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Footnotes

    1. Cf. John Dryden’s (1631–1700) famous appraisal of Virgil’s Georgics as ‘the best poem by the best poet.’ For Boris Johnson’s mischievous misprision, see the promotional video for CICERO, an acronym for Certamen In Concordiam Europae Regionumque Orbis, a competition (certamen) designed to further the peaceful harmony (concordia) of Europe (Europae) and the regions (regionum) of the world (orbis), at www.ciceroconcordia.com.

    2. See Goldhill (2004).

    3. To meet Minimus, go to http://www.minimus-etc.co.uk/.

    4. Horsfall (1995), p. 123.

    5. See I. Gildenhard, Cicero, Against Verres, 2.1.53–86: Latin Text with Introduction, Study Questions, Commentary and English Translation (Cambridge, 2011). The book is also freely available to read in its entirety at the publisher’s website (http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/96) and at Google Books at http://www.openbookpublishers.com. The free interactive version with teachers’ comments is available at http://openbookpublishers.theclassicslibrary.com/home/

    6. See Bibliography for details.

    7. Cf. Henderson (2006), p. 13, n. 19, on Austin writing his Aeneid 1 commentary after his Aeneid 4 commentary: ‘Aeneid I as “reprise” of Aeneid IV is a piquant trajectory—one followed by many a student/Latinist, for IV has been excerpted as the text set for early examination syllabuses so regularly that it always already does come first.’

    8. Lyne (1987), p. 121.

    9. Love, while a seemingly universal phenomenon, manifests culturally specific inflections and therefore also has a history: see S. May, Love: A History (New Haven and London, 2011).

  10. Gutting (2006), pp. 269–70.

  11. O’Hara (2011), p. 28.

  12. Austin (1963), p. 45.

  13. Austin (1963), p. 74.

  14. O’Hara (2011), p. 42.

  15. Hardie (2009), p. 107.

  16. Austin (1963), p. 87.

  17. Austin (1963), p. 92.

  18. O’Hara (2011), p. 52.

  19. Austin (1963), p. 94.

  20. Fans of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series may wish to compare the irony that the evil wizard Voldemort helped to turn Harry into the hero who would ultimately defeat him by acting on a prophecy that predicted this outcome.

  21. Compare Odysseus’ account of his travels at the court of Phaeacia at Odyssey 9–12 before his onward travel to Ithaca.

  22. For Aeneas as spin doctor in Aeneid 2 see Powell (2011).

  23. See especially 4.617–18:… uideatque indigna suorum/ funera (‘let him see the wretched deaths of his friends’). Dido’s garments are part of a tragic economy of gift exchange. See Quint (1993) 65: ‘Dido in Book 1 receives the veil of Helen and the scepter of Ilione (647–55), Latinus in Book 7, a libation bowl of Anchises and the scepter and robes of Priam (244–48). These Trojan spoils carry with them a kind of curse, and their new possessors are condemned to play out the tragic roles for which the costumes fit them. Their cities now become new versions of the fallen Troy: Carthage’s walls seem to be on fire with the flames of Dido’s pyre (5.3–4); Laurentium’s walls are literally burnt down (12.574f.).’

  24. Schiesaro (2008), pp. 206–07.

  25. Quinn (1968), p. 135.

  26. The most striking use of at as a keynote has to be the opening of Apuleius’ The Golden Ass: it is the first word of the novel, casting it as an already begun ‘conversation’ with the reader.

  27. facto hic fine arguably refers both to the action in the poem (the deictic hic in a temporal sense: at this moment) and to this particular point of the poem, i.e. the end of Book 3 (hic in a spatial sense: at this point in the scroll).

  28. Austin (1963), p. 25.

  29. I owe this Extra Information section to John Henderson, who recommended its inclusion ‘to emphasise just how wide a range of registers the Aeneid spans—from pedantic aetiological-etymological scholasticism to searing hot erotics in a turn of the page/ switch of a scroll—and how sheer the juxtapositions can be—a big part of Virgil’s “sheer” audacity’ (per litteras).

  30. Homer was considered the fountainhead of every conceivable type of discourse, including political theory, and his epics certainly portray key issues in politics in a proto-philosophical spirit. A good place to start from to explore this topic further is Murray (1965).

  31. A good starting point for exploring Virgil’s representation of Aeneas and Dido as king and queen against ancient discourses on kingship is Cairns (1989), esp. Ch. 1, ‘Divine and Human Kingship’ and Ch. 2, ‘Kingship and the Love Affair of Aeneas and Dido.’

  32. For further discussion and other possible intertexts see Essay 5.3: Allusion.

  33. See Lyne (1987), p. 120, n. 31, with reference to Otis (1964), pp. 70–72 and others.

  34. See Polybius 38.21–2 and Appian, Roman History 8.19.132.

  35. Otis (1964), p. 72.

  36. See esp. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2.43: appellata est enim ex uiro uirtus (‘for the word for excellence [uirtus] is derived from the word for man [uir]’).

  37. For a recent monograph on the term, see McDonnell (2006), though reviewers have argued that he unduly simplifies the evidence: see e.g. R. A. Kaster in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (02.08.2007).

  38. For a splendid and exhaustive treatment of this difficult subject matter see Smith (2006).

  39. Jupiter, in his magisterial unscrolling of destiny in Book 1, comments on this nomenclature as follows: at puer Ascanius, cui nunc cognomen Iulo/ additur (Ilus erat, dum res stetit Ilia regno)… (‘But the boy Ascanius, now surnamed Iulus (Ilus he was, while the Ilian state stood firm in its kingdom)…’).

  40. Hence the difficulties ‘new men’ (homines noui) such as Marcus Tullius Cicero faced, who hailed from the gens Tullia: they were called ‘new’ since they belonged to gentes that had no prior consulship to their credit.

  41. See further Gildenhard (2007), esp. pp. 92–98.

  42. The passage is important also to illustrate that Aeneas, from the beginning, considered his stay in Libya nothing more than an unforeseen, temporary sojourn—his ultimate goal is Italy, and he will travel on. He is, however, noticeably more reticent about his final destination here than he was at 1.380, when talking to his (disguised) mother Venus: Italiam quaero patriam et genus ab Ioue summo (‘I seek Italy, my fatherland, and a race sprung from Jupiter most high’).

  43. For a word of caution on the possible etymological connection between Venus and uenenum, see O’Hara (1996), p. 106: ‘Due [another scholar] has suggested that the metaphor is underscored by a presumed connection between the words Venus and venenum, but this suggestion must remain tentative, since ancient awareness of the perhaps genuine connection beween Venus and venenum is not clearly attested, and wordplay in Vergil here is not certain.’

  44. Virgil hints at the mythic background later in the book. See 4.584–85: 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’).

  45. Maclennan (2007), p. 74.

  46. Virgil here develops an idiom pioneered by Cicero, de Republica 6.17, where Sol is described as of such magnitude ut cuncta sua luce lustret et compleat (‘that he illuminates and fills all things with his light’) and Lucretius 5.693, where the sun is described as ‘illuminating lands and sky with oblique light’ (obliquo terras et caelum lumine lustrans).

  47. For metrical devices underscoring Dido’s mental disposition see Austin (1963), p. 28: ‘the elision at the end of the second foot, and the absence of a third-foot caesura, give a metrical picture of urgency.’ (Note, however, that the elision occurs at the beginning of the third foot, though there is an elision at the end of the second foot in the previous line: umentemque Aurora.)

  48. For the dialogue with Catullus and Callimachus that is arguably built into Virgil’s use of the adjective unanima, see Essay 3: Allusion.

  49. Lyne (1987), p. 195.

  50. See in particular 4.450–51, the moment when Dido embraces death: tum uero infelix fatis exterrita Dido/ mortem orat (‘Then, indeed, shocked and awed by her doom, luckless Dido prays for death’).

  51. I cite the translation of William H. Race in the Loeb Classical Library edition (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2008).

  52. Goold in the Loeb edition (‘Who is this stranger guest…?) and Mclennan in his commentary (‘What a strange visitor…’) translate nouus with ‘strange’, but that does not seem quite right: Aeneas is no stranger to Dido; indeed, she is quite familiar with his background and story—but he arrived out of the blue.

  53. According to Homer, Odysseus, despite sharing the bed with various immortals during his voyage (Circe, Calypso), does not sire any offspring; in an alternative tradition, however, he had a son by Circe, called Telegonos.

  54. Gutting (2006), p. 268.

  55. I owe the complications to John Henderson, per litteras.

  56. The term occurs one other time in the Aeneid (at 2.549, with reference to Neoptolemus) and, unsurprisingly, becomes a favourite of Lucan, who uses it 13 times in his Bellum Civile.

  57. See further Essay 4: Religion.

  58. Morwood (1999), p. 116.

  59. Gutting (2006), p. 269.

  60. Maclennan (2007), p. 76.

  61. See Morwood (1999), p. 10.

  62. I owe this point to John Henderson.

  63. Lyne (1989), pp. 31–32.

  64. Hersch (2010), pp. 166–67.

  65. Maclennan (2007), p. 77.

  66. Austin (1963), p. 30.

  67. Austin (1963), p. 31. Others, including Conington (1884), argue that labantem should be taken with impulit and construe the sense to be animum impulit ut labaret. Which reading do you find more compelling?

  68. Schiesaro (2008), p. 107.

  69. http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/pudor-e1014400. See further Langlands (2006), esp. Ch. 1: ‘Sexual virtue on display I: the cults of pudicitia and honours for women.’

  70. Collard (1975), p. 145.

  71. Kaster (1997), p. 5, and, in more detail, Kaster (2005), Ch. 2: ‘Fifty Ways to Feel Your Pudor.’

  72. Kaster (1997), pp. 9–10.

  73. O’Hara (2011), p. 23. See Pease (1935), p. 110 for further details.

  74. See Essay 2: Historiographical Dido, for the full story.

  75. O’Hara (2011), p. 24.

  76. Maclennan (2007), p. 78.

  77. Pease (1935), p. 113.

  78. I owe appreciation of this contrast to John Henderson.

  79. O’Hara (2011), p. 24.

  80. O’Hara (2011), p. 24.

  81. Maclennan (2007), p. 79.

  82. For a recent discussion, see Beard (2007).

  83. Austin (1963), p. 38.

  84. O’Hara (1993), pp. 105–06.

  85. Pease (1935), p. 128.

  86. Austin (1963), p. 39.

  87. Austin (1963), p. 40.

  88. Ibid.

  89. Expressed in Latin the principle is the snappy do ut des, i.e. ‘I give [something] so that you may give [something in return]’—though this precise phrase is not attested in our sources.

  90. Pease (1935), pp. 134–37.

  91. Somewhat ironically, the only parallel passage routinely cited that mentions all three divinities comes from the Pervigilium Veneris (‘The Night-watch of Venus’): Nec Ceres, nec Bacchus absunt, nec poetarum deus (43). But this poem dates to the second or third century AD, and the author may well have fashioned this line with Aeneid 4.58 in mind, which would render the argument circular.

  92. Terence, at Eun. 732, famously claimed sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus, i.e. without food and drink, love goes frigid, but one wonders what Ceres and Liber here do sine Venere.

  93. Pease (1935), p. 135.

  94. Maclennan (2007), p. 83.

  95. See also his note ad Aen. 6.244. Both are quoted by Pease (1935), p. 138.

  96. Pease (1935), p. 139.

  97. Maclennan (2007), p. 83.

  98. The cultural logic behind this practice is fascinating and tells us a lot about how the Romans construed their supernatural sphere. An instauratio (‘repetition of a ritual’) could be proactive as well as reactive. If a ritual was clearly disrupted, it could simply be repeated to pre-empt the displeasure of the divinities involved. (A good example is the festival of the Bona Dea in 62, which Clodius allegedly gate-crashed to spy on Caesar’s wife: the priests ordered a repetition.) But it could also be reactive, to deal with cases in which the flaw had gone unnoticed and disaster had struck. instauratio thus enabled the Romans to explain failures and disasters without giving up on their belief in benevolent and supportive divinities. The (retrospective) argument after, say, a military disaster could always be that the rituals performed before the battle had been in some respect flawed (given the complicated rules, slips are easy to posit), meaning that the gods had no reason to lend their support in this particular instance. And a careful repetition of the ritual would ensure a restitution of the pax deorum.

  99. For those of you who want to learn more about Rome’s civic religion (and Roman religion more generally) Beard, North, and Price (1998) offer a superb account of the material.

100. Austin (1963), pp. 43–44.

101. See the excellent website by Eleanor Robson, ‘Sacrificial divination: confirmation by extispicy’, Knowledge and Power, Higher Education Academy (2010) http://knp.prs.heacademy.ac.uk/essentials/sacrificialdivination/, which discusses the practice in ancient Assyria and includes some good illustrative material (including the sketch of a liver).

102. O’Hara (2011), p. 27. See also O’Hara (1993), p. 110 and O’Hara (1997), p. 251.

103. Maclennan (2007), p. 84.

104. O’Hara (2011), p. 28.

105. See e.g. the fabulations of Austin (1963), p. 44: ‘Virgil means that nothing could really help Dido, for her offerings were no more than lip-service to the gods, and her soothsayers (uates) were powerless to diagnose and heal her mental disorder (furentem). We are not told what the omens were; presumably the vates were satisfied, or perhaps they deliberately produced the favourable signs that Dido so plainly desired; but at least she had formally expiated her fault…, and that was the main thing.’ Are Dido’s offerings really no more than ‘lip-service’? Where are we told of uates trying to diagnose and heal Dido’s mental disorder—or that they interpreted omens, or, indeed, lied about what they saw? And one wonders how and where Dido formally expiated her ‘fault’ (whatever that may be in this context).

106. One haruspex appears in the Aeneid, the venerable Etruscan Tarchon, who backs Aeneas against Turnus. See 8.498 and 11.739. He is a figure quite different from (if genealogically related to) the specialist entrail-inspectors (haruspices) of historical times. For one, Virgil assimilates him to a uates (seer-prophet) by having another figure of privileged insight into the workings of the divine (Euander) note that he sings of fate (8.499: fata canens).

107. The strong line taken here should not obscure that distinguished scholars have argued the opposite case, with reference to further evidence. See e.g. Conington (1884), p. 256, who concedes the force of the parallels at 4.464 and 8.627, before continuing: ‘But the ordinary interpretation, “vatum mentes”, is clearly right, confirmed as it is by Apuleius, Met. 10. 2, “Heu medicorum ignarae mentes”, where the reference is to the powerlessness of physic in the case of love, and by Sil[ius Italicus] 8. 100, “Heu sacri vatum errores”, also an imitation of this passage.’ But are these parallels from other authors really more conclusive than evidence from the Aeneid itself, especially since imitation does not necessarily require slavish imitation? (One should at least entertain the possibility that Apuleius and Silius could have—deliberately or unintentionally—misread Virgil.)

108. For this complication see O’Hara (1990), a book best read in conjunction with the review by Alessandro Schiesaro in Classical Philology 88 (1993), pp. 258–65.

109. See 1.294–96: Furor impius intus/ saeua sedens super arma et centum uinctus aënis/ post tergum nodis fremet horridus ore cruento; ‘within, impious Rage, sitting on savage arms, his hands fast bound behind with a hundred brazen knots, shall roar in the ghastliness of blood- stained lips.’ The reference to the temple of Janus blurs the distinction between external and internal warfare in ways that readers with traditional-republican allegiances would not have appreciated.

110. Does Virgil thereby imply that his hero is flawed and the killing unjust and unjustified? Or does he want to suggest that at times the maintenance of order and the restitution of justice may require ‘furious’ actions?

111. The standard treatment is Hershkowitz (1998).

112. See Gildenhard (2011), pp. 324–26, 328–30.

113. You may enjoy reading W. H. Auden’s poem ‘Secondary Epic’ (1959), which mocks the pretension of Virgil’s uates-persona since it turns him into a retrospective prophet at the service of Augustus and his regime: ‘No, Virgil, no:/ Not even the first of the Romans can learn/ His Roman history in the future tense,/ Not even to serve your political turn;/ Hindsight as foresight makes no sense.’

114. infelix is of course Dido’s standard epithet: apart from here, Virgil also uses it at 1.712, 749; 4.450, 529, 596; and 6.456.

115. In his first simile at 1.148–56, Virgil inverts the conventional dynamics of comparison by using a simile drawn from the socio-political sphere (a mob at the brink of violence calmed down by a senior authority figure) to illustrate events in nature (the winds whipping up a storm being called to order by Neptune).

116. Pöschl (1962), p. 81.

117. Anderson (1968), p. 9.

118. Lyne (1987), p. 196.

119. Austin (1963), p. 47.

120. Horsfall (1995), p. 124, n. 13.

121. Morgan (1994), pp. 67–68 with reference to Cicero, de Natura Deorum 2.126: auditum est… capras autem in Creta feras cum essent confixae uenenatis sagittis, herbam quaerere quae dictamnus uocaretur, quam cum gustauissent sagittas excidere dicunt e corpore (‘it has been reported… that wild goats in Crete, when pierced with poisoned arrows, seek a herb called dittany; when they have eaten of it, so people say, the arrows drop out of their bodies’) and Pliny, Natural History, 8.97 and 26.142.

122. Armstrong (2002), pp. 330–31. For what Cretan women get up to in Latin poetry, see Armstrong (2006). I owe these references to John Henderson.

123. Henderson, per litteras. He refers us to A. D’Angour, The Greeks and the New: Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience (Cambridge, 2011), Ch. 1.

124. See further Austin (1963), p. 47: ‘Note the varied vowels, the repeated s sounds, the gentle assonance of “suadentque cadentia”,… The rhythm of 81 itself suggests sleep…, with no strong caesura, and the regular diminishing of the three final words.’

125. See Austin (1963), p. 48: ‘This use of double -que is a mannerism of high epic style, very common in Virgil, Lucan, and Statius; it is never found in classical prose. It goes back to Ennius, who took it over from Homer’s use of τε… τε.’ Within the assigned passage, double -que also occurs at 94 (tuque puerque tuus) and 146 (Cretesque Dryopesque).

126. The second-century BC historiographer Polybius (a Greek hostage in Rome) gives an account of the ritual at 6.53–54. See further Flower (1996).

127. Maclennan (2007), p. 87.

128. O’Hara (2011), p. 30.

129. The other passage to bear in mind here is 4.296: quis fallere possit amantem?

130. The wording also recalls Laocoon’s assessment of the wooden horse at 2.46: haec in nostros fabricata est machina muros (‘this has been built as a war-machine against our walls’).

131. For discussion of this relationship see Nelis (2001), p. 147 and Hall (2011), pp. 624–27. Hall argues for the presence of a hitherto underappreciated allusion to Sappho in the passage. More generally, Feeney (1991) is indispensable for any scene in the Aeneid that involves the gods.

132. Hall (2011), p. 625.

133. Conington (1884), p. 148.

134. Austin (1963), p. 51.

135. Pease (1935), p. 167.

136. Austin (1963), pp. 53–54.

137. I owe this point to John Henderson, per litteras.

138. Quint (1993), p. 93.

139. O’Hara (2011), p. 32.

140. Pease (1935), p. 171.

141. Ibid.

142. The irony becomes even more marked if we factor in the ‘Deception of Zeus’ in Iliad 14, where Hera requests the loan of Aphrodite’s girdle to seduce and befuddle her husband—though the last word of the line (precando), perhaps deliberately, puts the emphasis on rhetoric rather than sex as a means of persuasion.

143. Pease (1935), p. 173.

144. Maclennan (2007), p. 91.

145. Austin (1963), p. 57.

146. She follows this up with two lines in which she promises Aeolus that the marriage will be ever-lasting (he gains a consort for life) and produce beautiful offspring: omnis ut tecum meritis pro talibus annos/ exigat et pulchra faciat te prole parentem (1.74–75). These aspects are—perhaps ominously?—absent from Juno’s plan here.

147. On Venus’ smile see further Konstan (1986).

148. In 1945 a mosaic illustrating the hunt was discovered at Low Ham in Somerset. For a picture, see R. P. Wright, ‘Roman Britain in 1945: I. Sites Explored; II. Inscriptions’, Journal of Roman Studies, 36 (1946), p. 148, Plate 11. For discussion see Anderson (2006).

149. Caldwell (2008), passim, with the quotation from p. 426.

150. See Catullus 61.76–100, which also features a reference to the pudor of the bride (83).

151. The sentence reads like Virgil’s response to Juno’s pronouncement: ille picks up hic; the perfect fuit contrasts with the future erit; and the emphasis on letum and mala underscores that Juno’s perverse idea of a marriage will lead to tragedy and death.

152. Syed (2005), p. 101.

153. Austin (1963), pp. 61–62.

154. Horace makes fun of this feature at Ars Poetica 139: Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus (‘The mountains will give birth, there will be born a ludicrous mouse’).

155. See Pease (1935), pp. 182–83.

156. For the topos, in Catullus and elsewhere, see Hersch (2010), pp. 144–48.

157. Austin (1963), p. 62.

158. Caldwell (2008), p. 428 points out that the sinister connotations of the term increase significantly if we bear in mind what this loanword from the Greek means in Greek: ‘Moreover, thalamus is doubly resonant, in that it also assumes the meaning “tomb”, especially in Greek; the conflation of the elements of nuptial and funereal ritual is especially prevalent in Greek tragedy, often involving the girl who fails to make the transition to marriage.’

159. ‘Supposedly’ since the reluctance of the bride, at least according to Catullus, may well be faked.

160. Segal (2000), p. 94.

161. It is worth citing the passage in Athenaeus that preserves this tidbit from Theopompus since it brings out the negative political ideology of the colour purple as a sign of luxury, debauchery, and moral decay that leads to tyranny and civil war. See The Learned Banqueters 12.526c: ‘According to Phylarchus, the Colophonians originally practiced harsh social discipline, but after they ran aground on the reef of luxury and became friends and allies of the Lydians, they went out with their hair elaborately decorated with gold jewelry… The fact that they got drunk at all hours made them so depraved, that some of them had never seen the sun rise or set. They also passed a law—still in effect in our time—that pipe-girls, harp-girls, and all entertainers of this sort were to be paid to work from dawn until noon, and from then until dusk; after that, they spent the rest of the night getting drunk. Theopompus in Book XV of the History says that 1000s of them wandered around the city wearing sea-purple robes. Even kings did not have much fabric of this sort in that period, and they went to great lengths to obtain it; for purple dye cost its weight in silver. So since they lived this way, they became enmeshed in tyranny and civil war, and were ruined along with their country’ (trans. by S. D. Olsen in the Loeb Classical Library edition, Cambridge, MA, 2010).

162. O’Hara (2011), p. 35. He references John Dryden’s Preface to his Sylvae (1685).

163. For more statistics and general information on the golden line and the history of scholarship on it, see the excellent Wikipedia entry on ‘Golden Line’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_line).

164. Clausen (1987), p. 60.

165. Reed (1995), p. 95.

166. Austin (1963), p. 64.

167. Clausen (1987), p. 23.

168. In his version of the Medea myth in the Metamorphoses, Ovid sends this tradition up by suggesting that Jason was particularly beautiful when he met Medea ‘casu’—by chance.

169. Weber (2002), p. 324.

170. See also 4.193, from Fama’s song: nunc hiemem inter se luxu, quam longa, fouere.

171. Weber (2002), p. 323.

172. Ibid.

173. Pease (1935), p. 193.

174. Weber (2002), p. 325, with particular reference to Euripides’ Bacchae. He goes on to show that the ritual dancing here mentioned fits Dionysus far better than Apollo (324–25).

175. Dryopes: ‘the Dryopians share with Dionysus nomenclature connecting them with trees in general and with the oak [drus, in Greek] in particular’ (329); Agathyrsi: ‘the etymology of which, as it is explained by one Pisander in Stephanus Byzantius (s.v.), would make of these people “the right thyrsic ones”’ (328). (A thyrsos is a staff wreathed by ivy carried by Dionysus and his followers.)

176. Weber (2002), p. 329: ‘In the realm of diction, Virgil’s verb fremere is something of a vox propria for the Bacchic roar, recurring in this connection not only in the Aeneid (7.389), but also in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (3.528). Indeed, fremere is probably cognate with Greek <bremein> and, hence, with Dionysus’ epithet Bromius.’

177. Weber (2002) pp. 329–30, 332–33.

178. Pease (1935), p. 195.

179. Weber (2002), p. 330.

180. ibid., p. 331.

181. See Conington (1884), p. 266: ‘The image is from Il. 1. 46… though the nature of the motion is different.’

182. Lyne (1987), p. 124.

183. Lyne (1994), p. 199.

184. Ecce occurs 37 times in the Aeneid: for what it is doing in the epic, see the nuanced discussion by Dionisotti (2007). Our instance receives mention on page 80, ‘when Dido’s hunt moves from brilliant show into action’; more generally: ‘insofar as it [sc. ecce] has a definable meaning, it is that of expressing immediacy and engagement, in relation to happenings, people or thoughts, whether visible or not’ (p. 83).

185. For a discussion of the cave of the winds, see Essay 1: Content and Form.

186. Austin (1963), p. 68.

187. Austin (1963), p. 69.

188. Moles (1984), p. 52. See also Pöschl (1962), p. 82: ‘But the signs, multiplied by earth tremor… are not those of a gay wedding feast, but are rather related to the epiphanies of the gods of the nether world.’ He notes that ‘here begins the activity of Fama, which as an inescapable, growing demoniacal power, somewhat like another Allecto, announces and sets off the tragic development.’

189. O’Hara (2011), p. 38.

190. See Hersch (2010), pp. 266–67.

191. Hersch (2010), p. 193, in the context of a broader discussion of the attestations of pronuba in Latin literature from Plautus onwards.

192. Pease (1935), p. 207.

193. Pease (1935), p. 209.

194. Virgil uses a similar formulation in Aeneid 7, with reference to Ascanius’ shooting of the pet-stag that stirs the Latins to pick up arms: quae prima laborum/ causa fuit (481–82) (‘this was the first cause of travails’).

195. furtiuus in the sense of ‘stealthy’ or ‘clandestine’ is also used of love-affairs by Catullus 7.8 and occurs in other love poets as well (OLD s.v. 2a), though it is difficult to say whether it has a distinct generic flavour here. If it does, the adjective marks a switch from ‘elegy’ to ‘tragedy.’

196. Moles (1984), pp. 48–54.

197. Ibid., pp. 51–52.

198. See also Homer, Iliad 2.93 and Odyssey 24.413 (for the workings of rumour). For a survey of earlier authors as well as imitators of Virgil (from Ovid onwards) see Pease (1935), pp. 211–13.

199. Hardie (2009), p. 108.

200. The nickname of the now defunct News of the World, for instance, was ‘News of the Screws’: see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070733.

201. Hardie (2009), p. 67, with a more detailed discussion at pp. 116–25 (‘The Sublime and Grotesque Body of the Poet’).

202. Another famous instance of this trope occurs at the very end of the Aeneid. Just before Aeneas deals Turnus the fatal blow he tells his foe that the one who is going to kill him is Pallas, the son of Euander whom Turnus had slain before: 12.948–49: Pallas te hoc uulnere, Pallas/ immolat et poenam scelerato ex sanguine sumit.

203. Hardie (2009), p. 71. (Note that the bolding of auget in Lucretius points to uiget in Virgil. One could further argue that Virgil, with adquirit, economically sums up the three Lucretian verbs sumere, crescit, and auget, just as he contracts the phrase ualidas… uiris into uiget. Lucretius’ prolixity is of course part of his message: it conveys something of the difficulty of harnessing all the atoms that go into the making of a thunderbolt; Virgil’s divine agent can operate more organically.)

204. Hardie (2009), p. 72. See also p. 93: ‘The unpacking of Religio into fama (deum), fulmina, minitans murmur provides us with an identikit for Fama: her name, the meteorological phenomenon with which she is allusively identified, and the hostile mutterings that are her mode of operation.’

205. Ironically, Fama goes on to stimulate religious doubts in at least one character in the poem, i.e. Iarbas: see below on 4.198–218. In other words, she has the same effect as Epicurus, throwing into question the notion of a universe governed by divine forces.

206. Cf. Aeneid 3.658 (of Polyphemus): monstrum horrendum informe ingens…

207. Austin (1963), p. 72.

208. See further Hardie (2009), pp. 99–100 who points out that a variant of this construction recurs at Aeneid 7.325–26 when Virgil describes the Fury Allecto: cui tristia bella | iraeque insidiaeque et crimina noxia cordi, which in turn points back to Ennius’ representation of Discordia (‘Strife’) in his epic Annales, fragment 220–21 in Skutsch’s edition: corpore tartarino prognata Paluda uirago | cui par imber et ignis, spiritus et grauis terra (‘a maiden in a military cloak, born with hellish body, of equal proportion with water and fire, air and heavy earth’). Discordia, like Fama an outbirth of chthonic divinities, is of obvious relevance to the Fama-episode and her personified appearance in Ennius may have had archetypal status for Virgil. See Hardie (2009), p. 101: ‘Ennius’ Discordia was perhaps the original embodiment in Roman poetry of the monstrous sublime, her impact heightened by the judicious obscurity of her elemental body’ with a more detailed discussion following on pages 103–07, drawing in part on Feeney (1998), pp. 109–11.

209. Dyer (1989). He argues that this interpretation would go some way towards explaining Virgil’s preference for mirabile dictu over mirabile uisu (though this can be accounted for in other ways: see note ad loc.). Cf. critically Hardie (2009), pp. 95–96.

210. Mercury, who is, in many ways, chthonic Fama’s Olympian double, is also depicted as flying midways between sky and earth: terras inter caelumque uolabat (256).

211. Hardie (2009), p. 71. See also Pease (1935), pp. 36–38 and Dyson (1996), both cited by Hardie.

212. Austin (1963), p. 73.

213. Hardie (1986), p. 274.

214. See O’Hara (2011), p. 42.

215. Hardie (2009), p. 72.

216. See Pease (1935), p. 230.

217. Pease (1935), p. 233.

218. Austin (1963), p. 77.

219. Pease (1935), p. 235.

220. O’Hara (2011), p. 44.

221. Weber (2002), p. 336.

222. Ibid.

223. Austin (1963), p. 80.

224. Pease (1935), p. 241.

225. Note that Virgil switches from the perfect (promisit) to the present tense (uindicat), for greater vividness or, as Maclennan (2007), p. 108 suggests, because ‘the effect of her actions still continues’.

226. Pease (1935), p. 243.

227. See the bilingual edition (Latin text/ English translation) by Michael C. J. Putnam for the I Tatti Renaissance Library (Harvard University Press) or (for the Latin text only) http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/vegius.html.

228. Pease (1935), p. 246.

229. Hardie (2009), p. 75.

230. Ibid., p. 78.

231. See Hardie (2009), pp. 78–79 on the ‘sublimity of Mercury’s flight’: ‘As often in the Augustan poets it is difficult to judge whether sublimis has a purely spatial meaning, or whether it connotes “sublimity”… Mercury’s rangings are the mythological equivalent of the sublime flight of the mind of Lucretius’ Epicurus, who reaches from earth to heaven in the proem to Book 1 [sc. of the De Rerum Natura]…’ The fact that Virgil deliberately added the word to his Homeric model would seem to support the ‘strong’ reading Hardie argues for.

232. Again, Virgil’s departure from Homer, which enables him to associate Mercury with the pits of Hell as well as with the heights of heaven supports Hardie’s argument that Virgil is striving for a sense of the ‘cosmic sublime’ in this passage, with a figure who measures out the entire universe (cf. Longinus, On the Sublime) over and above his (suddenly seemingly banal) Greek model—were it not for the fact that ‘Virgil’s Homer had been consecrated through centuries of cosmological allegorizing interpretation’ (John Henderson, per litteras). From this point of view, Virgil reinforces through a strategic lexical choice a specific dimension of meaning in—or a way of reading—Homer that turns him into the archegete of the cosmological sublime.

233. Pease (1935), p. 249.

234. O’Hara (2011), p. 47.

235. Austin (1963), p. 87.

236. Hardie (1986), p. 278.

237. See Knauer (1964) (in German) and (1965) (in English). His studies mark a watershed in our appreciation of the literary relationship between Virgil and Homer. For the Odyssean plot of the Aeneid, see more recently Cairns (1989).

238. Pease (1935), pp. 260–61.

239. Weber (2002), pp. 337–38. See Plutarch’s Life of Antony, which was one of Shakespeare’s primary sources for his Antony and Cleopatra.

240. Pease (1935), p. 264.

241. See Syed (2004), p. 188, cited by O’Hara (2011), p. 49. Translation by Earnest Cary in the Loeb Classical Library, 9 volumes, Greek texts and facing English translation (Cambridge, MA, 1914–1927). This is now in the public domain. See: http://penelope.uchicago.edu.ezphost.dur.ac.
uk/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/home.html

242. Hardie (2009), p. 78.

243. Pease (1935), p. 268.

244. Austin (1963), p. 93.

245. O’Hara (2011), p. 51.

246. Austin (1963), p. 94.

247. Pease (1935), p. 272.

248. Ibid., p. 273.

249. Ibid.

250. Horsfall (1995), p. 131.

251. These lines offer surprising, retrospective insight into some of the complex comings and goings at Dido’s palace while the relationship was in full swing: Anna apparently played a key role as confidant and go-between, somehow getting to know Aeneas better than Dido. In some mythic variants, Anna even follows Aeneas to Italy.

252. Austin (1963), p. 94.

253. Austin (1963), p. 95.

254. Pease (1935), p. 277.

255. Austin (1963), p. 96.

256. Also: Aeneid 6.78 and Appendix Virgiliana, Ciris 167: infelix uirgo tota bacchatur in urbe and 480. To gauge the meaning of the verb in a civic context, Cicero’s speeches offer good illustrative material. See in Catilinam 4.11: cerno animo sepulta in patria miseros atque insepultos aceruos ciuium, uersatur mihi ante oculos aspectus Cethegi et furor in uestra caede bacchantis (‘In my mind’s eye I see the pitiful heaps of citizens lying unburied upon the grave of our fatherland; there passes before my eyes the sight of Cethegus and the insanity of him as he raves like a Maenad upon your corpses’) or de Haruspicum Responso 39 (on Clodius):… tum baccharis, tum furis, tum das eas poenas quae solae sunt hominum sceleri a dis immortalibus constitutae (‘… then you are raving like a Bacchant, then you rage insanely, then you suffer the only punishment ordained by the immortal gods for human crime’).

257. Austin (1963), p. 97.

258. Ibid.

259. Austin (1971), p. 44, layout adjusted.

260. Let me spell this out: in luctantis, the ictus falls on luc- and -tis, the word-accent on -tan-; in uentos, the ictus falls on -tos, the word accent on ven-; in tempestatesque, the ictus falls on -pest- and -tes-, the word-accent on -tat-; in sonoras ictus and word-accent coincide on -nor-.

261. See Hardie (1986), pp. 90–97.

262. The alliterative patterning starts with illi indignantes and continues in the following line (56) with circum claustra.

263. One could posit a (very) weak diaeresis in 54 after premit.

264. The gender of the two nouns animos (masculine) and iras (feminine), moreover, mirrors the gender of the nouns in 53, i.e. uentos (masculine) and tempestates (feminine).

265. The classic study of Virgil’s cosmos is Hardie (1986). See also Quint (1993).

266. The winds have the upper hand in terms of participles: luctantis (53) and indignantes (55) versus tenens (58). The three participles are linked by assonance: -tan-, -tis, -nan-, -tes, te-, -nens.

267. The following is based on Gildenhard (2007), pp. 89–91.

268. For the same somnorific design see 4.81 discussed above.

269. Aeneas’ companions suddenly enter the picture at 6.34 when the verb switches to plural, at which point we also learn that the hero had sent Achates ahead of him to announce his arrival to the Sibyl: praemissus Achates (34).

270. A ‘compare-and-contrast’ exercise concerning the historical value of the Aeneid and W. C. Sellar’s & R. J. Yeatman’s 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates (Methuen Publishing, 1930), could produce interesting results.

271. I nevertheless proceed selectively. For a more comprehensive account and more detailed discussion of this alternative tradition, see Lord (1969), as well as Horsfall (1990), Hexter (1992), and Davidson (1998).

272. R. A Kaster, ed., Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3 vols, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, 2011), vol.1, p. xii.

273. Text and translation are from Kaster’s Loeb edition (see previous note).

274. Both passages play off an epitaph of Ennius (239 – c. 169 BC): nemo me lacrimis decoret nec funera fletu/ faxit. cur? uolito uiuos per ora uirum (Varia, 17-18 Vahlen²) (‘Let none honour me with tears nor prepare my funeral while weeping. Why? I fly alive on the lips of men’), which Virgil already imitated at Georgics 3.9:… uictorque uirum uolitare per ora (‘[a path must be attempted whereby I may] fly victoriously on the lips of men’).

275. Kaster (2011), vol. 2, p. 409, n. 62.

276. Jerome is by no means the only church father who hails Dido as an exemplum castitatis, a paragon of chastity. See also Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 225 AD), De Monogamia 17.

277. Jerome, Epistle 22.30. For an English translation of this fascinating letter see The Christian Classics Ethereal Library at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.v.XXII.html.

278. The Appendix Planudea is a collection of Greek epigrams and poems compiled by the Byzantine scholar Maximus Planudes, who lived from c. 1260 to c. 1305 (hence Planudea). The poems were mostly written much earlier. They then got attached, or appended (hence Appendix), to another collection of such poems, which is today known under the name of Greek Anthology (or Anthologia Graeca).

279. The Latin text is available in Heathcote William Garrod’s The Oxford Book of Latin Verse (Oxford, 1912).

280. Virgil’s full name was Publius Vergilius Maro.

281. The standard treatment of the De Mulieribus is D. Gera, Warrior Women: The Anonymous Tractatus de Mulieribus (Leiden, 1997). Since the author of the treatise here cites or summarizes the Greek historiographer Timaeus, the text is also available in Brill’s New Jacoby project, a re-edition of the collection of the fragments of the Greek historians by the German scholar Felix Jacoby (1876–1959), Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, under BNJ 566 F 82 (where BNJ = Brill’s New Jacoby; 566 = the number of the historian, i.e. Timaeus; F = fragment; 82 = the number of the fragment). I cite the BNJ text and translation (slightly adjusted).

282. For the Latin text see O. Seel, Iuniani Iustini Epitoma Historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi (Stuttgart, 1972); for a translation see J. C. Yardley, Justin: Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, American Philological Association Classical Resources, Series 3 (Atlanta, 1994).

283. The evidence for the possibility that Virgil followed the precedent of Naevius is considered by Horsfall (1990), pp. 138–39. Hexter (1992), p. 367 notes that ‘stories about Aeneas varied widely and drastically during Virgil’s lifetime, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing in Greek at Rome, noted already ca. 7 B.C.E. (e.g., Roman Antiquities 1.48–49, 53.4, 72–73). Neither Dionysius (1.47–53) nor another contemporary of Vergil, Livy, writing in Latin (Ab urbe condita, 1.1), includes a Carthaginian stopover on Aeneas’ way from Troy to Italy.’

284. This quotation and the next come from the opening paragraph of S. Hinds, Allusion and Intertext. Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 1998), p. xi. It is an excellent (if demanding) exploration of the topic of this essay.

285. D. Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs (Cambridge, 1998), p. 53—another highly recommended book, not least for its ability to render difficult subject matter accessible and entertaining.

286. For a pre-publication write-up see Propertius 2.34.65–6: cedite, Romani scriptores, cedite, Grai!/ nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade (‘Make way, Roman writers, make way, Greeks! Something greater than the Iliad is being born’). For Virgil’s epic successors (and their struggle to step out from under the overpowering shadow of Virgil’s achievement) see the stellar study by P. Hardie, The Epic Successors of Virgil: A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition (Cambridge, 1993).

287. The opening of the Odyssey starts paving the way for Virgil’s subjective stance. It begins Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Mοῦσα, i.e. ‘Tell me, Muse, of the man…’.

288. See further above Commentary on 4.258.

289. See further above Commentary on 4.149.

290. Scholarly opinion is divided: see the commentary ad locum for details and further discussion.

291. For a highly stimulating treatment see Hardie (1997).

292. See Servius on Aeneid 4: Apollonius Argonautica scripsit et in tertio inducit amantem Medeam; inde totus hic liber translatus est.

293. Hardie (2006), p. 35, with reference to Wills (1998), pp. 289–90.

294. I cite the text and translation (slightly adjusted) of J. Godwin, Catullus, Poems 61–68, edited with introduction, translation and commentary, (Warminster, 1995).

295. Lyne (1994), p. 190.

296. Lyne (1994), p. 191. See already Skulsky (1985), p. 451.

297. Skulsky (1985), p. 449. Note in this context that at Catullus 66.26 the Lock hails her former owner as magnanimam.

298. See especially Hardie (1986) and (2009). I make extensive use of his work in the commentary, especially in the sections on Fama and Atlas.

299. Some bibliography: see Goldberg (1995) on Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and, yes, Cicero; Horsfall (1990) on Dido in Naevius; Gildenhard (2007) on Virgil and Ennius; and the essays in Boyle (1993) for a full-scale survey of epic writing in Rome before and after Virgil.

300. Pease (1935), p. 85.

301. Ovid’s Heroides collection also includes a letter from Dido to Aeneas (7)—a brilliant take on Aeneid 4 from Dido’s point of view!

302. This is the opening of the play. The high number of the fragment may hence surprise. It results from the fact that fragments are counted across plays, which Jocelyn arranges in alphabetical order from Achilles (1–10) to Thyestes (290–308) followed by the incerta (fragments that cannot be assigned to a specific play). The Medea fragments are 208–45 (and may come from two different plays).

303. I cite the text and translation (slightly adjusted) of C. Bailey, Titi Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex, edited with Prolegomena, Critical Apparatus, Translation, and Commentary, 3 vols (Oxford, 1947).

304. R. D. Brown, Lucretius on Love and Sex. A Commentary on De Rerum Natura IV, 1030-1287 with Prolegomena, Text, and Translation (Leiden, 1987), p. 191.

305. Maltby in the Oxford World’s Classics edition (see note 307), p. 120.

306. Profugis perhaps presupposes knowledge of (a version) of the opening of the Aeneid. See 1.1–2: Arma uirumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris/ Italiam fato profugus Lauinaque uenit.

307. I cite the text and translation of the brand new Oxford World’s Classics edition of Tibullus: Tibullus, Elegies, with Parallel Latin Text. A New Translation by A. M. Juster with an Introduction and Notes by Robert Maltby (Oxford, 2012).

308. I cite text and translation (slightly modified) of the Loeb Classical Library edition: Ovid I: Heroides and Amores, trans. by G. Showerman, 2nd edn, rev. by G. P. Goold (Cambridge, MA, 1977).

309. I cite and text and translation of J. D. Duff’s Loeb Edition: Silius Italicus, Punica, with an English Translation (Cambridge, MA, 1934).

310. Schiesaro (2008), p. 222.

311. In Aeneid 4, some Olympian gods feature as agents in the narrative (notably Iris, Juno, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus), some appear in other capacities. Apollo (at 4.143–49) and Bacchus (at 4.301–03) are the subjects of similes. Anna and Dido sacrifice to Juno (of course), but also Ceres, Apollo, and Dionysus (4.58–9). Dionysus/ Bacchus also receives allusive acknowledgement elsewhere and has anyway a pervasive, subliminal presence in the narrative. The Apollo-simile at 4.143–49, for instance, features many an incongruous touch that recalls Bacchus (see commentary ad loc.), and at 4.469 Virgil compares Dido’s deranged state of mind to that of ‘raving Pentheus’ as he sees the bands of the Bacchants (Euiadum ueluti demens uidet agmina Pentheus)—a line that gestures to tragedies, in the tradition of Euripides’ Bacchae, about the encounter between Dionysus and Pentheus, the king of Thebes, who fatally tries to thwart the triumphant homecoming of his divine cousin. (The allusion may be to a Roman adaptation, as opposed to the Greek original—or indeed to several plays, Greek and Latin, at once.) Book 4 is tragic terrain, after all, and it is therefore fitting that the patron deity of the genre should hover in the background of the action. Other aspects of Dionysus, in particular his association with Eastern luxury and Marc Antony, add further nuances of meaning, explored in more detail in the commentary.

312. See the note in Goold’s Loeb edition (vol. 1, p. 471): ‘Before sacrifice a few hairs were plucked from the forehead of the victim, and as the dying were regarded as offerings to the nether gods, a similar custom was observed in their case. Proserpine evidently being unwilling to perform this service for the suicide Dido, Juno takes pity on her and sends Iris to do it.’

313. For a brief survey of Rome’s civic religion, with much further bibliography, see Gildenhard (2011), pp. 246–54.

314. See Essay 1: Content and Form on the destructive winds she unleashes in Book 1.

315. See Gildenhard (2007), pp. 84–86 (for Ennius and his ‘republican’ conception of epic history in the Annals) and pp. 98–102 (for Virgil’s ‘Augustan’ conception of epic history in the Aeneid).

316. See Essay 1: Content and Form.

317. See 4.381–84: i, sequere Italiam uentis, pete regna per undas./ spero equidem mediis, si quid pia numina possunt,/ supplicia hausurum scopulis et nomine Dido/ saepe uocaturum (‘Go, make for Italy with the winds; seek your kingdom over the waves. Yet I trust, if the righteous gods have any power, that on the rocks midway you will drain the cup of vengeance and often call on Dido’s name’).

318. Cf. already 1.628–29, with its striking reminiscences of the proem: me quoque per multos similis fortuna labores/ iactatam hac demum uoluit consistere terra (‘Me, too, has a like fortune driven through many toils, and wanted that in this land I should at last find rest’).

319. For a brief discussion see Gildenhard (2007), pp. 82–84. My argument is based on Flaig (1991).