So there's a scene in Blade Runner 2049, the sequel, which if you haven't seen it, is actually a really good movie.

And there's this shot from the movie where Ryan Gosling, he's playing this character named Kay,

is looking up at an enormous pink and purple hologram of this beautiful woman.

And she's his AI girlfriend. I looked this up

because I couldn't remember the details of the movie. Her name is Joy. She's a fake AI girlfriend,

and the shot is just this iconic image of this little man in front of this enormous spectral

woman. And I can't get that shot out of my head because I promise it has to do

with the subject of today's episode, which is the last few passages of Aeneid book two.

Right, we're back in the Aeneid this week.

We've been working our way through book two, which is Aeneas' story of how Troy fell and how he escaped.

And now we're going to close the story out, or at least this portion of the story.

We come to the end of book two. We left on

kind of a cliffhanger last time. We saw Neoptolemus, the deranged nihilist, crazed son of Achilles,

who has none of Achilles' honor, but is just raw will to power, this kind of ugly, unmasked Greek savagery, comes and he kills

Priam, the king of Troy, and he does it in the most gruesome and impious way possible at the

altars in the courtyard in front of everybody. We've had first the death of Priam's son in front of Priam

and then the death of Priam himself. Neoptolema sends him down to the underworld and all of this

is watched, witnessed by Aeneas himself. And now we're going to pick up right at that point in the

story and it is a turning point for for Anius. It's the moment when

he realizes something new about his destiny that's going to stick with him for the whole

rest of the story. It's deeply painful, it's deeply important, formative, and it will define

the journey of Anius going forward. Because up until this

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