Well, war has come at last to Lachium.

And guess what?

We're doing it live.

Okay, this is a meme that I actually do know the origin of, unlike the prophecy has been fulfilled meme, the we're doing it live meme comes

if you've ever seen Bill O'Reilly this clip of him on, I think it was called Inside Edition. And it's

like his teleprompter breaks down or something and he's extremely frustrated and in a hilarious

profanity-laced rant, he says, just ditch the, ditch the

teleprompter. We're doing it live. And that's what's happening today on this penultimate second to

last episode of our series on the Aeneid. This whole poem, this whole time, has been the poem of fate. If there's one theme that hangs

over the entire thing, it's the destiny of Aeneas and how his individuality is going to relate

to this grand thing that he has to do that's written in the stars. And now that war has finally broken out,

remember it's been brewing and we've been talking about the tension over the locals,

between the locals and the new arrivals from Troy. And finally, the Ritulians are going to

lead the Latins to war against the Trojans.

That's what's happening now.

And something very fascinating happens.

Something I had almost forgotten until I reviewed this part of the poem to talk about it

with you guys on the show.

Something kind of amazing, which is that the script, the part of the story that is scripted by fate,

gets thrown aside or we enter into this weird world where we're not totally sure whether

the faded thing is actually going to happen. There are precedents for this in Homeric literature, in the

Iliad especially. There are these moments when you think, well, we know what's going to happen

...