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Invasion in the Aeneid
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
Through the ages it has been the tendency of critics to dwell upon Virgil's praise of Augustus and to emphasize the poet's role as a propagandist for the new regime. In his first encounter with the Aeneid, the student learns to consider this work, as well as the author's treatment of its central figure, a ‘glorification’ of the Princeps.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1968
References
page 82 note 1 Bardon, H., Les Empereurs et les lettres latines d'Auguste à Hadrien (Paris, 1940), 75Google Scholar : ‘Un propagandiste habile, sincère, reconnaissant et soumis.’
page 82 note 2 Knapp, C., The Aeneid of Vergil (New York, 1928), 51Google Scholar , where paragraph 68 is entitled ‘The Aeneid a Glorification of Augustus’; cf. again 52, paragraph 70: ‘In drawing his picture of Aeneas, Vergil thus had Augustus ever in mind. He wished his readers to see in Aeneas the founder, by decree of the Fates, of Rome, and so, by the will of heaven, the source of all the greatness not only of Rome itself, but also of Italy, an Italy unified and developed, for its good, by Rome. He wished them to see in Augustus a glorified, completely successful Aeneas, who had finished the work Aeneas began; he wished them to see in the beneficent rule of Augustus at once the crowning glory of the history of Rome and Italy and the promise of a still more glorious future.’
page 82 note 3 Bowra, C. M., ‘Aeneas and the Stoic Ideal’, Greece & Rome 3 (1933–1934), 17–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 82 note 4 Sforza, F., ‘The Problem of Virgil’, CR 49 (1935), 97–108Google Scholar . The opinion quoted will be found on 107, right-hand column.
page 83 note 1 Knight, W. F. Jackson, Roman Vergil (London, 1944), 142–3.Google Scholar
page 83 note 2 Starr, C. G., ‘Virgil's Acceptance of Octavian’, AJP 76 (1955), 36, 38.Google Scholar
page 83 note 3 Frank, T., Vergil, a Biography (New York, 1922), 89Google Scholar : ‘Octavian, to whom Vergil was always devoted.…’ This assumption is based on Frank, 's acceptance as ‘not un reasonable’ (18, 28 f.)Google Scholar of the statement of the Berne manuscript that Octavian and Virgil were fellow students under the master of rhetoric, Epidius.
page 83 note 4 Most recently, Otis, Brooks, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholar . Pöschl, V., Die Dichtkunst Virgils (Wiesbaden, 1950)Google Scholar made it plain that Virgil conceived of Turnus as a ‘Verkörperung des Furor impius’ (158Google Scholar ; also 183–4, and 213). But Aeneas himself is just as savage: cf. furere in x. 604 and 802Google Scholar ; uiso sanguine laetus in x. 787Google Scholar ; saeuae irae in x. 813Google Scholar . It would be a mistake to insist that Aeneas is all duty and all order, while seeing Turnus as all chaos. Furor is not the special property of one sex or side; its figure throws a shadow over all the action in the epic, driving Trojans and Latins alike. The whole Aeneid is a surpassing monument to an age dominated by unreason and immoderation.
page 83 note 5 The cutting of the hair from the victim's head was an important procedural step in making an offering (cf. vi. 245–6; xii. 173–4; and Iliad iii. 273)Google Scholar , and Iris is sent down to clip the locks of the queen at the end of Book iv. Earlier in the book, when Dido prays for death, she is said to be standing beside arae turicremae (iv. 453)Google Scholar : the adjective turi-cremus is an unusual one—we find it only once in Virgil, who presumably borrowed it from Lucretius (in whom, Cyril Bailey tells us in his note De Rer. Nat. ii. 353Google Scholar , it also occurs only once):
Nam saepe ante deum uitulus delubra decora
turicremas propter mactatus concidit aras.
The italicized words suggest another sacrifice scene in Lucretius, viz. i, 84–100, where Iphigenia, like Dido, yielded her life for a larger mission:
Hostia concideret mactatu maesta parentis.
It should be noticed now that this mission was accomplished by Greeks. This will become significant in the course of the paper.
page 84 note 1 Cf. Clausen, W., ‘An Interpretation of the Aeneid’, HSCP 68 (1964), 139Google Scholar : ‘In a sense the Aeneid is a prolonged literary allusion to Homer; and Virgil expected his readers to be aware of this: our response to the Aeneid will depend in good part on our knowledge of the Iliad and the Odyssey.’ It may well be that we should study Sanskrit, too; cf. Duckworth, G., ‘Turnus and Duryodhana’, TAPA 92 (1961), 81–127.Google Scholar
page 84 note 2 In depicting the vengeance Aeneas takes for Pallas, Virgil derived his literary inspiration largely from the vengeance Achilles exacts from the Trojans for Patroclus' death. It strikes the attention, therefore, that while Achilles dispatches only two men who assume the position of suppliants (Tros, son of Alastor, , in Iliad xx. 463–72Google Scholar , and Lycaon, , in xxi. 65–135)Google Scholar , Aeneas kills three (Turnus will be a fourth) in less than 100 lines, not in the space of two books as in Homer's epic. And of these men three were in the act of pleading when Aeneas cut them short, whereas Achilles does this only with Tros (if, indeed, Tros had a chance to begin speaking—it is not clear that he did). Again, in the Iliad two books will follow Hector's passing, and at the poem's termination, harmony and peace will prevail. By contrast, Virgil chooses to stop the Aeneid at the most precarious of moments: perhaps the hero will return to moderation and use the kindness which has occasionally been visible through his fury; yet the poem ends with an angry Aeneas acting in haste, who might, even as Achilles, extend his rage beyond the death of his adversary.
page 84 note 3 A complete listing of Homeric references in the Aeneid is now to be found in Knauer, G. N.'s Die Aeneis und Homer (Hypomnemata 7, Göttingen, 1964).Google Scholar
page 84 note 4 Servius, as is well known, recognized a limited parallelism between Aeneas and Augustus and was aware that Virgil ascribed actions to Aeneas which were, in fact, actions of Augustus. For allegory in the Aeneid, cf. Drew, D. L., The Allegory of the Aeneid (Oxford, 1927)Google Scholar . For details in Book viii which recall actual features of Octavian's triple triumph in 29 B.c., see Grimal, P., ‘Énèe à Rome et le triomphe d'Octave’, REA 53 (1951), 51–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 85 note 1 What now becomes especially significant is that Virgil apparently chose to attribute to his protagonist merciless deeds which Suetonius introduces with such phrases as scribunt quidam or exstiterunt qui traderent, thus making it obvious that such accounts were circulated by the oppositionl (cf. Div. Aug. 15).Google Scholar
page 85 note 1 Putnam, M. C. J., The Poetry of the Aeneid (Harvard, 1965).Google Scholar
page 85 note 3 Anderson, W. S., ‘Vergil's Second Iliad’, TAPA 88 (1957), 17–30.Google Scholar
page 86 note 1 Putnam, , op. cit. 172.Google Scholar
page 86 note 2 Ibid. 175.
page 86 note 3 This word is found only three times in all of Virgil: Aen. ii. 553Google Scholar ; x. 536; xii. 734. (Also in Culex 392.)Google Scholar Only twice does it occur in the ablative, viz. in the two lines I have quoted. We should notice, too, that in both of the above verses the words capulo tenus come in the same two feet in the hexameter.
page 87 note 1 The form frigore is used only five times in the Aeneid: i. 92Google Scholar ; vi. 205, 309; xii. 905, 951. On each of the occasions it is to be found in the fifth foot, but only in the first and last is it preceded by soluuntur and followed by membra.
page 88 note 1 Putnam, , op. cit., 177.Google Scholar
page 88 note 2 Panthus, a priest of Apollo, comes to Aeneas, in ii. 319Google Scholar ; Apollo's presence is marked throughout Book iii. Prescott, H. W., The Development of Virgil's Art (Chicago, 1927), 345Google Scholar , points out that Apollo was not within the tradition with which Virgil worked. Granting the possibility that Virgil stressed the god because Apollo was Augustus' patron divinity, Prescott thinks it more likely that the poet has Apollo give directions in Book iii because he is the Greek god of colonization. If this could be substantiated, it would shed further interesting light on the relation of Aeneas' Trojans to the Greeks who sacked Troy.
page 89 note 1 Cf. Scherling, K., ‘Polydorus’, RE 21 2, 1608–9.Google Scholar
page 89 note 2 Virgil has greatly expanded the incident reported in Iliad xxii, 273–7Google Scholar , in which Achilles hurls a spear at Hector, only to have it stick in the ground; Pallas Athene then retrieves it for him. By changing the scene to include a tree sacred to a god of the country and significant in the eyes of the inhabitants of that land, Virgil reveals his interest in making the Trojans violators of others' territory. At the same time, this tree is a place where those saved from the sea can hang up their soaked clothes as votive offerings:
Seruati ex undis ubi figere dona solebant
Laurenti diuo et uotas suspendere uestis
sed stirpem Teucri nullo discrimine sacrum
sustulerant, puro ut possent concurrere campo. (768–71)
Here we are reminded of that passion for fighting, that complete giving over of one's self to murder, ut semel intepuit mucro, to such an extent that the fighter's mind is no longer clear, which Virgil marks in the behaviour of all his central characters in the second half. The juxtaposition of nullo discrimine sacrum is powerful; it also recalls Aeneas, killing indiscriminately (nullo discrimine, xii. 498)Google Scholar . Although it can be argued that, inasmuch as the Trojans are not the same as the Latins, it is not strange that they fail to recognize the sacred nature of the tree, it nevertheless is highly ironic that people, who, above all others, owe thanks for being rescued from the waves in Book i and owe to Italy a haven from their wanderings by sea, are so intent on having a place to fight that they tear up as much of the tree as they can!
page 90 note 1 Cf. Murphy, P. R., ‘Emotional Echoes of Aeneis One in Aeneis Four’, CB 33 (1956), 20–1.Google Scholar
page 90 note 2 Populare occurs twice elsewhere in the Aeneid: in vi. 496Google Scholar , Aeneas sees Deiphobus, son of Priam, whose head the Greeks are said to have disfigured (populata tempora); in xii. 263Google Scholar , Aeneas appears to Latin sympathizers as an eagle who plunders the Ausonian coast in force (litora uestra / ui populat). Again we see Aeneas and the Trojans doing what the Greeks did earlier.
page 91 note 1 Knox, Bernard M. W., ‘The Serpent and the Flame: The Imagery of the Second Book of the Aeneid’, AJP 71 (1950), 391.Google Scholar
page 92 note 1 Knox, , op. cit. 392.Google Scholar
page 92 note 2 Ibid. 396–7.
page 92 note 3 Putnam, , op. cit. 40–1.Google Scholar
page 92 note 4 Knox, . op. cit. 382–3Google Scholar ; Putnam, , op. cit. 30–40.Google Scholar
page 93 note 1 Putnam, , op. cit. 40–1.Google Scholar
page 93 note 2 Knox, , op. cit. 398, n. 42.Google Scholar
page 94 note 1 Anderson, W. S., TAPA 88 (1957), 21–2.Google Scholar
page 94 note 2 Newton, F. L., ‘Recurrent Imagery in Aeneid IV’, TAPA 88 (1957), 31–43.Google Scholar