The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [55]
No sooner has Aeneas returned from his visit to the underworld in the Aeneid than the Trojans recognise that they have in fact at last arrived at the very place, the mouth of the River Tiber, where the gods intend they should settle. And at first all seems set for a quick and happy ending to the story. They are warmly welcomed by the local king Latinius, because prophecy has long foretold that strangers would arrive, bringing great honour to his land: and that their leader would marry his daughter, the beautiful Princess Lavinia, who has been vainly wooed by every prince in Italy, above all by the great Turnus, king of the nearby Rutulians.
But when the Princess is promised to Aeneas, black jealousy seizes Turnus's heart: and gradually the storm clouds gather for Aeneas's last and most terrible ordeal. The entire second half of the poem is taken up with describing how the tribes gather from all over the surrounding countrsyide, to hurl the Trojan interlopers back into the sea; the mustering of two great armies; the first skirmishes; a tremendous battle, which the Trojans survive only by the skin of their teeth; and finally the titanic single combat between Aeneas and his `dark rival, which at first it seems the hero will lose. But it ends at last, with his protective goddess Venus hovering over him, in his total victory.
Again, when the Argonauts arrive in Colchis to claim the Golden Fleece, the evil King Aetes tells Jason that he must face three tests, far worse than anything the Argonauts had met on their journeyings. First he must yoke two monstrous, brazen-hoofed, fire-breathing bulls, which live in an underground cavern, and plough a great field. Then he must sow the field with dragon's teeth, from which will spring up an army of fierce warriors, and slay them. Finally, if he survives all this, he must somehow slip through the defences of the fearsome, unsleeping dragon which is coiled round the tree on which the shining fleece hangs, guarding it night and day.
It seems like mission impossible. But fortunately for Jason, just as happened when Theseus arrived in Crete to challenge the Minotaur, he has already won the love of a `helper' of supernatural powers, the tyrant's beautiful daughter, the Princess Medea. Just as Ariadne provided Theseus with the magic thread, so Medea provides Jason with a magic salve, which enables him to withstand every onslaught of the mad bulls. When he has sown the field with dragon's teeth, and is confronted with the mass of armed warriors, he is again saved from seemingly inevitable death, this time by his own ingenuity, when he throws a rock into the middle of them, so that they all turn on each other. Finally, when Medea learns that her enraged father is treacherously planning to murder Jason and all his companions while they are sleeping, she secretly leads him by night to the sacred grove where the Golden Fleece hangs, armed with a magic drug which renders the dragon unconscious. At last he can seize his prize.
When the Jews arrive in the Promised Land (without Moses or Aaron, whom God has decreed should die before the goal is reached, for allowing their faith in his protection to waver), they face a series of `final ordeals' just as great as those confronting the other Quest heroes: a series of tremendous battles with the tribes who already live there, beginning with the great siege of Jericho, and culminating in their victory over `the Thirty One Kings'.
Halfway through the story of the Holy Grail, when it