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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2014
The death of Turnus is one of the Aeneid's most controversial and variously interpreted episodes – anything from the triumphant vindication of Aeneas and the Roman future, to the poet's last, resounding plaint against Augustan totalitarianism, with all the more nuanced shades of opinion in between. Virgilian scholarship has recently become tired of the opposition between ‘optimist’ and ‘pessimist’ perspectives, but one piece of potentially important evidence has not found its way into the argument. As often, it is a matter of intertexts, and it begins, unsurprisingly, with the Iliad.
I would like to thank Bill Allan, Joseph Farrell, Nora Goldschmidt, Jim O'Hara, Philip Hardie, Matthew Robinson, CQ's anonymous referee, and the Department of Classics at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, as well as the Casa Guilherme de Almeida in the same city, where the material in this article was first presented.
1 See Thomas, R.F., Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. xi–xx, for an introductory narrative, and counter-argument; also Conte, G.B., The Poetry of Pathos: Studies in Virgilian Epic (Oxford, 2007), 150–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 152–4. For summaries of the issues and scholarship on this final scene, see Horsfall, N.M., A Companion to the Study of Virgil (Leiden, 1995), 192–216Google Scholar (with appendix by Clausen at 313–14); Tarrant, R.J., Virgil: Aeneid Book XII (Cambridge, 2012), 16–30Google Scholar.
2 See e.g. Hardie, P., ‘Closure in Latin epic’, in Roberts, D.H., Dunn, F.M., and Fowler, D.P. (edd.), Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature (Princeton, NJ, 1997), 139–62, at 143–4Google Scholar, for a summary. The standard work is Knauer, G.N., Die Aeneis und Homer (Göttingen, 1964)Google Scholar, esp. 316–27 (for this portion of the Aeneid) and 425–31. I take it as axiomatic that Aen. 12.952 is the final line of the poem. Cf. J. O'Hara, ‘The unfinished Aeneid?’, in Farrell, J. and Putnam, M.C. (edd.), A Companion to Virgil's Aeneid and its Tradition (Oxford, 2010), 96–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 103–6; Tarrant (n. 1), 3 n. 6; contra West, S.R., ‘Terminal problems’, in Collard, C., Finglass, P.J., and Richardson, N.J. (edd.), Hesperos: Studies in Ancient Greek Poetry Presented to M.L. West on the occasion of his 75th birthday (Oxford, 2007), 3–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 13.
3 The term is that of Putnam, M.C., The Humanness of Heroes: Studies in the Conclusion of Virgil's Aeneid (Amsterdam, 2011)Google Scholar, 115. Of course, Virgil has his funeral games for Anchises in Book 5, on which see Cairns, F., Virgil's Augustan Epic (Cambridge, 1989), 215–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the surprise ending with violence, see Farron, S., ‘The abruptness of the end of the Aeneid’, AClass 25 (1982), 136–40Google Scholar, inadequately answered by Springer, C.P.E., ‘The last line of the Aeneid’, CJ 82 (1987), 310–13Google Scholar.
4 Lyne, R.O.A.M., Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1987), 135–7, 217–38Google Scholar. See also Lyne, R.O.A.M., ‘Vergil and the politics of war’, CQ 33 (1983), 188–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 201–2 = Harrison, S.J. (ed.), Oxford Readings in Virgil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1990), 316–81Google Scholar, at 336: ‘Unlike the Iliad, the Aeneid does not proceed after its “Book 22” into eventual hard-won harmony. Book 12 ends in an echoing silence.’ Of the enormous amount of scholarship in this vein, see most recently Putnam (n. 3), 102–17.
5 West, D., ‘The end and the meaning’, in Stahl, H.-P. (ed.), Vergil's Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context (Swansea, 1998), 303–18Google Scholar, at 303.
6 Cf. Stahl, H.-P., ‘The death of Turnus: Augustan Virgil and the political rival’, in Raaflaub, K. and Toher, M. (edd.), Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Empire (Berkeley, CA, 1990), 174–211Google Scholar, at 198: ‘a Super-Achilles able to defeat the “New Achilles”’; see also 193 and n. 24 for his question-begging preference ‘to limit the use of Vergil's models in the interpretation of the Aeneid to the function which they are assigned by the Vergilian context’. How one defines this ‘function’ depends entirely on one's interpretation of the ‘context’, as shown very clearly by the treatment of Homeric passages in Stahl, H.-P., ‘Aeneas: an “unheroic” hero?’, Arethusa 14 (1981) 157–77Google Scholar, at 159–65; see also Thomas (n. 1), 288–93.
7 On the Odyssey as an intertext for the end of the Aeneid, see below, p. 647 with n. 25.
8 See Nelis, D., Vergil's Aeneid and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (Leeds, 2001)Google Scholar, passim, but esp. 1–21, 382–402 (summarized in Nelis, D., ‘Apollonius and Virgil’, in Papanghelis, T. and Rengakos, A. [edd.], A Companion to Apollonius Rhodius [Leiden, 2008 2], 341–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Nelis suggests in his Virgil–Apollonius table (453–83, at 483) that Aen. 12.952 is an ‘inverted’ and ‘possible’ parallel for Arg. 4.1781, but in the Apollonius–Virgil table (481–508, at 508) the parallel is denied. This refers to his argument that the Aeneid cannot be separated into two ‘Argonautic’ halves (i.e. Aen. 1.1–7.36 ~ Arg. 1 & 2 / Aen. 7.37–12.952 ~ Arg. 3 & 4), and at 387–8 he relates Apollonius' envoi to Virgil's apostrophe of Nisus and Euryalus (Aen. 9.446–9). Elsewhere (365–81) Nelis draws parallels between the defeat of (the figuratively fire-breathing) Turnus in Virgil and Aietes' actual fire-breathing bulls in Apollonius at the end of Argonautica Book 2; though one might construct that in Aeneas' favour, it seems to me that the poet's point is rather that victory thus (i.e. dubiously) gained is a qualified success, since in Apollonius the means will becomes Jason's end.
9 R.L. Hunter, ‘Poetics of narrative in the Argonautica’, in Papanghelis and Rengakos (n. 8), 115–46, at 136; see also Hunter, R.L., The Argonautica of Apollonius: Literary Studies (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 120: ‘The end of the poem is no real end.’
10 Rossi, L.E., ‘La fine alessandrina dell’Odissea e lo घΗΛΟΣ ΟΜΗΡΙΚΟΣ di Apollonio Rodio’, RFIC 96 (1968), 151–63Google Scholar.
11 See Heubeck, A. in Russo, J.A., Fernández-Galiano, M., and Heubeck, A., A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey Volume III: Books XVII–XXIV (Oxford, 1992), 353–5Google Scholar, for discussion; Kelly, A.D., ‘How to end an orally-derived epic poem’, TAPhA 137 (2007), 371–402Google Scholar, for a defence of the ‘continuation’.
12 See e.g. Livrea, E., Apollonii Rhodii Argonauticon: Liber Quartus (Florence, 1973), 476–8Google Scholar, on 4.1781; Green, P., The Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodios (Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles, CA, 1997)Google Scholar, 360; Clare, R.J., The Voyage of the Argo: Language, Imagery and Narrative in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (Cambridge, 2002), 283–5Google Scholar; contra Campbell, M., ‘Apollonian and Homeric book-division’, Mnemosyne 36 (1983), 152–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 See A. Rengakos, ‘Apollonius Rhodius as a Homeric scholar’, in Papanghelis and Rengakos (n. 8), 193–216.
14 See Campbell (n. 12), 153; Hunter (n. 9 [1993]), 119–20 with n. 77.
15 For recent studies of Jason, see e.g. Hunter (n. 9 [1993]), 15–25; Clauss, J.J., ‘Conquest of the Mephistophelean Nausicaa: Medea's role in Apollonius' redefinition of the epic hero’, in Clauss, J.J. and Johnston, S.I. (edd.), Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art (Princeton, NJ, 1997), 149–77Google Scholar; Pietsch, C., Die Argonautica des Apollonius von Rhodos: Untersuchungen zum Problem der einheitlichen Konzeption des Inhalts (Stuttgart, 1999), 99–158Google Scholar, esp. 100–4 with further bibliography. For other interpretations of the end of the Argonautica, see e.g. de Forest, M., Apollonius' Argonautica: A Callimachean Epic (Leiden, 1994), 132–3Google Scholar, for whom (plausibly) this is a victory of ‘Callimachean poetics’, while Hunter (n. 9 [1993]), 119–20, expands the allusion to include Od. 23.248–50, which ‘casts a dark shadow over the end of the poem’, Mori, A., The Politics of Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica (Cambridge, 2008), 233–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, contrasts the ‘happy’ end of the Argonautica with the despair of the Aeneid, and Hutchinson, G.O., Talking Books: Readings in Hellenistic and Roman Books of Poetry (Oxford, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 89, perceives ‘the happy ending of the Argonautica, the natural conclusion of its tight formality, as in some respects a self-consciously artificial imposition’.
16 This is not to exclude other models or influences, esp. from Latin epic: Nickbakht, M., ‘Aemulatio in cold blood: a reading of the end of the Aeneid’, Helios 37 (2010), 49–80Google Scholar, connects Aen. 12.952 with Ennius' envoi (Cic. Tusc. 1.34 = Varia 17–18 Vahlen2 = fr. 46 Courtney) and, though he is careful not to elide its complexity, reads the end of the poem as Virgil's (~ Aeneas') defeat of Ennius (~ Turnus). See also I. Gildenhard, ‘Virgil vs. Ennius, or: the undoing of the Annalist’, in Fitzgerald, W. and Gowers, E. (edd.), Ennius perennis: the Annals and beyond (Cambridge, 2007), 73–102Google Scholar; S. Casali, ‘Killing the father: Ennius, Naevius and Virgil's Julian imperialism’, in Fitzgerald and Gowers (this note), 103–28, esp. at 110–28 for a similar equation (Ennius ~ Anchises). For Wigodsky, M., Vergil and Early Latin Poetry (Wiesbaden, 1972)Google Scholar, 138, the ending of Lucretius' De rerum natura was ‘the only one which could have supplied Vergil with a model for the abruptness of his ending; and the Aeneid ends with Turnus’ death, allowing the sunnier events to follow to be supplied from earlier references, much as Lucretius passes briefly over the lives of gods and sages to dwell on scenes of ordinary human folly and misery', yet even this description makes the parallel with the Argonautica seem stronger.
17 This is immediately clear from even the swiftest glance at Knauer (n. 2), 425–31; see also Tarrant (n. 1), index, s.v. ‘Iliad, as model for V’.
18 See esp. Fowler, D.P., ‘First thoughts on closure: problems and prospects’, MD 22 (1989), 75–122Google Scholar = Roman Constructions: Readings in Postmodern Latin (Oxford, 2000), 239–83Google Scholar; Fowler, D.P., ‘Second thoughts on closure’, in Roberts, D.H., Dunn, F.M., and Fowler, D.P. (edd.), Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature (Princeton, NJ, 1997) 3–22Google Scholar = Roman Constructions, 284–308; Feeney, D.C., The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1991), 107–28Google Scholar, 267–9; Hardie (n. 2). For the influence of Virgil's ending on subsequent Latin poetry, see Hardie, P., The Epic Successors of Virgil: A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition (Cambridge, 1993), 11–18Google Scholar; Tarrant (n. 1), 30–3.
19 See e.g. Hardie (n. 2), 140–1, 143; Skutsch, O., The Annals of Q. Ennius (Oxford, 1985), 5–6Google Scholar; Goldberg, S., Epic in Republican Rome (Oxford and New York, 1995), 111–34Google Scholar; Casali (n. 16), Gildenhard (n. 16); Nickbakht (n. 16); Goldschmidt, N., Shaggy Crowns: Ennius' Annales and Virgil's Aeneid (Oxford, forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 See Courtney, E., The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford, 1993), 238–43Google Scholar; also Hofman, P., ‘Die literarische Persönlichkeit des P. Terentius Varro Atacinus’, WS 46 (1928), 159–76Google Scholar, on his ‘learned’ use of Apollonian commentaries; Wigodsky (n. 16), 103–4; Nelis (n. 8 [2001]), 397–8.
21 For other examples of this well-known ‘Homer through Apollonius’ technique, see e.g. Clausen, W., Virgil's Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry (Berkeley, CA, 1987), 95–6Google Scholar, on the description of Pallas leaving Pallanteum (Aen. 8.587–91) as modelled not only on the start of Diomedes' aristeia (Il. 5.4–6) but also Apollonius' erotic recasting of that Homeric image in Medea's reaction upon seeing Jason (Arg. 3.956–61). See also the excellent general discussion in Farrell, J., ‘The Virgilian intertext’, in Martindale, C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge, 1997), 222–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the fundamental work of Nelis (n. 8 [2001]), passim, but esp. 382–402.
22 Nelis (n. 8 [2001]), 380: ‘it is Aeneas who is the Jason figure throughout Vergil's epic’. Matthew Robinson has suggested to me that Ovid also seems to have recognized and developed this intertext in Fasti 3, where Lavinia, enraged by Aeneas' reaction to the appearance of Anna on Latium's shores, takes on a ‘Medea-like ferocity and jealousy’ – see esp. Fasti 3.637–8 (non habet exactum quid agat: furialiter odit | et parat insidias et cupit ulta mori) – though Barchiesi, A., The Poet and the Prince: Ovid and Augustan Discourse (Berkeley, CA, 1997), 164–6Google Scholar, offers a more ‘Roman’ interpretation of her behaviour. For Ovid as a critical reader of Virgil, see Thomas (n. 1), 78–83, esp. 82–3 on Lavinia (without mentioning the Fasti); S. Casali, ‘Other voices in Ovid's Aeneid’, in Knox, P.E. (ed.), Oxford Readings in Ovid (Oxford, 2006), 144–65Google Scholar.
23 Peleus also takes Epeigeus (Il. 16.570–6) into his household in similar circumstances, and was himself an exile in several early Greek epic traditions. See Alcmaeonis F 1 B; [Hes.] F 211, 212b MW; also Alden, M., ‘The despised migrant’, in Montanari, F., Rengakos, A., and Tsagalis, C. (edd.), Homeric Contexts: Neoanalysis and the Interpretation of Oral Poetry (Berlin, 2012), 115–32Google Scholar, for this theme in general, and 121–2 for Peleus' prominence.
24 See Tarrant (n. 1), on Aen. 12.933–4, 332. For the programmatic importance of paternal influence in constructing the relationship between Ennius and Virgil, see esp. Casali (n. 16). Philip Hardie has reminded me of the disturbing parallel with Pyrrhus' behaviour in Book 2, where he first kills Priam's son Polites ante oculos … et ora parentum (Aen. 2.531) and then the old man himself, after Priam had made an unfavourable comparison with the mercy shown by his father (540–3): failure to live up to the Achillean example of the Iliad is not limited in the Aeneid to Aeneas.
25 As part of a larger argument about the Odyssey's intertextual function for the whole of the Aeneid, Cairns (n. 3), 177–214, at 210–14, and Dekel, E., Virgil's Homeric Lens (London, 2011)Google Scholar, esp. 109–14, contend that the Odyssey is even more important than the Iliad for Virgil's ending: they see Aeneas as a successful Odysseus, killing his enemies and achieving his nostos. However, the Odyssean parallels for Book 12 in general and the material of this article in particular are vastly fewer and much less striking than those from the Iliad (cf. Knauer [n. 2], 425–31; Tarrant [n. 1], 18 n. 70, also index s.v. ‘Odyssey, as model for V’), and one also wonders why Virgil once more leaves that apparent success pendant (as described in the above paragraph).
26 Oliensis, E., ‘Sons and lovers: sexuality and gender in Virgil's poetry’, in Martindale, C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge, 1997), 294–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 207; contra Lyne (n. 4 [1987]), 114–22, and Lyne, R.O.A.M., Words and the Poet: Characteristic Techniques of Style in the Aeneid (Oxford, 1989), 79–82Google Scholar, who tries to make a little too much of her famous blush (Aen 12.64–9); also Cairns (n. 3), 151–76. On Lavinia's afterlife in Ovid, see n. 22 above, and for other ancient recreations see Tarrant (n. 1), 105–6, on Aen. 12.64–9.
27 On the traditions of his death and apotheosis (Aen. 1.259–60, 12.794–5) soon after the end of the Aeneid, see Tarrant (n. 1), 292–3, on Aen. 12.794.
28 On this term and its scholarly context, see above, nn. 1 and 3.
29 I am indebted to CQ's reader for the notion.
30 I am indebted to Philip Hardie for discussion on this point.
31 See, however, Edgeworth, R.J., ‘The silence of Vergil and the end of the Aeneid’, Vergilius 51 (2006) 3–11Google Scholar, at 4–7.
32 See above, n. 15.
