I
There are twin gates of Sleep, of which the one is said to be of horn, by which an easy exit is given to true shades; the other, gleaming, is fashioned from shining ivory, but the Manes send through this one false dreams to the upper world. At that time Anchises escorts his son together with the Sibyl there with these words, and he sends them out from the ivory gate.
Few passages of Virgil have brought forth such an abundance of commentary as his description of the Gates of Sleep and Aeneas’ exit from the Underworld at the end of Aeneid Book 6. In the main, this scholarship has been concerned with the significance of Aeneas’ departure from the Underworld via the gates of ivory and what this might mean for the interpretation of what has gone before.Footnote 1
What follows, however, focusses on the placement of the Gates at the end of Aeneas’ underworld journey. It is true, of course, that we would hardly expect the ‘geography’ of Virgil’s Underworld to be systematic; yet the appearance of the Gates at this point—with no previous indication that they were to be found here—is surprising.Footnote 2 Frank Fletcher writes: ‘we are left wondering why Virgil introduced the two gates here’; and R.G. Austin puts it somewhat more strongly when he remarks that ‘The Gates of Sleep come now as a total surprise’.Footnote 3
That Virgil should have chosen to use a Homeric motifFootnote 4 is in no way surprising, nor that in doing so he has characteristically altered the context of the Homeric original. In this particular passage, Penelope’s description in the Odyssey of the Gates of Dreams has been altered in at least two ways: where she had spoken of gates ‘of dreams’, Virgil speaks of gates ‘of sleep’; and where she offered no location for the Gates, Virgil places them at the end of Aeneas’ underworld journey as a way of allowing him to return to the upper world. It is perhaps also characteristic that Virgil has incorporated this motif within a different Homeric imitation, namely that of Odysseus’ journey to the Underworld in Odyssey Book 11. Yet here too there is a difference since Odysseus does not quite enter the Underworld but stands outside of it while the souls of the dead come to him, drink the blood and then address him. At a certain point fear grips him and he decides to abandon his place and return to his ship (Od. 11.634–6).Footnote 5 Virgil’s Aeneas, by contrast, has an actual journey through the Underworld, entering by one means and leaving by another.
We may well ask then why Virgil chooses to place the Gates here at the exit of the Underworld. He may have had several reasons for doing so, given the significance of gates in the literary and philosophical traditions,Footnote 6 but I would like to suggest that one of the reasons the Gates appear precisely here is that he wished to acknowledge the role that dreams play in Roman historiography, and in particular in the history written by Fabius Pictor, Rome’s first historian; for Pictor, we are told, regularly had Aeneas learn what he was to do through dreams. The only previous mention of Fabius’ history in discussions of the Gates appears in an article by Agnes Michels published some forty years ago. She remarks that Aeneas’ dream, if that is what it is,Footnote 7 ‘might have been suggested by two Roman writers’, Fabius Pictor and Cicero.Footnote 8 She does not, alas, develop the idea, nor does she connect, as this article will try to do, the review of Roman heroes and in particular Anchises’ instructions to his son with the placement of the Gates themselves.
II
The use of dreams in classical historiography begins with Herodotus, who bequeathed this motif to his successors—not all of them, to be sure, but to many of them both Greek and Roman.Footnote 9 For Herodotus and other historians, dreams are a way of indicating a role for the divine in human history without importing the epic convention of having gods actually partake in the action. In this way dreams have something in common with oracles, which also likewise indicate the workings of the divine among mortals: like oracles, dreams can indicate the gods’ intentions, but, also like oracles, dreams require interpretation, and their true meaning often becomes apparent only in retrospect and after the fact. Roman historians took this motif over, as they did with so many Greek historiographical practices.Footnote 10
Our information about Fabius Pictor and dreams comes from Book 1 of Cicero’s De diuinatione, where Cicero’s brother Quintus discusses the different ways in which the gods make information known to mortals, including dreams. Quintus looks at a variety of different types of dreams as they appear in both poets and historians. He seems to suggest that one should choose examples of dreams that are ‘more weighty’, by which he means those that come from reliable authors, such as historians.Footnote 11 But having said this, he immediately offers a passage from Ennius, noting that, although such dreams are those of poets, they are like dreams in real life.Footnote 12 Cicero follows this with another dream from Ennius (Diu. 1.42), at which point he mentions Fabius Pictor (Diu. 1.43 = FRHist 1 F1 = F3 Chassignet):
sint haec, ut dixi, somnia fabularum, hisque adiungatur etiam Aeneae somnium, quod inuentum in Fabi Pictoris Graecis annalibus eius modi est ut omnia quae ab Aenea gesta sunt quaeque illi acciderunt ea fuerint quae ei secundum quietem uisa sunt.Footnote 13
inuentum in Woodman : in numerum AVB : in nostri Hertz : inclusum van den Bergh
Although these [sc. the two Ennian dreams just recounted] are, as I have said, the dreams of fabulae, to them should be added also the dream of Aeneas, which, found in the Greek annals of Fabius Pictor, is of that kind, namely that everything that was done by Aeneas and happened to him was that which appeared to him as he slept.
Quintus then moves on to an additional dream from ‘closer to our own time’, which concerns Tarquinius Superbus and comes from Accius’ Brutus (Diu. 1.44–5).
Now it is clear that the arrangement of Quintus’ argument is somewhat loose,Footnote 14 and it can seem confusing, not least because he will eventually go on to cite a number of historians and the dreams that appear in them.Footnote 15 Fabius is, so to say, out of place. Yet this does not mean that Quintus (and, by extension, Cicero) considers Pictor’s history no more than poetry.Footnote 16 Rather, Fabius’ dream is included here because it is the same type of dream as the two he cited from Ennius.
That said, we can turn to the passage itself. The first point to be noted is the singular somnium, which suggests just one dream: this might indicate that Fabius took an approach similar to what Virgil does in Aeneid Book 6, where Anchises offers one long recounting of future Romans. Yet other testimonia seem to indicate a different scenario, namely that Fabius included several dreams rather than a single one. If, however, it was a single dream and concerned only the activities of Aeneas himself, we would then have to conclude that Virgil adapted and expanded Fabius’ dream, which limited itself to Aeneas’ own future res gestae, to include the long parade of heroes that displays to Aeneas Rome’s future well into the centuries ahead.
The second point is whether Quintus’ omnia can be taken at face value. Could Fabius have Aeneas schooled by a dream in everything? That would suggest a very detailed and (possibly) lengthy dream. Yet even if omnia is somewhat exaggerated, Quintus’ words none the less suggest that Aeneas’ destiny was more or less comprehensively revealed to him.
Against the idea that Fabius had only a single dream we may place the evidence of Diodorus, who, in summarizing his account of the foundation of the city, explicitly names Fabius as the author who included both an oracle and a dream (Diod. Sic. 7.5.4–5 = FRHist 1 F3 = F5 Chassignet):
περὶ δὲ τῆς προσηγορίας ταύτης Φάβιος ὁ τὰς Ῥωμαίων πράξεις ἀναγράψας ἄλλως μεμυθολόγηκε. φησὶ γὰρ Αἰνείᾳ γενέσθαι λόγιον, τετράπουν αὐτῷ καθηγήσεσθαι πρὸς κτίσιν πόλεως· μέλλοντος δ᾿ αὐτοῦ θύειν ὗν ἔγκυον τῷ χρώματι λευκήν, ἐκφυγεῖν ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν, καὶ διωχθῆναι πρός τινα λόφον, πρὸς ᾧ κομισθεῖσαν τεκεῖν τριάκοντα χοίρους. τὸν δὲ Αἰνείαν τό τε παράδοξον θαυμάσαντα καὶ τὸ λόγιον ἀνανοούμενον ἐπιχειρῆσαι μὲν οἰκίσαι τὸν τόπον, ἰδόντα δὲ κατὰ τὸν ὕπνον ὄψιν ἐναργῶς διακωλύουσαν καὶ συμβουλεύουσαν μετὰ τριάκοντα ἔτη κτίζειν, ὅσοσπερ ὁ τῶν τεχθέντων ἀριθμὸς ἦν, ἀποστῆναι τῆς προθέσεως.
About the name of the city, however, Fabius, the one who composed Roman history, has told this mythos otherwise. For he says that Aeneas received an oracle, to the effect that a four-footed animal would lead him to the place for the foundation of the city. When he was about to sacrifice a pregnant sow, white in colour, it escaped from his hands, was pursued to a certain hilltop, and, having reached it, gave birth to thirty piglets. Aeneas was astonished at this remarkable event, and, recalling the oracle, he set to work on founding a city on the spot. But in his sleep he saw a vision which clearly prohibited him from doing so, and counselled him to carry out the foundation after thirty years, corresponding to the number of piglets born, and he accordingly abandoned the project.
The extended accusative-and-infinitive construction indicates that the story is all of a piece, with Aeneas first receiving an oracle, and then, when he was on the point of misunderstanding the order, receiving further clarification from a dream.Footnote 17 This seems to suggest not Quintus’ single dream in which everything was revealed at once but rather a more gradual or individual approach, with dreams appearing as Aeneas ‘needed’ them, and possibly mixed in with other divine signs (such as oracles) that guided Aeneas in his activity.Footnote 18
We do not know how detailed Fabius’ treatment of Aeneas was, although the remarks of Diodorus above suggest some level of detail.Footnote 19 Plutarch’s characterization of Fabius’ history may offer some insight here. In the Life of Romulus Plutarch offers a lengthy narration of the exposure and discovery of Romulus and Remus (Vit. Rom. 3–8), at the end of which he sums up as follows (Vit. Rom. 8.9 = FRHist 1 T16 = F7a Chassignet):
ὧν τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ τοῦ Φαβίου λέγοντος καὶ τοῦ Πεπαρηθίου Διοκλέους, ὃς δοκεῖ πρῶτος ἐκδοῦναι Ῥώμης κτίσιν, ὕποπτον μὲν ἐνίοις ἐστὶ τὸ δραματικὸν καὶ πλασματῶδες, οὐ δεῖ δὲ ἀπιστεῖν τὴν τύχην ὁρῶντας οἵων ποιημάτων δημιουργός ἐστι, καὶ τὰ Ῥωμαίων πράγματα λογιζομένους ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἐνταῦθα προὔβη δυνάμεως, μὴ θείαν τινὰ ἀρχὴν λαβόντα καὶ μηδὲν μέγα μηδὲ παράδοξον ἔχουσαν.
Although most of these particulars are related by Fabius and Diocles of Peparethos (who seems to have been the first to publish a Founding of Rome),Footnote 20 some people are suspicious of their fictitious and fabulous quality; but we should not be incredulous when we see what a poet fortune sometimes is, and when we reflect that the Roman state would not have attained to its present power, had it not been of a divine origin, and one which was attended by great marvels.
This suggests that Fabius’ account of the origins of Rome, including his treatment of Aeneas, was heavily ‘mythologized’, with the gods playing an important and direct role. That is not surprising, and indeed Livy almost certainly has this approach in mind when he says that ‘antiquity is granted the indulgence of making the beginnings of cities more revered by mixing human and divine together’.Footnote 21
III
To return to the Aeneid, we note that the final part of Book 6 (652–859) contains Anchises’ review of Roman history, where Aeneas is shown the souls of his future descendants, with his father occasionally commenting on the actions that some will take, and the fame (or infamy) that will follow some of them. After the elegiac engagement of father and son with the soul of the doomed Marcellus (860–86), Virgil offers a capsule summary of their activity (886–7):
So they wander here and there throughout the whole region, in the wide fields of the air, and they cast their eyes over everything.
Then, in a brief notice, Anchises moves from the Roman future to Aeneas’ more immediate future, anticipating the second, Iliadic half of the Aeneid, and integrating, so to say, these more immediate actions of Aeneas into those of all the future Romans whom he had just displayed (888–92):
After Anchises had led his son through each individual thing, and enkindled his spirit with love of the glory to come, he relates to the man what he must do from then on, and he teaches him about the Laurentian peoples and the city of Latinus, and how he should flee or bear each labour.
It is precisely after that last line—‘and how he should flee or bear each labour’—that the Gates appear in stark asyndeton (6.892–3):
To be sure, it may be over-interpretation to put a great deal of weight on that quemque, but it does seem to strike the same note as Quintus’ omnia. At the very least, it suggests, again like Quintus’ remark on Fabius, that Anchises is offering comprehensive guidance to his son.
Now if it is right that in narrating Aeneas’ ‘future’ on the macroscopic level, Virgil had in mind Fabius Pictor’s portrayal of an Aeneas who was consistently advised by dreams, then that could account for his placement of the Gates of Sleep directly after Anchises’ instructions. Virgil would assume, of course, that his audience was familiar with the earlier tradition about Aeneas (especially how he learned of his future),Footnote 23 and the poet then would here be substituting Anchises for the dreams (possibly divine or anonymous?) in Fabius’ history. In other words, the placement of the Gates of Sleep is closely connected with the immediately preceding narration of the heroes who comprise Aeneas’ future. And Anchises here, no less than the prophetic dreams in Fabius, is instructing his son on how he must behave.Footnote 24
We should, of course, allow the possibility that it was not Fabius Pictor specifically whom Virgil has in mind here but rather the conventions of Roman historiography in general, since there is enough evidence from other Roman historians to indicate that dreams had an important role in their works. It must be noted, for example, that Cato’s account of Aeneas and the sow, though parting ways with Fabius, also includes a dream (OGR 12.5–13.2 = FRHist 5 F10 = F14b Chassignet):Footnote 25
at Cato in Origine generis Romani ita docet: suem triginta porculos peperisse in eo loco, ubi nunc est Lauinium, cumque Aeneas ibi urbem condere constituisset propterque agri sterilitatem maereret, per quietem ei uisa deorum penatum simulacra adhortantium, ut perseueraret in condenda urbe, quam coeperat; nam post annos totidem, quot foetus illius suis essent, Troianos in loca fertilia atque uberiorem agrum transmigraturos et urbem clarissimi nominis in Italia condituros. igitur Latinum Aboriginum regem, cum ei nuntiatum esset multitudinem aduenarum classe aduectam occupauisse agrum Laurentem, aduersum subitos inopinatosque hostes incunctanter suas copias eduxisse ac priusquam signum dimicandi daret, animaduertisse Troianos militariter instructos, cum sui lapidibus ac sudibus armati, tum etiam ueste aut pellibus, quae eis integumento erant, sinistris manibus inuolutis processissent. itaque suspenso certamine per colloquium inquisito, qui essent quidue peterent, utpote qui in hoc consilium auctoritate numinum cogebatur (namque extis ac somniis saepe admonitus erat tutiorem se aduersum hostes fore, si copias suas cum aduenis coniunxisset).
Cato in his Origin of the Roman People tells us this: a sow gave birth to thirty piglets in that place where Lavinium now is, and when Aeneas decided to found a city there, and grieved over the sterility of the soil, the images of the Penates appeared to him in a dream exhorting him to continue founding the city which he had begun. For, after as many years as the number of the sow’s litter, the Trojans would migrate to a fertile place and a richer land and would found a city of the most renowned name in Italy. Then Latinus, the king of the Aborigines, when informed that a host of strangers arriving by sea had occupied the Laurentine territory, unhesitatingly led out his forces against the unexpected and unforeseen enemy. But just as he was about to give the signal to engage he noticed that the Trojans were drawn up in military order, while his own men had set forth armed with stones and sticks, and, what is more, with their left hands covered with cloths or skins as shields. So he held up the battle, and at a parley enquired who they were and what they wanted, as was to be expected of one who was driven to this policy by the authority of the gods (for he had been frequently warned by the entrails and by dreams that he would be more secure against his enemies if he joined his forces with those of strangers).
It is perhaps worth noting here as well that Latinus in this passage is described as often (saepe) having been advised by dreams. One might add other dreams, of course, such as Coelius Antipater’s famous dream of Hannibal and the destruction of Italy.Footnote 26 And so it might be that the common motif of dreams in Roman historiography suggested to Virgil that Homer’s Gates of Dreams might follow appropriately from Anchises’ historical ‘prophecy’.
All this may not be much to go on, but when we consider the wretched remains of early Roman historiography, it is perhaps not nothing. Whether or not we see in this passage of the Aeneid a specific reference to the role of dreams in Fabius Pictor or in Roman historiography more broadly, it none the less may not be stretching credulity too much to suggest that Roman historiographical practice has played some role in Virgil’s decision to place the Gates of Sleep immediately after the conclusion of the parade of heroes and Anchises’ instructions to Aeneas on his future destiny. Nor would this be surprising given the close connection from the earliest stages of Latin literature between epic poetry and history,Footnote 27 not to mention the subtle interplay between myth and history that is everywhere evident in the Aeneid, where Virgil is now poet, now historian of the entire Roman experience.
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