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129–172: The Hunting Party¹⁴⁸

After the divine interlude the action switches back to the human plane. The basic structure of the section is as follows:

129: Indication of time
130–50: Preparation for the hunt and departure

130–35: Nameless attendants from Carthage

130–32: The youth and Massylian horsemen
133–35: Punic princes

136–39: Queen Dido
140–41a: Aeneas’ companions, above all his son Iulus/ Ascanius
141b–50: Aeneas, including simile that compares him to Apollo, correlating with the Dido-Diana simile in Book 1.494–504.

151–59: The hunt

151–55: General activities
156–59: Ascanius/ Iulus enjoying the hunt

160–72: The perfect storm

160–64: Scattering of the companions
165–72: The encounter in the cave

In broad outline, 129–172 recount the events that Juno had anticipated in 117–127, but the match is uneven. In particular, Virgil elaborates on the preparation for the hunt (the one and a half lines 117–18: uenatum Aeneas unaque miserrima Dido/ in nemus ire parant prefigure 130–50) and the hunt itself (the one line 121: dum trepidant alae saltusque indagine cingunt prefigures 151–59). More intriguingly, Virgil manages to keep Juno’s notion that a ‘marriage’ is in the works resonant throughout. He follows up the programmatic announcement ‘hic hymenaeus erit’ with subtle hints that assimilate the proceedings to a Roman wedding ceremony, leading up to the climax in the cave. ‘Echoes of wedding language and imagery’ include 133: thalamo; 133: cunctantem; 137–39: Dido’s incongruously ornate dress; 142: iungit; perhaps also 165: dux.¹⁴⁹ Possibly, Virgil encourages the reader to recall the ‘long poems’ by Catullus (61–68) and in particular Catullus 61, the famous wedding poem, which features many thematic parallels to this section of Aeneid 4, most conspicuously perhaps the belated appearance of the ‘bride’/ Dido.¹⁵⁰ These persistent hints open up various avenues of interpretation: (i) to begin with, they serve as subtle reminders that Juno is orchestrating events in the background for a specific purpose; (ii) at the same time, the oblique and refracted gestures to a proper Roman wedding ceremony cannot help but highlight that the ‘wedding’ that is unfolding here is profoundly distorted and deeply flawed: if hic hymenaeus erit (127) stands at the beginning of the section, death (letum) and evil (mala) mark the end: ille dies primus leti primusque malorum/ causa fuit (169–70);¹⁵¹ (iii) more specifically, the conflation of a hunt and a wedding produces jarring results, as it brings into close contact two cultural spheres that are often configured as diametrically opposed: if wedding and marriage revolve around a domestic union for the purpose of procreation, hunting is about going off into the wild for the purpose of killing. Likewise, hunting in ancient thought is a sexually charged activity, but the erotics associated with hunting are of the violent, trangressing kind, as opposed to the civilized values that inform proper marital arrangements. In English, as John Henderson reminds me, ‘venery’ traditionally covers both hunting and sex.

The joining of Carthaginians and Trojans in the hunt extends the theme of union beyond the two leaders to include two ethnic groupings: the two mingle, and Virgil uses the language of social ties (4.142: infert se socium) in the run-up to the physical mingling in the cave, thus recapitulating the two modes of civic and ethnic union that the two goddesses voiced in their plotting. The intermingling of Carthaginians and Trojans raises the question whether Virgil uses the occasion to demarcate ethnic differences. But at least on the level of the entourage, similarities outweigh differences: in fact, Virgil opts for studied symmetry in how he presents the two peoples. At first sight the same does not quite apply to the same degree to the two leaders: here differences dominate, also on the syntactical level. As Syed points out:¹⁵²

The description of Dido’s appearance in lines 133–39 starts out with Dido as the grammatical object, being awaited by her companions (4.133–34: reginam… exspectant). She is the subject of hardly a single active verb, excepting the (ironically) deponent progreditur in 4.136. For the most part, she is watched for (4.134: exspectant), surrounded (4.136: stipante), clothed (4.137: circumdata), her hair tied (4.138: nodantur), her brooch clasping her dress (4.139: subnectit). By contrast, Aeneas and Apollo to whom Aeneas is compared, are insistently active, they are the subjects of active verbs in the passage: Aeneas joins Dido (4.142: infert se socium) and unites his companions with hers (4.142: agmina iungit). In the simile, Apollo leaves Lycia (4.144: deserit) and comes to Delos (4.144: invisit). He renews dances (4.145: instaurat), he walks (4.147: graditur), he presses his locks (4.148: premit crinem) and braids them with gold (4.148: implicat auro). Just so, Aeneas, too, walks (4.149: haud illo segnior ibat).

There is, then, a much greater emphasis on Aeneas in this section, who re-enters the text with a vengeance. But on inspection, the differentiation between Dido and Aeneas is perhaps less marked than Syed makes it out to be. It is true that Dido, throughout this passage, remains strangely out of focus and her agency marginalized. But this does not square at all with Syed’s conclusion that ‘Dido is the object of the reader’s gaze.’ Instead, Virgil directs the attention of his audience onto Aeneas, his comparandum Apollo, and Ascanius/ Iulus: they are the protagonists in the unfolding drama of the hunt and regain the narrative limelight. And there are subtle touches through which Virgil breaks down any stark opposition between the Trojan hero and the Phoenician queen: many of the thematic concerns that dominate the stretch on Dido, in particular ‘gold’ and ‘hair’ recur in the simile that compares Aeneas to Apollo. Also in light of the fact that we later meet Aeneas as if dressed for a Punic catwalk, with a cloak aflame in Phoenician gold and purple (4.261-64), we may legitimately wonder whether his attire here does not provide a fitting match for that of the queen. And as for syntax, just as Dido, Apollo, too, struts about in a deponent: graditur (147). The passage, then, seems studiouly ambiguous about the countervailing dynamics of assimilation and differentiation.

129: Oceanum interea surgens Aurora reliquit: this is Virgil’s equivalent to Juno’s ubi primos crastinus ortus/ extulerit Titan radiisque retexerit orbem (118–19). He had already used Aurora to indicate daybreak at 6–7 (postea Phoebea lustrabat lampade terras/ umentemque Aurora polo dimouerat umbram). The goddess of Dawn will again mark the beginning of a day at 584–85 (which is set up by a reference to her in 568, within a speech by Mercury): Et iam prima nouo spargebat lumine terras/ Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile (‘And now early Dawn, leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus, was sprinkling the earth with fresh light’). Virgil thus uses Aurora three times in Aeneid 4 to indicate the beginning of a day: the first day is Dido’s first day in love; on the second day, the fateful encounter in the cave takes place; and on the third day, Aeneas departs. Moreover, over the course of the book Aurora gradually morphs from a personified concept into a mythological character. At 6–7 there is hardly any hint of her involvement with Tithonus; here, at 129, surgens and reliquit refers to her daily departure from the bed of her aging husband, for whom she requested immortality, while forgetting to ask for eternal youth as well; and at 584–85, the sad story of a love-quest that went tragically awry is alluded to explicitly, with linquens harking back to (and providing a gloss on) surgens and reliquit in 129. In a sense, then, the repeated references to Aurora and the ever more concrete allusion to her myth offer a cosmic correlate to the evolving tragedy of Dido.

130–139: The Carthaginians (and, notably, Dido) get themselves ready for the hunt. The section falls into three parts:

130–32: Out come the youth (3 lines)
133–35: The Carthaginian nobles and her horse wait for dallying Dido (3 lines)
136–39: Dido’s entrance (4 lines)

130–132: it portis iubare exorto delecta iuuentus,/ retia rara, plagae, lato uenabula ferro,/ Massylique ruunt equites et odora canum uis: Three ‘excited’ lines that describe how the Carthaginian hunting party bustles from the gates. Several formal features magnify the sense of jostling excitement and expectation:

1)  The missing verb: whereas the delecta iuuentus (130) ‘comes forth’ (it) and the Massyli equites (132) ‘rush out’ (ruunt) together with the hounds, the three pieces of equipment mentioned in line 131 (retia, plagae, uenabula), which are also in the nominative, lack a verb. Given that these are inanimate objects, it is difficult to construe them either with it or with ruunt, and one has mentally to supply something like portantur (‘are brought’).

2)  Word order: the monosyllabic verb at the outset (it) instantly emphasizes motion and conveys something of the hustle and bustle of the hunting party: everyone is eager to get going. (The English expression ‘tally ho!’ generates a similar effect.) See also below on stat sonipes (135). 3) Ictus, accent, and monosyllabic verse ending: the concluding phrase of 132 is agitated by a clash between ictus (odóra canúm uis) and accent (odóra cánum uís), in addition to featuring a highly unusual monosyllabic line ending. The two aspects go together as Austin explains, as part of a little disquisition on word accents in Latin more generally:¹⁵³

A glance at any page of Virgil shows two normal patterns in the last two feet, either that of delecta iuventus, or that of venabula ferro: i.e. the last word is a disyllable or a trisyllable, and the last two feet are shared between two words only. Thus the metrical beat or ‘ictus’, in a normal ending, falls on the same syllable as that which bears the accent of the spoken word; for that accent falls on the penultimate syllable of all disyllabic words, and of all longer words if that syllable is long, but on the antepenultimate of trisyllabic or longer words if the penultimate is short; and this rule gives delécta iuvéntus, venábula férro, with word-accent and ictus coinciding. When the normal end-pattern is disturbed, the rhythm is disturbed too, so that there is no longer this coincidence: the ictus falls thus, odóra canúm vis, but the accent thus, odóra cánum vís, and so with an abnormal end-pattern an abnormal rhythm is obtained. The line has a bustling, agitated close instead of a calm, smooth one, and the metre itself shows the excitement of the scene, with the hounds poking about vigorously and appearing in unexpected places.

Monosyllabic verse-endings are always very dramatic: cf. e.g. 1.105: insequitur cumulo praeruptus aquae mons (‘down in a heap comes a sheer mountain of water’) which also features the same sequence of adjective, genitive attribute, noun.¹⁵⁴ In both cases, Virgil enhances the effect by stepping down the number of syllables in the words that precede the climactic monosyllable: 3 (odora/ praeruptus): 2 (canum/ aquae): 1 (uis/ mons).

130: iubare exorto: an ablative absolute; iubar signifies the radiance of heavenly bodies, here the sun. The party sets out ‘at sunrise.’

131: retia rara, plagae, lato uenabula ferro: a surprising asyndetic continuation of delecta iuuentus, specifying some items of accoutrement that are carried out for the hunt: two different kinds of nets (retia rara are ‘broad-meshed’ to channel the game in a certain direction; plagae are nets for trapping) and spears with broad blades (lato… ferro is an ablative of description).

132: Massyli… equites: the Massyli are another ethnic grouping in Northern Africa, apparently on friendly terms with the Phoenician settlers—in contrast to the hostile people mentioned by Anna in 40–43. The priestess supposed to have supplied Dido with a counter-spell to love is ‘of Massylian race’ (4.483: hinc mihi Massylae gentis monstrata sacerdos). The most famous member of the tribe in historical times was king Massinissa, the first king of Numibia, who lived during the time of the Second Punic War, starting out as an ally of Carthage but then switching sides and playing a key role in the battle of Zama (202 BC), which ended the war. The Roman general Scipio nevertheless refused to pardon his wife, the Carthaginian princess Sophonisba; to avoid the humiliation of being paraded in a Roman triumph, she committed suicide. For those who know their Roman history Sophonisba and the fate of Carthage more generally beckon on the historical horizon and in turn foreshadow Dido’s tragic end within the Aeneid.

132: odora canum uis: Virgil uses a transferred epithet: the hounds, not the uis, are ‘keen-scented’ (odora). The phrasing has precedents in Homer, Ennius, and Lucretius.¹⁵⁵

133–135: reginam thalamo cunctantem ad limina primi/ Poenorum exspectant, ostroque insignis et auro/ stat sonipes ac frena ferox spumantia mandit: in direct antithesis to the eagerness of the rest of the party and the hounds, Dido lingers (cunctantem) in her chamber (thalamo), holding up proceedings. Both the lingering and the term Virgil uses for ‘chamber’ hint at the Roman wedding ritual. The reluctance of the bride to enter into the house of her husband on the day of her marriage, as a preliminary step towards her first experience of sexual intercourse, is a key theme of Catullus’ wedding poems designed to highlight her modesty and her virginity (see especially Catullus 61 and 66, but the whole bloc of Catullus’ long poems comes into play here).¹⁵⁶ And as Austin points out, ‘Virgil’s choice of the word thalamus is significant (he could have written tecto)’¹⁵⁷: in a transferred sense, thalamus means ‘bridal-bed’ or ‘wedlock’—as in 4.18 above.¹⁵⁸ Its use here seems to imply that Dido has become a bride—but one wonders about focalization: does Dido already conceive of herself as a bride and display bridal hesitation before the upcoming ‘wedding’? Or is she simply busy with her toilette, and the oblique reference to her as a bride is Virgil’s way of emphasizing that Dido, unknowingly, prepares for (another) wedding experience? But the ‘wedding associations’ of cunctantem and thalamo, once put together, are somewhat disturbing: after all, what is Dido doing dallying in the wedding chamber? Far from highlighting her sense of shame (pudor, pudicitia) or virginity, her prolonged presence in the room marked for encounters of the carnal kind would seem to suggest that sex is on her mind and that she longs for the physical consumation of her visceral passion in a way that is supposedly entirely alien to innocent brides.¹⁵⁹ Alternatively, we could read the moment of hesitation as ‘a last saving instinct, a natural pull back to the safety of her home and her goals before she enters upon her hard fata.’¹⁶⁰ Whatever the answer, the leading men of the Carthaginians (primi/ Poenorum: a phrase linked by alliteration across the enjambment) patiently wait for her; her horse, too, ‘stands’ (stat, another monosyllabic beginning that ‘stands’ in contrast to the it in line 130), but does so impatiently: see below on 135.

134–135: ostroque insignis et auro: the phrase describes Dido’s horse, but the referent does not become clear until the following line. For a moment one could therefore assume that Dido is meant, especially since both the purple and the gold evoke her hometown of Tyre—which was famous for the sea snail from which the purple dye was extracted and which she fled on ships laden with gold. The joke continues in line 136, where Virgil switches the subject, almost imperceptibly, from the horse (mandit) to Dido (progreditur).

[Extra information: Here is the opening of the excellent Wikipedia entry on ‘Tyrian Purple’, which includes discussion of the biology of the sea snails, the chemistry behind the secretion used to make dye, and the snails’ contribution to cultural history:

Tyrian purple (Greek, πορφύρα, porphyra, Latin: purpura), also known as royal purple, imperial purple or imperial dye, is a purple-red natural dye, which is extracted from sea snails, and which was possibly first produced by the ancient Phoenicians. This dye was greatly prized in antiquity because it did not fade but became more intense with weathering and sunlight. Tyrian purple was expensive: the 4th-century-BC historian Theopompus reported, ‘Purple for dyes fetched its weight in silver at Colophon’ in Asia Minor. The expense meant that purple-dyed textiles became status symbols, and early sumptuary laws restricted their uses.]¹⁶¹

135: stat sonipes ac frena ferox spumantia mandit: sonipes is a combination of sonus + pes, i.e. a creature that makes a noise with its feet, especially a horse. Virgil may be cracking a bit of a joke here by combining this metonymy for horse with the verb stat. The two verbs (stat, mandit) frame the line; note also the alliteration (stat sonipes… spumantia; frena ferox). Cicero calls ‘f’ a lettera insuauissima (‘a most unpleasant letter’) at Orator 163, and the f-alliteration, reinforced by the assonance of fre- fer- and spumantia mandit here perhaps conveys something of the impatient chomping of the horse.

136–137: tandem progreditur magna stipante caterua/ Sidoniam picto chlamydem circumdata limbo;: Dido finally issues forth, but she remains strangely oblique throughout this passage: Virgil mentions the delecta iuuentus (130), the Massyli equites (132), the primi Poenorum (133–34), the Phrygii comites (140), Iulus/ Ascanius (twice in the nominative: 140, 156), and Aeneas (also twice in the nominative: 142, 150), whereas Dido registers only as an absent queen (reginam… exspectant) and an implied subject (progreditur). See also below on 138–39. This is very much in contrast to her magnificent entrance in Book 1, to which Virgil here gestures (1. 496–97):

regina ad templum, forma pulcherrima Dido,
incessit, magna iuuenum stipante caterua.

[The queen, Dido, of surpassing beauty, approached the temple, with a large throng of youths crowding around her.]

In this earlier scene, which is followed by a simile that compares Dido to Diana, Aeneas lurks in the shadows and watches. In our passage, which includes a simile that compares Aeneas to Apollo, the positions are reversed: Dido is out of the limelight for the time being, whereas Aeneas and his son are very much in it. After Juno’s performance script, which foregrounded Dido, this comes as a bit of a surprise. Virgil, it seems, deliberately inverts the emphases and preferences of the goddess.

137: Sidoniam picto chlamydem circumdata limbo: Virgil often construes perfect passive participles with a direct object as if they had a reflexive- active (or Greek middle) sense, as here circumdata: Dido has surrounded herself with a Sidonian (= Phoenician) riding-cloak that sports an adorned border (picto… limbo). The two phrases are interlaced according to the pattern adjective₁ (Sidoniam), adjective₂ (picto), noun₁ (chlamydem), noun₂ (limbo).

138–139: cui pharetra ex auro [sc. est], crines nodantur in aurum,/ aurea purpuream subnectit fibula uestem: Dido’s disappearing act continues: we get her at the beginning of 138 in the dative of ownership (cui), but the focus is on her golden bow, her hair (literally ‘tied into gold’), and her golden buckle that clasps her purple-dyed cloak: the polyptoton ex auro, in aurum, aurea that dominates the tricolon, together with the reference to the purple colour of her cloak, gives the impression that Dido is decked out like a Christmas tree but remains strangely out of focus herself—in contrast, as we shall see, to Aeneas. In terms of plot, one begins to understand why her companions were in for such a long wait, though Dido’s sense of dress is clearly out of kilter: hunting is dirty business, whereas she is clothed as if for a beauty pageant. The chlamys, though, a Greek type of cloak, is an appropriate hunting garment, and the quiver recalls her special association with the goddess of the hunt, Diana: see 1.500–01: illa [sc. Diana] pharetram/ fert umero gradiensque deas supereminet omnis (‘she carries a quiver on her shoulder and, striding along, surpasses all the other goddesses in height’). (The lines are from the simile that accompanies the entry of Dido into the poem and powerfully resonates in the passage here: see below.) Ironically, the golden display strongly recalls Dido’s dead husband Sychaeus. See Book 1.343–44 (from Venus’ speech to Aeneas, instructing him about Dido’s past): huic coniunx Sychaeus erat, ditissimus auri/ Phoenicum (‘Her husband was Sychaeus, richest in gold of the Phoenicians’). After his murder by Dido’s brother Pygmalion, Sychaeus appears to his wife in a vision, showing her the place of his hidden treasures (359): ignotum argenti pondus et auri (‘a secret mass of gold and silver’), which Dido then loads on a ship and flees (362–64): nauis, quae forte paratae,/ corripiunt onerantque auro; portantur auari/ Pygmalionis opes pelago (‘ships, which by chance were ready, they seize and load with gold; the wealth of greedy Pygmalion is carried overseas’). So in essence, Dido is here wearing the treasures of her dead husband to impress her would-be new consort.

[Extra information: As for the gold, to top it all off, line 138 is a so-called ‘golden line’, a uersus aureus, i.e. it features the pattern adjective₁ (aurea) adjective₂ (purpuream) verb (subnectit) noun₁ (fibula) noun₂ (vestem), though it ought to be noted that ‘the term was not used in antiquity.’¹⁶² Such golden lines are comparatively speaking uncommon in the Aeneid and could be considered an Alexandrian-neoteric mannerism. So from the point of view of genre, Dido is not really dressed here as befits an epic protagonist.¹⁶³ Likewise, the passage recalls two passages in Callimachus, in which the Alexandrian poet describes the golden regalia of Artemis (Hymn 3.110–12):

Ἄρτεμι Παρθενίη Τιτυοκτόνε, χρύσεα μέν τοι
ἔντεα καὶ ζώνη, χρύσεον δ’ ἐζεύξαο δίφρον,
ἐν δ’ ἐβάλευ χρύσεια, θεή, κεμάδεσσι χαλινά.

Artemis, Lady of Maidenhood, Slayer of Tityus, golden were your weapons and your belt, and golden the car you yoked, and you put golden bridles, goddess, on your deer.

and Apollo (Hymn 2.32–5):

χρύσεα τὠπόλλωνι τό τ’ ἐνδυτὸν ἥ τ’ ἐπιπορπίς
ἥ τε λύρη τό τ’ ἄεμμα τὸ Λύκτιον ἥ τε φαρέτρη,
χρύσεα καὶ τὰ πέδιλα· πολύχρυσος γὰρ Ἀπόλλων
καὶ πουλυκτέανος·

Golden is the tunic of Apollo, his mantle, his lyre, his Lyctian bow, and his quiver. Golden, too, are his sandals; for rich in gold is Apollo and also in possessions.

These gestures would certainly be thematically appropriate and enriching in a passage that, by means of allusions to Book 1.494–504, correlates Dido with Diana/ Artemis and Aeneas with Apollo.¹⁶⁴ The result is something one may call intertextual cross-dressing: ‘The queen of Carthage proceeds to the hunt resplendent in finery from various corners of the Callimachean wardrobe, matched with consummate skill by her Roman dresser.’¹⁶⁵]

140: nec non et Phrygii comites et laetus Iulus/ incedunt. ipse ante alios pulcherrimus omnis/ infert se socium Aeneas atque agmina iungit: the litotes nec non marks the switch from Phoenicians to Trojans. Virgil’s design nicely conveys a sense of hierarchy and importance: in a first step he introduces the anonymous collective and Iulus, who is singled out by name, but is syntactically situated at the same level as the comites (see the coordination by et… et…). They enter the scene together, in enjambment: incedunt. Then there is a slight pause, signalled by the caesura (a trithemimeres), which ‘marks the moment of their waiting for Aeneas to take up his position.’¹⁶⁶ Then Aeneas steps forward to take his place next to Dido and to join their forces. agmina refers to the Carthaginians and the Trojans who have come from separate quarters and are here joined together into one troop by Aeneas. Dido is nowhere to be seen, though some translations obfuscate her eclipse. Goold, for instance, renders the lines thus: ‘Aeneas himself, goodly beyond all others, advanced to join her and unites his band with hers.’ ‘Her’ and ‘hers’ are not in the Latin. The verse design enacts the central and conspicuous leadership role of Aeneas. The design is chiastic with Aeneas as pivot—verb: infert, accusative object: se socium, subject: Aeneas, accusative object: agmina, verb: iungit—and thereby mirrors on the figurative level what happens at the level of plot: the intermingling of the two peoples around Aeneas who stands at dead centre. One could imagine that the meeting of the two groups resulted in a huge hullabaloo, but Virgil suggests otherwise: the two elisions (socium Aeneas; atque agmina) enact the smooth joining of forces by the joining of words. If one sees the preparations for the hunt as the distorted and distorting performance of a wedding ritual, agmina iungit recalls 126: conubio iungam stabili.

141–142: ipse ante alios pulcherrimus omnis/ infert… Aeneas: Aeneas’ entry into the narrative here is modelled on Dido’s entry in Book 1 and its accompanying simile (see below). Cf. esp. lines 1.496–97: regina ad templum, forma pulcherrima Dido/ incessit, 501: gradiensque deas supereminet omnis (of Diana), and 503: talem se laeta ferebat. Parallels include the epithet pulcherrima/us (as W. Clausen puts it: ‘Dido and Aeneas are thus beautifully paired’),¹⁶⁷ the effective use of enjambment for a verb of entry (incessit, infert), and the notion of excelling all others, with omnis positioned for emphasis in the last foot of the line. While the adjective pulcherrimus helps to correlate Dido’s entry in Book 1 with the scene here, it otherwise strikes an odd note: apart from underscoring that Dido has remained entirely faceless in the verses devoted to her (her last ornamenting epithet came in 117, where Juno called her miserrima), ‘outstanding beauty’ is an attribute better suited to erotic contexts than the hunt. In fact, it is an epic topos that goddesses work some cosmetic magic on their favourite heroes before crucial encounters with a girl: Athena prettifies Odysseus before his encounter with Nausicaa; Hera prettifies Jason before his encounter with Medea; and Venus, in Book 1, had rendered Aeneas stunning to behold before he left his protective cloud to meet Dido (1.586–91). While Virgil mentions no divine intervention here, his use of pulcherrimus constitutes a gesture to this commonplace.¹⁶⁸

143–149: qualis ubi hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta/ deserit ac Delum maternam inuisit Apollo/ instauratque choros, mixtique altaria circum/ Cretesque Dryopesque fremunt pictique Agathyrsi;/ ipse iugis Cynthi graditur mollique fluentem/ fronde premit crinem fingens atque implicat auro,/ tela sonant umeris: The Apollo-simile interrupts the plot and transports the reader into the realm of the gods. The tricolon is an operative principle throughout: we get three geographical locations (hibernam Lyciam, Xanthi fluenta, Delum maternam), three main verbs in the opening sequence (deserit, inuisit, instaurat), three types of companions (Cretes, Dryopes, picti Agathyrsi), three main verbs in the closing sequence with Apollo as subject (graditur, premit, implicat)—though, perhaps for the sake of variation, with a fourth tagged on but with a change in subject (sonant). In pairing Dido with Diana and Aeneas with Apollo by way of similes Virgil follows a pattern set by Apollonius who likens Jason to Apollo at Argonautica 1.307–09 and Medea to Artemis (the Greek equivalent to Diana) at 3.876–84. (Virgil inverts Apollonius’ sequence of male—female.) Here is Argonautica 1.306–11, details of which Virgil preserved in his own simile:

Ἦ, καὶ ὁ μὲν προτέρωσε δόμων ἒξ ὦρτο νέεσθαι.
οἷος δ’ ἐκ νηοῖο θυώδεος εἶσιν Ἀπόλλων
Δῆλον ἀν’ ἠγαθέην ἠὲ Κλάρον, ἢ ὅγε Πυθώ
ἢ Λυκίην εὐρεῖαν ἐπὶ Ξάνθοιο ῥοῇσι—
τοῖος ἀνὰ πληθὺν δήμου κίεν, ὦρτο δ’ ἀυτή
κεκλομένων ἄμυδις.

[He spoke and went forth from his home to make his departure. And as Apollo goes from his fragrant temple through holy Delos or Claros, or through Pytho or broad Lycia by the streams of Xanthus, so he went through the crowd of people, and a shout went up as they cheered with one voice.]

143: qualis ubi: ‘as when….’ qualis translates οἷος in the Greek, but ubi, which introduces an emphasis on a precise moment in time, has no equivalent in Apollonius. It sets up the highly resonant hibernam: see next note.

143: hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta/ deserit: hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta translates almost verbatim Apollonius, Argonautica 1.300: ἢ Λυκίην εὐρεῖαν ἐπὶ Ξάνθοιο ῥοῇσι, i.e.:

Λυκίην (Lukiên) > Lyciam
εὐρεῖαν (eureian) ~ hibernam
Ξάνθοιο (Xanthoio) > Xanthi
ῥοῇσι (rhoêsi) > fluenta

Three items are all but identical (indicated by ‘>‘). Virgil, however, changes the attribute of Lycia (signalled by ‘~’). Instead of εὐρεῖαν (‘broad’) we get hibernam, an adjective here used instead of an adverb: it signifies the moment in time when Apollo leaves Lycia, i.e. ‘in winter.’ See Weber: ‘Lycia is not Apollo’s “winter home” [Austin (1963) 64]; on the contrary, it is the place in Asia that in winter the god leaves behind for Greece.’¹⁶⁹ The adjustment seems minor; but it is fraught with meaning, as it interrelates the simile with a wide range of key thematic concerns in Aeneid 4. To begin with, the thought that Apollo leaves Lycia in winter (as Weber goes on to point out) surprises: ‘it is an unfamiliar Apollo who joins his worshippers in the dead of winter.… the presence of the visitors named in 4.146 actually rules out winter rites on Delos. The god whose epiphany coincides with winter is rather Dionysus, winter being the season when this god renews his biennial dances on Parnassus and, probably, on Cithaeron as well’ (324).

The theme of ‘abandoning a place in winter’ is a charged theme in the context of Aeneid 4, ominously proleptic of what Aeneas will do later on in the book. The reference to winter not only recalls the end of Anna’s speech, where she suggests to Dido that she should use the time of the year as an argument for Aeneas to stay (4.51–53), but also sets up 309–11 (Dido’s outraged confrontation with Aeneas upon finding out that he will even brace the winter-storms to get away from Carthage as quickly as he can): quin etiam hiberno moliri sidere classem/ et mediis properas Aquilonibus ire per altum,/ crudelis? (‘Even in the winter season you hasten to get your fleet ready and to travel across the sea in the midst of northern gales, cruel one?’).¹⁷⁰ Virgil’s use of the verb deserit (‘he abandons’), which he placed for special effect in enjambment (followed by a weak diaeresis after the first foot), is equally charged and it, too, features prominently in Dido’s confrontation with Aeneas. See 323: cui me moribundam deseris hospes?, as well as Dido’s concluding self-portrayal at 330 as capta ac deserta. A look at the Apollonian model is again instructive: in the Argonautica, the god simply ‘goes’ (309: εἶσιν).

144: Delum maternam… Apollo: Delos was the island on which Leto gave birth to her twins Diana and Apollo. The position of the attribute after the noun it modifies generates a chiasmus with hibernam Lyciam in the previous line, mirroring the dynamics of ‘departure’ (deserit) and ‘arrival’ (inuisit). Virgil identifies the subject (Apollo) only at the very end of the second verse of the simile, though the geographical locations, and in particular the phrase Delum maternam, already provide fairly decisive clues. Virgil has changed the attribute of Delos from ἠγαθέην (‘most holy’, an attribute used of places under divine protection) in Apollonius to maternam. The emphasis on returning to a maternal location may aid in the subtle assimilation of Apollo to Dionysus that pervades the simile.¹⁷¹ The purposeful direction of Apollo’s travels in Virgil contrasts sharply with the somewhat haphazard enumeration of cult locations in Apollonius and thereby enhances the parallels between Apollo’s actions in the simile and Aeneas’ action later on in the narrative.

145: instauratque choros: choros instaurare means ‘to renew the dance.’ This is a further hint of a Dionysiac presence in the simile: ‘the god who, after an absence abroad in Asia, returns to the Greek land of his mother and there sets his votaries to dancing…—this god is first and foremost Dionysus.’¹⁷²

145–146: mixtique altaria circum/ Cretesque Dryopesque fremunt pictique Agathyrsi: the -que attached to mixti links instaurat and fremunt; the -que attached to Dryopes links Cretes and Dryopes; the -que attached to picti links Dryopes and Agathyrsi. The -que attached to Cretes, in contrast, despite scanning long, does not link anything and is thus strictly speaking superfluous. (Converting the -ques into ‘ets’, one would get et Cretes et Dryopes et picti Agathyrsi.) Who are the people that participate in Apollo’s rites? Cretes are inhabitants of the island of Crete, a straightforward designation. The Dryopians and Agathyrsians, on the other hand, here ‘make their debut in Latin verse’: Weber (2002) 328. Pease describes the Dryopians as ‘a rude and predatory tribe’,¹⁷³ whereas the Agathyrsians are, according to Weber, ‘obscure barbarians.’¹⁷⁴ He notes: ‘this heterogeneous mélange of mainstream and marginal Greeks mingling with outlandish foreigners has no place in the elitist cult of Apollo. Such retinue of polyglot worshipers would rather be at home in the ecumenical milieu of Dionysus’ (325–26). He points out other Dionysiac touches, including the etymology of both Dryopians and Agathyrsians;¹⁷⁵ the modifier of the Agathyrsians, that is, picti (‘whether this word refers to tattooing or to some other means of coloring the skin or hair, painted or tattooed devotees are out of place in the cult of Apollo’: 328); the verb fremunt, which recalls Dionysus’ epithet Bromius;¹⁷⁶ and the neologistic licence and dithyrambic flair of the verse design, with the extra -que scanned long in the second arsis. (The overemphatic polysyndeton arguably also underscores the action of the verbs: mixti and fremunt, the mixing and crowding around the altar.)

147: ipse: picks up Apollo.

147: iugis Cynthi: Dionysus, too, is a mountain god.¹⁷⁷

147: graditur: ‘in 1, 501 the same verb is used of his sister Diana in her rites on Cynthus.’¹⁷⁸ See also 1.312 (of Aeneas): ipse uno graditur comitatus Achate (‘he himself strides forth, accompanied only by Achates’).

147–148: mollique fluentem/ fronde premit crinem fingens atque implicat auro: Virgil lavishes as much attention on Apollo’s hairdo as he did on Dido’s. crinem is the accusative object of both premit and fingens (an ‘apo-koinou’ position), as well as implicat, and all three verbs address the quality captured in the attribute of crinem, i.e. fluentem: Apollo puts his hair in order (premit) by shaping (fingens) his flowing locks with soft foliage (note the alliteration fluentem—fronde—fingens) and braiding it (implicat) with a golden diadem. The Dionysiac touches continue: mollis is, as Weber points out, ‘virtually a vox propria for objects connected with Dionysus.’¹⁷⁹ He also provides the following analysis of the participle fingens, which turns out to be syntactically and thematically ‘camp’: ‘The effeminacy implicit in molli… is further suggested by the fingens in the next line. This participle acquires a degree of emphasis from being somewhat superfluously appended to a clause that is already complete both syntactically and semantically.… Aeneid 4.148 is… unique in Latin verse for not applying fingere of setting the hair either to a woman or to a male of precarious masculinity. Here fingens combines with molli in the preceding line to frame fluentem/ fronde premit crinem, and both words together imbue the intervening expression with a strong suggestion of effeminacy that is at once alien to Apollo and intrinsic to Dionysus.’¹⁸⁰

149: tela sonant umeris: a sudden shift in tone from the peaceful imagery of the previous lines, especially if one recalls Iliad 1.43–47:¹⁸¹

Ὣς ἔφατ’ εὐχόμενος, τοῦ δ’ ἔκλυε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων,
βῆ δὲ κατ’ Οὐλύμποιο καρήνων χωόμενος κῆρ,
τόξ’ ὤμοισιν ἔχων ἀμφηρεφέα τε φαρέτρην·	45
ἔκλαγξαν δ’ ἄρ’ ὀϊστοὶ ἐπ’ ὤμων χωομένοιο,
αὐτοῦ κινηθέντος· ὃ δ’ ἤϊε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς

[Thus he [sc. Chryses] spoke in prayer, and Phoebus Apollo heard him.
Down from the peaks of Olympus he came, irate at heart,
bearing his bow on his shoulder and his covered quiver.	45
The arrows rattled on the shoulders of the angry god,
while he was moving, and his coming was like the night.]

This is Apollo’s highly dramatic entry into Western literature, and Virgil seemingly lifts and translates a key component from Homer’s description of the wrathful divinity striding down from Mt. Olympus to shoot his plague-bearing poisoned arrows into the camp of the Greeks. In Virgil, the reference to the arrows of destruction rattling in the quiver on Apollo’s shoulders comes as an unpleasant surprise after the peaceful scenes of dancing and hair-dressing—a dark reminder that both the god and the hero he is meant to illustrate may have a baleful impact on those around them. Specifically, it recalls the deer-simile at 4.69–73, where a pastor, who represents Aeneas, mortally wounds a deer with his arrows. The sudden switch in theme from celebration to death in the simile thus mirrors on the micro-level the progression from what is supposed to be a wedding (127: hymenaeus) but actually is the beginning of a tragic plot that leads to misery and death (169–70: ille dies primus leti…). With supreme economy Virgil thereby recapitulates the Homeric paradox that the god of brightness and light (see his epithet Phoebus) may also resemble darkness and night, that the god of healing may cause a plague. For the first appearance of the divinity in Western literature, the terms of entry are fittingly complex and problematic, setting the tone for what was to follow.

[Extra information: The question whether the passage from Iliad 1 is ‘relevant’ here triggered a little tussle between the two Virgilian scholars Oliver Lyne and Nicholas Horsfall. Lyne offers the following interpretation of our passage: ¹⁸²

Aeneas is armed for Apollo, armed for the hunt. But Apollo in arms is surely too significant and ominous a figure to perform merely this function: poets introduce him in warlike as opposed to peaceful guise with deliberation, and for awesome purposes. Added to which, the arms here in question are particularly sinister arms, for this is Apollo from a most sinister source. A highly disturbing allusion is in fact operating. ‘Tela sonant umeris’ is a translation of Hom. Il. 1.46. And Il. 1.46 describes Apollo the plague-bringer, describes, to be precise, the very means by which Apollo delivered plague. In Iliad 1 Apollo came down from Olympus to punish the Achaeans with plague, and ‘his arrows’, the instruments of that plague, ‘clashed on his shoulders’ as he descended—a striking, ominous, and memorable moment: ἔκλαγξαν δ’ ἄρ’ ὀϊστοὶ ἐπ’ ὤμων, ‘tela sonant umeris.’ Vergil’s simile therefore culminates in a recall of this most memorable moment, the advent of the divine plague-bringer. So the allusion (assuming it to be such) intimates the suggestion: Aeneas the plague-bringer. Aeneas a plague-bringer?

Nicholas Horsfall reviewed Lyne at Classical Review 38.2, 243–45, and objected: ‘L.’s hunt for allusions comes up with answers of varying credibility: I can see why he finds the Homeric plague god behind Aen. 4.143ff., but not here alone we might pause to ask “is that association actually relevant?”, “does it make sense, or serve any real purpose?” and above all, “can we believe that that is what V. himself wanted us to conclude?”.’ To which Lyne responds: ‘We have no evidence for what Vergil wanted us to conclude—beyond the text. The question is pointless and evades the interest[ing] fact in the text. “Is that association actually relevant?” Why shouldn’t it be, unless we have preconceptions about what Vergil “intends” to be relevant?’¹⁸³ What are we to make of this? Horsfall’s question ‘is that association actually relevant?’, far from being ‘pointless’ (as Lyne would have it), strikes me as a good one—as a challenge to the reader who has this association to make it ‘relevant’ (whatever this is taken to mean: ‘relevance’, too, is under continual negotiation as the history of engaging with Latin texts amply shows) by offering a good argument in its favour (and the criteria for what counts as ‘good’ are of course also to some extent in flux). Conversely, Horsfall seems to rule out relevance in part by failing to see any point or purpose, in part by appealing to the poet behind the text as a decisive instance of critical authority. Yet I agree with Lyne that the reference to Iliad 1 (if it is one) makes a lot of sense and serves a very real purpose: for starters, it renders Virgil’s text more resonant with meaning, makes for a perfect fit with the overarching dynamics of this section, and enhances the complexity and appeal of his artistry. Put differently, if Virgil did not want his readers to have this association and consider it relevant, he should have.]

149–150: haud illo segnior ibat/ Aeneas, tantum egregio decus enitet ore: Virgil foregrounds two points of comparison, juxtaposed asyndetically: the graceful energy that animates Aeneas’ movements (emphasized by means of the litotes haud segnior); and his beauty. illo is ablative of comparison and refers to Apollo; in the second clause the comparison is understood: so much (tantum) beauty shines forth from the face of Aeneas as (quantum) shines forth from that of Apollo. (a₁) tantum (a2) egregio (b1) decus (c) enitet (b₂) ore, i.e. attribute₁ attribute2 noun1 verb noun2, almost forms a ‘golden pattern’. Note the enjambment of Aeneas; the name serves as pivot between the two clauses of which he is the subject.

151: postquam altos uentum in montis atque inuia lustra: uentum, sc. est, i.e. the third person singular perfect indicative passive of uenio, here used impersonally (‘they came’). The preposition in modifies both altos montis and inuia lustra. The line features three elisions (postquam altos, uentum in, atque inuia), where the space between words disappears: is this, perhaps, Virgil’s way of emphasizing by formal means the pathless thickets into which the company moves? Along those lines, note the clash of accent and ictus in both altos and montis—a formal feature arguably used to underscore their steepness. The ascent into the mountains surprises: Juno, in her masterplan, had twice mentioned ‘groves’ as venue for the hunt (see 118: in nemus ire parant; 121: saltusque indagine cingunt) and there are other incongruous touches, such as hunters on horseback (135, 156–57), including Ascanius, who enjoys himself ‘in the middle of the vale’ (156: mediis in uallibus). Weber explains the unexpected mountain setting as a means of sustaining affinities between Aeneas and Dionysus: ‘As Dionysus is a mountain god who hunts, Aeneas is a hero who hunts in the mountains’ (333), or, more specifically, ‘Aeneas is the Virgilian counterpart of Euripides’ Dionysus, as both the hunter who survives the hunt and a stranger newly arrived from Asia. His advent, like that of Dionysus, leads to the death of the reigning monarch’ (334).

152: ecce: the particle—a colloquialism integrated into high poetry by Virgil—marks a moment of transition, from preparation to the actual start of the hunting.¹⁸⁴

152–153: ferae saxi deiectae uertice caprae/ decurrere iugis: Virgil interlaces words modifying the hunted animals (ferae—deiectae—caprae: note the hyberbaton of attribute (ferae) and noun (caprae), effectively placed at the end of the line) with words describing the topography (saxi—uertice). The result is a combination of symmetry and order on the level of form that generates a moment of suspense before the sudden resolution in the subsequent lines: decurrere (= decurrerunt) iugis. The placement of deiectae between the genitive attribute (saxi, here used as a synonym of montis) and the noun on which it depends (uertice) enacts its meaning and prepares for the main verb (de-iectae ~ de-currere): the mountain goats are separated from (‘driven off’) their usual haunts on the rocky mountain-crags.

153–155: alia de parte patentis/ transmittunt cursu campos atque agmina cerui/puluerulenta fuga glomerant montisque relinquunt: the subject of all three clauses (transmittunt, glomerant, relinquunt) is the much-delayed cerui (corresponding in metrical position to the caprae in line 152). There is a sharp change in rhythm from 154, where all the feet, except the fifth, are spondaic, to 155, where all the feet, except the fourth, are dactylic. In each case the rhythm is thematically appropriate: first, the deer crowd together; then they take off. Virgil further enhances the speed of their flight by a husteron proteron: logically, the deer must first leave the mountains before they can rush across the plain, but Virgil has inverted the natural order to convey a ‘head-over-heels’ impression. Compare, for instance, Antony and Cleopatra, Act 3, Scene 10: ‘The Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,/ With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder.’ (The logical sequence would require ‘they turn the rudder and fly.’) Other unsettling features include the hyperbata patentis… campos (which ‘opens’ up a space for the words of movement transmittunt and cursu that Virgil places within the ‘open…. fields’) and agmina… puluerulenta (reinforced by the verse break). The sequence of attribute—noun: noun—attribute is chiastic, an effect reinforced by the chiastic symmetry of verb (transmittunt)—ablative (cursu)—accusative object (campos): accusative object (agmina)—ablative (fuga)—verb (glomerant). The excitement of the verse design calms down and resolves itself in the final colon, which is simplicity itself: montisque [= montesque] relinquunt.

156–159: at puer Ascanius mediis in uallibus acri/ gaudet equo iamque hos cursu, iam praeterit illos,/ spumantemque dari pecora inter inertia uotis/ optat aprum, aut fuluum descendere monte leonem: To end his description of the hunt, Virgil includes a vignette of Ascanius, who displays the exuberant enthusiasm of youth, both in how he hustles and bustles around the hunters on his high-spirited horse and in his heroic fantasizing. (acri, prominently placed at the end of the line, harks back to Ascanius through the alliteration, but modifies equo; acri/ gaudet equo is a highly effective verse break, with the enjambment followed by a choriambic phrase.) The passage forms a tricolon, organized around the three main verbs gaudet—praeterit—optat. optat introduces an indirect statement that falls into two parts, linked by aut: the first revolves around a boar—note the awe-inspiring hyperbaton spumantem… aprum, the second around a lion (also marked by a hyperbaton, though a less impressive one: fuluum… leonem). Ascanius’ fascination with hunting will play a major role in the second half of the poem, where his shooting of a treasured stag is one of the main reasons why war breaks loose: see 7.475–510. Ascanius is also notably, if not surprisingly, absent from Juno’s script.

156: mediis: true to its meaning, the word is placed plumb in the middle of the line.

158: pecora inter inertia: the preposition inter (‘between’), true to its meaning, is placed between the two segments of the phrase it coordinates. iners here means something akin to ‘unadventurous’ or ‘harmless’, i.e. not suited to test the mettle Ascanius thinks he has.

158: uotis: in the dative, with dari: ‘… may be granted to his vows.’ Votum is a technical term of Rome’s civic religion and usually involves a promise to a god in return for his or her aid, especially in situations of military crisis. Here the term ironically ennobles Ascanius’ day-dreaming and wishful thinking.

The Perfect Storm: the concluding part of this section consists of thirteen lines, falling into three blocks of roughly equal length:

160–164: The storm starts; everyone is running for cover (5 lines)
165–168: Dido and Aeneas ‘happen’ to find themselves in the same cave and have sex (4 lines)
169–172: The disastrous consequences (4 lines)

160–164: Interea magno misceri murmure caelum/ incipit, insequitur commixta grandine nimbus,/ et Tyrii comites passim et Troiana iuuentus/ Dardaniusque nepos Veneris diuersa per agros/ tecta metu petiere; ruunt de montibus amnes: these lines fulfill Juno’s announcement in 120–24. See in particular the repetitions (with variation) of nigrantem commixta grandine nimbum (120)?ommixta grandine nimbus (161) and tonitru caelum omne ciebo (122) ~ magno misceri murmure caelum (160). Overall, the design of 160–64 is systematically chiastic: clause 1: subject (caelum) and verb (incipit), clause 2: verb (insequitur) and subject (nimbus), clause 3: subject (Tyrii comites, Troiana iuuentus, Dardanius nepos) and verb (petiere), clause 4: verb (ruunt) and subject (amnes). In his coverage of personnel and weather conditions Virgil has achieved ‘asymmetrical balance’: three clauses (1, 2, and 4) are about the weather and its consequences, one clause (3) is about the personnel, but the number of subjects for each of the two topics is identical: caelum, nimbus, amnes—Carthaginians, Trojans, Ascanius.

160–161: Interea magno misceri murmure caelum/ incipit, insequitur commixta grandine nimbus: magno misceri murmure is a magnificent instance of onomatopoeia, combining m-alliteration with assonance (-ri, mur-, -mur-, -re) and a deft mixing of vowels, all of which are present: a, o, i, e, i, u, u, e. The formulation recalls Virgil’s description of the cave of the winds, which are said to roar around their prison magno cum murmure montis (1.55), before they are set loose at Juno’s behest. Again the goddess takes control of the weather, infringing upon a domain where her husband Jupiter is nominally in charge, and unleashes chaos and destruction.¹⁸⁵

161: incipit, insequitur: the asyndeton emphasizes the speed with which the cloud gathers—it is there in an instant: insequitur thus does what it means: it follows immediately upon what precedes, without room for a connective. The alliterative beat in-, in- reinforces the effect. (See already 1.104–05: tum prora auertit et undis/ dat latus; insequitur cumulo praeruptus aquae mons; ‘then the prow turns and exposes the ship’s side to the waves; down in a heap follows a steep mountain of water.’)

162–164: et Tyrii comites passim et Troiana iuuentus/ Dardaniusque nepos Veneris diuersa per agros/ tecta metu petiere; ruunt de montibus amnes: Virgil accounts for all parties of the hunt mentioned before, i.e. the Carthaginians, the Trojans, and Ascanius (= Dardanius nepos Veneris), though he devotes significantly more space to the entourage than Juno did in her preview, who dismissed it with two words (123: diffugient comites). He also introduces an element of variation: when describing the preparations for the hunt, he wrote of Carthage’s delecta iuuentus (130) and Aeneas’ Phrygian companions (140: Phrygii comites); here the Carthaginians (from Tyre) are the companions (Tyrii comites), and the Trojans the youth (Troiana iuuentus). The ‘confused’ word order is not dissimilar to the design Virgil used to describe the hunted beasts in flight at 153–55. Note the hyperbaton, reinforced by enjambment, of diuersa… tecta, enacting the notion of ‘being scattered’ all across the fields (per agros, deftly placed between) and the two adverbial modifications sprinkled in at the beginning (passim) and the end (metu). (Cf. 153–55: cursu and fuga.) The main verb (petiere = petierunt: ‘a perfect of sudden action’¹⁸⁶ is long in the coming. Just as incipit and insequitur in 161, petiere and ruunt are juxtaposed asyndetically—a startling effect enhanced by the preceding polysyndeton et… et… -que.

165–166: speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem/ deueniunt: an almost verbatim repetition of 124–25: speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem/ deuenient; only the future deuenient has become a present (deueniunt). See above for comments on the design. Virgil’s closest Greek model for the encounter in the cave is Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4.1128–69, which describes the consummation of the marriage between Jason and Medea (also in a cave). But in Apollonius, the situation is quite different: the Argonauts have reached the land of the Phaeacians, ruled by king Alcinous and his wife Arete, hotly pursued by the enraged Colchians. In desperation, Medea pleads with Arete not to be handed back over to the Colchians to take her back to her father’s home (4.1014–28), mentioning in passing that she has so far retained her virginity (4.1024–25). But when Arete presents Medea’s case to her husband, Alcinous, who is disinclined to offend either Zeus or Aeetes with a partial judgment in favour of Medea, makes his judgment dependent on Medea’s virginity (or lack thereof): ‘If she is a virgin, I direct that she be returned to her father; if, however, she is sharing a bed with a husband, I will not separate her from her spouse, nor will I hand over to enemies any child she may be bearing in her womb’ (1006–9). Thereupon he falls asleep, giving Arete the opportunity to inform the Argonauts of her husband’s intent. Thus put into the picture, Jason and Medea do not hesitate for an instant to get the wedding ceremony and the physical consummation of their marriage underway (4.1128–69):

Immediately they prepared a mixing-bowl of wine for the blessed gods, as is proper, and following correct ritual procedure led sheep to the altar. On that very night they made ready a bridal bed for the girl in the sacred cave where Macris once lived… Here, then, they prepared the great bed; over it they threw the gleaming golden fleece, so that the wedding night should be honoured and become the subject of song. And for them the nymphs gathered flowers of many colours and brought them cradled in their white breasts.… Some were called daughters of the river Aegaeus, others haunted the peaks of mount Melite, and others were woodland nymphs from the plains. Hera herself, Zeus’ wife, urged them to come in Jason’s honour. To this day that holy cave is called the Cave of Medea, where the nymphs spread out fragrant linen and brought the marriage of the couple to fulfilment.… The crew… to the pure accompaniment of Orpheus’ lyre, sang the wedding song at the entrance of the bridal chamber. It was not in Alcinous’ domain that the heroic son of Aeson [Jason], had wished to marry, but in the halls of his father after his retun to Iolcus; and Medea also had the same intention, but necessity led them to make love at that time. But so it is: we tribes of woe-stricken humans never enter upon delight wholeheartedly, but always some bitter pain marches alongside our joy. Thus, though they melted in sweet love-making, both were fearful whether Alcinous’ sentence would be brought to fruition.

Yes, we may share Apollonius’ sentiment and sympathise with Jason and Medea that they did not have the palace wedding both of them dreamed of. Arrangements are indeed a bit makeshift and premature and the mingling in the cave perhaps not quite what Jason and Medea had in mind for their first night together. And yet: we get a proper wedding ritual, nymphs honouring the bride in joyful humour at the behest of Hera, and Hera herself overseeing the proceedings and giving her blessings. The Golden Fleece, too, one would have assumed, is a reasonable substitute for a wedding couch, and the music (Orpheus’ lyre!) is of the finest quality. The contrast to the illicit romp we get in Aeneid 4, where Dido and Aeneas, sweaty from the hunt and drenched by the sudden downpour, just ‘happen’ to find themselves all alone, with Juno’s nymphs howling on top of the mountain, could not be starker. It is the difference between a one-night stand motivated by sudden opportunity and overwhelming passion and deliberate and purposeful, if somewhat reluctant, entry into the bonds of marriage according to proper ritual protocol: Jason and Medea ‘get legal’; Aeneas and Dido do not.

166–168: prima et Tellus et pronuba Iuno/ dant signum; fulsere ignes et conscius aether/ conubiis summoque ulularunt uertice Nymphae: upon the arrival of Dido and Aeneas in the same cave, Virgil shifts the focus back to the sphere of the divine—a euphemistic side-stepping of what, precisely, the pair get up to in the cave. Instead, we get a cosmic spectacle, put on by Tellus, Juno, Aether, and the Nymphs, that mimics aspects of a wedding ritual. Here are three assessments:

Austin: ‘Virgil thus makes the wedding ritually correct, as one would expect him to. But it remains a supernatural ceremony, and an uncanny one for all its seeming correctness.’¹⁸⁷

Moles: ‘For her own purposes Juno desires the union of the two lovers to be a permanent marriage: this does not amount to an objective statement of the nature of their union. While the divine responses to the “wedding” are indeed ritually correct the emotional effect is of a ghastly parody of the norm, suggesting rather that this marriage presided over by Juno is not a true marriage at all.’ ¹⁸⁸

‘Vergil’s passage suggests either a wedding or a parody of a wedding, and the event is described in such a way that it is hard to know what is really happening.’¹⁸⁹

You may (or may not) wish to use these views as points of departure in developing your own reading of the text.

166–167: Tellus… fulsere ignes et conscius aether: a presence of Earth (or Mother Earth) nicely complements the presence of aether and the flashes of lightning that come down from the sky—but neither Tellus nor Aether are standard divinities in the context of a Roman wedding.¹⁹⁰

166: pronuba Iuno: a pronuba was ‘a married woman who conducted the bride to her bridal chamber’ (OLD s.v.). It derives from nubo, to marry, and is hence etymologically related to conubium (see below, 168). Here the term is used as an epithet of Juno, clearly in her self-assigned role as assistant in the wedding she plans, stages, but arguably fails to execute properly. Juno is thus portrayed as present during the cave-encounter in her ritual function as goddess of marriage. Intriguingly, however, pronuba is not attested as an attribute of Juno before our passage (though later becomes common in Virgilian imitators, from Ovid onwards). This raises the question: ‘does Virgil use the epithet Pronuba in an ironic sense?’¹⁹¹

167: dant signum: they give a/ the sign—for what?

167–168: fulsere ignes et conscius aether/ conubiis: possibly a hendiadys (= fulsit ignibus aether).¹⁹² fulsere = fulserunt, i.e. third person plural perfect indicative active of fulgeo. conscius is ‘a witness’, and Virgil links the witnessing and what is being witnessed through alliteration: conscius—conubiis. The enjambed conubiis correlates with the enjambed dant signum in the previous line, almost as if the two form a complete sentence (dant signum conubiis). The clause picks up 4.126 from Juno’s speech: conubio iungam stabili. (Virgil had already used the plural of a single marriage at 3.319.)

168: summoque ulularunt uertice Nymphae: ulularunt = ululauerunt; ululo, which is an onomatopoeic word, here means ‘to howl in religious excitement’: OLD s.v. 2c. Significantly, the corresponding noun makes an appearance at 4.667–68 (the collective response to the news of Dido’s suicide): lamentis gemituque et femineo ululatu/ tecta fremunt, resonat magnis plangoribus aether (‘the palace rings with lamentations, sobbing, and the howling of women, heaven echoes with loud wails’). As such, it foreshadows Virgil’s comments in the subsequent lines that the event in the cave, whatever it was, inaugurated a plot that would end in death (leti… causa). Virgil’s lexical intertwining of sex and death has a proto-Freudian ring to it.

169–170: ille dies primus leti primusque malorum/ causa fuit: the transition from the flashes of lightning and the howling nymphs of the previous lines to the sober and brutal assessment of the consequences is stark, especially since Virgil states the consequences (death and evils) before giving the reasons, which follow in lines 170–72. (This inversion, of course, also enables the close proximity of sex and death discussed above, and suggests that the event in the cave itself, and not just what it does to Dido, causes what follows.) Virgil stresses that his narrative has reached a tragic turning point (in Aristotelian terms: peripeteia) through the reiteration of primus, which is perhaps best understood adverbially and indicating ‘degree rather than chronology’, i.e. ‘that day before all others.’¹⁹³ For the encounter in the cave clearly has a prehistory: it is not that Dido’s condition changes; rather, the physical consummation of her passion entails a change in her behaviour, which has tragic consequences.¹⁹⁴ As John Henderson points out (per litteras), the Homeric word for this notion, which would turn into a cliché of tragic historiography, is arche-kakos, i.e. ‘the beginning of evil.’ One also wonders when the evils are supposed to have run their course. Do they end with Dido’s suicide? Or with the end of the Aeneid? With the historical fulfilment of Dido’s course in the figure of Hannibal? Or with the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC? Virgil’s formulation is open-ended in terms of chronology and endows Dido’s and Aeneas’ romp in the cave with world-historical significance, along the lines of William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan, 19–21, which traces the destruction of Troy and the subsequent murder of Agamemnon back to a divine orgasm: ‘A shudder in the loins engenders there/ The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/ And Agamemnon dead.’

170–172: neque enim specie famaue mouetur/ nec iam furtiuum Dido meditatur amorem:/ coniugium uocat, hoc praetexit nomine culpam: Dido comes out. She no longer has any regard for appearances (specie) or for what people say (fama, which sets up the personified entry of the concept, i.e. Fama, in 173). Considerations of face or reputation no longer bother her: she lives her love out in the open and calls it marriage.¹⁹⁵ Note the gradual increase in agency: Virgil starts out with a negated passive (neque… mouetur) and continues with a negated deponent (nec iam… meditatur), which together serve as foil for two verbs in the active: uocat, praetexit. The diaeresis after uocat is unusual: a caesura in the third foot (after hoc, in this case) is far more frequent. There is, then, a ‘premature’ shift from a description of what Dido is doing to a critical evaluation of her action, from a ‘subjective’ to an ‘objective’ point of view. At the same time, one could construe hoc both with coniugium (neuter accusative singular) and nomine (neuter ablative singular), especially since coniugium lacks a predicative complement: ‘she calls this marriage, and with that name covers her culpa.’ hoc, then, functions as a marked pivot between Dido’s lie or self-delusion (coniugium) and the authorial assessment (culpam). There is a shift from the dactylic coniugium uocat to the heavily spondaic hoc praetexit nomine culpam, reinforced by the complete coincidence of accent and ictus in each word after uocat. As Moles puts it: ‘Virgil’s words clearly imply that Dido is behaving badly and knows it: she “is no longer influenced by appearances or reputation; no longer is it a secret love she practises. She calls it marriage—with this name she conceals her ‘culpa’”. Dido, now shameless, says something… which is not true. Virgil draws a clear contrast between Dido’s outward behaviour and the inner reality.’¹⁹⁶ The two key nouns coniugium and culpam frame the line and are linked by alliteration. The verb praetexo [prae + texo], here in the figurative sense of ‘to cloak (with)’ (OLD s.v. 2b), links sex and death in the Dido episode insofar as it recurs at 4.500 (Anna not realizing that her sister is about to commit suicide): non tamen Anna nouis praetexere funera sacris/ germanam credit (‘yet Anna does not believe that her sister cloaks her death with these new rites’).

What does the culpa consist in? Moles has an excellent discussion of the various possibilities that have been suggested, including the popular view that the culpa lies in her disloyalty to Sychaeus, her reneging on her oath of eternal faithfulness.¹⁹⁷ But, he argues, ‘this makes no sense in context. To defend herself against criticism Dido calls her “culpa” a “coniugium”. Her “culpa” cannot be disloyalty to Sychaeus, for any association with a man, whether licit or illicit, necessarily involves abnegation of her oaths to Sychaeus and to protest that her association with Aeneas was a “coniugium” does nothing at all to meet that charge, as indeed Dido herself has already recognized (Aen. 4.15–19).’ The right answer, according to Moles, is that the culpa ‘consists in the illicit nature of her love-making with Aeneas, which Dido, to defend her reputation, tries to present as proper “coniugium”.’ This generates a powerful split in perceptions (or versions) of reality. Dido may be dishonest in trying to cover up her sexual misdemeanour, but Juno certainly is of the considered opinion that the act of intercourse that took place in the cave represents a proper marriage (see Aeneid 4.99, 103–4, 125–27), for which she has even solicited the agreement of Venus. So what is missing? Most importantly, as Moles makes clear, the consent of the supposed groom. Even if one were to assume that the sex-act could serve as substitute for the speech- act (the equivalent of the ‘I do’ in a modern wedding), for it to be felicitous would seem to require mutual consent. And Aeneas himself never regards his fling in the cave (and whatever commingling and cohabitation comes after) as a coniugium. See esp. 4.338–39 (Aeneas speaking to Dido): nec coniugis umquam/ praetendi taedas aut haec in foedera ueni (‘I never held out the torch of a bridegroom or entered into such a contract’).

173–197: The News Goes Viral

173–77: Introduction to Fama (5 lines)
178–83: Parentage and appearance (6 lines)
184–88: Generic description of her movements (5 lines)
189–95: The rumours she spreads of Aeneas and Dido (7 lines)
196–97: Pinpointing a specific target: Iarbas (2 lines)

The term fama has already made an oblique appearance at 170 (neque enim specie famaue mouetur, sc. Dido). Now Fama, as goddess, enters the epic for good. Even after her first intervention, she remains a latent presence, not least at the end of Iarbas’ prayer to Jupiter (if unanswered, he implies, Jupiter is nothing more than an idle rumour, a fama inanis: 218) and in the form of the fama melior of 222 that Aeneas and Dido have become oblivious to. In Dido’s case, it would seem to refer to her unblemished reputation that she needs for effective civic leadership; in his case it refers, as Jupiter’s subsequent address to Mercury makes clear, to the future gloria that comes with the founding of Rome and the Roman people (see 232:… tantarum gloria rerum). Personified Fama then reappears: in reporting news of Aeneas’ intention to leave, she triggers the same reaction in Dido as she triggered in Iarbas when she reported that Dido and Aeneas are staying together (4.298–300: eadem impia Fama…). She makes two further interventions later in Book 4: at 556–59, she takes delight in bringing news of Aeneas’ impending departure to Dido in a dream appearance; and at 666 she glories in spreading news of Dido’s suicide through the stricken city.

There are some precedents for this figure. Two are particularly noteworthy: Iliad 4.439–43, where Strife (Eris) grows from small beginnings until her head reaches heaven; and Hesiod, Works & Days 760–64, where Rumour is explicitly identified as a pernicious goddess.¹⁹⁸

Homer, Iliad 4.439–43:

ὦρσε δὲ τοὺς μὲν Ἄρης, τοὺς δὲ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη
Δεῖμός τ’ ἠδὲ Φόβος καὶ Ἔρις ἄμοτον μεμαυῖα,
Ἄρεος ἀνδροφόνοιο κασιγνήτη ἑτάρη τε,
ἥ τ’ ὀλίγη μὲν πρῶτα κορύσσεται, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα
οὐρανῷ ἐστήριξε κάρη καὶ ἐπὶ χθονὶ βαίνει·

[The Trojans were urged on by Ares, and the Greeks by flashing-eyed Athene, and Terror, and Rout, and Discord that rages incessantly, sister and comrade of man-slaying Ares; she at first rears her crest only a little, yet thereafter plants her head in heaven, while her feet tread on the earth.]

Hesiod, Works & Days 760–64:

ὧδ’ ἔρδειν· δεινὴν δὲ βροτῶν ὑπαλεύεο φήμην·
φήμη γάρ τε κακὴ πέλεται κούφη μὲν ἀεῖραι
ῥεῖα μάλ’, ἀργαλέη δὲ φέρειν, χαλεπὴ δ’ ἀποθέσθαι.
φήμη δ’ οὔ τις πάμπαν ἀπόλλυται, ἥντινα πολλοὶ
λαοὶ φημίξουσι· θεός νύ τίς ἐστι καὶ αὐτή.

[Act this way. Avoid the wretched talk of mortals. For talk is evil: it is light to raise up quite easily, but it is difficult to bear, and hard to put down. No talk is ever entirely gotten rid of, once many people talk it up: it too is some god.]

Yet despite these parallels in earlier literature, the entry of Fama into Virgil’s narrative comes as a surprise: ‘For the modern reader Fama seems to spring from the poet’s head as the first circumstantially elaborated personification set to work within the action of a human narrative.’¹⁹⁹ She is a fascinating figure in her own right, as the personification of a phenomenon we are all familiar with, that is, rumour and gossip, often malicious: in that sense Fama is, as it were, Virgil’s equivalent of the modern tabloids, not least in how she delights in (illicit) sex, scandal, and sensation.²⁰⁰ But there is another, ‘metapoetic’ side to her: besides her activities on the level of plot within Virgil’s epic world, she has also strong affinities with the poet of the Aeneid (hence ‘meta- poetic’), who is trying to spread his ‘epic news’ far and wide. Philip Hardie magisterially sums up the double nature of our goddess, also bringing out the gender-angle to her function and portrayal: ‘The personification of Fama in Book 4 of the Aeneid (173–97) is a Hellish female monster, the embodiment of the unattributable and irresponsible voices of the multitude, the many- headed beast, who thrives on distortion and defamation, as she spreads a malicious version of the behaviour of Dido and Aeneas. At the same time Fama is a figure for the ambitions of the male epic poet and for the fame that he confers on his subject-matter and on himself.’²⁰¹

173–174: Extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes,/ Fama, malum qua non aliud uelocius ullum: Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes is another instance of iconic word order: subject (Fama) and verb (it) are placed right in the middle of the phrase that refers to the sites through which Fama moves, an effect reinforced by the ensuing hyperbaton Libyae magnas… urbes. Note the epanalepsis (‘taking up again, repetition’) of Fama, which is strictly speaking unnecessary from the point of view of syntax, but generates a great rhetorical effect.²⁰² The relative pronoun qua is in the ablative of comparison (dependent on uelocius); the antecedent is Fama; the verb (sc. est) is elided. Virgil’s identification of Fama as a malum no doubt recalls the malorum of line 169.

175–177: mobilitate uiget uirisque adquirit eundo,/ parua metu primo, mox sese attollit in auras/ ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubila condit: The three lines portray the exponential growth of a rumour, which gains in power as it is spreading. The basis of Fama’s strength is hence her mobility, which Virgil states as a matter of principle (mobilitate uiget) before glossing it further (uirisque adquirit eundo). (uiris is the accusative plural of uis and forms an alliterative figura etymologica with uiget.) After this ‘theoretical’ perspective, he goes on to illustrate the phenomenon with a striking image: from small beginnings (cf. parua), Fama soon takes flight and eventually stretches from earth to heaven.

[Extra information: Hardie points out that Virgil has modelled his portrayal of Fama in part on Lucretius’ description of the thunderbolt: ‘Fama is introduced as an agent in motion through the world of human society (173: magnas… per urbes). But in the manner of her motion she allusively embodies a force in the natural world, the Lucretian thunderbolt: with lines 174–5 compare [Lucretius’] De Rerum Natura 6.177 (wind in clouds creating thunderbolt) mobilitate sua feruescit ‘it grows hot through its own motion’, 340–2 (thunderbolt) denique quod longo uenit impete, sumere debet | mobilitatem etiam atque etiam, quae crescit eundo | et ualidas auget uiris et roborat ictum ‘then too as it advances with a long-continued moving power, it must again and again receive new velocity, which increases as it goes on and augments its powerful might and strengthens its stroke.’²⁰³ He sums up: ‘Allusively [i.e. if we read Virgil’s Fama-passage with Lucretius’ thunderbolt-passages in mind] Fama is a natural force, translated to the theatre of human actions and words.’ This raises the question: why does Virgil cast his character as ‘thunderbolt-Fama’? What are the affinities, what the differences between Virgil’s Fama and Lucretius’ thunderbolt? Why does he model his divine force on a natural force? (Lucretius, it is worth recalling, writes a poem that explains the world by way of Epicurean physics, i.e. atomic motions. He programmatically eliminates any possibility of divine intervention in human affairs.) Is it meaningful that Lucretius’ thunderbolt flashes from Heaven to Earth, whereas Fama moves from Earth to Heaven?]

176: parua metu primo: fear is a quality that Virgil associates with Fama throughout the passage. But there is a curious reversal: to begin with (primo: perhaps best taken adverbially), Fama is small because of fear, but as she grows she starts to terrify: see esp. 187: et magnas territat urbes. But why should Virgil foreground fear, either that of Fama herself or that caused by her? The dynamics that enable her success and sway are perhaps not dissimilar to what animates Freddy Krueger, the child murderer from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, who, though dead, comes to haunt those who give credence to his continued existence, by which he transforms from a nightmare into a reality. Likewise with Fama: in terms of physique, she is a repulsive monster; but her frightening powers gain in force only by people engaging with her—by perpetuating what they hear and believing what she says. Or, as John Henderson has it (per litteras), ‘Fama is just like any lively classroom/ supervision/ seminar discussing the Aeneid.’

A further consideration is the continuing relevance of the Lucretian intertext: as Philip Hardie has pointed out, Fama in Virgil corresponds to Religio in Lucretius; and the prime function of religio, according to Lucretius, is the generation of (unjustified) fear of the gods: ‘Religio and fama go together, DRN [sc. Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura] 1.68–9 (Religio’s weapons of terror) quem neque fama deum nec fulmina nec minitanti | murmure compressit caelum ‘he [sc. Epicurus] was quelled neither by stories about the gods, nor by thunderbolts, nor by the heaven with its threatening rumble.’²⁰⁴ In general, Virgil ‘re-mythologizes’ Lucretius’ mechanical universe, which is devoid of meaningful religious agency: according to the philosophy of Epicurus, which Lucretius professes, the gods live carefree lives in so-called ‘intermundia’, i.e. ‘between worlds’, and take no interest in human affairs. Fama is an extreme case: Virgil not only revalidates divine agency as an important factor in the human sphere, but even turns an abstract concept (‘rumour’) into a powerful, supernatural agent.²⁰⁵

177: ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubila condit: the design of the verse is chiastic: ingreditur correlates with condit, solo with inter nubila; and the accusative object of the second verb (caput; 177) stands at the centre of the arrangement (not unlike uiris in 175).

178–181:

illam Terra parens ira inritata deorum
extremam, ut perhibent, Coeo Enceladoque sororem
progenuit, pedibus celerem et pernicibus alis,	180
monstrum horrendum, ingens,…

The basic syntax of these lines is simple: accusative object (illam) subject (Terra) verb (progenuit). But Virgil manages to ‘inflate’ this basic structure to convey something of Fama’s monstrous nature. His basic technique is to add a predicative complement (extremam… sororem) and two appositional phrases (pedibus celerem et pernicibus alis and monstrum horrendum, ingens) to illam to expand Fama’s presence throughout these verses (see the parts in italics). In comparison, the presence of Fama’s mother (see the bits in bold) dwindles in importance. Two hyperbata reinforce the effect of monstrosity, ensuring that both the figure of Fama and Virgil’s verse-design and syntax are terribly ‘out of shape’: (i) Terra parens… progenuit (reinforced by the front-position of illam); (ii) extremam… sororem. Rhythm, too, matches theme: line 180, which describes Fama’s swiftness, is almost entirely dactylic (the exception being the fourth foot), whereas the subsequent verse has a horrendously spondaic opening: monstrum horrendum ingens. (Note the two elisions, which generate a monstrous agglomeration.) Virgil further enhances the impression of speed in line 180 by means of alliteration (progenuit, pedibus, pernicibus) and preference for the ‘light’ vowels e and i, especially in the central portion pedibus celerem et pernicibus—in contrast to the heavy mons-, and hor- and the plodding homoioteleuton -strum, -dum (which impacts despite the elision) in line 181.²⁰⁶

178: Terra parens, ira inritata deorum: the mother of Fama is Earth, who brought forth Fama because she was angry at the gods (deorum is an objective genitive dependent on ira; the paronomasia ira inritata almost amounts to a specious figura etymologica).

179: extremam, ut perhibent, Coeo Enceladoque sororem: Fama figures here as the last of the giants. Her brother Enceladus already figured at 3.578–62: fama (sic!) has it, so Aeneas says while recounting their adventures on Sicily, that Jupiter struck Enceladus low with his thunderbolt and then piled Mt. Etna on top of him. In Greek mythology, Coeus is one of the Titans, but the 1st-century AD mythographer Hyginus (writing in Latin) includes him in a list of giants. He is the obscure father of Leto/ Latona, the famous mother of Apollo and Diana. Ovid makes fun of his obscurity at Metamorphoses 6.185–86 (Niobe speaking): nescio quoque audete satam Titanida Coeo/ Latonam praeferre mihi… (‘dare to prefer to me the Titan-daughter Latona, born from some Coeus or other…’).

179: ut perhibent: this vague reference to ‘hearsay’, by which the author both acknowledges his use of sources and distances himself from their truth value, is particularly appropriate in the present context: Virgil is picking up rumours on Rumour.

180: progenuit, pedibus celerem et pernicibus alis: Fama is swift on the ground (pedibus) and in the air (pernicibus alis; pernix, -icis: ‘swift’, ‘agile’). The verse enacts the quality: ‘note the swift rhythm and the hard, clattering consonants’,²⁰⁷ notes Austin, referring to the preponderance of dactyls and the alliteration plus assonance of pro-, -ge-, pe-, ce-, pe-, -ci-.

181–183: cui, quot sunt corpore plumae,/ tot uigiles oculi subter (mirabile dictu),/ tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris: Virgil seems to be saying that Fama has as many (quot) feathers on her body as she has eyes (oculi), tongues and mouths (linguae, ora), and ears (auris). In the quot-clause an ei (matching cui) needs to be supplied mentally, just as the verb [sc. sunt] needs to be supplied in the first tot-clause: cui, quot [ei] sunt corpore plumae, tot uigiles [sunt] oculi subter. In the second and third segment of the tricolon Virgil gradually abandons this construction. A break in syntax (‘anacoluthon’) ensues: we are notionally still in the relative clause introduced by cui, but have to assume a shift in the kind of dative (from dative of possession to the ethical dative) in the second segment to stay within this construction; and there is a complete break in syntax in the third segment:²⁰⁸

–cui… tot uigiles oculi subter [sunt], with cui a dative of possession

–[cui] tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, with cui an ethical dative

–[quae] tot subrigit auris, with the notional relative pronoun in the nominative since Fama is the subject of subrigit, though it is perhaps better to assume that Virgil does not continue with the relative clause at all.

One could consider the anacoluthon a deliberate rhetorical effect: ordinary syntax is incapable of describing this extraordinary creature. And in one sense, the image seems reasonably straightforward: rumour flies, after all, (hence the feathers) and needs the specified organs to spread effectively. Problems arise because of the subter, which seems designed to specify where, precisely, the watchful eyes are located: one each under each feather? And are we supposed to imagine that the same applies to tongues, mouths, and ears? Visualized, this would turn the underside of each feather into a full- blown face—a seemingly grotesque idea.

One solution would be to say, with Dyer, that the first and second tot- clauses do not refer to Fama’s physique at all, but to the fact that as she flies, below her (subter) human beings watch and chatter, feeding her as she flies by and pricks her ears.²⁰⁹ Dyer thus construes (and hence punctuates) the cui differently, as a connecting relative that belongs into the quot-clause only: cui quot sunt…, i.e. ‘How many feathers she has, so many watchful eyes there are… etc.’ I am not convinced: this reading would rather reduce Fama’s monstrosity, which Virgil has underscored so much. One could, however, ponder a deliberate ambiguity, insofar as Fama is both a goddess and the sum-total of all human gossip-mongerers, not least since Virgil emphasizes the need for our collaboration with Fama for her to grow and succeed. The open-ended construction may therefore gesture to the fact that the concentrated assemblage of eyes, tongues and mouths, and ears on her body has a numerical, if dispersed, equivalent of individual eyes, tongues, mouths, and ears among us humans: she is not unlike Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, who, in Abraham Bosse’s famous frontispiece, emerges from the earth as a monstrous creature put together of many individual human beings.

182–183: tot uigiles oculi…,/ tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris: within the basic tricolon marked by the anaphora tot, tot, tot, Virgil introduces an element of variation in the second colon, following up the pars pro toto, i.e. linguae, with the totum, i.e. ora, which enables him to slip in another reference to the innumerable devices of communication that Fama has at her disposal.

182: mirabile dictu: dictu is an ablative supine: ‘marvellous to relate.’ Virgil does not say mirabile uisu, i.e. ‘marvellous to behold.’ Why does he put the emphasis on verbal, rather than visual representation? Most obviously, perhaps, this is about Fama, after all, etymologically related to fari, to speak, so Virgil, within his visualization/ personification of the abstract concept, points to its primary meaning and mode of operation.

184–188: After a portrait of the figure, we get a description of her activities, both during nighttime (184: nocte uolat) and daytime (186: luce sedet). (The two verse openings correspond to each other syntactically and metrically.) After taking two lines each to describe Fama during night (184–85) and day (186–87), Virgil sums up his general description of the monster in 188, before focusing on her actions in the case at hand.

184–185: nocte uolat caeli medio terraeque per umbram/ stridens, nec dulci declinat lumina somno: the two verses describing Fama at night revolve around the present participle stridens, which stands like an emphatic pivot between ‘she flies’ (uolat) and ‘she does not sleep’ (nec… declinat…). medio enacts its meaning ‘midway between’ twice: it is placed in the middle of the line and in the middle of its two genitive attributes caeli and terrae (linked by the -que). The effect is enhanced by how Virgil frames the line: nocte is picked up by per umbram.²¹⁰ per umbram could go either with uolat (as a pleonastic reinforcement of nocte) or with stridens. If one construes per umbram/ stridens, stridens most likely signifies the whirring sound of her wings as she flies through the dark; if stridens stands without any circumstantial qualification it may also refer to Fama’s screeching.

185: stridens, nec dulci declinat lumina somno: a heavily spondaic line (with the exception of the fifth foot). The soothing alliterative assonance dulci decli- and the coincidence of accent and ictus in declinat lumina somno would lull any reader to sleep, but not Fama! (Note that accent and ictus also coincide in stridens and nec—there is, then, a real tension in this verse: the opening, with its emphasis on screeching and the negation, renders the potential resolution hinted at in the second half ineffectual.)

186–187: luce sedet custos aut summi culmine tecti/ turribus aut altis, et magnas territat urbes: as in the night part, Virgil uses two verbs linked paratactically: sedet and territat. The aut… aut (with the second postponed) coordinates summi culmine tecti and turribus altis. Fama is always on her guard (cf. custos), keeping under surveillance both private dwellings (tecta) and public fortifications (turres), and always choosing the most advantageous, i.e. highest, spot from which to keep watch. (Virgil emphasizes this especially in the phrase summi culmine tecti: she sits on the highest point of the highest roof.)

188: tam ficti prauique tenax quam nuntia ueri: tenax and nuntia stand in apposition to the (implied) subject of uolat, declinat, sedet, and territat, i.e. Fama. The design is chiastic, with the objective genitives framing the adjective and the noun on which they depend (both of which have a verbal force: ‘grasping’ (tenax); ‘announcing’ (nuntia): (a) ficti prauique (b) tenax (b) nuntia (a) ueri. It is, however, slightly unbalanced because of the two negative genitives dependent on tenax: with Fama, it seems, for each bit of the truth we get two bits that are freely invented (cf. ficti) or distorted (cf. praui).

189–197: After the generic description of who Fama is, what she looks like, and how she operates, Virgil proceeds to specify what she does with regard to Dido and Aeneas. The section falls into two parts: we first get the general dissemination of the news (189–95); then, after spreading the news far and wide, Fama proceeds to target Iarbas, knowing full well that he will find the rumours particularly upsetting (196–97). Overall, she conveys the impression that Dido and Aeneas have become, to echo Horace, ‘two pigs in the sty of Epicurus’, giving themselves over to a life of luxury and sex, slaves of their desires: ‘Dido’s court’, Fama intimates, has become ‘the location for a(n)… attempt to realize an Epicurean life.’²¹¹

189–190: haec tum multiplici populos sermone replebat/ gaudens, et pariter facta atque infecta canebat: replebat—canebat is an unusual rhyme. canere is also what the epic poet (and his internal narrator Aeneas) do. So why does Virgil choose this charged word here? Is he suggesting an analogue between Fama and epic poetry, or, indeed, the problematic truth-value of his (and Aeneas’ narration) and that of the monster? Austin observes that the assonance in facta ~ infecta and replebat ~ canebat ‘effectively suggests the way in which Fama keeps hammering away remorselessly.’²¹²

190: gaudens: in terms of syntax, verse position, scansion, and rhetorical function, gaudens mirrors stridens in line 185.

190: pariter facta atque infecta: it is the perfect mixture of truths and falsehoods that makes rumour so insidious: Virgil enacts the mixture by way of the two elisions in fact(a)atqu(e)infecta. In what Fama says, it is impossible to draw a line between what is true and what is false. And consider what she says: is not everything true in one way or another? Sure, she gives the facts an insidious spin, but she does not utter an outright lie. See the allegorical generalization by Hardie for whom Fama ‘represents the power of the spoken word to exceed the truth while yet remaining anchored to it.’²¹³ He points out the affinity with the rhetorical trope of hyperbole, which, as he shows in his monograph, is absolutely fundamental for Virgil’s aesthetics. What do you make of such (rather disturbing) parallels between Fama and Virgil’s epic song?

191–194: uenisse Aenean Troiano sanguine cretum,/ cui se pulchra uiro dignetur iungere Dido;/ nunc hiemem inter se luxu, quam longa, fouere/ regnorum immemores turpique cupidine captos: the verses, which contain ‘Fama’s song’, are in indirect speech, dependent on canebat: the two main verbs are uenisse (with the subject accusative Aenean) and fouere (with the implied subjects Aeneas and Dido).

191: Troiano sanguine cretum: Virgil is much concerned with ‘blood- descent’—it is a key theme of his epic and governs the interface between the world of the epic and the wider historical context, i.e. the principate of Augustus, not least since it is a Virgilian innovation. Lineage allows Virgil to centre the story of Rome in the one gens to which Aeneas and Iulus, Julius Caesar and Caesar Octavianus belong—even though, as John Henderson rightly reminds us (per litteras) ‘adoption, along with other relations (affinal, fostering, alliance…), turns out to be cardinal in the perpetuation of Rome and Roman tradition: Octavian, Claudius Marcellus, Agrippa, Pallas—all the social sons of the pater patriae throughout the gens Romana. Within the idea of blood-descent, the crucial clash will be thoroughbred Iulus, Trojan on both sides, so “autochthonous” vs. the hybrid Italian-Trojan son of Aeneas and Lavinia. This is the excruciation of “dynastic royalty”, and Augustans knew that already.’ The first time the idiom of blood-descent enters the epic is in the extended proem (1.19–20: progeniem sed enim Troiano a sanguine duci/ audierat [sc. Juno], Tyrias olim quae uerteret arces; ‘Yet in truth she had heard that a race was springing from Trojan blood, to overthrow some day the Tyrian towers’); it then recurs at prominent places throughout, not least in Venus address to Jupiter in Aeneid 1 (235–37: hinc fore ductores, reuocato a sanguine Teurci… pollicitus [sc. es, i.e. Jupiter]; ‘you promised that from Teucer’s restored blood-line should come leaders…’) and the so-called ‘parade of heroes’ towards the end of Aeneid 6.

192: cui se pulchra uiro dignetur iungere Dido: Virgil nicely interlaces the two lovers, in what could be seen as an enactment of iungere: Aeneas (cui) Dido (se pulchra) Aeneas (uiro) Dido (dignetur… Dido). uiro (‘as a husband’) complements cui. But Fama picks on ‘beautiful Dido’ (note the hyperbaton), especially by her choice of verb: dignetur, in nice assonance with Dido, slyly refers to her earlier refusal to entertain proposals of renewed wedlock; that she deems the foreign cast-away proper husband-material must grate with the local dignitaries who suffered the indignity of rejection when they went wooing.

193: nunc hiemem inter se luxu, quam longa [sc. sit], fouere: Fama uses a slyly contrived expression. Literally, she says that ‘Dido and Aeneas keep the winter warm between them’, but what she really means is that ‘all winter long, Dido and Aeneas keep each other warm’, in what is a thinly veiled allusion to sex and postcoital hugging. The formulation, together with luxu (see below), is designed to generate envy in those left out in the cold.

193: luxu: luxus refers to ‘soft or extravagant living’, or ‘(over-)indulgence’: OLD s.v. 1. It is a life-style often associated with effeminacy and the perceived decadence of the East. At Rome, the term had a stellar career in stories of decline that set in over the last centuries of the republic, with the influx of wealth and the apparent loosening of the martial-marital ethos that supposedly made Rome great. One influential representative of this view is Sallust, both in his War Against Jugurtha and the War Against Catiline (53.5). The theme of luxury certainly plays a key role in Iarbas’ reaction: below 198–218.

194: regnorum immemores: that this is not simply Fama’s point of view becomes manifest at 221, where Aeneas and Dido are described in the authorial voice (or perhaps through the eyes of Jupiter) as oblitos famae [sic!] melioris amantis (‘lovers forgetful of their better reputation’). Epic is a ‘genre of memory and remembrance’ through and through, from Homer onwards: the basic premise of the Iliad is Achilles’ choice of a short life in return for everlasting fame in Homeric song (the Greek term is kleos) over a long life in forgettable obscurity. And, in the Odyssey, the memory of his wife and home in Ithaca sustains Odysseus on his travels and protects him from all temptation (even the option of acquiring a divine consort, Calypso, and the attendant prospect for immortality): the basis of his kleos (‘immortal fame’) is, not least, a successful nostos (‘return home’). The theme of forgetting is central to the episode of the ‘Lotus-eaters’ (Odyssey 9.91–104), where some of Odysseus’ men eat of the sweet-tasting lotus and become mindless (or, in Latin, immemores) of their desire to return to their native island. In the Aeneid, memory and forgetting operate in an even more complex key, as Aeneas has to overcome his memories and allegiances to the Trojan past to facilitate and found the Roman future. In Carthage, this basic storyline of the epic has reached a temporary dead end.

194: turpique cupidine captos: turpis is ‘morally depraved.’

195: haec passim dea foeda uirum diffundit in ora: this line, which concludes the general section of Fama’s newsreel correlates in diction and meaning with the initial verse, i.e. 189: haec tum multiplici populos sermone replebat. Note the identical openings (haec, followed by an adverbial qualification of time (tum) or space (passim), the similar meanings of the verbs (replebat, diffundit) and the well-nigh synonymous formulations multiplici populos sermone and uirum… in ora. The adjective foeda could modify either haec (‘these foul things’), or dea (‘the foul goddess’), or ora (‘the foul lips of men’); most naturally, it is an epithet of the goddess purely on the basis of proximity in the verse, but the various grammatical possibilities are by no means mutually exclusive. Arguably, the range of options is deliberate, designed to convey something of Fama’s infectious power: the rumours (haec) the foul (foeda) goddess (dea) spreads are foul (foeda) and those who listen to her and disseminate her rumours further become ‘foul-mouthed’ (foeda in ora) as well.

196: protinus ad regem cursus detorquet Iarban/ incenditque animum dictis atque aggerat iras: after the shot-gun approach indicated by passim, protinus conveys a clear sense of purpose and direction. Fama’s plan unfolds in three steps, with the first (accusative object: cursus and verb: detorquet) standing in chiastic order to the second (verb: incendit and accusative object: animum) and third (verb: aggerat and accusative object: iras) cola of the tricolon. detorqueo here means something akin to ‘she changes her path so as to seek out specifically king Iarbas.’ Iarbas was the African king who granted Dido the land on which to build her city and became one of her suitors; he did not take kindly to being rejected (Anna singles him out at 36–7 from among the other African princes: despectus Iarbas/ ductoresque alii), much less to hearing about her willingness to enter into a liaison with a Trojan refugee instead: this was adding insult to injury. Fama knows how best to stir up trouble.

197: dictis: best taken apo koinou with both incendit animum and aggerat iras.

197: aggerat iras: aggero, -are, -avi, -atum [agger + o] here means ‘to reinforce, intensify’: OLD s.v. 6a. Iarbas was already aggrieved by Dido’s rejection of his advances.

198–218: In Dad I Tru$t

198–202: The five lines provide a brief introduction to Iarbas (hic), his lineage, and his extraordinary devotion to Jupiter. The flashback (cf. the perfect posuit and the pluperfect sacraverat) serves as explanatory foil for his outrage at the news about Dido that Fama brings his way.

198: Hic Hammone satus rapta Garamantide nympha: born, i.e. son, of Hammon (in the ablative of origins). Hammon, a Libyan deity, was identified with Greek Zeus and Roman Jupiter (a phenomenon called ‘syncretism’: various cultures are claimed to call the same divinity by different names). The mother remains virtually anonymous (an odd Garamantian nymph) and is deprived of active participation in the procreation—a point nicely reinforced by the ablative absolute construction rapta… nympha and Virgil’s choice of satus, the perfect passive participle of sero, ‘to sow’, which reduces the importance of the nymph to providing a vessel for Jupiter’s seed: syntax and lexicon reinforce Virgil’s callous account of Iarbas’ parentage.

199–202: templa Ioui centum latis immania regnis,/ centum aras posuit uigilemque sacrauerat ignem,/ excubias diuum aeternas, pecudumque cruore/ pingue solum et uariis florentia limina sertis: templa… centum… immania, centum aras is one of the most impressive accusative objects in the entire poem. Note the chiasmus (a) templa (b) centum (b) centum (a) aras. The word order enacts the deliberate placement (cf. posuit) of the temples in his expansive kingdom: Virgil intersperses the phrase that signifies the temples (templa), their number (centum), and their size (immania) with references to their dedicatee (Ioui: ‘for Jupiter’) and their position (latis… regnis). Here it sounds as if Hammon situated the temples at various places throughout his realm; but the fact that he prays in front of altars (plural) in 204 would seem to suggest that some, if not all, are concentrated in one location.

We move from temples to the altars in the temples to the fire on the altars: a gradual, climactic narrowing of focus, even though the tense (sacrauerat is pluperfect, posuit perfect) would seem to suggest that Hammon first dedicated the ever-watchful fires before constructing the buildings in which to house them.²¹⁴ excubias… aeternas stands in apposition to uigilem… ignem (explaining its function), with a chiastic inversion of attributes and nouns: (a) uigilem (b) ignem (b) excubias (a) aeternas. pingue solum and limina are either further accusative objects with sacrauerat or, more likely, nominatives with the verbs (erat, erant), elided. Overall, the nouns in the second half of the description pick up the accusative objects in the first half in inverse order, creating the pattern abc ~ cba: (a) templa (b) aras (c) ignem; (c) excubias (b) solum (a) limina. The thresholds (limina) refer to the entrance to the temples (templa); the ground (solum) that is fat with the blood of sacrificial victims harks back to the altars where the beasts are slaughtered (aras); and at the centre, as we have seen, excubias articulates the purpose of the fire (ignem).

202: uariis florentia limina sertis: another Virgilian word-picture, with the varied garlands ‘wreathed around’ the florentia limina. serta, -orum n. comes from sero, (serui), sertus, ‘to wreathe’, which is not to be confused with sero, seui, satus, ‘to sow’, which Virgil used in 198 (see above on satus).

203–205: isque amens animi et rumore accensus amaro/ dicitur ante aras media inter numina diuum/ multa Iouem manibus supplex orasse supinis: The basic structure of the sentence consists of is (203)… dicitur (204)… Iouem supplex orasse (205): ‘he is said to have beseeched Jupiter as suppliant.’ Then we get further specifications of why he did this (he was amens animi and rumore accensus amaro), where he did it (ante aras, media inter numina diuum), how he did it (manibus supinis) and with what frequency or intensity he did it (multa: perhaps best taken as an adverbial accusative). These verses ironically recall and invert 1.48–49 (Juno speaking): et quisquam numen Iunonis adorat/ praeterea aut supplex aris imponet honorem? (‘And will any still worship Juno’s divine powers or humbly lay sacrifice upon her altars?’) If there a goddess feels she needs to assert herself to avoid a crisis of recognition and identity, here Iarbas demands the same of Jupiter.

203: amens animi et rumore accensus amaro: commentators read the striking phrase amens animi (where animi is either a locative or a genitive of reference or specification) as a Virgilian response to Lucretius’ phrase mens animi (De Rerum Natura 3.615, 4.758 etc.), in which mens designates ‘the intellectual rather than the emotional side of animus.’²¹⁵ If that is the case, it would imply that Iarbas, whose animus has lost (a-) its mens, is now ruled entirely by his passions. accensus picks up the metaphorics of fire from 197: incenditque animum. This is the first of a series of revelations that cause the recipient to lose his/her mind and burst into fiery passion. See below 279 (Aeneas in shock at Mercury’s epiphany and reacting to his message): obmutuit amens and 281: ardet abire fuga; and 300–01 (Dido reacting to Fama’s news that Aeneas is getting his fleet ready): saeuit [sc. Dido] inops animi totamque incensa per urbem/ bacchatur.

204: ante aras media inter numina: a replay of the scene we get at 62, where it is Dido who ante ora deum pinguis spatiatur ad aras. The verse features another media in the middle, and another inter ‘between’ the two components of the phrase it governs, here reinforced by ante aras. As behooves a preposition meaning ‘before’, ante comes before the noun it governs. For numen/ numina, see above on 4.94.

205: manibus… supinis: Iarbas prays with his hands turned upwards, i.e. towards the divinity he is trying to reach.

206–218: Iarbas’ prayer to Jupiter falls into three parts:

206–210: Opening remarks that issue a challenge to Jupiter (5 lines)
211–214: Dido’s past misbehaviour (4 lines)
215–219: Her current licence and its religious implications (4 lines)

206–210: Iarbas begins with two questions of roughly equal length, in which he poses a dilemma: either Jupiter sees what is going on with Dido and Aeneas, or there is no point in worshipping him; but if he is aware of what is going on, so the implication, his inaction is disgracefully negligent given the dutiful veneration he receives. Jupiter is thus placed in an impossible position: the way Iarbas frames the situation, he cannot plead ignorance and hence is undoubtedly guilty of negligence. In essence, the fact that these going-ons can happen without any sign of divine disapproval or intervention suggests that the economy that sustains religious worship has broken down, and Iarbas puts it to Jupiter that it is in the god’s own interest to restore it.

206–208: Iuppiter omnipotens, cui nunc Maurusia pictis/ gens epulata toris Lenaeum libat honorem,/ aspicis haec?: overall, the rhetorical force of the sentence is finely calibrated between respect for the god and outrage at his inactivity. Iarbas begins in prayer-mode, with a vocative (Iuppiter) and honorary epithet (omnipotens) as if to invoke the divinity or address him in a hymn. The relative clause, however, already introduces a subtle switch in focus. In a hymn, this construction is often used to detail the powers and achievements of the divinity invoked. But Iarbas does not retain Jupiter in the subject position—instead, he, with a whiff of indignation, puts on record what he and his people are doing for Jupiter (the relative pronoun cui is in the dative of advantage). Then comes, effectively placed in emjambment, the choriambic punchline: aspicis haec? Only now it becomes manifest that we are not dealing with a respectful invocation but a question that challenges Jupiter as potentially remiss in his oversight of human affairs.

omnipotens is a standard epithet of Jupiter, but Iarbas here uses it with a special edge: given that Jupiter is assumed to be all-powerful (an erroneous assumption, as we shall see), the question whether he sees what happens in Carthage becomes rhetorical; and as a rhetorical question it carries a bitter accusation: you see this—and do nothing? The very fact that Iarbas questions whether Jupiter has been paying attention puts an oblique questionmark over the supreme divinity’s epithet omnipotens. In articulating frustration with divine inaction in the face of injustice, Iarbas touches upon a problem that haunts many religious belief-systems: if gods or God are/ is all-powerful, how come that there is perceived injustice and evil in the world? Iarbas adds a second aspect to his accusation: in the relative clause introduced by cui he underscores the material investment that he and his people have devoted to ensuring Jupiter’s approval and support. There is a clear implication here that in the economy of exchange and services that tends to inform many religious transactions (sacrifice and worship in return for divine benevolence, according to the logic of do-ut-des, i.e. ‘I, the human, give [something] in order that you, the god, give [something] in return’: see above Footnote 89), Jupiter miserably fails to uphold his part of the bargain.

206–207:… cui nunc Maurusia pictis/ gens epulata toris Lenaeum libat honorem…: the force of the nunc is either that now, i.e. under the rule of Iarbas, the people of Mauretania (Maurusia is the Greek name for the region of North-West Africa) have started to worship Jupiter whereas they did not do so before, or that the worshipping is going on at this very moment, i.e. is concurrent with Iarbas’ prayer.²¹⁶ pictis… toris: translators and commentators are virtually unanimous in thinking that the phrase refers to ‘couches decorated with embroidered covers’, but my colleague Dr Clemence Schultze, an expert in ancient clothing, assures me that they are mistaken. pictus, she argues, simply means ‘decorated’ and here refers most likely to woven, figurative decoration, rather than embroidery (which apparently was very rare compared to weaving patterns and figures). Cf. 1.708: during Dido’s banquet, the Trojans are ‘summoned to decline on decorated couches’ (toris iussi discumbere pictis). Note the regular pattern of attributes (Maurusia, pictis, Lenaeum) and nouns (gens, toris, honorem), nicely interlaced in the first two cases, which are organized around the participle epulata. (As often, the deponent past participle here expresses an action that started in the past but continues contemporaneously with the action of the main verb.) Lenaeum… honorem is a contrived way of saying ‘an offering of wine’ (Lenaeus, a, um = Bacchic, from Greek Lênaios, in turn derived from lênos, which means ‘wine-press’), but note the nice alliteration Lenaeum libat that ensues. libare is a ritual action, the pouring of wine in honour of the god.

208–210: an te, genitor, cum fulmina torques/ nequiquam horremus, caecique in nubibus ignes/ terrificant animos et inania murmura miscent?: after already getting into Jupiter’s face with the importunate question aspicis haec?, Iarbas now becomes even more aggressive. He could have made it clear that the question is entirely rhetorical (with the implied answer from Jupiter being ‘of course I do’) by following it up with a request for a divine intervention to right the wrong. Instead, he leaves the answer open and posits the stark alternative that either Jupiter sees what is going on or he is impotent. As with the first rhetorical question, the set of beliefs behind this rhetorical posture seems to be the following:

(i)	Jupiter, far from being impotent, is omnipotent (at least that is what Iarbas calls him);
(ii)	he hence sees exactly what is going on (which turns aspicis haec? into a rhetorical question);
(iii)	he does nothing about it—despite the worship he receives from his son and his people.

As the following narrative makes clear, the presuppositions that inform the prayer are not aligned with the realities of Virgil’s literary world: (i) is only partially correct (Jupiter is neither impotent nor omnipotent); (ii) is incorrect; and (iii) is both moot (since (ii) is incorrect) and ironic: Jupiter will react to Iarbas’ prayer, but not out of a concern for Iarbas, but for Aeneas and his destiny! In other words, Iarbas, just like Anna, is a minor character who thinks about the gods and engages in religious activities while being shown up by the poet as profoundly misunderstanding the supernatural realities that apply within the narrative universe of the Aeneid.

The an-sentence pursues the implications of Jupiter not seeing what is happening at Carthage. If that were the case, Iarbas argues, the meteorological phenomena that tend to be seen as expressions of his will, are in fact devoid of meaning, and the religious awe they trigger beside the point. Iarbas raises the possibility of absence of divine purpose in the universe (which implies that one may well cease to pay attention to divinities or try to interact with them) by means of one subordinate clause (cum fulmina torques) and three main clauses: te nequiquam horremus; caeci in nubibus ignes terrificant animos; and inania murmura miscent (with the subject remaining caeci in nubibus ignes). Jupiter retains meaningful agency in the cum-clause, but the three main clauses then gradually proceed to cancel it out. Each contains a term that evokes a world defined by supernatural indifference: nequiquam, caeci (‘blind’ in the sense of ‘random’, i.e. without point or purpose), and inania. Iarbas thus removes Jupiter from the scene bit by bit. In the first colon, which also includes a direct address in apostrophe (genitor), he juxtaposes a frightening action undertaken by Jupiter (cum fulmina torques: second person singular) with fear on the part of humans (horremus: a generic first person plural, ‘we humans’). The second person personal pronoun te, which is the accusative object of horremus and harks back to torques, functions as link between the cum-clause and the main clause. In the second and third main clause, matters look very different. We get the same natural phenomenon, but without reference to divine agency. And Iarbas pointedly shifts from the personal ‘you—we’ to the third person plural: ignes terrificant animos. While terrificant picks up horremus, Iarbas no longer presupposes a relationship between Jupiter and humanity. Instead of considering lightning (ignes) and thunder (murmura) the result of divine action (Jupiter throwing his thunderbolts for a reason), Iarbas gives a ‘natural’ explanation: they become meteorological occurrences that are devoid of intention (cf. caeci) and purpose (cf. inania). (The breaking apart of fulmen, i.e. thunder-bolt, into bolt (ignes) and thunder (murmura) hints at a quasi-scientific approach to a phenomenon often endowed with religious import. Virgil/ Iarbas here use/s the idiom of Epicurean physics as elaborated by Lucretius in the De Rerum Natura.)

208: genitor: the meaning is both generic and specific: Iarbas, after all, is the son of Jupiter.

210: murmura miscent: an onomatopoetic phrase.

211–214: femina, quae nostris errans in finibus urbem/ exiguam pretio posuit, cui litus arandum/ cuique loci leges dedimus, conubia nostra/ reppulit ac dominum Aenean in regna recepit: In four verses Iarbas presents his take on the affair between the Carthaginian queen and the Trojan castaway, reminding Jupiter of what happened when Dido arrived in the region. He outlines the background in a series of relative clauses (quae, cui, cui), framed by the exposed subject femina and the rest of the main clause (conubia nostra… recepit). The last line of this account features a nice antithesis between reppulit at the beginning of the verse (in enjambment and followed by a very effective diaeresis after the first foot) and recepit at the end: linked by alliteration, the two verbs refer to diametrically opposed actions on Dido’s part.

His prayer has intriguing parallels with the accusations Dido levels at Aeneas when she hears of his preparations for departure (4.373–75): eiectum litore, egentem/ excepi et regni demens in parte locaui;/ amissam classem, socios a morte reduxi (‘I welcomed him, a castaway on the shore, a beggar, and madly gave him a share in my kingdom; his lost fleet I rescued, his crews I saved from death’). She prefaces these observations with an invocation of the gods as guardians of justice (371–72: iam iam nec maxima Iuno/ nec Saturnius haec oculis pater aspicit aequis; ‘Now neither mighty Juno nor the Saturnian father looks on these things with righteous eyes!’), but then goes on to mock the notion that Aeneas’ desire to leave Carthage has been kindled by a messenger from Jupiter, endorsing in the process a quasi- Epicurean conception of the gods as tranquil beings uninterested in human affairs (376–80), only to follow up on this with a renewed appeal to pia numina to shipwreck Aeneas on his way to Italy (382–84): just like Iarbas, Dido, too, is confused about the supernatural forces at work in the (literary) world she inhabits.

211: femina: Dido, of course, but Iarbas cannot bring himself to call her by her name; instead he spits out the generic ‘a woman’.

211: nostris errans in finibus: Just as Dido has come wandering around in Iarbas territory, so errans has roamed into the midst of nostris… in finibus. Note that Iarbas uses an ablative, rather than an accusative of direction, emphasizing the haphazard and random nature of Dido’s movements.

211–212: urbem/ exiguam: ‘to be contrasted with the ingentia… moenia of 1, 365–366 and the minae… murorum ingentes of 4, 88–89. Perhaps Iarbas had not lately seen the city which had risen so rapidly, or else he wished to disparage the upstart town or to emphasize the smallness of the tributary territory upon which its economic life depended.’²¹⁷ A third possibility is perhaps even more likely: he knows full well what Carthage has been turning into, but feels betrayed, and is unwilling to acknowledge that a woman has had the better of him.

212–213: litus arandum… loci leges: Iarbas continues to deprecate Dido’s achievements: after his reference to the supposedly small size of the city, he laughs at her people ploughing the shore (not the most fertile of soils) and highlights that he has dictated the terms on which she can use the land. From a legal point of view, he considers himself her overlord.

212: pretio posuit: the phrase puts the emphasis on Dido’s mercenary, rather than military, modus operandi in taking possession of the land: she purchased (pretio is an ablative of price), rather than conquered, her kingdom. Austin detects ‘snarling contempt’²¹⁸ in the p-alliteration. Virgil may here be hinting at the reputation of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians as nations of traders.

214: dominum Aenean: dominum is best taken predicatively: ‘Aeneas as (her) lord.’ Dominus (unlike uir) is a marked term: like Juno at 4.103 (liceat seruire marito), Iarbas diagnoses a servile streak in Dido, implying that she has willingly become Aeneas’ slave. These internal perspectives on her status and condition contrast sharply with Virgil’s systematic use of regina throughout the book. Dido thereby turns into a challenging paradox: she belongs to both the highest and the lowest category of human beings, nominally a queen, but, according to some of her fellow-characters, thinking and acting like a slave. The formulation also stands in implicit contrast to conubia nostra and suggests that Dido has got a worse deal by choosing Aeneas over himself.

215–217: et nunc ille Paris cum semiuiro comitatu,/ Maeonia mentum mitra crinemque madentem/ subnexus, rapto potitur: the design is similar to 211–14: Iarbas begins with a contemptuous reference to Aeneas (ille Paris; cf. femina in 211), which he pads out with a prepositional phrase (cum… comitatu) and a lengthy participle construction (Maeonia… subnexus; cf. the relative clauses in 211–213) before the main verb of the sentence (potitur). Dido is reduced to the level of spoils, raptum. (Like uti, frui, fungi, and uesci, potiri takes an ablative object.)

215: ille Paris: Iarbas construes an analogy: as Paris is to Helen and Menelaus, so Aeneas is to Dido and himself. In each case, the rightful husband had his wife stolen by an unwarlike Trojan prince. The notion that Aeneas is ‘another Paris’ recurs as an insult in the second half of the poem: see 7.321: Paris alter; 7.363; 9.138–39. This, as John Henderson points out (per litteras), is ‘part of an all-pervasive typological struggle for the roles of Trojans and Achaeans in Virgil’s re-make of the Iliad, which eventually casts Aeneas as Achilles, and his victim Turnus as Hector—mutatis, however, mutandis.’

215: cum semiuiro comitatu: ‘with his entourage of eunuchs.’ semiuir (put together from semi- and uir) seems to be a Virgilian neologism, but he relies on a more general discourse: ‘This particular taunt was made by Greeks and Romans against various Oriental peoples, from the Persian Wars onward, including the Trojans.’²¹⁹ The verse design adds to the effect: ‘the rhythm produced by the four-syllable line-end comitatu, with clash of ictus and accent in the fifth foot…, adds to the “foreign” sound of the line.’²²⁰ The construal of the other as ‘foreign’, ‘feeble’, and ‘effeminate’, as both threatening and inferior, is an insidious if widespread rhetorical technique. The insults also continue the oblique affiliation of Aeneas with Dionysus: ‘Iarbas’ allegation that the entourage accompanying Aeneas is male only in part (cum semiuiro comitatu) applies quite literally to Dionysus, whose thiasos in fact consists partly of men, partly of women.’²²¹

216: Maeonia mentum mitra crinemque madentem/ subnexus: the m-alliteration, combined with the assonance crinemque madentem (one can almost feel the oil dripping), nicely conveys disgust. The Maeonian mitre or ‘Phrygian cap’ again evokes associations of an Eastern locale (Maeonia refers to Lydia, a region situated next to Phrygia) and Dionysus: it is a ‘headgear so typical of Dionysus that in Propertius, the god Vertumnus claims that donning a mitre will allow him to pass for Dionysus [Prop. 4.2.31].… Iarbas’ mockery of Aeneas for hair damp with perfume is paralleled in Pentheus’ ridicule of Dionysus for the same affectation.’²²² Some editors prefer to read subnixus instead of subnexus, which would (literally) heighten the insult.

217–218: nos munera templis/ quippe tuis ferimus: Iarbas construes an antithesis between Aeneas (ille) and himself (nos): Aeneas takes possession of what is not his (rapto), whereas Iarbas offers gifts (munera) to the supreme divinity. At the end of his prayer, he thus returns to his personal relationship with Jupiter, underscored by the alliterative attribute of templis, i.e. tuis. For quippe see Austin: ‘Like scilicet and nimirum, it is often ironical, as here; it should probably be taken closely with tuis, although its effect colours the tone of the whole sentence.’²²³

218: ferimus famamque fouemus inanem: the f-alliteration, combined with homoioteleuton (-mus… -mus), again may convey a sense of irritation. Fama’s news induces Iarbas to reduce Jupiter to the level of a rumour (fama), and one that is inanis on top. Iarbas thereby continues his Epicurean/ Lucretian deracination of divinely animated nature into atmospheric phenomena. Put differently, he is supplying the Epicurean physics to match Dido’s pseudo-Epicurean ethics. (inane is the technical term for the void through which Epicurus’ atoms move; Iarbas had already used the adjective at 210 above: inania murmura.)

Jupiter’s Wake-up Call

Jupiter does indeed heed Iarbas’ prayer—just not in the way Iarbas intended him to. Far from engaging with the concerns voiced by his son, Jupiter decides that it is time to issue a wake-up call to our forgetful hero Aeneas, and he instructs his underling Mercury, traditionally responsible for delivering messages from the divine to the human sphere, to pay a visit to Carthage and get destiny back on track. The structure of this section is as follows:

219–222: Narrative (3 lines)
223–237: Jupiter’s speech to Mercury (15 lines)
223–226: Jupiter’s order to Mercury (4 lines)
227–231: Appraisal of Aeneas’ failure to live up to expectations (5 lines)
232–236: Expression of bafflement at said failure (5 lines)
237: Concluding order to be conveyed to Aeneas (1 line)

There is an important Homeric model for this scene: in Odyssey 5, Zeus, after having been visited by an upset Athena pleading on behalf of her hero Odysseus, who is held captive on the island of Ogygia, against his wishes, by the nymph Calypso, addresses Hermes with the order to visit Calypso to get Odysseus’ voyage home underway (Odyssey 5.28–42):

ἦ ῥα, καὶ Ἑρμείαν, υἱὸν φίλον, ἀντίον ηὔδα·
“Ἑρμεία, σὺ γὰρ αὖτε τά τ’ ἄλλα περ ἄγγελός ἐσσι,
νύμφῃ ἐυπλοκάμῳ εἰπεῖν νημερτέα βουλήν,	30
νόστον Ὀδυσσῆος ταλασίφρονος, ὥς κε νέηται,
οὔτε θεῶν πομπῇ οὔτε θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων·
ἀλλ’ ὅ γ’ ἐπὶ σχεδίης πολυδέσμου πήματα πάσχων
ἤματί κ᾽ εἰκοστῷ Σχερίην ἐρίβωλον ἵκοιτο,
Φαιήκων ἐς γαῖαν, οἳ ἀγχίθεοι γεγάασιν,	35
οἵ κέν μιν περὶ κῆρι θεὸν ὣς τιμήσουσιν,
πέμψουσιν δ’ ἐν νηὶ φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν,
χαλκόν τε χρυσόν τε ἅλις ἐσθῆτά τε δόντες,
πόλλ’, ὅσ’ ἂν οὐδέ ποτε Τροίης ἐξήρατ’ Ὀδυσσεύς,
εἴ περ ἀπήμων ἦλθε, λαχὼν ἀπὸ ληίδος αἶσαν.	40
ὣς γάρ οἱ μοῖρ’ ἐστὶ φίλους τ’ ἰδέειν καὶ ἱκέσθαι
οἶκον ἐς ὑψόροφον καὶ ἑὴν ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν”.

[He spoke, and said to Hermes, his son: ‘Hermes, for you are also at other times our messenger, declare to the fair-tressed nymph our fixed resolve, the return of steadfast Odysseus, that he may return with guidance neither of gods nor of mortals, but that on a well-constructed raft, suffering woes, he may come on the twentieth day to deep-soiled Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians, who are near of kin to the gods. They shall show him honour with all their heart, as if he were a god, and shall send him in a ship to his native land, after giving him stores of bronze and gold and clothing, more than Odysseus would ever have won for himself from Troy, if he had returned unscathed with his due share of the spoil. For in this wise it is his fate to see his friends, and reach his high-roofed house and his native land.’]

This section is also in part a re-run of the narrative sequence in Aeneid 1 that unfolds after the storm. There, too, Jupiter’s attention is drawn to what is going on in Libya (see 1.226: Libyae defixit [sc. Iuppiter] lumina regnis); Venus appears in order to remonstrate with him on behalf of her son; and Jupiter, after unscrolling the scripts of destiny for the benefit of Venus, sends down Mercury to ensure that fate takes its course (1.223–304).

219–221: Talibus orantem dictis arasque tenentem/ audiit Omnipotens, oculosque ad moenia torsit/ regia et oblitos famae melioris amantis: some commentators take audiit (= audiuit) to mean ‘answered’; but this would seem to imply that Jupiter listened to, agreed with, and acted on the contents of Iarbas’ prayer. As it turns out, however, he only uses him as an ‘alarm bell’ that alerts him to the fact that Aeneas’ historical mission is currently on hold in Carthage. He does not seem to care a jot for Iarbas’ own grievances and desires. Hence a simple ‘heard’ might convey a better sense. Virgil’s use of the epithet Omnipotens in the narrative harks back to Iarbas’ use of the term at the beginning of his prayer (206: Iuppiter omnipotens…), just as oculosque ad moenia torsit/ regia picks up aspicis haec? in 208. The reiteration of omnipotens is either affirmative (‘yes, Jupiter is indeed all- powerful’) or slightly ironic (‘he who got hailed as “All-Powerful”‘)—or both. Virgil/ Jupiter appraises the walls of Troy differently from Iarbas: regia, in emphatic enjambment underscores Dido’s royal-imperial ambition (and the scope of her construction site). Jupiter first casts his gaze on the royal walls (ad moenia… regia) and then the lovers (amantis is accusative plural: = amantes). The et thus links moenia and amantis, and both accusatives are governed by the preposition ad. The phrase famae melioris, which is dependent on oblitos, introduces an interesting twist: apparently, there is fama, in the sense of rumour, and then there is fama melior, i.e. fame. Aeneas’ fama melior is the equivalent to the fama (in the sense of ‘good reputation’) that Dido begins to disregard after the encounter in the cave (170: neque enim specie famaue mouetur).

222: tum sic Mercurium adloquitur ac talia mandat: with Jupiter’s address to Mercury (who just happens to be around to do the supreme divinity’s bidding), compare 4.8: cum sic unanimam adloquitur male sana sororem (Dido addressing her sister Anna).

223: ‘uade age, nate, uoca Zephyros et labere pennis: four imperatives (or ‘bossy forms of the verb’), i.e. uade, age, uoca, labere (of the deponent labor) and one vocative, i.e. nate, in the opening line: Jupiter takes charge, and no mistake. uade and age are best taken together as a colloquial ‘off you go’, which gives the command a tripartite structure. zephyri are the western winds, though it is not entirely easy to correlate geography and favourable flying conditions: how do you best get to Carthage from Mt. Olympus via Mt. Atlas? Here is Henderson (per litteras) on the sound effect: ‘just say the w-w-word (ua- uo) “Zephyros” and hey presto! you’re gliding: soft sound for soft puff.’

224–226: Dardaniumque ducem Tyria Karthagine qui nunc/ exspectat fatisque datas non respicit urbes/ adloquere: the -que after Dardanium links labere (223) and a fifth imperative, i.e. adloquere in 226, of which Dardanium ducem is the accusative object. Virgil used adloqui of Jupiter addressing Mercury in 222 (tum sic Mercurium adloquitur) and the reiteration reinforces on the lexical level the ‘chain of command’: Jupiter > Mercury > Aeneas. Jupiter fills the hyperbaton between the accusative object Dardanium ducem and the verb adloquere with a relative clause that contains his appraisal of what he considers disgraceful behaviour. Syntax reinforces sense: by pulling the specification (in the locative) Tyria Karthagine out of the relative clause into which they belong (the relative pronoun qui is in post-positive position), Virgil generates a particularly jarring juxtaposition of Dardanium ducem and Tyria Karthagine: what, so Jupiter implies, has a Trojan leader got to dally in Tyrian Carthage? Likewise, Karthagine stands in contrast to the urbes that the fata have granted to Aeneas and his descendents upon his arrival in Italy: Lavinium, Alba Longa, Rome. Dido’s city is thus poised midway between a reference to Aeneas’ past, i.e. Troy (founded by Dardanus), and a reference to Aeneas’ future. (Cities—and not Iarbas’ aggrieved feeling of justice or Dido’s sense of shame—concern Jupiter.) Another dramatic moment in these lines comes at the end of 224, which, unusually, concludes with the two monosyllables qui nunc: ‘… who now’—does what, precisely? Line break, 227: exspectat, i.e. ‘wastes his time’.

226: et celeris defer mea dicta per auras: the et links adloquere and Jupiter’s sixth imperative, i.e. defer. The word order again creates an iconic enactment of the sense, with defer mea dicta ‘passing through’ celeris… per auras. Pease notes ‘the figurative transfer of speed from the messenger to the medium through which he passes’,²²⁴ but the celeris auras may also pick up Zephyros in 223.

227–231: non illum nobis genetrix pulcherrima talem/ promisit Graiumque ideo bis uindicat armis/ sed fore qui grauidam imperiis belloque frementem/ Italiam regeret, genus alto a sanguine Teucri/ proderet, ac totum sub leges mitteret orbem: the syntax is difficult: illum, together with its predicative complement talem, is the accusative object of promisit and uindicat;²²⁵ but promisit also introduces the indirect statement that begins with sed fore (= futurum esse; the subject accusative, which is also the antecedent of the generic qui-clause, i.e. eum, is implied). The non in 227 negates talem: ‘not as such a one (read: not as a slothful womanizer forgetful of his destiny) did his pretty mother promise him to me…’; the striking hyperbaton of non… talem underscores the perceived difference between Venus’ promise and current realities. Jupiter here presupposes that Aeneas’ mother Venus (= genetrix pulcherrima) at one point vouched for her son to him (= nobis). We may be dealing with an ironic reflex of the scene in Book 1.235–37, where Venus accosts Jupiter to remind him of a promise he made to her: hinc fore ductores, reuocato a sanguine Teucri,/ qui mare, qui terras omnis dicione tenerent,/ pollicitus [sc. es] (‘you promised that from Teucer’s restored blood-line should come leaders, who hold the sea and all lands under their rule…’). The parallels in terms of syntax, lexicon, and theme are striking:

1.235: hinc fore ductores… qui ~ 4.229: sed fore, qui

1.235: reuocato a sanguine Teucri ~ 4.230: genus alto a sanguine Teucri

1.236: qui mare, qui terras omnis ~ 4.231: totum… orbem

1.236: dicione tenerent ~ 4.231: sub leges mitteret

1.237: pollicitus ~ 4.228: promisit

The joke is multilayered: in Book 1, Venus quotes Jupiter back at himself. Here Jupiter recalls Venus recalling what he himself had promised at an earlier occasion and turns things around in such a way that his original promise to her, of which she reminded him in Book 1, now sounds like her promise to him.

228: Graiumque ideo bis uindicat armis: Jupiter refers to the rescue operations Venus performed on the battlefield of Troy (Iliad 5.311–18) and during the sack of the city (see Aeneid 2.620, 665). Graium (= Graiorum) is Virgil’s preferred form of the genitive plural.

229–231: sed fore qui grauidam imperiis belloque frementem/ Italiam regeret, genus alto a sanguine Teucri/ proderet, ac totum sub leges mitteret orbem: Jupiter anticipates Aeneas’ future in Italy (as well as Italy’s future) in a tricolon:… regeret,… proderet (= propagaret),… mitteret. Italy, placed in enjambment (Italiam), comes with a massive predicative complement, designed chiastically: (a) grauidam (b) imperiis (b) bello (a) frementem. It is unclear to what moment in time Jupiter’s striking image of an Italy ‘pregnant’ with military commands (imperia) and ‘buzzing’ with war refers: to the time of Aeneas’ arrival in Italy or to Italy as the future centre of a world-empire (or both)? Jupiter, of course, condenses several centuries of Roman history in the figure of Aeneas.

230–231: genus alto a sanguine Teucri/ proderet: Jupiter again employs the idiom of blood-descent and racial founding, which (as here) has the tendency to blur the distinction between the gens of Aeneas and the gens Romana: the genus is both specifically the gens Iulia and more generally the people of Rome. As we already had occasion to note, the first time Virgil introduces the theme of ‘Trojan blood-descent’ focused in the figure of Aeneas is in the proem. See 1.19–20: progeniem sed enim Troiano a sanguine duci/ audierat [sc. Juno]. Jupiter thus casts his accusatory assessment in the idiom of the proem (progenies and genus are virtual synonyms), suggesting an affinity between the author and the supreme divinity of the Olympic pantheon.

231: totum sub leges mitteret orbem: Jupiter here prefigures the ‘Roman mission statement’ that Anchises will pass on to his son in Aeneid 6.847–53, esp. 851–53:

tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
(hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem,
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.

[you, Roman, be mindful to rule the peoples with the power to command (these shall be your arts), to impose traditional order upon peace, to spare the vanquished, and to war down the proud.]

The image combines imperial conquest on a cosmic scale (totum… orbem is a hyperbole) with the imposition of legal order (sub leges): Roman civilization and its worldwide spread are, seemingly paradoxically, grounded in superior violence and a commitment to law. Readers of the Aeneid debate furiously whether the Aeneid has Aeneas fail to live up to the mission statement at the death (of beaten and pleading) Turnus that concludes the poem.

232: si nulla accendit tantarum gloria rerum/ nec super ipse sua molitur laude laborem,/ Ascanione pater Romanas inuidet arces?: in the two parts of the si-clause, Aeneas is the understood accusative object of accendit (sc. eum) and the emphatic subject (cf. ipse) of molitur. This sequence, in which Aeneas first figures as an absent presence and then comes fully into focus, serves as foil for the main clause where Jupiter remonstrates that at least Aeneas’ role as father ought to get him going: he insidiously implies that Aeneas dallies with Dido since he begrudges his son his stellar future. gloria and laus represent the core desire of Rome’s ruling elite: immortality through fame, involving the public recognition of praiseworthy deeds on behalf of the community. These ambitions sustained and defined the political culture of the Roman republic and continued to play a decisive role in imperial times even though the presence of a princeps put a glass ceiling on what heights of gloria (in particular) other members of the ruling elite could reach. Jupiter refers to the glory that will accrue to Aeneas if he pursues his destiny. tantae res refers to both his epic quest in the Aeneid and its aftermath, the history of Rome. He again uses the language of the (extended) proem: labor is a leitmotif since 1.10–11 (…tot adire labores/ impulerit) and molitur, together with tantarum and Romanas, echoes the final line (1.33): tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem. But Jupiter observes that Aeneas’ current conduct suggests that he could not care less for core Roman values, that he has morphed, at least temporarily, from a proto- Roman into an anti-Roman character. (Though Aeneas is by no means averse to labor: see 235 below; he just misapplies his efforts.)

233: super ipse sua molitur laude laborem: the preposition super governs the ablative phrase sua laude. Pease notes that ‘super… sua… laude is interlocked with ipse… molitur… laborem’,²²⁶ which, among other things, generates the thematically effective juxtapositions of ipse and sua and of laude and laborem. (The alliterated laude laborem almost verges on a specious figura etymologica: labor tends to entail laus.)

234: Ascanione pater Romanas inuidet arces?: the particle -ne attached to Ascanio signals the question. Again Jupiter interlocks syntactic units: pater… inuidet is situated between Ascanione… Romanas… arces. This spacing is iconic especially since other stylistic devices suggest that ‘Ascanius’, ‘Roman’, and ‘citadels’ form a unity: Romanas modifies arces and Ascanione and arces are linked by alliteration and assonance; but the supposed envy (inuidet) of father (pater) Aeneas breaks this unity apart. Jupiter’s insinuation is spiteful not least since Aeneas elsewhere takes loving care of his offspring.

235: quid struit?: after Iarbas’ prayer, in which he expresses outrage at the supposedly Epicurean leisure that Dido and Aeneas indulge in, this question comes as a bit of a surprise. Clearly, what Jupiter sees (220–21: oculosque ad moenia torsit/ regia…) does not correspond in every respect to what Fama reports (and Iarbas mindlessly reiterates). Apparently, Aeneas, far from being idle, is hard at work in building up Carthage! Later on we learn that Jupiter’s gaze captures the truth better than Fama’s gossip: see below, 259–71.

235: aut qua spe inimica in gente moratur: there is a hiatus (absence of elision) between spe and inimica. The description of the Carthaginians as a gens inimica recalls the fact that earlier on Jupiter had dispatched Mercury to suppress their warlike spirit (1.302–303: et iam iussa facit [sc. Mercury], ponuntque ferocia Poeni/ corda uolente deo; ‘Instantly, he carries out the order, and at the will of the god, the Carthaginians soothe their savage hearts’) and also foreshadows the inveterate enmity between Carthage and Rome in historical times.

236: nec prolem Ausoniam et Lauinia respicit arua?: Jupiter continues to use charged language, not least from the proem, foregrounding Aeneas’ final destination by means of the chiasmus (a) prolem (b) Ausoniam (b) Lauinia (a) arua: references to Ausonia, a poetic name for Italy, recur throughout the prophetic utterances in Aeneid 3; and Lauinia… arua recalls the very beginning of the Aeneid, i.e. 1.2–3: Lauiniaque uenit/ litora. The geographical specification ‘Lavinian’ refers to the town of Lavinium, which Aeneas is destined to found and name after his Italian wife Lavinia. Jupiter’s discourse thus spans the entire epic (and beyond), looking backwards to the prophetic proem and forward to events in Italy that are recounted in the second half of the epic, as well as ‘Aeneid 13’.

[Extra information: as you know, the poem comes to an abrupt end with Aeneas’ killing of Turnus, at 12.952. It does not include the narrative material that would go into a ‘happy end’, such as Aeneas’ marriage to Lavinia and his founding of Lavinium. Dissatisfied with this (lack of) closure, a Renaissance scholar, Maffeo Vegio (1407–1458), added a further book to the epic, a sequel known as Aeneid 13, which contains all the good stuff that happened after the final showdown between Turnus and Aeneas.²²⁷]

237: nauiget!: a subjunctive of command: ‘let him set sail!’: ‘the chief point in Jupiter’s command, emphasized by its position in the line, yet entirely omitted by Mercury in 4, 265–276.’²²⁸

237: haec summa est, hic nostri nuntius esto: esto is third person singular imperative of sum; nostri is the genitive of nos (Jupiter uses the so-called ‘majestic plural’): ‘let this be the message from Us’. He here sums up and crosses his ‘ts’: see the assonance in nostri nuntius esto.

238–258: Mercury Descending

Mercury’s departure is closely modelled on those of his Homeric counterpart Hermes at Iliad 24.339-48 and Odyssey 5.43-54. This allusive engagement has attracted critical comment since antiquity: see Macrobius, Saturnalia 5.6.11-12. In the Iliad, Zeus sends Hermes to make sure that Priam will arrive safely at the tent of Achilles to ransom the body of his son Hector (Iliad 24.339–48):

Ὣς ἔφατ’, οὐδ’ ἀπίθησε διάκτορος Ἀργειφόντης.
αὐτίκ’ ἔπειθ’ ὑπὸ ποσσὶν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα	340
ἀμβρόσια χρύσεια, τά μιν φέρον ἠμὲν ἐφ’ ὑγρὴν
ἠδ’ ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν ἅμα πνοιῇς ἀνέμοιο
εἵλετο δὲ ῥάβδον, τῇ τ’ ἀνδρῶν ὄμματα θέλγει
ὧν ἐθέλει, τοὺς δ’ αὖτε καὶ ὑπνώοντας ἐγείρει·
τὴν μετὰ χερσὶν ἔχων πέτετο κρατὺς Ἀργειφόντης.	345
αἶψα δ’ ἄρα Τροίην τε καὶ Ἑλλήσποντον ἵκανε.

[So he spoke, and the messenger, the slayer of Argus, did not disobey. Straightway he bound beneath his feet his beautiful sandals, immortal, golden, which were wont to bear him over the waters of the sea and over the boundless earth together with the blasts of the wind. And he took the wand wherewith he lulls to sleep the eyes of whom he wishes, while others again he awakens out of slumber. With this in his hand the strong slayer of Argus flew, and quickly came to Troy and the Hellespont.]

The first time we meet Odysseus in the Odyssey, he lives the life of a castaway on the island of Ogygia, the dwelling place of the nymph Calypso, who is madly in love with the hero and wishes to make him her husband (a proposition that includes the offer of immortality). However, Odysseus, far from jumping at this opportunity, just wants to go home. Sure, he sleeps with the nymph; but for the rest of the time, he just sits forlorn on the shore, gazing out upon the waves, and weeps. Zeus sends down Hermes to let Calypso know that she has to let Odysseus go (Odyssey 5.43–54; the speech that precedes the following passage is cited above, on Aeneid 4.219–37):

ὣς ἔφατ’, οὐδ’ ἀπίθησε διάκτορος Ἀργεϊφόντης.
αὐτίκ’ ἔπειθ’ ὑπὸ ποσσὶν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα,
ἀμβρόσια χρύσεια, τά μιν φέρον ἠμὲν ἐφ’ ὑγρὴν	45
ἠδ’ ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν ἅμα πνοιῇσ’ ἀνέμοιο.
εἵλετο δὲ ῥάβδον, τῇ τ’ ἀνδρῶν ὄμματα θέλγει,
ὧν ἐθέλει, τοὺς δ’ αὖτε καὶ ὑπνώοντας ἐγείρει.
τὴν μετὰ χερσὶν ἔχων πέτετο κρατὺς Ἀργεϊφόντης.
Πιερίην δ’ ἐπιβὰς ἐξ αἰθέρος ἔμπεσε πόντῳ.	50
σεύατ’ ἔπειτ’ ἐπὶ κῦμα λάρῳ ὄρνιθι ἐοικώς,
ὅς τε κατὰ δεινοὺς κόλπους ἁλὸς ἀτρυγέτοιο
ἰχθῦς ἀγρώσσων πυκινὰ πτερὰ δεύεται ἅλμῃ·
τῷ ἴκελος πολέεσσιν ὀχήσατο κύμασιν Ἑρμῆς.

[So he spoke, and the messenger, the slayer of Argus, did not disobey. Straightway he bound beneath his feet his beautiful sandals, immortal, golden, which were wont to bear him over the waters of the sea and over the boundless earth together with the breeze of the wind. And he took the wand wherewith he lulls to sleep the eyes of whom he wishes, while others again he awakens out of slumber. With this in hand the strong slayer of Argus flew. On to Pieria he stepped from the upper air, and swooped down upon the sea, and then sped over the wave like a bird, the cormorant, which in quest of fish over the dread gulfs of the unresting sea wets its thick plumage in the brine. In such fashion did Hermes ride over the multitudinous waves.]

The final passage that ought to be compared with Mercury’s departure is Aen. 1.297-304, which describes his first mission:

Haec ait, et Maia genitum demittit ab alto,
ut terrae, utque nouae pateant Karthaginis arces
hospitio Teucris, ne fati nescia Dido
finibus arceret: uolat ille per aëra magnum	300
remigio alarum, ac Libyae citus adstitit oris.
Et iam iussa facit, ponuntque ferocia Poeni
corda uolente deo; in primis regina quietum
accipit in Teucros animum mentemque benignam.

[This he says and sends the son of Maia down from the sky that the lands and towers of newly-built Carthage may open in welcome to the Teucrians and Dido, ignorant of fate, may not keep them away from her realm. He flies through the wide air on the oarage of his wings and quickly stands on the shores of Libya. At once he carries out the orders and, with the god willing it, the Punic people lay aside their savage hearts; above all the queen receives a gentle soul and friendly mind towards the Teucrians.]

Several features are worth noting. To begin with, in Aeneid 1 Virgil covers the plot elements very briskly: we neither get Jupiter’s order to Mercury in direct speech nor Mercury’s preparation for departure. Details of the voyage are likewise skipped over, and the god carries out his orders unseen: unlike Aeneas, Dido does not become the beneficiary of a theophany as Mercury simply ensures that the disposition of the Carthaginians (and especially their queen) corresponds to Jupiter’s will, without the recipients of divine attention being any the wiser that a god has manipulated their outlook.

[Extra information: As Hardie points out, Mercury is ‘Fama’s good double’.²²⁹ He elaborates: ‘Fama and Mercury are related as two divinities of the word: both fly freely through the air on the horizontal and vertical axes, both easily span the gap between heaven and earth, and reach still further into the underworld (Mercury as psychopomp, Fama through her chthonic origin). There is a strong polarization between Fama as a divinity of the perverted word, and Mercury as the embodiment of the rational logos of Jupiter, but this is a dichotomy that is not in the end maintained. Mercury’s final message to Aeneas is a defamation of Dido as tendentious as Fama’s initial report of her and Aeneas’ behaviour, 4.569–70 uarium et mutabile semper | femina “woman is always an unstable and changeable thing”.’²³⁰]

238: Dixerat: the Latin equivalent, also metrically, of the Homeric ὣς ἔφατ’ (‘thus he spoke’).

238–239: ille patris magni parere parabat/ imperio: the hyperbaton of the possessive genitive patris magni and the noun on which it depends, i.e. imperio (in enjambment no less), emphasizes the weight an order by Jupiter carries. (Though, as we shall see, it is not that Mercury jumps into action.) patris is both specific (Jupiter sired Mercury with Maia) and generic (he is called father of gods and humans). The insistent p-alliteration, which frequently conveys a sense of movement, here also contains a hint of retardation: by far the most prominently placed item in the sequence patris, parere, parabat, which continues with primum and pedibus in 239, is the one in the middle, i.e. parabat. (Note also the assonance in imperio, which integrates this key term into the sequence of words connected via alliteration.) parere parabat is a witty paronomasia, combining paro, parere ~ to obey with paro, parare ~ to prepare, get ready. Teenagers faced with a parental request are particularly well placed to appreciate the joke in parabat. The tense (imperfect) adds to the humour: is it durative (meaning that Mercury is taking his time to get ready)? Or is it iterative (after Iliad 24, Odyssey 5, and Aeneid 1, this is already the fourth time he is heading off on such a mission in high literature)? Or is it both (faced with yet another such request, who could blame Mercury for dragging his feet a bit)? Comparison with the Homeric models reinforces the sense that the Virgilian divinity dallies just a little: οὐδ’ ἀπίθησε διάκτορος Ἀργειφόντης./ αὐτίκ.’… (‘the messenger, the slayer of Argos, did not disobey. Straightaway…’). In contrast, Mercury here proceeds very deliberately. In both Homer and Virgil, we get a detailed appreciation of Mercury’s special attributes, especially his winged shoes and his magic wand, and his functions. He is a god who operates at interfaces, acting as messenger between mortals and immortals and negotiating the boundary between life and death, the upper and the underworld, and, relatedly, being awake and being asleep.

239–241: et primum pedibus talaria nectit/ aurea, quae sublimem alis siue aequora supra/ seu terram rapido pariter cum flamine portant: these lines are very closely modelled on Homer, Odyssey 5.44–46, which makes the departures and additions particularly marked (strike-through indicates words left out by Virgil):

(1) pedibus talaria nectit/ aurea ~ ὑπὸ ποσσὶν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα,/ἀμβρόσια χρύσεια:

pedibus (‘on his feet’): ὑπὸ ποσσὶν
talaria (‘the winged sandals’): πέδιλα
nectit (‘he binds’): ἐδήσατο
aurea (‘golden’, modifying the sandals): χρύσεια

The translation is almost verbatim, with some minor tweaks: Virgil inverts the order of verb (nectit/ ἐδήσατο) and accusative object (talaria/ πέδιλα) and economizes on the number of attributes of Hermes’/ Mercury’s sandals, only taking over one out of three: he retains ‘golden’ (aurea/ χρύσεια), placed in enjambment, but does without an equivalent for καλὰ (‘beautiful’) and ἀμβρόσια (‘divinely excellent’).

(2) quae sublimem alis siue aequora supra/ seu terram rapido pariter cum flamine portant ~ τά μιν φέρον ἠμὲν ἐφ’ ὑγρὴν/ ἠδ’ ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν ἅμα πνοιῇς ἀνέμοιο. (‘which were wont to bear him both over the sea and over the boundless earth together with the breeze of the wind’):

quae (‘which’): τά.
sublimem alis (‘him high on wings’): μιν [= him]
siue… seu… (‘either… or…’): ἠμὲν… ἠδ’… (‘both… and…’)
aequora supra (‘over the sea’): ἐφ’ ὑγρὴν
terram (‘earth’): ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν
rapido… cum flamine (‘with the swift breeze’): ἅμα πνοιῇς ἀνέμοιο
(‘with the breeze of the wind’)
pariter (‘as’): no equivalent
portant (‘bear’): φέρον

Virgil here follows Homer in minute detail, to the point of imitating the variation in the correlating particles: siue ~ seu: ἠμὲν ~ ἠδ.’ But as with the sandals, he suppresses a Homeric epithet: his Mercury flies over the earth (terram) plain and simple, whereas Homer’s earth (gaian) is ἀπείρονα (‘boundless’). Conversely, he adds two components: in place of the plain Homeric μιν (‘him’, i.e. Hermes), Virgil uses the predicative attribute sublimem, which he further qualifies and explains via an ablative of means: alis (‘on his wings’). There is, then, an added emphasis on Mercury’s sky- high altitude in Virgil: the god is soaring in an awe-inspiring, ‘sublime’ sort of way.²³¹ Likewise, Virgil adds the adjective rapido as an attribute to flamine and changes the construction slightly by means of pariter: in Homer, Hermes flies ‘with the breeze of the wind’ (ἅμα πνοιῇς ἀνέμοιο), which could be taken to mean that it is the breeze that carries him and his winged-sandals only keep him in the air, rather than providing significant forward-motion. Virgil eliminates this ambiguity: in his epic, Mercury’s flying equipment operates at a speed equal to (pariter) a powerful (cf. rapido) gust of wind (flamine). Overall, then, we here have the Olympic motto citius, altius, fortius (‘faster, higher, stronger’) applied to the realm of intertextual poetics: Roman-Virgilian Mercury surpasses his Greek- Homeric counterpart Hermes in speed, height, and flying ability: imitatio et aemulatio, the two principles by which authors situate their works vis- à-vis their predecessors, at their finest!

242–244: tum uirgam capit: hac animas ille euocat Orco/ pallentis, alias sub Tartara tristia mittit,/ dat somnos adimitque, et lumina morte resignat: the three lines of Virgil rework two formulaic lines from Homer (see Iliad 24.344–345; Odyssey 5.47–48; Odyssey 24.1–5):

εἵλετο δὲ ῥάβδον, τῇ τ’ ἀνδρῶν ὄμματα θέλγει,
ὧν ἐθέλει, τοὺς δ’ αὖτε καὶ ὑπνώοντας ἐγείρει.

[And he took the wand wherewith he lulls to sleep the eyes of whom he wishes, while others again he awakens out of slumber.]

Again, the parallels are striking—as are the differences:

tum uirgam capit (‘Then he takes his wand’): εἵλετο δὲ ῥάβδον (‘And he took the wand’)
hac (‘with this’): τῇ (‘wherewith’)
animas ille euocat Orco/ pallentis (‘he calls pale ghosts from Orcus’): no Homeric equivalent
alias sub Tartara tristia mittit (‘and sends others down to gloomy Tartarus’): no Homeric equivalent
dat somnos adimitque (‘gives and takes away sleep’): ἀνδρῶν ὄμματα θέλγει,/ὧν ἐθέλει, τοὺς δ’ αὖτε καὶ ὑπνώοντας ἐγείρει (‘he lulls to sleep the eyes of whom he wishes, while others again he awakens out of slumber’)
et lumina morte resignat (‘and unseals the eyes in/ from death’): no Homeric equivalent.

Following Homer, Virgil opts for a parenthetical elaboration of Mercury’s wand (uirgam/ ῥάβδον). But he alters his model in two ways: he streamlines presentation of the one area of Hermes’ responsibility that Homer foregrounds, i.e. the two states of consciousness ‘asleep’ and ‘awake’; and he adds an elaborate description of a second function associated with his wand, i.e. patrolling the crossings between the living and the dead.²³² Hermes in his role as psychopompos, i.e. as guide (-pompos) for souls (psycho-) of the dead, is a frequent presence in Greek literature, in particular Greek tragedy and Orphic writing, but also in Homer. At Odyssey 24.1–5 Hermes acts in his role as guide to the Underworld for the shades of the recently murdered suitors. Yet whereas the Homeric Hermes summons the souls of the suitors to lead them down into the Underworld, Virgil’s Mercury also calls souls up from out of the Underworld. This part is truly difficult to comprehend. To begin with, the emphasis Virgil places on Mercury as a god who calls shades up from out of the Underworld (Orco is an ablative of separation) baffles: there tends to be rather little traffic in this direction. So what does Virgil refer to? Are those the shades of the deceased that visit the living during dreams or visions? Are we dealing with a reference to necromancy, as Pease supposes?²³³ Or is Virgil thinking of reincarnation along Orphic-Pythagorean lines? (This doctrine, of course, plays an important role in Aeneid 6, where Aeneas encounters the souls of great Romans about to re-enter life on earth.) And secondly, it is unclear what the phrase et lumina morte resignat means. There are three options: (i) ‘and he unseals eyes in death’; this would imply a reference to the Roman custom of opening the eyes of the dead on the funeral pyre: see Pliny, Natural History 11.150. (ii) Conversely, Servius believes that resignat here has the same meaning as claudit, i.e. that it refers to the custom of closing the eye-lids of the deceased. (iii) ‘and he unseals eyes from death,’ taking morte as an ablative of separation. As O’Hara notes, ‘the rendering “unseals from death” would return to the idea of 242 animas ille euocat Orco, or refer mysteriously to some aspect of existence in the underworld.’²³⁴ Recent translators and commentators show a marked preference for (i), but I think (iii) deserves serious consideration, not in least in the light of Aeneid 6.748–51 (the end of Anchises’ account of reincarnation):

has omnis [sc. animas], ubi mille rotam uoluere per annos,
Lethaeum ad fluuium deus euocat agmine magno,
scilicet immemores supera ut conuexa reuisant	750
rursus, et incipiant in corpora uelle reuerti.

[All these souls, when they have rolled the wheel of time through a thousand years, the god summons to the river Lethe in a vast throng, so that, without recall, they may revisit the vault above again, and conceive of the wish to return into bodies.]

242–243: animas… pallentis: cf. 4.25–26: ad umbras/ pallentis umbras Erebo, where pallentis figures in the same metrical position and thematic context as here.

243: alias sub Tartara tristia mittit: the design suggests the unconditional speed with which Mercury dispatches the dead into Tartarus: note the dactylic Tartara tristia mittit, reinforced by alliteration and assonance (tar-, -tar-, tris-, tia, mit-, -tit). The fact that the last three words only contain the vowels a and i enhances the effect. One may usefully compare the demythologizing account of death (and the subsequent dismissal of any descent into the Underworld) in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura. See especially 3.966: nec quisquam in barathrum nec Tartara deditur atra (‘no one ever falls into the deep pit or black Tartarus’) and 1012: Tartarus horriferos eructans faucibus aestus (‘Tartarus belching horrible flames from its throat’), where ‘hell (its monsters) is (just) a horrible belching noise’ (Henderson, per litteras).

245–246: illa fretus agit uentos et turbida tranat/ nubila: illa, which is in the ablative dependent on fretus, is still the wand (virgam, 242). With agit uentos Virgil reinforces the point that his Mercury does not drift in the winds—he drives them. The design of turbida tranat/ nubila, enacts the idea of Mercury passing, or, literally, swimming, through the clouds.

246–251: iamque uolans apicem et latera ardua cernit/ Atlantis duri caelum qui uertice fulcit,/ Atlantis, cinctum adsidue cui nubibus atris/ piniferum caput et uento pulsatur et imbri,/ nix umeros infusa tegit, tum flumina mento/ praecipitant senis, et glacie riget horrida barba: the main verb of the sentence is cernit (with Mercury as subject). There are two accusative objects: apicem et latera ardua; they come with a possessive genitive, i.e. Atlantis duri (247), reiterated without attribute in the following line: Atlantis. Each of the genitives serves as the antecedent of a relative clause (with the relative pronoun in postpositive position): caelum qui uertice fulcit; cinctum adsidue cui nubibus atris etc. The first is straightforward. The second causes the same sort of problem as the relative clause Virgil uses to describe Fama at 181–183 (also introduced by cui): the construction seems to change after imbri: what follows could be taken as a tricolon of main clauses in anakoluthon. (This parallel in extraordinary syntax is not a coincidence: it further helps to correlate Fama and Atlas as two complementary monsters.) Virgil at any rate only loosely connects the different elements of the enumeration:

(a) caput pulsatur

(b) nix tegit

(c) flumina praecipitant (linked to the preceding by tum)

(d) riget barba (linked to the preceding by et; the sequence ‘verb—subject’ inverts the order in the previous three clauses)

Overall, Virgil has created an anthropomorphic landscape that plays on correspondences between Atlas the man, and Atlas the mountain. While Atlas certainly is a geological formation to begin with, it is possible to identify humanoid parts, which come gradually into focus, without Atlas ever ceasing to be also a mountain: vertex, caput, umeri, mentum, and barba. Virgil also calls Atlas a senex. Austin notes the progressive personification: ‘from using vertex and caput, which suit the mountain as well as the human figure, Virgil passes to purely human features in umeros, mento, barba, while the mountain has become a senex.’²³⁵ For the wider significance of Atlas in the set passage see Hardie:²³⁶

Mercury’s descent is interrupted by the striking picture of the man- mountain Atlas. This apparent digression may also be integrated into the wider context. Atlas is the measure of the vertical distance between heaven and earth that Mercury has to cover; he occupies the space which Fama threatened to infect. He, like Fama, is a giant, and, like Fama, he has his head in the clouds, but, unlike Fama, he reaches beyond the clouds to touch and support the heavens themselves. Atlas is a giant who has been immobilized and rendered safe; from hubristic sky-reacher he has been transformed into a stable prop of the established order, a guarantee of cosmic cohesion.… The descent of Mercury thus represents a reversal of the ascent of Fama, the reimposition of Olympian order in a space which has been threatened by an evil chthonic power.

247–248: Atlantis duri – Atlantis: a gemination as with Fama at 173–174: Extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes,/ Fama, malum qua non aliud uelocius ullum. Atlas, one of the first of the Titans (see e.g. Hesiod, Theogony 507–511), just as Fama was the last (179: extremam) of the Giants, belonged to the generation of primordial, and often monstrous, divinities that preceded the Olympian order. After the so-called Titanomachy (the battle between Titans and Olympians), Atlas was forced as punishment to support the vaults of heaven on his shoulders, stationed in Northwestern Africa. In certain versions, he was said to have been petrified into the mountain range, which Virgil here (re-)personifies. Titanic and Olympian lineages of course intersected in complex ways, and Aeneas himself happens to be a distant descendant of Atlas—as we learn in Book 8, where Aeneas draws on this ancestral connection to plead kinship bonds with Euander, a settler on the future site of Rome, to whom he appeals for help (8.134–41):

Dardanus, Iliacae primus pater urbis et auctor,
Electra, ut Grai perhibent, Atlantide cretus,	135
aduehitur Teucros; Electram maximus Atlas
edidit, aetherios umero qui sustinet orbis.
uobis Mercurius pater est, quem candida Maia
Cyllenae gelido conceptum uertice fudit;
at Maiam, auditis si quicquam credimus, Atlas,	140
idem Atlas generat caeli qui sidera tollit.

[Dardanus, the first father and founder of the city of Ilium, born (as Greeks recount) of Electra, daughter of Atlas, came to the Teucrians. The mightiest Atlas who sustains the heavenly spheres on his shoulder, sired Electra. Your ancestor is Mercury, whom fair Maia once conceived and gave birth to on the icy peak of Mt. Cyllene. But Maia, if we believe at all in what we have heard, Atlas brought forth, the same Atlas, who holds up the stars of heaven.]

247: caelum qui uertice fulcit: caelum belongs into the relative clause introduced by qui: it is the accusative object of fulcit.

248–249: cinctum adsidue cui nubibus atris/ piniferum caput et uento pulsatur et imbri: the relative pronoun cui is in the dative of reference (‘for whom’); the subject of the relative clause is caput, which is modified by the participle cinctum and by the adjective piniferum. nubibus atris is an ablative of agency with cinctum (as often in poetry without the preposition a/ab); et uento et imbri are also ablatives of agency (again without preposition) with pulsatur. adsidue is an adverb (with cinctum), meaning ‘constantly’.

250–251: flumina mento/ praecipitant senis: Virgil seems to be referring to glaciers, i.e. ‘frozen rivers’ that hang down from Atlas’ chin: senis is genitive singular of senex, dependent on mento.

252–253: hic primum paribus nitens Cyllenius alis/ constitit: a nice image: Mercury first poises himself on his wings paribus nitens… alis, before touching down, if only for a moment (or a metrical foot: after the diaeresis after constitit he is instantly on his way again).

252: Cyllenius: the e scans long since it represents an ‘êta’ in Greek (which is naturally long): see e.g. Odyssey 24.1: Ἑρμῆς… Κυλλήνιος.. Again below 258: Cyllenia proles. The name derives from his place of birth, i.e. on top of Mt. Cyllene in Arcadia. In the Aeneid, Virgil uses it only in this passage here, though three times (see also 258 and 276), in what is a learned (‘Alexandrian’) joke, as Aeneid 8.138–141 (cited above) makes clear: Maia, daughter of Atlas, who got turned into an icy mountain, gave birth to her son on an icy mountain, and Mercury in Aeneid 4 pays a brief visit to his grandfather, with a brief touch-down on top of him. Grandfather and grandson thereby enact a nice contrast between (Olympian) mobility and (Titanic) fixity. For those not up on their mythological geography, Virgil kindly offers a pointer in 258: materno ueniens ab auo Cyllenia proles.

253–255: hinc toto praeceps se corpore ad undas/ misit aui similis, quae circum litora, circum/ piscosos scopulos humilis uolat aequora iuxta: The lines rework Odyssey 5.50–53:

Πιερίην δ’ ἐπιβὰς ἐξ αἰθέρος ἔμπεσε πόντῳ·
σεύατ’ ἔπειτ’ ἐπὶ κῦμα λάρῳ ὄρνιθι ἐοικώς,
ὅς τε κατὰ δεινοὺς κόλπους ἁλὸς ἀτρυγέτοιο
ἰχθῦς ἀγρώσσων πυκινὰ πτερὰ δεύεται ἅλμῃ·
τῷ ἴκελος πολέεσσιν ὀχήσατο κύμασιν Ἑρμῆς.

[On to Pieria he stepped from the upper air, and swooped down upon the sea, and then sped over the wave like a bird, the cormorant, which hunting fish over the dread gulfs of the unresting sea wets its thick plumage in the brine. In such wise did Hermes ride upon the multitudinous waves.]

hinc (‘hence [sc. from Atlas]’): Πιερίην δ’ ἐπιβὰς (‘stepping on Pieria’)
toto… corpore (‘with his whole body’): no equivalent
praeceps (‘sheer down’): no equivalent
se… misit (‘he sent himself’): ἔμπεσε (‘he swooped down’)
ad undas (‘to the waves’): πόντῳ (‘upon the sea’) and σεύατ’ ἔπειτ’ ἐπὶ
κῦμα (‘he then sped over the wave’)
aui similis (‘like a bird’): λάρῳ ὄρνιθι ἐοικώς (‘like a bird, the cormorant’)
quae (‘which’): ὅς (‘which’)
circum litora, circum piscosos scopulos (‘round the shores, round the
fish-haunted cliffs’): τε κατὰ δεινοὺς κόλπους ἁλὸς ἀτρυγέτοιο ἰχθῦς
ἀγρώσσων (‘hunting fish over the dread gulfs of the unresting sea’)
humilis uolat aequora iuxta (‘flies low near the water’): πυκινὰ πτερὰ
δεύεται ἅλμῃ (‘wets its thick plumage in the brine’)
haud aliter (‘even thus’): τῷ ἴκελος (‘in such wise’)

Which image is the more successful? Homer gives the kind of bird; the reference to hunting fish introduces purpose into its flight; and the wetting of the wings with brine adds a bracing note of excitement. In contrast, Virgil’s unidentified fowl seems to circulate pretty aimlessly, and one does not quite understand why it is skirting the waves, though the attribute of the cliffs, i.e. piscosos, at least hints at hunting: these are good grounds for fishing. For etymological reasons, humilis (from humus) strikes an odd note with aequora iuxta, even though it correlates well and antithetically with sublimem in 240. Where Virgil arguably has the edge is the bold image of Hermes plunging himself headlong down towards the sea praeceps se… misit, though ἔμπεσε πόντῳ (‘… he swooped down upon the sea’) is full of drama as well. In terms of ornamentation, Virgil’s lines for once are pretty flat: there is the repetition of circum, conveying a sense of the ceaseless circling, but overall that isn’t a patch on Homer’s deft handling of alliteration—see in particular κατὰ δεινοὺς κόλπους ἁλὸς ἀτρυγέτοιο (‘over the dread gulfs of the unresting sea,’ where the depth of the sea is further emphasized by the rhyhm δεινοὺς κόλπους) and πυκινὰ πτερὰ (‘thick plumage’)—as well as the beautiful chiastic design that concludes the simile: (a) τῷ [‘to it’] ἴκελος [‘equal,’ modifying Hermes] (b) πολέεσσιν [‘many,’ modifying waves] (c) ὀχήσατο [‘went over,’ the verb taking Hermes as subject] (b) κύμασιν [‘the waves’] (a) Ἑρμῆς [‘Hermes’].

256: terras inter caelumque: inter again does its meaning proud, sitting snugly between the two nouns it governs.

257: litus harenosum ad Libyae: the preposition ad, which governs the accusative phrase litus harenosum, is in striking postpositive position, perhaps enacting the helter-skelter speed with which Mercury arrives at his destination.

258: materno ueniens ab auo Cyllenia proles: Virgil, like Homer, concludes his description with the god in the nominative, but he uses a learned paraphrase. Cyllenia proles, i.e. Mercury, corresponds to Ἑρμῆς (‘Hermes’) at Odyssey 5.53, also at line-end. As pointed out above, the materno… auo is Atlas, the father of Maia, mother of Mercury. For Cyllenia, see above 252: Cyllenius.

[Extra information: It is neat and tidy to think of Aeneid 1–6 as ‘Virgil’s Odyssey’ and of Aeneid 7–12 as ‘Virgil’s Iliad’, developing, in chiastic sequence, the two opening words of the poem: arma = war = Iliad; uirum = the man and his travels = Odyssey. But as Knauer has shown, matters are much more complex: the Aeneid sustains a parallel with the Odyssey all the way through.²³⁷ It is easy to forget, in the excitement over Odysseus’ travel adventures, which are narrated in Books 9–13, that the poem ends in mass-slaughter on Ithaca and the outbreak of civil strife: in the last scene of the poem Athena borrows the thunderbolt of Zeus to break up civil war between the families of the murdered suitors and Odysseus and his family. Put differently, at the end the Odyssey stages an Iliad at home, turning external warfare into civil conflict—a constellation of particular relevance to Virgil and his readers. The simultaneous presence of Iliad and Odyssey in the second half of the Aeneid underscores the ambiguous status of Aeneas, as both a foreign arrival in Italy and a proto-Roman returnee.]

259–278: Back To The Future

Mercury touches down in Carthage to pass on Jupiter’s orders and get (Aeneas’) destiny back on track. The Homeric model is Hermes’ appearance to Calypso in Odyssey 5, telling the nymph that she has to let the hero go. There is, then, a shift from the clinging host in Homer to the lingering guest in Virgil. (One could have imagined a divine messenger appearing to Dido: but she is cut off from communication with Olympian divinities and later on also doubts that Aeneas has been the beneficiary of a genuine theophany: see 4.379–80.) Mercury displays notable independence in his address to Aeneas: far from repeating Jupiter’s discourse virtually word for word (as some characters in Homer are wont to do who act as messengers), he gives his speech an idiosyncratic spin. In part, he is reacting to the shocking scene he encounters at Carthage. For far from being idle, as Fama had it, Aeneas is in fact hard at work at building a city—just not the one he is supposed to. Mercury takes in the proceedings in lines 259–265a; bursts into speech (and Aeneas’ sight) in lines 265b–276a; and abruptly disappears again at lines 276b–278.

259: ut primum alatis tetigit magalia plantis: magalia (here in the neuter accusative plural, object of tetigit) are ‘North African huts, of lowly and temporary character’, here, specifically, ‘the first rude and hasty dwellings of the immigrants, not yet replaced by the newer houses which are in the next line represented as under construction. For this contrast of the temporary and the permanent styles of building, cf. 1.421.’²³⁸

260–261: Aenean fundantem arces ac tecta nouantem/ conspicit: the present participles fundantem and nouantem, which form a chiasmus with their accusative objects (arces, tecta) beautifully capture Aeneas misplaced energies: far from lording it over Dido as dominus, as Iarbas supposes, he is doing her work. (The following lines show that he is amply rewarded for his efforts.) The correlation of Aenean and conspicit at the beginning of two successive lines nicely underscores what catches Mercury’s eyes upon touching down: that the proto-Roman hero lays the foundations of Carthage. (The enjambment of conspicit, following suddenly upon the heavily spondaic line 260, which labours just as much as Aeneas, and the diaeresis thereafter, convey something of the shock value.)

261: conspicit: after cernit in 246, Virgil switched into the past tense, first the perfect (253: constitit; 255: misit, both placed dramatically at the beginning of a verse), then, to emphasize the duration of the flight, the imperfect (256: uolebat; 257: secabat, both placed soothingly at the end of a verse). Now he is back to the present. conspicit recalls both cernit (in terms of semantics) and constitit (in terms of alliteration and assonance, scansion, and placement in the verse).

261–264: atque illi stellatus iaspide fulua/ ensis erat Tyrioque ardebat murice laena/ demissa ex umeris, diues quae munera Dido/ fecerat, et tenui telas discreuerat auro: the -que after Tyrio links erat and ardebat, which takes laena as subject; munera, which is the antecedent of quae but has been attracted into the relative clause, stands in apposition to laena (‘the coat glowed, a gift, which…’: quae is in the neuter accusative plural). Diues, pulled up front before the relative clause in which it belongs, modifies Dido (note the paronomasia created by the alliteration diues Dido). After the initial focus on Aeneas’ activity, we get a detailed account of the hero’s ornate apparel, specifically his sword (ensis) and cloak (laena). A laena is a thick woollen cloak; depending on design it could be used in a military context or for representational purposes; here it is clearly an Eastern luxury item that assimilates Aeneas to Dionysus (and Antony): ‘luxurious robes dyed crimson or yellow and trailing down to the feet are thoroughly typical of Dionysus and so figure repeatedly in descriptions of the god’—as well as the Roman who went East and promoted himself as Dionysus reborn, that is, Mark Antony.²³⁹ A sword studded with precious gems (iaspis is jasper, a loanword in Latin; more generally ia with vocalic i-a, as in Iarbas, is un-Roman stuff) and a purple cloak shot through with threads of gold are items designed for ostentatious display rather than everyday use: that Aeneas actually wears them while building the city would seem to suggest that he oversees the building efforts, rather than getting his own hands dirty in the trenches. The cloak will reappear at 11.72–75, as one of the garments Aeneas uses to cover the corpse of his protegee Pallas, the son of Euander:

tum geminas uestis auroque ostroque rigentis
extulit Aeneas, quas illi laeta laborum
ipsa suis quondam manibus Sidonia Dido
fecerat et tenui telas discreuerat auro.

[Then Aeneas brought forth two garments stiff with gold and purple, which Sidonian Dido, glad of the labour, had once made for him herself with her own hands, interweaving the web with fine gold.]

The death of Pallas fulfills part of the curse Dido utters before her suicide where she wishes Aeneas to see the shocking deaths of his friends (4.617–18: uideatque indigna suorum/ funera). That Dido’s garments should reappear at this moment of utter despair hints at the efficaciousness of her imprecation.

261: illi: dative of possession.

262: Tyrio… murice: the murex is the sea-snail out of which purple dye was extracted; the best and most expensive variant came from the snails whose habitat was Dido’s native Tyre in Phoenicia. See above 134–135: ostroque insignis et auro.

262–263: laena/ demissa ex umeris: the placement of demissa ex umeris in enjambment nicely enacts the way the coat is hanging down from Aeneas’ shoulders.

264: et tenui telas discreuerat auro: Dido had interwoven (discreuerat) the fabric (telas) with finely spun gold (tenui auro).

265: continuo inuadit: Mercury displays a decisiveness that startles. Without hesitation (continuo) he attacks (inuadit) if with words. The forceful approach corresponds to the shock and disgust at what he is seeing. Virgil does not even comment on the fact that a theophany has occurred, though he will remark on Mercury’s disappearance (below, 276–78).

265–267: ‘tu nunc Karthaginis altae/ fundamenta locas pulchramque uxorius urbem/ exstruis?: Pease cites the insightful comment of the Scholia Danielis on the first two words of this sentence: ‘tu’ invectio est, et ‘nunc,’ id est, hoc tempore, quo tibi navigandum vel pro tua spe laborandum est (‘“tu” is an invective attack, and “nunc” means “at the very moment when you ought to be sailing or exerting yourself on behalf of your own future”’).²⁴⁰ Karthaginis altae/ fundamenta: the placement of fundamenta in the line under high Carthage iconically mirrors the actual architecture by means of verse design.

266: uxorius: ‘too much beholden to his woman/ wife.’ A passage in Dio Cassius suggests that accusations of enslavement to a foreign woman formed an important theme in Octavian’s propaganda warfare against Mark Antony and Cleopatra in the run-up to the battle at Actium in 31 BC (50.26.5–27.1):²⁴¹

… τῇ δὲ γυναικὶ δουλεύων τόν τε πόλεμον καὶ τοὺς κινδύνους τοὺς ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς αὐθαιρέτους καὶ καθ’ ἡμῶν καὶ κατὰ τῆς πατρίδος ἀναιρεῖται, τί λοιπὸν ἄλλο πλὴν ἀμύνασθαι καὶ τοῦτον μετὰ τῆς Κλεοπάτρας ἡμῖν προσήκει; μήτ’ οὖν Ῥωμαῖον εἶναί τις αὐτὸν νομιζέτω, ἀλλά τινα Αἰγύπτιον, μήτ’ Ἀντώνιον ὀνομαζέτω, ἀλλά τινα Σαραπίωνα·

[… but being a slave to that woman, he undertakes the war and its self- chosen dangers on her behalf against us and against his country. In view of all this, what is left to us but the duty of fighting him, together with Cleopatra, and repelling him? Therefore let no one count him a Roman, but rather an Egyptian, nor call him Antony, but rather Serapion.]

Mercury, in other words, joins in the ethnic abuse that Aeneas suffers from several other characters in the poem (notably Iarbas and Turnus), who cast him as an effeminate Eastener who lacks proper virility and heroic stature. In contrast to the human characters, however, who believe to have pinpointed ‘the essence’ of Aeneas, Mercury knows that his present condition is simply a momentary aberration: Aeneas has slipped into ‘un-Roman’ behavioural patterns, prefiguring in myth the historical liaison between Mark Antony and another African Queen, i.e. Cleopatra. This wider horizon endows Mercury’s wake-up call with special urgency, at least for Virgil’s readers: Aeneas, the ancestor of Octavian, is running the danger of turning into a prototype of Mark Antony.

267: heu, regni rerumque oblite tuarum!: oblite is the vocative form of the masculine singular perfect participle of obliuiscor, i.e. oblitus; it governs the two objective genitives regni and rerum tuarum. Mercury here reuses the idiom of 221, where Jupiter’s eyes fall on oblitos famae melioris amantis.

268–270: ipse deum tibi me claro demittit Olympo/ regnator, caelum et terras qui numine torquet,/ ipse haec ferre iubet celeris mandata per auras: after giving Aeneas the treatment on his own account, Mercury moves on to report why he has come in the first place: Jupiter sent him. Mercury gives the king of the gods appropriate prominence: note the pattern ipse—regnator—ipse at the beginning of the three verses, a quasi-hymnic design reinforced by the massive hyperbaton deum (= deorum)… regnator (the noun on which the objective genitive depends). regnator is etymologically related to regnum (267), so Mercury here obliquely hints at the affinity of Aeneas and Jupiter, as prospective and present rulers of empire and cosmos.

269: caelum et terras qui numine torquet: qui is in postpositive position.

270: ipse haec ferre iubet celeris mandata per auras: iubet introduces an indirect statement: the implied subject accusative is me (easily supplied from the previous clause in which me is the direct object of demittit), the infinitive is ferre, which takes haec… mandata as accusative object. mandata harks back to the beginning of Jupiter’s speech at 222: ac talia mandat, reinforcing the (erroneous) impression that Mercury has just delivered a verbatim message from Jupiter. The phrasing celeris (= celeres) … per auras generates a similar effect: it harks back to 226 (Jupiter speaking): et celeris defer mea dicta per auras. Mercury reuses this and other Jovian speech-fragments to underscore that what he has just said is a faithful reproduction of what he was told by Jupiter. But the switch from compound verb (defer) to simple (ferre) and the elegant switch from mea dicta to mandata gives the game away even here: Mercury does not consider Jupiter’s speech unalterable gospel.

271: quid struis?: Jupiter’s question precisely: see 235 above: quid struit?.

271: aut qua spe Libycis teris otia terris?: teris is the second person singular indicative present active of tero. Note the mocking homoioteleuton Libycis—teris—terris, with the last two items also featuring an alliterative paronomasia as well as a figura etymologica: see Varro, de Lingua Latina 5.4.21: Terra dicta ab eo, ut Aelius scribit, quod teritur. Itaque tera in augurum libris scripta cum R uno. (‘Terra is called like this, according to Aelius, because it is trodden upon. This is why in the books of the augurs tera is written with one R only.’). otium, here in the accusative plural (otia), means ‘leisure’. In recasting 235 of Jupiter’s speech (aut qua spe inimica in gente moratur?) Mercury suppresses Jupiter’s anticipation of future historical hostilities between Rome and Carthage and falls back into Iarbas’ perspective, disregarding for a moment the fact that Aeneas is busy at work building up Carthage. So the sense of otia here is probably something akin to ‘idling away time better spent on advancing your own mission.’

272–276: si te nulla mouet tantarum gloria rerum/ [nec super ipse tua moliris laude laborem,]/ Ascanium surgentem et spes heredis Iuli/ respice, cui regnum Italiae Romanaque tellus/ debetur.’: the final part of Mercury’s speech remains fairly close to Jupiter’s wording and ideas, but also significant alterations on the level of detail:

232: si nulla accendit tantarum gloria rerum ~ 272: si te nulla mouet tantarum gloria rerum
233: nec super ipse tua molitur laude laborem ~ 273: nec super ipse tua moliris laude laborem [though most editors and commentators consider this line an interpolation]
234: Ascanione pater Romanas inuidet arces? and 236: nec prolem Ausoniam et Lauinia respicit arua? ~ 274–276: Ascanium surgentem et spes heredis Iuli/ respice, cui regnum Italiae Romanaque tellus/ debetur.

Specifically, Mercury drops Jupiter’s invidious speculations about the psychology behind Aeneas’ dallying with Dido (some sort of resentment over his son’s future career in Italy) and takes exactly the opposite approach: he presents the filial prospects (spes heredis Iuli more likely refers to the hopes Iulus harbours, rather than the hopes others have invested in him) as a prime motivating factor. The placement of Ascanium and Iuli at the beginning and the end of the line hints at the temporal development: Ascanius as Iulus will fully come into his own in Italy. These departures from Jupiter’s script also enable Mercury to streamline Jupiter’s rhetorical questions (inuidet? respicit?) into one imperative: respice! Overall, Mercury’s version is much more economical and to the point: in the main clause, we get two sturdy phrases as accusative objects (Ascanium surgentem, spes heredis Iuli) followed by the verb (respice) in enjambment, attached to which is a relative clause that repeats this pattern with slight variation: regnum Italiae and Romana tellus are two resonant and compact subjects (the chiastic placement of the geographical indicators reproduces the stylistic effect of Jupiter’s prolem Ausoniam and Lauinia arua in 236); the verb, debetur, is again placed in enjambment. Mercury thereby neatly turns Jupiter’s somewhat idle rhetorical questions into a powerful image of the future and a command. What he leaves out, though, is the concluding order (237: nauiget!).

277: mortalis uisus medio sermone reliquit: an elegant if abrupt ending: adjective + noun (accusative object), adjective + noun (ablative of time), verb. Mercury’s is indeed a sermo interruptus: he does not even pass on Jupiter’s command to set sail (237: naviget!), perhaps because he knows or suspects that what he has said is quite enough to get Aeneas going. medio, here as elsewhere, is placed in the middle of the verse.

278: et procul in tenuem ex oculis euanuit auram: Mercury comes out of nowhere and vanishes again into thin air: no wonder Aeneas is under shock.

279–295: The Great Escape

As Hardie notes, ‘the effect of Mercury’s first message on Aeneas had been similar in its incendiary emotional effects to the effect of Fama’s words on Iarbas’²⁴²—as well as, one may add, to the effect of Fama’s words on Dido (see below 298–301). Aeneas now too has lost his mind (he is amens: 279) and he is on fire (ardet: 281): two pathological conditions that also characterize ‘Dido in love.’ The section falls into unequal parts:

279–282: First reactions (4 lines)
283–287: Aeneas ponders possibilities (5 lines)
288–294a: Aeneas calls his men and instructs them of his intentions (6+ lines)
294b–295: His men gladly obey (1+ line)

Some stylistic features go across section divisions, such as the striking a-alliteration that runs throughout Aeneas’ reaction (all words come at the beginning of the line):

279: At (followed by Aeneas, aspectu, and amens, to set the tone)
280: arrectaeque
281: ardet abire
282: attonitus
283: heu quid agat? (as well as ambire)
284: audeat adfatu?
285: atque animum

For a full seven lines Virgil maintains the image of Aeneas’ hair standing on ends and his mouth and eyes open in shock and astonishment, silently screaming Ahhhhh!, while various thoughts rush through his head (summed up in 285–86, i.e. when the sequence of verses starting with a- comes to an end). The one exception, 283: heu quid agat?, is a nice break in the pattern that signals the gradual transition from shock to thought. There is a touch of closure to the pattern in the rhyming line endings sumat (284) and uersat (286).

279–280: At uero Aeneas aspectu obmutuit amens,/ arrectaeque horrore comae et uox faucibus haesit: Virgil uses a tricolon to describe Aeneas’ reaction to the theophany: he is speechless (obmutuit), his hair stands on end (arrectae [sc. sunt] comae), and his tongue is stuck in his throat (haesit). It is a very vivid image, worth visualizing, though also fairly formulaic: cf. 2.774 (= 3.48): obstipui steteruntque comae et uox faucibus haesit and 12.868, which is identical to 4.280.

279: amens: commentators play down the full force of the attribute (‘bewildered rather than frenzied, as noted by Conington.’²⁴³ I am inclined to disagree: there is a striking sequence from Iarbas (203: amens animi) via Aeneas here to Dido just below (300: saeuit inops animi) that emphasizes loss of rational faculties in response to news from Fama (Iarbas, Dido) or Mercury (Aeneas). Aeneas’ is clearly the most muted response, but ‘bewildered’ does not quite capture his state of holy horror (cf. horrore in the following line) that overpowers the reasoning part (mens) of his brain.

281–282: ardet abire fuga dulcisque relinquere terras,/ attonitus tanto monitu imperioque deorum: dulcis (= dulces)… terras, as a periphrasis of Carthage, makes it clear that Aeneas enjoyed himself in Carthage, and there is a striking contrast between his pleasurable experience and his desire to abscond (cf. fuga): he is torn in two. The design of the massive and momentous tanto monitu imperioque deorum is chiastic and climactic:

Aeneas is left in no doubt, this admonition (monitu) amounts to an order (imperio). Note also the assonance attonitus tanto monitu. The awkward notion of receiving an ‘order to flee’, which amounts to a contradiction in terms (obeying an imperium deorum has positive connotations; absconding in flight is shameful), revisits the paradox that defines Aeneas from the outset: he is fato profugus, exiled by fate (1.2). What looks like running away is actually an imposition to move history forward. The problem of a hero turning his heel is particularly acute in Book 2, where Aeneas does his excruciating best to explain and justify why he left his native Troy in a moment of dire need. He is far less eloquent with Dido—and much more eager to flee (a.k.a. ‘to follow fate’) once more.

283–284: heu quid agat? quo nunc reginam ambire furentem/ audeat adfatu? quae prima exordia sumat?: agat, audeat, and sumat are ‘indirect deliberative subjunctives’: the poet—hence indirect (direct deliberative subjunctives would be in the first person: quid agam? etc.)—is describing the deliberations that pass through the mind of his character. The hyperbaton quo… adfatu is as gigantic as Aeneas’ aporia and embarrassment are excruciating. Aeneas already knows exactly what the outcome of the encounter will be: Dido will ‘make a scene’, ‘fly off the handle’ or, indeed, ‘go crazy’ (furentem). He is not far off the mark: primed by Fama, Dido becomes furens (298).

283: ambire: ambire means, literally, ‘to go around, to surround’, ‘to approach’, but is also a technical term for ‘going around and canvassing (or, indeed, buying) support before elections.’ The Romans had laws de ambitu, designed to punish excessive use of this practice. From early on, some readers have therefore felt that Virgil’s use of the term here is meant to present his hero in an unfavourable light. Others disagree. See e.g. Austin: ‘literally, “to canvass”, a good word here, but Page is wrong in thinking that it “hints at cunning and treachery”; the sense of pleading or persuading is uppermost.’²⁴⁴ In turn, O’Hara reverts to Page’s view, taking it for granted that ambire ‘hints at cunning and treachery.’²⁴⁵ Etc. Whatever the precise semantic charge—and this is a great topic for debate!—Aeneas is thinking of ways to get Dido to see matters from his point of view, knowing full way that he is embarking upon a mission impossible.

285–286: atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc diuidit illuc/ in partisque rapit uarias perque omnia uersat: the word order in the tricolon diuidit, rapit, uersat mimics the frantic thoughts that rush through Aeneas’ mind: nunc huc ‘separates’ animum from its attribute celerem (here used instead of the adverb) just as diuidit splits nunc and illuc. As opposed to the very specific nunc huc – nunc illuc in 285, 286 contains two more comprehensive expressions: in partis (= partes) uarias and per omnia. Note that the -que after partis links diuidit and rapit, though the in goes with partis; the -que after per links rapit and uersat.

287: haec alternanti potior sententia uisa est: alternanti: present active participle of alternare (‘to oscillate’) in the dative, modifying an implied ei, dependent on uisa est: ‘to him, as he was oscillating [one could imagine mentally supplying an accusative object: sententias, i.e. between ‘two alternatives’], this seemed the better course of action.’ What are the two alternatives? His subsequent instructions to his men make it clear that Aeneas ponders whether he should (a) just approach Dido, come clean, and try to reason with her (cf. ambire); or (b) do this, but not before telling his men to get everything ready for an immediate departure. He opts for the latter course of action, though as it turns out he never gets the chance to break the news to Dido first: she cottons on to what is afoot and, enraged, goes for him.

288–294: Virgil devotes 13.5 feet to the orders Aeneas gives to his men, but 20.5 feet to his ruminations of how best to break the news to Dido: preparing to be off is straightforward; telling Dido about it is not.

288: Mnesthea Sergestumque uocat fortemque Serestum: Mnesthea is a Greek accusative form (Latin would be Mnestheum). Austin draws attention to the ‘internal or “leonine” rhyme’ Sergestum ~ Serestum.²⁴⁶ Here are some prosopographical details on the names:

•    Mnestheus: ‘Mnestheus is the most frequently mentioned of Aeneas’s lieutenants (23 times as compared with 21 for Achates), but has the rather shadowy personality of all such satellites.’²⁴⁷ He was the legendary/ alleged Trojan ancestor of the gens of the Memmii.

•    Sergestus: ‘a member of the deputation to Dido (1, 510), commander in the regatta [in Aeneid 5] of the ship Centaurus (5, 121–122), which ran aground (5, 204; 5, 221–222).’²⁴⁸ At 5.121, Virgil reminds his readers that Sergestus was the legendary/ alleged Trojan ancestor of the gens Sergia (domus tenet a quo Sergia nomen): her most notorious member was none other than L. Sergius Catilina, i.e. the conspirator Catiline, but the gens also produced illustrious members. See Pliny, Natural History 7.104, on M. Sergius in particular: he was twice captured by Hannibal and was twice able to flee, lost his right hand on campaign, but kept fighting with his left hand four times until he had equipped himself with an iron-replacement, and was all in all wounded twenty-three times. (I owe the reference to John Henderson.)

•    Serestus: ‘thrice (9. 171 = 9, 779 = 12, 549) described as acer and coupled with Mnestheus (with whom he is also linked here and in 12, 561). He participated in the deputation to Dido (1, 611), commanded a ship (5, 487), set up a trophy (10, 541), and occasionally appeared in other connections.’²⁴⁹

For the significance of this verse (and its catalogue of names) within the Aeneid as a whole see Henderson (per litteras): ‘“Mnestheus” presumably “comes to mind” when Aeneas is “mindful” of his men—given the connection with Greek mnaomai [‘to remember’]. Saying the name out loud makes him and us “recall” the flowery [a Greek word for flower is anthos] Aeneid 1.510: Anthea Sergestumque uidet fortemque Cloanthum AND its repetitious rhyme 1.611–12,… Serestum |,… fortemque Gyan fortemque Cloanthum. And this gets him and us back to where we were before winter off-duty “up the nile with cleo” [sc. Cleopatra, as the contemporary typological equivalent to Dido], and all those nights of talk and heat. The names here stand as a synecdochic recall of both those roll calls, as well as prequels for all their later exploits, all the way to the repeat line(-up) of 12.561: Mnesthea Sergestumque uocat fortemque Serestum (where we are called to remember back to Aeneid 4 where they came in, in readiness to wipe out another city, not Dido’s Carthage but the civilian population of an Italian town, along with even its name…).’

289-291: classem aptent taciti sociosque ad litora cogant,/ arma parent et quae rebus sit causa nouandis/ dissimulent: Aeneas’ order to his comrades includes four parts: aptent, cogant (linked by the -que attached to socios), parent (in asyndetic sequence), and dissimulent (linked to parent by et in 290). They are all in the (indirect) jussive subjunctive (matching the indirect deliberative subjunctives in 283–84), dependent on an implied verb of command. The four aspects of Aeneas’ order operate at two different levels: the first three (aptent, cogant, parent) enumerate the practical things that the men should get underway. Aeneas covers this aspect with three straightforward di-syllabic words, without particular emphasis. The fourth is different: dissimulent concerns the way in which they should go about their business and implies deceit. The verb has twice as many syllables as the other three and stands in an emphatic position in emjambement, reinforced by the choriambic shape and the caesura that follows. ‘Do this, this, and this. But, above all, be sly about it and tell no one why you are doing it!’

289: taciti: an adjective in place of an adverb. It anticipates dissimulent.

290: arma parent: arma has the double meaning of ‘gear’ and ‘weapons’. Aeneas refers to the former, but the latter may resonate as well.

290: quae rebus sit causa nouandis/ dissimulent: quae introduces an indirect question (hence the subjunctive sit) dependent on dissimulent. The formulation res nouare, ‘to alter circumstances radically’ recalls the phrase res nouae, which in the conservative society of ancient Rome did not possess a positive ring. It meant ‘revolution’, i.e. the destruction of the traditional socio-political order. The radical touch is appropriate in the situation: Aeneas’ about-face could not be sharper and causes Dido’s world to collapse. As 292 (tantos rumpi non speret amores) makes clear, nothing in his behaviour towards Dido hinted at the threat of departure, much less a headlong flight; everything pointed to a permanent union. What Aeneas plans, in other words, is a 180º turnaround, out of the blue—and he knows it. The lines have given rise to different readings, more or less favourable to Aeneas. Here, for instance, is Horsfall: ‘the balance of 291 shows that this secrecy is not so much aimed at Dido as (unsuccessfully) at town gossip (cf. 296f.). Aeneas himself, since optima Dido… has no idea of what is up, will try to find the right moment to break the news (293–94).’²⁵⁰ This interpretation brings out well how Aeneas presents his plans to his men. But we may wonder whether Virgil’s ethopoiea is as innocuous as all that—does use of a verb that implies dissimulation not also capture an inherent ambiguity in his actions towards Dido? Sure, he tells his men that he will approach her when the moment is right; but what would a right moment look like? And would Aeneas have found it? His plan anyway goes awry: Dido, so Fama ensures, gets wind of events, quite apart from the fact that Aeneas turns out to be stunningly naive in his assumption that Dido harbours no suspicion (see below on 296–98). Moreover, the dolos in line 296 is most naturally taken as an authorial comment on Aeneas’ plans for the departure, so irrespective of his intention of breaking the news gently at an opportune moment, he is tainted with treachery. As one would expect, Dido, in her address, begins by charging him with, precisely, dissimulation (4.305–06):

‘dissimulare etiam sperasti, perfide, tantum
posse nefas tacitusque mea decedere terra?
…’

[Did you really hope to be able to cover up such an outrage, treacherous one, and depart from my land in silence?]

to which Aeneas responds briefly, denying the charge, at 4.337–38: neque ego hanc abscondere furto/ speraui (ne finge) fugam (‘I did not hope—don’t imagine it!—to conceal this flight in stealth’). Aeneas here is disarmingly—or callously—honest, conceding that his departure is a flight (a frank assessment of the situation and his own perception of it as 281 makes clear: ardet abire fuga), but denying that he wanted to depart in secret (also true, in the light of a literal reading of 291–94). The scenario he clearly had in mind was to get everything secretly ready for an immediate departure, break the news to Dido as gently as possible, and then get out of dodge, in a peculiar mixture of strategic dissimulation (and careful planning) and genuine integrity of character. (In contemporary terms, Aeneas is not someone who would have broken up with his girlfriend by sending a text-message; he would have dropped by at an opportune moment to end the relationship in person, though with a mate waiting outside in a car, with the engine running.)

291–294: sese interea, quando optima Dido/ nesciat et tantos rumpi non speret amores,/ temptaturum aditus et quae mollissima fandi/ tempora, quis rebus dexter modus: Virgil continues in indirect speech (which explains the subjunctives nesciat and speret in the quando-clause), but the implied verb switches from one of command to one of plain speech as Aeneas tells his men what he plans to do while they get the fleet ready: sese is subjective accusative and temptaturum [sc. esse] the corresponding infinitive, separated from each other by a massive hyperbaton. temptaturum takes a direct object (aditus: in the accusative plural) as well as two indirect questions, enumerated asyndetically: quae mollissima fandi tempora [sc. sint], quis rebus dexter modus [sc. sit]. The hyperbaton and the elisions arguably underscore Aeneas’ sense of unease. Ironically, his thoughts are reflected in Dido’s plea to Anna to seek out Aeneas again to see whether anything can be done to change his mind at 4.421–423: solam nam perfidus ille/ te colere, arcanos etiam tibi credere sensus;/ sola uiri mollis aditus et tempora noras (‘For that treacherous man befriended you alone, to you he confided even his secret thoughts; you alone know how to mooch up to the big guy at schmooze time’).²⁵¹

291–292: quando optima Dido/ nesciat et tantos rumpi non speret amores: as the following lines make clear, Aeneas is, of course, utterly mistaken—and hence emerges as potentially naïve, or self-deceived. To begin with, he underestimates the powers of love in general (see 296: quis fallere possit amantem?) and Dido’s sense of foreboding and suspicion in particular (see 298: omnia tuta timens). Secondly, he underestimates the talent of Fama to pick up and disseminate sensational news (see 298–299: eadem impia Fama furenti/ detulit armari classem cursumque parari). And thirdly and conversely, he vastly overestimates the ability of himself and his men to disguise their preparation for departure. What is Virgil telling us about his hero by thus emphasizing his lack of shrewdness?

291–292: quando optima Dido/ nesciat: it is only now that Aeneas comes clean with his mates: he has not yet told Dido, their host and his lover, that he is going to ditch her. Not that they care: as 295 makes clear (cf. laeti), they are only too glad to be off.

291: optima Dido: ‘Optima is heart-breaking in its context;… It means what it says, that Dido was all the world to him; it is one of the tiny revelations of Aeneas’ true feelings, like dulcis terras, 281.’²⁵² True, but we here also get a hint of the line he will take later on, the timeless ‘look, it’s me, not you—you are optima and all, and I love you dearly, but I got to find my own fatum, indeed am compelled to do so by the gods.’ The choice of the epithet thus focalizes not just Aeneas’ ‘true feelings’ and his genuine dilemma, but also issues of sincerity (or dishonesty). We may also wonder about Virgil’s authorial strategy: Aeneas has been strangely absent from the narrative so far: we have seen him resplendent during the hunt, obliquely active in the cave, mentioned by Fama and Iarbas, but ‘Aeneas the man’ has remained elusive. We get no insight into the mind of the hero while the affair is on; Aeneas only re-enters the narrative when, for him, the affair is over. There is, then, a narrative gap that could presumably be filled with volumes.

292: tantos rumpi non speret amores: the design emphasizes tantos by means of the hyperbaton, but ironically underscores that the love, however great, is shattered by way of the words that keep tantos and amores apart: rumpi non speret.

294–295: ocius omnes/ imperio laeti parent et iussa facessunt: everyone instantly (ocius omnes, linked by alliteration) hustles to carry out the orders. There is no retarding parere parabat (see above 238) here. On the contrary: everyone seems overjoyed that Aeneas has finally come to his senses. As Austin puts it: ‘Note how uneasy Aeneas’ men have plainly been in Carthage, and compare their simple alacrity with his worried indecision: they have no problems like his to complicate their little world.’²⁵³ The contrast between the leader and the led pervades the entire epic, and often involves a related contrast between complexity and simplicity. Virgil constantly emphasizes how difficult it is to be a leader. It involves cares and requires skills in decision-making (and decisiveness). The verses here at any rate portray reaching a decision as vastly more difficult than carrying out an order. In Virgil’s conception of leadership dissimulation also plays a role: a good leader does not share every worry he has with his troops.

296–299 (and beyond): Hell Hath no Fury Like a Woman Scorned

Dido somehow ‘divines’ (297: praesensit) what Aeneas has in mind, loses control of her rational self (she is furens and inops animi), and rages (300: saeuit) and raves (301: bacchatur) through the city, before accosting Aeneas (from 305 onwards). What is the source of her premonition? She seems to rely on her own intuition, and Fama does the rest.

296: At regina: the phrase introduces the middle section of the book. It echoes 4.279: At uero Aeneas, harks back to the keynote of the book (4.1: At regina) and points forward to the third occurrence of the phrase at 4.504.

296: quis fallere possit amantem?: amantem: ‘someone in love’; possit is in the potential subjunctive.

297–298: motusque excepit prima futuros/ omnia tuta timens: prima could be taken either as an adjective instead of an adverb (‘instantly’) or as a predicative to the subject, i.e. Dido, in the sense of ‘she found out first of all.’ There is a similar ambiguity in tuta (with a short a): it could modify either omnia (neuter accusative plural) or the subject of timens, i.e. Dido (feminine nominative singular). The former would mean ‘(already) fearing everything even while it was (still) safe’, the latter ‘(already) fearing everything even while she was (still) safe.’ Pease registers that some editors have endorsed the second possibility but notes that ‘that explanation violates all the ancient understandings of the line and lacks appropriateness in the context.’²⁵⁴ All subsequent editors (Austin, Maclennan, O’Hara) concur. Austin suggests that ‘Virgil thus makes it clear that Dido in her inmost heart was never free from self-blame.’²⁵⁵ Conversely, one could argue that she (quite rightly) knew never to trust Aeneas fully. The phrase harks back to 1.583 (Achates to Aeneas, commenting on how Dido is receiving his lost comrades with warm welcome): omnia tuta uides, classem sociosque receptos. See also 4.373: nusquam tuta fides. Cf. Propertius 2.12.11–21 (about Cupid and his arrows): ante ferit quoniam tuti quam cernimus hostem/ nec quisquam ex illo uulnere sanus abit (‘he strikes when we think we are safe before we even see the enemy. And no one thus struck departs in good health’).

298–299: eadem impia Fama furenti/ detulit armari classem cursumque parari: eadem and impia both modify Fama (i.e. ‘the self-same accursed creature who had already spread the news of the liaison’). She conveys her news with some exquisite rhetorical ornamentation as if to mock the queen: note the chiasmus (a) armari (b) classem (b) cursum (a) parari, with the two nouns linked by alliteration (classem, cursum) and the two verbs by homoioteleuton (armari, parari).

* * *

NB: The set passage stops here. But the following lines set the tone for the rest of the book, which is assigned in English translation. I have therefore extended the commentary until 303:

300–301: saeuit inops animi totamque incensa per urbem/ bacchatur: the image of Dido in torment raging through her city collapses the boundary between wilderness and civilization: the queen exhibits the savage, out-of- control, and insane demeanour of a Maenad in the city itself. Both saeuit and bacchatur (each prominently placed at the beginning of the line) are striking: saeuio evokes the savagery and rage of beasts, natural forces, or violent passion, whereas bacchatur, which corresponds metrically to praesensit in 297: three long syllables, placed in enjambment, followed by a trithemimeral caesura, suggests that Dido behaves like a Maenad in the entourage of Bacchus, in her raving rampage through her city. The fact that the narrative proper and the simile share the verb bacchatur reinforces the assimilation. Virgil uses bacchatur again at 4.666, right after Dido has thrown herself on Aeneas’ sword, with Fama as subject: concussam bacchatur Fama per urbem (where concussam… per urbem mimics 300: totamque… per urbem).²⁵⁶ A Bacchant in the thrall of divine furor is everything a Roman senator is not: his stately comportment sharply contrasts with the frenzied behaviour associated with being possessed by divine madness; and his reasoning faculty are the exact opposite of a mind in the grip of ecstatic intoxication.

301: qualis commotis excita sacris/ Thyias: sacris refers to ‘either the “rites” in the abstract, or, more probably, the actual “symbols” or emblems of the god, brandished in ecstasy.’²⁵⁷ A Thyias is a Maenad, i.e. one of the female followers of Bacchus. The designation derives from a Greek equivalent of bacchari, i.e. thuein, ‘to rush violently.’ The word seems to have been introduced into Latin by Catullus. See 64.391–92: saepe uagus Liber Parnasi uertice summo/ Thyadas effusis euantis crinibus egit (‘Often Bacchus roaming on the topmost summit of Parnassus drove his Thyiads, shouting and with their hair flowing’).

302–303: ubi audito stimulant trieterica Baccho/ orgia nocturnusque uocat clamore Cithaeron: stimulant and uocat lack a direct object (such as eam)—a nice touch that reinforces the numinous powers of the god. The revels and the mountain do not bother to spur on or call this particular Thyiad; rather, they constitute a force field into which the Thyiad is attracted like a magnet, losing control of her ego and rational agency.

302: audito… Baccho: an ablative absolute.

302–303: trieterica…/ orgia: trieterica means ‘literally “held every third year”, that is, “in alternate years” by our reckoning; the ancient system of reckoning was inclusive, so that in a given group of years ABCD the festival would be held in the years A and C, the latter being the “third year” inclusive of A.’²⁵⁸

303: nocturnus… Cithaeron: nocturnus (‘at night’) is an adjective used in place of an adverb. Cithaeron is a mountain range between Boeotia and Attica and the site where Pentheus met his doom, being torn limb from limb by the women of Thebes (including his mother and aunt), after they had been turned into raging followers of Dionysus. (Virgil compares Dido to Pentheus at 4.469.) We are entering the terrain of tragedy.