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LUCRETIAN DIDO: A STICHOMETRIC ALLUSION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 June 2023
Abstract
In the fourth line of her first speech in Book 1, to Ilioneus and the Trojan castaways, Dido quotes the first word of the first line of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, and in the fourth line of her second speech, to Aeneas, she quotes the first words of the second line of the De rerum natura. This is not a coincidence but a signal of the importance of Lucretius and Epicureanism for the characterization of Dido in the Aeneid.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
I wish to thank J. Farrell, L. Galasso, P.E. Knox, J.F. Miller, A. Schiesaro and F. Stok for having read and criticized earlier versions of this article. My thanks are also due to CQ's editor, B. Gibson, and to the journal's anonymous reader for many helpful comments and suggestions.
References
1 Pease, A.S., ‘Some aspects of the character of Dido’, CJ 22 (1927), 243–52, at 246–8Google Scholar; Pease, A.S., Publi Vergili Maronis Aeneidos liber quartus (Cambridge, MA, 1935), 36Google Scholar. After Pease, and before the publication of the articles cited in the following note, see also Hahn, E.A., ‘Pietas versus uiolentia in the Aeneid’, CW 25 (1931), 9–21Google Scholar, at 19; V. Mellinghoff-Bourgerie, Les incertitudes de Virgile: Contributions épicuriennes à la théologie de l’Énéide (Brussels, 1990), passim; Feeney, D.C., The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1991), 172–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar with n. 177; Lyne, R.O.A.M., ‘Vergil's Aeneid: subversion by intertextuality. Catullus 66.39–40 and other examples’, G&R 41 (1994), 187–204Google Scholar, at 195–6.
2 Dyson, J.T., ‘Dido the Epicurean’, CA 15 (1996), 203–21Google Scholar, at 205; Gordon, P., ‘Phaeacian Dido: lost pleasures of an Epicurean intertext’, CA 17 (1998), 188–211Google Scholar (cf. P. Gordon, The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus [Ann Arbor, 2021], 60–8). See also E. Adler, Vergil's Empire: Political Thought in the Aeneid (Lanham, MD, 2003), especially 3–133 and, most recently, M.M. Gorey, Atomism in the Aeneid: Physics, Politics, and Cosmological Disorder (Oxford, 2021), especially 88–92.
3 For Anna, cf. 4.34 id cinerem aut manis credis curare sepultos? (with Serv. ad loc.); see Dyson (n. 2), 214–15. For Iopas, cf. 1.742–6; see Dyson (n. 2), 210–11; Adler (n. 2), 9–16; Casali, S., ‘Didone come Luna’, in Beltrami, L., Nicolini, L. and Pagani, L. (edd.), ‘Fly me to the Moon’: La luna nell'immaginario umano (Genoa, 2022), 127–46Google Scholar, at 140–3. It is only, if cruelly, appropriate that Dido's destructive passion, which a good Epicurean should have avoided, will be described in Lucretian terms, especially at the beginning of Book 4; see Dyson (n. 2), 209–10; Gordon (n. 2 [1998]), 203–4.
4 See Dyson (n. 2), 205–6.
5 Dyson (n. 2), 206 n. 10, also noting that ‘Virgil uses this construction in the beginning of the metempsychosis passage (inde hominum pecudumque genus uitaeque uolantum, 6.728), generally regarded as his most Lucretian in language and least Lucretian in meaning’; not by chance it also occurs in the first line of Iopas’ ‘Lucretian’ song: 1.742 unde hominum genus et pecudes (hominum genus in this metrical position = Lucr. 3.307, 5.1430). Note that in Lucretius the construction first occurs in the fourth line of his proem, 1.4 genus omne animantum: see n. 9 below.
6 In the rest of the Aeneid, the form Aeneadum occurs three more times, without particular Lucretian resonances (9.180, 10.120, 11.503), but the important thing here is that ‘[t]he form Aeneadum occurs only once in extant Latin literature before Virgil: as the first word, and hence in the title, of Lucretius’ poem’: Dyson (n. 2), 206 n. 10.
7 Dyson (n. 2), 206 n. 10, who also convincingly points out a Lucretian flavour in the phrase res dura et regni nouitas, comparing Lucr. 5.925–6, 5.943–4.
8 See Mellinghoff-Bourgerie (n. 1), 136–7 (citing Lucr. 6.31 seu casu seu ui); Adler (n. 2), 35.
9 A hypothesis: perhaps Virgil has placed Aeneadum in the fourth line because in the fourth line of the DRN there is the first occurrence of the (very Lucretian) construction genus + genitive plural (see n. 6 above) in Lucretius’ poem: Lucr. 1.4 genus omne animantum. In a sense, therefore, genus Aeneadum in 1.565, the fourth line of Dido's speech, would allude at the same time to Lucr. 1.1 Aeneadum and to Lucr. 1.4 genus … animantum.
10 Dido's ‘doctrinal’ position is notoriously inconsistent, as already noticed by Servius on 4.365, according to whom there she speaks secundum Epicureos, at 4.382 secundum [Stoicos], and after him by many. On Dido's ambivalence, see Lyne (n. 1), 203 n. 28; Dyson (n. 2), 216. Given Dido's Epicurean attitude, however, it cannot be ruled out that the question tune ille Aeneas …? is less rhetorical than it may seem, and even slightly ironic. Misplaced irony: Dido does not know how important it is to her that Aeneas is really the son of Venus.
11 Lowe, D., ‘Women scorned: a new stichometric allusion in the Aeneid’, CQ 63 (2013), 442–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 444 and 443 (Lowe's emphasis); bibliography on the subject at 443 nn. 1–3. See also Lowe, D., ‘A stichometric allusion to Catullus 64 in the Culex’, CQ 64 (2014), 862–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The term ‘stichometric intertextuality’ was credited by the late D.P. Fowler to L. Morgan, according to Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Latin Poetry (Cambridge, 1998), 92Google Scholar n. 80; see Morgan, L., Patterns of Redemption in Virgil's ‘Georgics’ (Cambridge, 1999), 26–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar (cf. 223–9).