So don't judge me, but I was watching an Instagram reel, which, as you probably know, is basically just TikTok, but on Instagram for geriatric millennials like me who can't figure out how to work a new platform.

And so it just feeds you vertical videos for days, cute, funny, amusing things that just show up on your screen. And the algorithm, which naturally

knows every particle of my being, knows my going in and my coming out, my standing up and my

sitting down, figured out that it should serve me this video of a girl talking about the

titles of fantasy novels. And she pointed out that like every fantasy series

has a title that goes like,

the something of something and something.

They all sound like this,

the song of ice and fire,

a court of thorns and roses,

a crown of cheese and bananas or whatever.

And so today I'm going to be bringing you

Aeneas and Dido, a tale of love and war.

Now, they say that all is fair in love and war. That's certainly going to be the case here.

We're going to have twists and turns, ups and downs, brutal betrayals, heartbreaking,

disasters, tragedies, thrills, chills, excitement, romance.

It's all here in the tale of love and war.

And I wanted to frame it that way as this tale of two distinct things, these kind of opposing opposite themes, love and war,

because I want to talk to you today about ring composition. This is a major literary technique that I think Virgil is using here.

It's one of the most ancient impulses in storytelling to tell a ring story. That is a story

that proceeds in a kind of loop. And by the end of it, there are themes that were there at the

beginning that you've kind of forgotten that then come back up at the end.

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