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DIDO, PALLAS, NISUS AND THE NAMELESS MOTHERS IN AENEID 8–10
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2018
Extract
In the so-called ‘Iliadic’ Aeneid (Books 7–12), Dido is scarcely mentioned. At first sight, Aeneas’ dalliance at Carthage is forgotten when he gets down to the serious business of establishing the Trojans in Italy. But the poem's last mention of Dido (at 11.74, when Aeneas places a tunic made by her on the dead Pallas) is enmeshed in a network of parallel passages elsewhere in the Aeneid relating to tunics and adoption. In the light of similarities between Aeneas and the superficially unimportant Trojan warrior Nisus, these passages bear crucially (I suggest) on the contrast between Aeneas’ public and private pietas: his obedience to imposed (or public) commitments and to chosen (or private) ones. In this way, Virgil provides guidance on what motivates Aeneas’ fury in Books 10 and 12.
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References
1 The issue of why there are two tunics, and what Aeneas does with the second, does not impinge directly on my argument, and I will say nothing about it. For discussion, see Lyne, R.O.A.M., Words and the Poet: Characteristic Techniques of Style in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1989), 190–2Google Scholar and Traina, A., ‘«Parole» di Virgilio’, in id., Poeti latini (e neolatini): note e saggi filologici, IV serie (Bologna, 1994), 151–60Google Scholar (= RFIC 120 [1992], 490–8), at 158–9. (For comments on earlier versions of this article, I am grateful to Derek Davis, Bruce Gibson, Richard Jenkyns and Graham Zanker. They are not to be assumed to agree with what I say, however.)
2 ‘Cadeaux et dépouilles: variations sur le jeu du sens et du destin dans l’Énéide’, REL 63 (1985), 87–100, at 93Google Scholar. For a similar view, see Gross, N.P., ‘Mantles woven with gold: Pallas’ shroud and the end of the Aeneid’, CJ 99 (2003/2004), 135–56Google Scholar.
3 Virgil's Aeneid: A Critical Description (London, 1968), 346Google Scholar.
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7 Fratantuono, L., ‘Harum unam: Dido's requiem for Pallas’, Latomus 63 (2004), 857–63Google Scholar offers a precise reason for linking Pallas and Dido: ‘The effect is intense: Pallas is viewed by Aeneas as yet another sacrifice in the place of his own life …’ (862). But I find this unconvincing. One can say many things about the death of Dido, but one cannot say that she died as some sort of substitute for Aeneas.
8 See e.g. Otis, B., Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1963), 361Google Scholar; Pavlock, B., ‘The hero and the erotic in Aeneid 7–12’, Vergilius 38 (1992), 72–87, at 72Google Scholar; Jenkyns, R., Virgil's Experience: Nature and History: Times, Names and Places (Oxford, 1998), 584–5Google Scholar.
9 Two further passages provide yet more remote parallels. At Il. 16.841 Hector taunts the dead Patroclus with Achilles’ supposed instruction to bring back his (Hector's) blood-soaked tunic, and at 11.437 a spear hurled by Socus pierces Odysseus’ armour and slices off some skin.
10 Sharrock, A., ‘Womanly wailing? The mother of Euryalus and gendered reading’, EuGeStA 1 (2011), 55–77Google Scholar does not focus primarily on this mother's namelessness.
11 Petrini, M., The Child and the Hero: Coming of Age in Catullus and Vergil (Ann Arbor, 1997), 77–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar discusses Amata's fierce desire that Turnus should become her son-in-law, but does not explore as a possible explanation the replacement of a lost son.
12 Traina, A., Virgilio: l'utopia e la storia. Il libro XII dell'Eneide e antologia delle opere (Turin, 1997), 108Google Scholar points out the parallel between 12.65–6 plurimus ignem | subiecit rubor et calefacta per ora cucurrit ‘a great blush ignited fire and ran through her heated face’ and the description at 8.389–90 of Vulcan's passion for his wife Venus: notusque medullas | intrauit calor et labefacta per ossa cucurrit, ‘and the well-known warmth entered his marrow and ran through his loosened limbs’. Thus Lavinia's blush does not merely reflect maidenly modesty or embarrassment at her mother's behaviour; it shows that she has passionate feelings for Turnus. On this, see also Casali's, S. review of Traina in CJ 94 (1998), 93–6Google Scholar, and Lyne, R.O.A.M., Further Voices in Virgil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1987), 114–22Google Scholar.
13 For discussion, see Fantham, E., ‘Allecto's first victim: a study of Vergil's Amata’, in Stahl, H.-P. (ed.), Vergil's Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context (London, 1998), 135–53Google Scholar.
14 Discussing the preparations for Pallas’ funeral at 11.72–7, Lyne (n. 1) emphasizes the continuing importance of Dido to Aeneas, demonstrated by the fact that he has ‘put … away in his suitcase’ (189) two tunics that she has made, so ‘we see here a slight rejoinder by Aeneas the lover—to Mercury, Jupiter, and the claims of public duty: Aeneas’ little protest’ (188). But, if I am right, it is rather more than a slight rejoinder.
15 See Wiltshire (n. 5), 108.
16 For more discussion of Virgil's precautions against Augustus’ possible (indeed, probable) failure, see Carstairs-McCarthy, A., ‘Does Aeneas violate the truce in Aeneid 11?’, CQ 65 (2015), 704–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 As Uden, J. remarks in ‘The smile of Aeneas’, TAPhA 144 (2014), 71–96Google Scholar, this is the only occasion in the poem when Aeneas smiles or laughs (risit: 5.358).
18 Lines 448–9 raise questions whose proper discussion here would take us too far afield. But in section 7.1 I will mention certain hints that, from Book 9 on, Augustus’ patron Apollo transfers his patronage from Aeneas to Ascanius. It may therefore be significant that at 9.448 the Capitol is mentioned but not the Palatine, where Augustus lived and where he built a new temple of Apollo.
19 Putnam, M., The Poetry of the Aeneid: Four Studies in Imaginative Unity and Design (Cambridge, MA, 1965), 64Google Scholar asserts that, in Book 5, ‘little happens which forms a necessary link in the chain of epic story’. More bluntly, Levi, P., Virgil: His Life and Times (New York, 1999), 176Google Scholar says in connection with the running race: ‘In the course of a lifetime I have nearly never reread all this nonsense, but it belongs with the rest.’ Yet, the distinction drawn by Carstairs-McCarthy (n. 16) between what we are told directly and what we are shown obliquely may be relevant here. It may not be an accident that seemingly marginal events are chosen by Virgil as the context for a description of Nisus on his first appearance that parallels so closely the first description of Aeneas. The resemblance between the seemingly insignificant warrior and the Trojan leader is shown to us without being explicitly stated, because the aspect of the poem that this resemblance bears on is not the foregrounded Augustan message.
20 Volcens’ killing of Euryalus (9.420–4), though superficially similar, is an act of reprisal rather than revenge. Volcens knows that it is not Euryalus who killed the Italians Sulmo and Tagus (9.410–19).
21 D. Fowler, ‘Epic in the middle of the wood: mise en abyme in the Nisus and Euryalus episode’, in Sharrock, A. and Morales, H. (edd.), Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations (Oxford, 2000), 89–113Google Scholar comments at 9.101–3 on the parallel final acts of Nisus and Aeneas (the revenge killings and the attempts to shift responsibility), but he does not notice their parallel introductions (featuring pietas and pius amor). An intriguingly similar inverted parallel connects the two tragic queens, Dido and Amata. Through Aeneas, Dido acquires posthumously a son (I have argued), namely Pallas. Also through Aeneas, Amata loses posthumously a son (or, more strictly, a son-in-law), namely Turnus.
22 See Jenkyns (n. 8), 10–11, where he also suggests that, in the books of warfare, Virgil ‘has difficulty in maintaining variety of narrative and force of feeling’, and adds: ‘His “fortunati ambo” may be an attempt to add emotional weight to an episode which is in danger of lacking it. Let us imagine for a moment that he had broken off from Dido's story to tell us how impressive it was: how painfully superfluous we should have found that’. I argue, by contrast, that lines 9.446–9 are anything but superfluous.
23 Nisus, in effect, does what Aeneas is chided by his wife Creusa for doing when escaping from Troy (2.776–9).
24 Fowler (n. 21) fails to mention this. One of the few commentators to do so is Fratantuono, L., Madness Unchained: A Reading of Virgil's Aeneid (Lanham, 2007), 275Google Scholar.
25 Perotti, P.A., ‘L'eroismo “privato” di Eurialo e Niso’, Latomus 64 (2005), 56–69Google Scholar compares Euryalus aptly to a spoiled child. In section 4.2 I will explore the ‘private’ nature of not only Euryalus’ heroism but also the pius amor that he and Nisus share.
26 See OLD (1996 edition) s.vv. pius 3c and pietas 3d. What one might call ‘second-order pietas’ is the acknowledgement of it on the part of its recipients: thus gods and parents can display pietas by honouring the respect that mortals and offspring pay to them (2.536 si qua est caelo pietas quae talia curet, ‘if there is in heaven any pietas that cares for such things’; 4.382 si quid pia numina possunt, ‘if the pius powers can do anything’). There is even a third-order pietas: for example respect by third parties for the pietas that a mother, such as the mother of Euryalus, displays towards her son (9.493–4). Traina, A., ‘Pietas’, Enciclopedia Virgiliana (Rome, 1984–1991), 4.93–101Google Scholar discusses pietas in the Aeneid at length but without drawing attention to the Aeneas–Nisus parallels.
27 Monaco, G., Il libro V dell'Eneide (Florence, 1958), 39Google Scholar and Lee, O., Fathers and Sons in Virgil's Aeneid (Albany, 1979), 110Google Scholar interpret pius here as meaning that Nisus’ relationship with Euryalus is ‘chaste’, not physical. But this is unconvincing, as the word does not have this sense anywhere else. Fratantuono, L., ‘Pius amor: Nisus, Euryalus and the footrace of Aeneid V’, Latomus 69 (2010), 43–55, at 45Google Scholar suggests that we are meant to regard as disgraceful the pair's physical love (if that is what the plural amorum at 5.334 implies): it is ‘part of [Virgil's] depiction of the worst of old Troy that is destined for elimination as part of the advent of Rome’. But this view is hard to reconcile with the enthusiasm of lines 4.446–9.
28 ‘Epic and tragedy in Vergil's Nisus and Euryalus episode’, TAPhA 115 (1985), 207–24, at 218–19Google Scholar.
29 Casali, S., ‘Nisus and Euryalus: exploiting the contradictions in Virgil's “Doloneia”’, HSPh 102 (2004), 319–54Google Scholar ingeniously discusses some puzzles concerning the relationship of Book 9 to Iliad 10 (the Doloneia) and the relevance of these puzzles to ‘Augustan’ and ‘non-Augustan’ readings of the Aeneid. However, he misses the parallel between Nisus and Aeneas with respect to pietas.
30 The Living Universe: Gods and Men in Virgil's Aeneid (Dunedin, 1976), 169–70Google Scholar.
31 See e.g. Wlosok, A., ‘Vergil in der neueren Vorschung’, Gnomon 80 (1973), 129–51Google Scholar, Galinsky, K., ‘The anger of Aeneas’, AJPh 109 (1988), 321–48Google Scholar, and id., ‘How to be philosophical about the end of the Aeneid’, ICS 19 (1994), 191–201Google Scholar.
32 See Carstairs-McCarthy (n. 16), who also suggests a possible reason why Virgil presents gods and prophecies as so often unreliable, as noted by O'Hara, J., Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's Aeneid (Princeton, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan (Cambridge, 2007)Google Scholar.
33 This is pointed out by Jenkyns (n. 8), 585.
34 See e.g. Williams, G., Technique and Ideas in the Aeneid (New Haven, 1983), 105Google Scholar.
35 ‘Possessiveness, sexuality and heroism in the Aeneid’, Vergilius 31 (1985), 1–21Google Scholar, reprinted in Virgil's Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence (Chapel Hill, 1995), 27–49, at 45 and 46Google Scholar.
36 ‘The meaning of the Aeneid: a critical inquiry. Part I: Empire and the individual: an examination of the Aeneid’s major theme’, Ramus 1 (1972), 63–90, at 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 The Characterisation of Aeneas (Edinburgh, 1988), 172Google Scholar. Putnam, M., The Humanness of Heroes: Studies in the Conclusion of Virgil's Aeneid (Amsterdam, 2011)Google Scholar continues to argue that Aeneas, in killing Turnus, violates the pietas supposedly implied in Anchises’ injunction parcere subiectis (6.853). But the attested uses of pius and pietas support Mackie against Boyle and Putnam.
38 Die Gestalt des Turnus in Vergils Aeneis (Königstein, 1984), 246Google Scholar.
39 Thomas, R., ‘Furor and furiae in Virgil’, AJPh 112 (1991), 261Google Scholar and in Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge, 2001), 290Google Scholar argues convincingly against any supposed contrast in connotation between singular furor and plural furiae.
40 Horsfall, N., Virgil, Aeneid 7: A Commentary (Leiden, 2000), 70Google Scholar says: ‘Onto the scene is about to burst the very presentable widower Aeneas, whom [sic] we have known since 2.783 is to find a bride somewhere near the Tiber. Though the epic drama that ensues is not fundamentally elegiac or erotic … the situation is admirably suited to the patronage of Erato.’ I find this unconvincing. Erato is the muse of romantic passion, not arranged marriages.
41 Todd, F., ‘Virgil's invocation of Erato’, CR 45 (1931), 216–18Google Scholar argues at 217 that Erato's responsibility ceases (so to speak) with the words tu, diua, mone (‘you, goddess, advise me’) at the middle of 7.41; it does not extend to the maius opus of 7.44, which is the responsibility of all the Muses, invoked at 7.641 to assist the poet in cataloguing the Italian allies of Latinus. But this requires an implausible break in the sense of lines 7.37–44, which are more naturally read as a single paragraph.
42 See e.g. Woodworth, D., ‘Lavinia: an interpretation’, TAPhA 61 (1930), 175–94Google Scholar.
43 ‘Possessiveness, sexuality and heroism in the Aeneid’, Vergilius 31 (1985), 1–21Google Scholar, reprinted in Putnam, M., Virgil's Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence (Chapel Hill, 1995), 27–49, at 33Google Scholar.
44 Toll, K., ‘What's love got to do with it? The invocation to Erato and patriotism in the Aeneid’, QUCC 33 (1989), 107–18Google Scholar considers but rejects (I think rightly) the possibility that it is amor patriae that is the basis for Erato's invocation here. Toll opts for Servius’ bald suggestion (Serv. on Aen. 7.37) that Erato is here an all-purpose Muse. But that is surely an explanation of last resort.
45 Wiltshire (n. 5), 106–21 catalogues a number of examples of amor in the Aeneid, but she oddly omits Nisus’ amor for Euryalus.
46 Pavlock (n. 28) emphasizes the continued importance of Dido in the second half of the Aeneid, but I disagree with her on the details of how this manifests itself. Also, Pavlock ignores the amor of Nisus and Euryalus, and is (I believe) wrong, like Putnam, in seeing a homoerotic element in Aeneas’ interest in Pallas.
47 Senfter, R., ‘Vergil, Aen. 8, 589–91: Konnotationsraum und Funktionalisierung eines Vergleichs’, MD 2 (1979), 171–4Google Scholar discusses the recurring connection in the Aeneid between beauty and untimely death, and the way in which the bright positive Morning Star simile counterbalances the dark foreboding implicit in Evander's collapse at 8.583–4. But Senfter does not explain why it should be Pallas in particular who is compared to the Morning Star, rather than one of the other beautiful youths who die before their time, namely Marcellus, Lausus, Euryalus and ‘the son of Arcens’ (Arcentis filius, 9.581).
48 See e.g. Keith, A.M., Engendering Rome: Women in Latin Epic (Cambridge, 2000), 16–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar and McAuley, M., Reproducing Rome: Motherhood in Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, and Statius (Oxford, 2016), 55–94Google Scholar.
49 For discussion, see Nugent, S.G., ‘Vergil's “voice of the women” in Aeneid V’, Arethusa 25 (1992), 255–92Google Scholar. I offer a different view in section 7.2 below, and particularly in note 57.
50 In an interesting discussion, Block, E., ‘Failure to thrive: the theme of parents and children in the Aeneid, and its Iliadic models’, Ramus 9 (1980), 128–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar comments at 148: ‘Venus’ protection of Aeneas … is not particularly motherly. Indeed, in a number of places (the plot with Cupid in Book 1 and Juno in Book 4, for example) she seems to be working against him.’
51 Tarrant, R. (ed.), Virgil Aeneid Book XII (Cambridge, 2012), 341Google Scholar says: ‘[I]n V. both deaths are on the Latin side, showing how the weight of destiny has shifted.’ But the weight of destiny in Homer is solidly on the Greek side, so, on that basis, we would expect both occurrences of the Homeric line to apply to Trojans.
52 Hübner, W., Dirae im römischen Epos: Über das Verhältnis von Vogeldämonen und Prodigien (Hildesheim, 1970), 74–5Google Scholar.
53 Virgil supplies a curious detail about Drances’ origin: his mother was of noble birth, his father not (11.340–1). Are we intended to note here a resemblance to Aeneas, the natural son of a divine mother and a mortal father?
54 Fratantuono, L., ‘Diana in the Aeneid’, QUCC 83 (2006), 29–43Google Scholar does not discuss this rift.
55 For discussion, see Miller, J., Apollo, Augustus and the Poets (Cambridge, 2009), 170–9Google Scholar.
56 Miller (n. 55), 149–60.
57 McAuley (n. 48), 83 draws attention to ‘Virgil's extraordinary sensitivity to a feminine perspective and psychology’. Moreover, Diana's important and thoroughly non-Homeric opposition to her brother Apollo, as manifested through Camilla and Opis, shows that Virgil does not marginalize women, or denigrate their influence, to the extent that Nugent (n. 49) suggests.
58 Virgil, Aeneid 11: A Commentary (Leiden, 2003), 475Google Scholar.