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The Fates, the Gods, and the Freedom of Man's Will in the Aeneid.

Fates of Particular Persons or Communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Louise E. Matthaei
Louise E. Matthaei
Affiliation:
Newnham College, Cambridge
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Extract

Vergil has a strong idea of personal fate. A certain fate becomes attached to a certain person (or community) and follows him all his life; then the fates are spoken of as the fates of that person. As a parallel one might quote the idea in Maeterlinck's essay ‘La Chance’ (in the volume, he Temple enseveli, 1902, pp. 229 sqq.). For both Maeterlinck and Vergil men are marked out, one might almost call it annexed, by good or bad fortune; yet both authors refuse to endow this good or bad fortune with personality: they deal with personal fates which yet lack personality.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1917 , pp. 11 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1917

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References

Page 11 note 1 Fowler, Warde, Roman Ideas of Deity, p. 61 sqq.Google Scholar

Page 12 note 1 They occur in his farewell to Andromache.

Page 14 note 1 ProfessorConway, , Proc. of Classical Association, 1906, p. 30Google Scholar.

Page 15 note 1 Glover, , Vergil2, p. 293Google Scholar; but Mr. Glover's views on the gods of Vergil are somewhat different from those here expressed.

Page 15 note 2 For the trivial behaviour of the gods in general, see MacInnes, ' paper on ‘The Conception of Fata in the Aeneid,’ Class. Rev., 1910, p. 169Google Scholar.

Page 15 note 3 Such as Poseidon, has in the Odyssey, see Od. V. 288–90Google Scholar.

Page 16 note 1 Heinze, , Vergil's Epische Technik, 1903, p. 290Google Scholar, n. 2.

Page 18 note 1 ‘Omnipotens’ of Juno, but only in the eyes of Allecto (VII. 428), of Apollo, in the eyes of Arruns (XI. 790, cf.) ‘summe deum’ in 785). Here Juno and Apollo replace Jupiter to their own particular protégés. For these references, see Heinze, , op. cit., p. 286Google Scholar, n. 2 and 3.

Page 18 note 2 Other arguments and passages, tending to the same conclusions, in Maclnnes, , op. cit., p. 171–2Google Scholar.

Page 19 note 1 Rather like the hardening of Pharaoh's heart in the Bible.

Page 19 note 2 The same results, with other arguments and examples, in Maclnnes, , op. cit., p. 173Google Scholar.

Page 20 note 1 Noticed by Fowler, Warde, Roman Ideas of Deity, p. 77Google Scholar; and cf. Aen. VIII. 131.

Page 20 note 2 For an analysis of the ‘sin’ of the Trojans, see ProfessorConvray, , op. cit., p. 32Google Scholar. He defines it as the selfishness and cowardice of leaving Laocoön to his fate.

Page 21 note 1 We know from VIII. 398–9 that it was not absolutely fixed that Troy must be destroyed at that moment; it could have been saved for at least another ten years.

Page 22 note 1 Yet cf. VI. 376, quoted on p. 19.

Page 24 note 1 De Anima, p. 56 sq. ‘Aiunt et immatura morte praeuentas eo usque uagari istic, donec reliquatio compleatur aetatis, quam turn peruixissent, si non intempestiue obissent.’ I owe this quotation to Norden, , Virgilstuiien, Hermes, XXVIII. (1893), p. 372Google Scholar sqq.

Page 25 note 1 Except, perhaps, in the last line of the poem.