountable desire to preserve life of the illegitimate child. Once again, though, the possible complexity this desire implies is undermined when we examine his motivation, a selfish desire to make himself immortal and not age through the medium of his son: "This me, the vigor and image of my youth" (IV .ii.107-8, emphasis mine). In fact, the only 'character' who has a range of emotions worthy of a serious and artful portrayal of a human being is not a human being at all. It is the city, Rome itself. The adjectives Shakespeare uses to describe her cover the entire spectrum. Starting from the negative side: according to Demetrius she is "ambitious" (Ii132), then Lucius finds her "proud" (III.i.289). At other times she is "despising" (IV.ii.113), "ungrateful" (IV.iii,17, IV.iii.33, Vi12) and capable of being "disconsolate and despairing" (V.iii.74). On the other hand, he has "hope" (IV.ii.13), can be "kind" (Ii165), and can even "reward" his followers "with love" (Ii82). Likewise, his way of dressing, like that of every person, varies depending on his mood, whether decorative or practical, beautiful or sad. He sometimes wears the "Gracious Lavinia" as a "rich ornament" (Ii52) on his "glorious body" (Ii187). Then, at other times, he shows respect for his dead warriors by wearing "mourning weeds" (Ii70). Rome is the only one capable of covering the spectrum of human emotions like this, from the evil feeling of "ungratefulness" to the holy acts of being "loving" and "kind". Now that Tito's central, more human personality has emerged, we must ask about his development. What does this complex human aspect do during the show? Although his name is repeated again and again to punctuate lines and confer authority, Roma debuts in the first act as "headless" (Ii186). He remains so even after Saturninus becomes emperor because he is not strong enough to lead, as is demonstrated by Tamora's power to effect change in the state. In the second act, the manifestation of the terrible dismemberment of Rome is manifested in the loss of the senses of hearing and sight compared to those who should care most: the Empress, the princes and the princess when they are in the forest. "The palace," the seat of Rome's power, Shakespeare tells us... is endowed 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 occur. At the end of the second act, however, the dismemberment of Rome stops and continues only on the bodies of its inhabitants. First, and most atrociously, we find Lavinia mutilated and raped. Having lost his tongue and hands, he perfectly complements and complements Rome's loss of human senses. Where Rome has become deaf and blind, Lavinia has now lost her taste and touch. A later scene represents the loss of her last sense, smell, in the encounter with her father Tito, who compares her to an "almost withered lily" (III.i.113). In the next scene, Tito himself cuts his hand. Then follows the presentation of the heads of his two younger children. The boys imitate Rome's current headless state. Finally, the dismemberment wrought on its inhabitants goes beyond Rome's compromised position. This happens when Titus slaughters Tamora's two sons and removes their "blood," then "grinds their bones to dust" and "cooks" their "vile heads" (V.ii.197-200). This final act of dismemberment is as complete as possible because it separates, 21 (1970), 77- 84.