Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld, ca. 1600, oil on copper, Jan Brueghel the Elder (1569-1625), courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
Do the gods light this fire in our hearts, or does each man's mad desire become his god? ~ Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 9
Pretty girls are a dime a dozen in Manhattan. I’ve long since learned to take them in with a passing glance—an aesthetic acknowledgment, nothing more—and drift back into my thoughts. But on my commute home this evening, I saw a sibylline vision: someone who seemed to have strayed from another world.
She sat across from me, legs crossed: a classical Mediterranean beauty, dark-complexioned, with thick black hair and wide, doe-like eyes. Her name tag read Margot. Dressed in a black blouse and a charcoal skirt that brushed her ankles, she looked utterly out of place on the subway—she belonged in a sunlit café on the Costa degli Dei or the Côte d’Azur, not hurtling through the steel and concrete underworld beneath New York City.
What truly arrested me was her smile. Bright and knowing, there was something faintly lupine—almost predatory—in it. She had the broadest grin as she read The Aeneid. If seeing a young person with a physical book isn’t exotic enough these days, a woman reading Virgil is my undoing. She made me wish, absurdly, that I were thirty years younger.
She caught me looking once or twice, but paid no heed to my stolen glances. I was tempted to ask what line in that grave poem could make her smile like that, but I know how it feels to be interrupted mid-page—so I refrained.
When she stepped off at her station, I was left staring at her empty seat, thinking about the old poet. Perhaps she was an oracle of sorts. Virgil’s birthday is approaching—October 15th—and it’s been a few years since I last opened his books. Tonight, I think I’ll dust off those old volumes and revisit him once again.
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, October 7th, Feast of Our Lady of Victory and the Most Holy Rosary