¹ For the Cacus legend elsewhere, see especially the accounts in Vergil's contemporaries, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Roman Antiquities 1.39-42), Livy 1.7.3-15 (with the very useful notes of Ogilvie, R. M., A Commentary on Livy Books 1-5 [Oxford 1965] 55-61), and Propertius 4.9; see also Servius, , In Aeneidos 8.190, and Charles S. Singleton's notes on Inf. 25.25-29, in his ed. (Princeton 1970) 2 .431-34. Cacus' most infamous crime, fully recounted by Vergil and mentioned by Dante, was his rustling of several cattle from Hercules' herd and the subsequent denial of guilt. Throughout the passage Vergil emphasizes Hercules' divinity, and hence the sacrilegious nature of the theft; see especially 201: ‘auxilium adventumque dei.’ The act was Cacus’ undoing, for the god finally assaulted his lair on the Aventine and slew him. That the monster inhabited a cave on the Aventine is peculiar to Vergil's account (Aen. 8.231: ‘lustrat Aventini montem'—cf. Ovid, influenced by Vergil, Fasti 1.543-86, 5.643-50): others place him on the Palatine, a distinction further suggesting the Aeneid as Dante's primary source here (Inf. 25.26: ‘sotto'l sasso di monte Aventino'). For the manbeast quality of Cacus (reduced to a centaur by Dante), cf. Aen. 8.194 (‘semihominis Caci facies') and 267 (‘pectora semiferi'); Vanni Fucci describes himself as a beast emergent from the den (Inf. 24.124-26, quoted below): for the sanguinary character of both ‘monsters,’ Singleton, in his note on Inf. 25.27, compares Dante's ‘di sangue fece spesse volte laco’ with Aen. 8.195-96, ‘semperque recenti / caede tepebat humus’ (of Cacus' precinct). Regarding the general question of Dante's indebtedness in this portion of his work to the Aeneid, see L. Derby Chapin, D., who, from the point of view of technique alone, has observed, ‘The dependence of Dante on Virgil is particularly stressed in Inferno XXIV' (‘IO and the Negative Apotheosis of Vanni Fucci,’ Dante Studies 89 [1971] 26). For the text of Dante, Singleton's ed. has been employed throughout; for Vergil we have used R. D. Williams' Macmillan text (London 1972-73) 2 vols., and for Servius the standard ed. is now that of E. K. Rand, Stocker, A. F., et al. (Lancaster, Pa. 1946—).Google Scholar

² For the traditional sources of the episode consult, among others, the editions of Singleton, 2.414-34; Manfredi Porena and Mario Pazzaglia (Bologna 1966) 260 n.-66n.; Mattalìa, Mattalìa (Milan 1960) 1 .453n.-65n.; Sapegno, Sapegno (Florence 1955) 1 .273n.-82n.; Rivalta, Rivalta (Florence 1946) 1 .229n.-36n.; Grandgent, C. H. (Boston 1933) 1 .216n.-23n.; and Scartazzini, G. A. (9th ed.; Milan 1929) 197 n.-204n. See too the following discussions of the episode: Warren Vernon, William, Readings on the Inferno of Dante (2nd ed.; London 1906) 2 .251-300; Cosco, Cosco, ‘Vanni Fucci e la bolgia dei ladri,' Lettere italiane 4 (1952) 92–104; Sanguinetti, Sanguinetti, Interpretazione di Malebolge (Florence 1961) 173–223; in Letture dantesche, ed. Getto, Getto (Florence 1962), both Cosmo, Cosmo, ‘Canto XXIV' (447-66) and Attilio Momigliano, ‘Canto XXV' (466-88); in Nuove letture dantesche 2 (1966-67), both Sacchetto, Sacchetto, ‘Il Canto XXIV' (257-79) and Ettore Paratore, ‘Il Canto XXV' (281-315); Vallone, Vallone, ‘Vanni Fucci,' La Divina Commedia nella critica , ed. Pagliaro, Pagliaro (Messina 1967) 1 .294-99; and Norton, Glyn P., ‘Contrapasso and Archetypal Metamorphoses in the Seventh Bolgia of Dante's Inferno,’ Symposium 25 (1971) 162-70.Google Scholar

³ Helpful studies of the relationship between Dante and Vergil include Domenico Comparetti, Virgilio nel medio evo, ed. Pasquali, Pasquali (Florence 1967) 1 .239-91, and ‘Dante e Virgilio,’ Atene e Roma 5 (1924) 149–64, rpt. in Dante nella critica, ed. Di Salvo, Tommaso (Florence 1965) 99–101; Moore, Moore, ‘Dante and Virgil,' Studies in Dante (Oxford 1896; rpt. New York 1968) 1 .166-97; Wicksteed, Philip H., ‘Dante and the Latin Poets,’ Dante: Essays in Commemoration, 1321-1921, ed. Cippico, Antonio et al. (London 1921; rpt. Freeport, N. Y. 1968) 157–87; Theodore Silverstein, H., ‘Dante and Vergil the Mystic,' Harvard Studies in Philology and Literature 14 (1932) 51–82; Whitfield, J. H., Dante and Virgil (Oxford 1949) and ‘Virgil into Dante,’ Virgil, ed. Dudley, D. R. (New York 1969) 94–118; Tenenbaum, Tenenbaum, ‘Classical Influences in the Commedia: Dante's Use of Classical Antiquity in the “Purgatorio,’ ‘ Bucknell Review 15 (1967) 26–34; Hollander, Hollander, ‘Dante 's Use of Aeneid I in Inferno I and II,’ Comparative Literature 20 (1968) 142–56; and Montano, Montano, ‘Dante and Virgil,' Yale Review 60 (1971) 55-61.Google Scholar

⁴ Vernon, , 2.273n.Google Scholar

⁵ La Divina Commedia , ed. Mattalìa, , 1.455n.Google Scholar

⁶ The entire passage is exceptionally sibilant: note especially lines 204, 207, 210-12, and 215. Google Scholar

⁷ Montano 551. Google Scholar

⁸ Francesco De Sanctis, Lezioni e saggi su Dante, ed. Romagnoli, Romagnoli (Turin 1955) 451.Google Scholar

⁹ Cosco, 104.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Vallone, 296.Google Scholar

¹¹ From Laokoon ( 1766) in Lessing, G. E., Werke, ed. von Schirding, Albert (Munich 1970) 6.29.Google Scholar

¹² Cf., for example, the notes of Henry, Henry, Aeneidea (Dublin 1878; rpt. New York 1972) 2 .115-25, quoted in part below; and Hornsby, Roger A., Patterns of Action in the Aeneid: An Interpretation of Vergil's Epic Similes (Iowa City 1970) 59, on ‘Laocoon, the innocent victim’ who ‘represents the worthiness of Troy.’Google Scholar

¹³ The wooden horse is sacred only within the context of Sinon's elaborate fabrication: the sole hint of Minerva's agency here is in the fact that the serpents flee to her shrine on the citadel (whence Laocoon had first appeared). Later, in the vision granted Aeneas by his goddess-mother, she appears along with Neptune, Juno, and Jupiter, taking part in Troy's destruction (608-18), but in no particular connection with the horse. Google Scholar

¹⁴ For the eight short fragments of Sophocles' Laocoon and a discussion of the myth of the priest and his guilt, see Pearson, A. C., The Fragments of Sophocles (Cambridge 1917) 2.38-47. Regarding the availability of Sophocles' tragedy to Vergil's audience, see n. 19 infra. Google Scholar

¹⁵ Despite Prescott, Henry W., The Development of Virgil's Art (Chicago 1927; rpt. New York 1963) 310: ‘[To the Roman reader] … just why Laocoon, rather than anybody else, should address the sea god [and subsequently meet with destruction] would still be left very vague.’ But Prescott fails to acknowledge the Sophoclean tradition and the commentary of Servius (discussed below).Google Scholar

¹⁶ So Pearson, The Fragments of Sophocles 2, especially 41. The most exhaustive analysis of the Laocoon myth remains that of Carl Robert, ‘Excurs I: die Laokoonsage,’ in Bild und Lied (Berlin 1881) 192–212. Useful summaries, together with criticism and modification of Robert's conclusions, can be found in Pearson 38-41; F. Jackson Knight, W., ‘Vergil 's Troy' (1932) in Vergil: Epic and Anthropology (New York 1967) 85–89; and Austin, R. G., ed., P. Vergili Maronis liber secundus (Oxford 1964) 44–51, and especially 94-108, with additional bibliography; cf. also E. Bethe in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie, s.v. ‘Laokoon (1).’ Though once considered spurious (as by J. W. Mackail: see Austin 44f.), Vergil's Laocoon story (Aen, 2.40-56, 199-233) has been the object of careful study in this century: besides Knight and Austin, see Kleinknecht, H., ‘Laokoon,’ Hermes 79 (1944) 66–111; Knox, B. M. W., ‘The Serpent and the Flame,’ American Journal of Philology 71 (1950) 379–400; Otis, Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford 1963) 246–49; Putnam, Michael C. J., The Poetry of the Aeneid (Cambridge, Mass. 1966) 17–27; de Marino, Antonio, ‘La fine di Laocoonte e l 'uccisione di Priamo nell'Eneide,’ Vichiana 4 (1967) 92–94; Steinmeyer, H., ‘Die Laokoonszenen in Vergils Aeneis,’ Altsprachliche Unterricht 10 (1967) 5–28; Quinn, Quinn, Virgil's Aeneid: A Critical Description (Ann Arbor 1968) 114–18; Mir, J., ‘Laocoontis embolium,’ Latinitas 17 (1969) 96-112; Hornsby, , Patterns of Action in the Aeneid 59-63.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See the article ‘Euphorion (2)’ in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Hammond, N. G. L. and Scullard, H. H. (2nd ed.; Oxford 1970) 417. Pearson, , The Fragments of Sophocles 2.40, agrees essentially with Robert's conclusion that ‘the circumstances of Laocoon's guilt, as given by Servius [Euphorion], were also derived from Sophocles.’ Cf. Knight, ‘Vergil's Troy’ 87-89.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Hyginus, a far less creditable source than Servius, has a slightly different version, in which Laocoon's offense against Apollo was his marriage itself, counter to the god's wishes, and the begetting of sons (Fabulae 135). In both versions the subsequent death of the sons is understandable (cf. Tiberius Donatus on Aen. 2.230); and in each the essential point, that Laocoon had committed a sacrilege (of a sexual nature), is the same. Google Scholar

¹⁹ Both Sophocles and Euphorion (not to mention others, now lost, who might have further developed the tradition) were doubtless available to both Vergil and his audience, since Servius could still cite them, probably at first hand, in the fourth century (e.g., In Aen. 2.201, 204). It seems quite mistaken to suggest that ‘Laocoon's old sin and guilt are irrelevant’ (Knight 87, summarizing Robert), or that ‘the point is obscure and trivial’ ( Page, T. E., ed., The Aeneid of Virgil: Books I-VI [London 1894] on 201), when the Roman audience could hardly have dismissed the well-known story from their minds entirely.Google Scholar

²⁰ Aeneidea 2.115 and 124.Google Scholar

²¹ Troy, of course, suffers an abrupt (if only apparent) reversal in her fate, a situation dramatized through the poet's creation of an intense irony in the first third of the book: with the fall of night (250-53) there is a sudden shift from jubilation over the Greeks' supposed departure and Troy's consequent spiritual renaissance to the nightmarish horror of the city's incineration and final death throes. Laocoon's equally abrupt and final peripeteia is generally noticed by commentators: see, for example, the notes of Tiberius Donatus, Austin, and John Conington, ed. (London 1884) on 223; for its symbolic function, see Putnam, The Poetry of the Aeneid 24. The notion of reversal in this sequence is carefully emphasized by Vergil through verbal repetition, sound effect, metrical structure, and especially in the taurus image of 223-24, where Laocoon, who had been sacrificing a great bull in 201-02, is, in the anguish of h.s own screams, compared with a sacrificial bull. Google Scholar

²² On ductus sorte, see Tiberius Donatus: ‘non sine arbitrio divino.’ Google Scholar

²³ He recalls the legend more explicitly later at 4.542 and 5.799-811; cf. Horace, , Odes 3.3.21-22.Google Scholar

²⁴ Servius, , In Aen. 2.201 (this statement immediately precedes the passage quoted above in explanation of Laocoon's guilt): ‘Laocoon ut Euphorion dicit post adventum Graecorum sacerdos Neptuni lapidibus occisus est quia non sacrificiis eorum vetavit adventum.’ It is a neat and purposeful irony that in legend both the original priest and his temporary successor bore the name Laocoon, on which see below. Servius auctus (from Aelius Donatus?), on 204, records another ancient interpretation, according to which Neptune himself sent the serpents, angered over the neglect of his cult since the time of Laomedon: ‘alii dicunt quod post contemptum semel a Laomedonte Neptunum certus eius sacerdos apud Troiam non fuit; unde putatur Neptunus etiam inimicus fuisse Troianis, et quod illi meruerint in sacerdote monstrare.’Google Scholar

²⁵ For an unusually perceptive analysis of Vergil's integrative use of sources, particularly in the composition of Aeneid 2, see ch. 4 of Knight's ‘Vergil's Troy,’ especially 77: ‘Vergil quite ruthlessly, but yet with a sharp economy of material, transfers and transmutes references of every kind, and constructs new combinations of them in the service of his grand poetic vision.’ Google Scholar

²⁶ Cf. Servius, In Aen. 2.201, who remarks after explaining Laocoon's piaculum (and departing now from Euphorion), ‘historia quidem hoc habet, sed poeta interpretatur ad Troianorum excusationem, qui hoc ignorantes decepti sunt’ (i.e., regarding the true reason for the priest's punishment). There is a kind of tragic irony in the fact that, while the Trojans erroneously ascribe Laocoon's suffering to his sacrilegious treatment of the horse, the audience is aware that the priest is indeed guilty of sacrilege, though of an entirely different sort. Google Scholar

²⁷ Even in Homer, Apollo was associated with the island of Tenedos: see Iliad 1.38 and 452. Google Scholar

²⁸ See, for example, the notes of Henry and Williams on 203; Tiberius Donatus comments ad loc., ‘potuimus hoc signo praevidere manifestam imminere perniciem; significabant enim hostis venturos a Tenedo, et maximos duces et geminos.’ Cf. especially Knox, ‘The Serpent and the Flame’ 382-84, and Putnam, The Poetry of the Aeneid 24. Google Scholar

²⁹ Among those who have sensed Neptune's part here are Servius auctus (see n. 24 supra); Tiberius Donatus (on 203: ‘ipse Neptunus sacerdotem suum sacrorum sollemnia gerentem in ipso adhuc actu constitutum, mactantem ingentem taurum … nec iuverit aliquo auxilio et magis eius hostibus, hoc est geminis anguibus, quo facilius pervenirent, placidum praebuerit mare'); Charles Knapp, ed., The Aeneid of Vergil … and the Metamorphoses of Ovid (rev. ed.; Chicago 1928) on 201; and especially Quinn, Quinn, Virgil's Aeneid 117 (see n. 30 infra). For Neptune's sojourn at an undersea cavern near Tenedos, see Iliad 13.32-38.Google Scholar

³⁰ Servius auctus mentions sources that minimize Minerva's part in relation to Neptune's (In Aen. 2.201): ‘quod autem ad arcem ierunt serpentes: vel ad templum Minervae, aut quod et ipsa inimica Troianis fuit, aut signum fuit periturae civitatis’ (the statement immediately follows that quoted in n. 24 supra). But most commentators still persist in crediting Minerva exclusively with Laocoon's death, a view that seems quite at odds with Vergil's intent; a recent example is Hornsby, Patterns of Action in the Aeneid, who describes Minerva without qualification as ‘the goddess whose agents are the serpents’ (59). Quinn, Virgil's Aeneid 117, is much nearer the truth when, with regard to the serpents' movement from the sea to the goddess' shrine, he insists that ‘the reader could hardly expect a clearer symbolic statement of the fact that Minerva and Neptune have joined forces against Troy.’ Of course, the intentionally ironic effect of the monsters’ disappearance on the citadel is to reinforce the Trojans' fatal error in believing that Minerva had sent them, offended by Laocoon's desecration of the horse. Google Scholar

³¹ Knight, , ‘Vergil's Troy’ 88.Google Scholar

³² Croce, Croce, La Poesia di Dante (9th ed.; Bari 1958) 94. For Dante's indebtedness to Aquinas with regard to the subject of theft, see Gilbert, Allan H., Dante's Conception of Justice (Durham, N. C. 1925) 100.Google Scholar

³³ Melzi, Robert C., Castelvetro's Annotations to ‘The Inferno' (The Hague 1966) 44.Google Scholar

³⁴ ‘Malebolge (Inf. XVIII-XXX) as the Key to the Structure of Dante's Inferno,’ Romance Philology 20 (1967) 462.Google Scholar

³⁵ De Sanctis 451. Bestia may actually have been Vanni Fucci's nickname: see Singleton on line 126. Google Scholar

³⁶ For a slightly different view of Laocoon's double-offense, cf. Pearson, The Fragments of Sophocles 2.41: ‘That Laocoon had sinned against Apollo, as stated by Servius, is probable enough; but it is difficult to conceive him as merely the passive victim of destiny throughout the whole course of the action. In other words, the early transgression is too remote to serve as a dramatic justification for the πεϱιπέτεια; one would rather suspect that Laocoon by some fresh demonstration of ὕßϱις proved that the time was ripe for divine vengeance. To have hurled a spear at the wooden horse is in itself not enough to convict him of impiety (Aen. 2.229ff.); but the circumstances of the act may well have been such as to stamp it with the mark of reckless arrogance. Laocoon, the µάvτις, was perhaps a scoffer who ridiculed the notion of divine interference.’' Google Scholar

³⁷ Momigliano 476. The use of a snake in connection with the execution of divine will is not unique with Dante here. For example, the celestial ‘messo’ who comes to rescue Dante and Vergil at the gates of the city of Dis is likened to a ‘biscia’ from whom ‘le rane’ flee (Inf. 9.76-78). Google Scholar

³⁸ Laocoon must be silenced because, in addition to his own sacrilege, his monitory speech represents the chief obstacle to the fulfillment of Troy's fate. Google Scholar

³⁰ Cf. Singleton's note on Inf. 25.12. Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Virgilio nel medio evo 1.69, 157, and 185-88.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Dante Studies and Researches (London 1902; rpt. Port Washington, N. Y. 1971) 281-83.Google Scholar

⁴² Silverstein, , ‘On the Genesis of De Monarchia, II, v,’ Speculum 13 (1938) 326–49; Curtius, , European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, Willard (London 1953; rpt. Princeton 1973) 358n.Google Scholar

⁴³ Moore, 1.189. Moore argues, for instance, that Dante's conception of Achilles as a figure who died for love (Inf. 5.66) and Antenor as a traitor to his country (Inf. 32-33 and Purg. 5.75) are derived from Servius' notes on Aen. 3.322 and 6.57 for Achilles, and line 242 for Antenor.Google Scholar

(Inf. 24.119-20)