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Aeneas' Reaction to the Defeat of Troy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Peter J. Burnell
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Extract

When Aeneas wakes up and finds Troy overrun (Aen 2.298 ff.), he simply wants to die bravely, taking as many Greeks as possible with him. We are clearly meant by Virgil to consider this reaction inadequate to the realities Aeneas must face. There is enough in the structure of the poem and in Virgil's choice of words to leave us in no doubt about that. As K. F. Quinn says, ‘Aeneas’ surrender to impulse is as futile as Priam's pathetic, foolish gesture'. Aeneas says in retrospect that he did not have enough reason as he rushed into arms. As soon as he stops to think, he immediately becomes inclined to turn away from his mindless deathward career (559). Venus (589 ff.) confirms him in this new course, or returns him to it, by showing him the futility of any attempt at defence or revenge.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , April 1982 , pp. 63 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1982

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References

Notes

1. Virgil's Aeneid, a Critical Description (London, 1968) p. 21Google Scholar.

2. 314. It is worth noting that Dryden (who says that Aeneas is a ‘perfect prince … without blemish, thoroughly virtuous’,Dedication of the Aeneis (W. P. Ker, Oxford, 1900), p. 179)Google Scholar omits to translate nec sat rationis in armis in his version, but inserts ‘if Fortune favour'd’, which has no equivalent in the Latin, but makes Aeneas' action sound less nihilistic than in the original.

3. An Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid(Cambridge, 1969), p. 26Google Scholar.

4. Op. cit., p. 22.

5. Horace, , Carm. 1.12.35Google Scholar.

6. A little later in the same speech (315–16) Cato hopes that he alone will be struck with the sword, he who ‘vainly protects the laws and meaningless rights’ (me frustra leges et inania iura tuentem).

7. Plutarch, , Life of Pyrrhus 19.1–3Google Scholar.

8. Ap. Cic. Sen. 6.16.

9. 10.28.

10. We can see the formal nature of the devotio in another passage of Livy (8.9). Here it is in a very vivid form. The Decius in this case invites the State Priest to dictate to him the appropriate words, veils his head, and standing on a spear begins his speech: ‘lane Iuppiter Mars pater Quirine Bellona Lares …’

11. Enn. Ann. 6. fr. 16 (E. M. Steuart (1929) p. 28).

12. See Zetzel, J. E. G., HSPh 77 (1973)Google Scholar.

13. In one letter to Atticus (1.17), he calls Cato heros ille noster. He frequently dwells on Cato's specifically Stoic excellences: perfectus Stoicus (in Paradoxa Stoicorum); and perfectissimus Stoicus (in the Brutus 31.118).

14. There is Augustus' own Rescripta Bruto de Catone (Suet. Aug. 85), but we do not know what Augustus said. R. Syme suggests (The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939), p. 506)Google Scholar that this was not defamation, like Julius Caesar's Anticato, but an assertion that Cato would have supported Augustus, because Augustus was the restorer of the liberties Cato died in the name of.

15. Nobilis here may simply mean ‘aristocratic’. But in any case it is not the same word, in range of connotation, as ‘noble’, because it can mean ‘notorious’ in a bad sense (examples in Lewis and Short from Plautus, Terence, Cicero, and Livy).

16. Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace: Odes 1 (Oxford, 1970), ad locGoogle Scholar.

17. Cf. the suspicion Tacitus has for those who get glory the cheap way, by a useless death (Agricola 42).

18. This famous passage of Ennius is conceptually fairly sophisticated. It distinguishes not only between fleeting reputation (rumores) and lasting reputation (gloria), but between the purpose (salus) and the reward (gloria).Earl, D., The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome (London, 1967), p. 66Google Scholar, implies that gloria was, in the Roman tradition, the purpose of virtus. This passage of Ennius suggests otherwise.

19. Williams, R. D., The Aeneid of Virgil, Books 1–6 (London and Basingstoke, 1972)Google Scholar, note on lines 845–46. One could in fact say that there are two positions of honour, Augustus', more or less in the middle of the pageant (791–807), and Fabius', at the end, immediately before the famous statement of Rome's mission (847–53).

20. Cicero quotes the lines again in Cato Maior 4.10.

21. There is the opening of Horace, Carm. 3.3, for example, where the civium ardor prava iubentium does not shake the just man from his purpose.