>>14368759
>write
>>14367712
>Yeah. It's a pointless piece for modern audiences. In his day, it tied into the broader tactic Homer uses to show how War Is Hell by making everyone who dies a character with hopes and dreams and a history and then they spend their last moments alive wallowing in blood, shit, and piss wracked with pain and crying to their mothers.
That's not really it. Homer isn't a pacifist, and his primary audience of aristocrats was well aware of the horrors of war, seeing as they were the ones that made up their city's hoplite infantry. They weren't some zoomers who needed to be told How Horrible War Is so that they won't go "fascist" (which means not disputing the regime's policies and its thuggish enforcers and the aimless foreign wars it deems useful, of course).
To a degree it's a local pride thing- same as the march of flags at the Olypmics or the bit where the football players walk onto the field.
But this is even more important, seeing as the heroes were worshipped (not as gods, as dead men) in their cities; to name them is religiously vital. Not to mention that many of the nobles likely claimed personal, not just communal, descent from the heroes.
Moreover, the Catalog is simply nice to read, full of little details and minor stories, and every fragment of sacred history is important.
>>14367430
The trick is realize that Virgil is trying something very, very different from Homer. Whereas Homer wants to vividly tell you what (actually) happened, Virgil, writing a fictional piece, wants you to decipher all the little contradictions & omissions & see how clever he is.