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Vergil on Kingship: the first simile of the Aeneid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Stephen Harrison
Stephen Harrison
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

At Aeneid 1.148–56 Neptune's stilling of the storm roused against Aeneas and the Trojans by Juno is compared with the calming of a mob by a great statesman:

ac ueluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est

seditio saeuitque animis ignobile uulgus

iamque faces et saxa uolant, furor arma ministrat.

tum pietate grauem ac meritis si forte uirum quem

conspexere silent arrectisque auribus astant;

ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet:

sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, aequora postquam

prospiciens genitor caeloque inuectus aperto

flectit equos curruque uolans dat lora secundo.

As has been often remarked, this simile, prominently placed as the first in the poem, is evidently programmatic for the value system of the Aeneid. The ‘pietate grauem ac meritis…uirum’ standing up to and defeating the violence of the mob gives a highly Roman rôle-model (not always successfully followed) for Aeneas, the destined hero overcoming the forces of irrationality, something confirmed by the details of the poem as well as the events of its plot; Aeneas is similarly proclaimed by the Sybil in the Underworld as ‘pietate insignis et armis’ (6.402), while the soothing words of the statesman to the mob (153 ‘ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet’) are clearly echoed in the soothing words Aeneas addresses to his storm-shaken sailors in the very next scene of the poem (197 ‘dictis maerentia pectora mulcet’).

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 34 , 1988 , pp. 55 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

NOTES

1. Cf. Pöschl, V., Vergil's art of poetry, trans. Seligson, G. (1962) 22–3Google Scholar; Otis, Brooks, Virgil: a study in civilized poetry (1964) 229–30Google Scholar; Hardie, P. R., Virgil's Aeneid: cosmos and imperium (1986) 204–5Google Scholar.

2. Cf. Harrison, S. J., ‘Vergilian Similes: some connections’, PLLS 5 (1985) 102Google Scholar.

3. In his commentary on 1.148–53.

4. Cf. Pecchiura, P., La figura di Catone Uticense nella letteratura Latina (1965) 25–35Google Scholar; Goar, R. J., The legend of Cato Uticensis from the first century B.C. to the fifth century A.D. (Collection Latomus (1987) 13–18)Google Scholar.

5. West, M. L., Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days (1988) 5Google Scholar.

6. Modern commentators on Aeneid 1 (Conway, Austin, Williams)Google Scholar do not quote the Hesiod passage; its relevance for this passage of Vergil was seen by Henry, James, Aeneidea 1 (1873) 427Google Scholar, and has also been discussed in ‘First similes in Homer, Lucretius, Vergil and Ovid’, an unpublished paper by Dr D. C. Feeney (my thanks to the editors for this last reference).

7. On this literature see most conveniently Adam, T., Clementia principis (1970) 12–18Google Scholar. For the currency of Hellenistic ideas on kingship in the late Roman Republic cf. Murray, Oswyn, ‘Philodemus on the Good King according to Homer’, JRS 55 (1965) 161–82Google Scholar; their influence is clear in Cicero's ‘Caesarian’ speeches (cf. Griffin, M., Seneca: a philosopher in politics (1976) 148–9)Google Scholar. I am informed by the author that the theme of Hellenistic kingship in Vergil will receive substantial treatment in a forthcoming book on the Aeneid by Francis Cairns (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 1988).