¹ Pöschl, V., The Art of Vergil: Image and Symbol in the Aeneid (tr. Seligson, G., Ann Arbor, 1962), p. 22Google Scholar. On allegory in Virgil, see now Hardie, P. R., Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; also Drew, D. L., The Allegory of the Aeneid (Oxford, 1927)Google Scholar.

² Camps, W. A., An Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1969), pp. 97f.Google Scholar; on Priam in general, Caviglia, F., ‘Priamo 1’ in Enciclopedia Virgiliana, vol. 4 (Rome, 1988), pp. 264–8Google Scholar.

³ Heinze, R., Virgils epische Technik ³ (Leipzig, 1915), p. 39Google Scholar.

⁴ Austin, R. G., P. Vergili Maronis: Aeneidos Liber Secundus (Oxford, 1964), pp. 196fGoogle Scholar.

⁵ For a bibliography on the Helen-episode and the question of its authenticity, see Austin (n. 4), p. 219; Suerbaum, W., ‘Hundert Jahre Vergil-Forschung’, ANRW 2.31. 1 (1980), pp. 215fGoogle Scholar.; Conte, G. B., The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets (Ithaca & London, 1986), pp. 196–207Google Scholar.

⁶ Cf. e.g. Knauer, G. N., Die Aeneis und Homer (Göttingen, 1964), pp. 380fGoogle Scholar.

⁷ ll. 22.410f.

⁸ Ibid. 24.727ff.

⁹ Ibid. 21.526.

¹⁰ Whitman, C. H., Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 128–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ ll. 22.26–32; 134f.; cf. 317f.

¹² 471–5: note ‘lucem’, ‘nitidus’, ‘arduus’, ‘ad solem’, ‘micat’.

¹³ ll. 22.93–5. The snake simile is transferred from victim to victor for reasons that have not been discussed by the commentators. Since, as B. M. W. Knox says, the snake is an image of the ‘merciless and unthinking violence which was typical of Achilles at his worst’ (‘The serpent and the flame: the imagery of the second book of the Aeneid’, AJPh 71 [1950], 379–400Google Scholar, p. 394), this transfer may make Pyrrhus all the more potent; this idea would be supported by the fact that Virgil has added the brightness and youthfulness that is absent from Homer's Hector. Knox (p. 395) suggests that, since the snake is a symbol of regeneration, this simile looks forward to the regeneration of Troy in Italy, but it is hard to see how this meaning can be transferred from the destroyer of Troy's king, whose end stands for that of the city, to his victims.

¹⁴ Ibid. 139–42.

¹⁵ Ibid. 38–76.

¹⁶ 519f. also echo Il. 24.201ff., where Priam last confronted one of the tribe of Aeacus.

¹⁷ Il. 22.82–9.

¹⁸ Ibid. 22.99–130.

¹⁹ Ibid. 22.395–404.

²⁰ On the question of this technique in Virgil and for further bibliography, cf.Griffin, J., Latin Poets and Roman Life (London, 1985), pp. 183–97Google Scholar, who rightly argues that any simple application of the typology used in biblical criticism does no justice to the complexity of Virgil's narrative.

² Pomathios, J.-L., Le pouvoir politique et sa représentation dans l' Éneide de Virgile (Brussels, 1987), p. 35Google Scholar: cf. also ‘Priami arx alta’(2.56), ‘Priami imperio Phrygibusque’ (2.191), ‘patriae Priamoque’(2.291), ‘res Asiae Priamique…gentem’(3.1), ‘Priami tecta’ (4.343); cf. 2.581, 8.398f. Williams, G., Technique and Ideas in the Aeneid (New Haven and London, 1983), pp. 249fGoogle Scholar. writes of Priam's epitaph, ‘unlike the epitaph on Troy (195–8), the solemnity of this statement contains no irony, and so serves as an epitaph on the whole of the Trojan past for which Priam is the symbol’.

²² E.g. Il. 22.153–6, the wash-pots; cf. in the passage under discussion, Aeneas' memory of Andromache's use of the passage to take Astyanax to his grandfather (453–7).

²³ Ibid. 12.251ff. The anonymous reader points out that this breaching of the palace wall stands, like the death of Priam, as a metonymy for the destruction of the city, since the breaching of the city wall, the usual climactic moment, is in this story ruled out: he compares 2.438–9.

²⁴ Cf. Wigodsky, M., Vergil and Early Latin Poetry, (Hermes Einzelschr. 24 [Wiesbaden, 1972]), p. 78Google Scholar.

²⁵ ‘De Albano excidio translatus est locus’ (Serv. ad 486). Cf.Norden, E., Ennius und Vergilius (Leipzig, 1912), pp. 154ffGoogle Scholar.; Wigodsky (n. 24), p. 70; ‘whatever was the nature of the resemblance between Vergil's story of Troy's last night and the earlier description of Rome's first conquest, the echoes may have been meant to lighten the gloom of Troy's fall with a hint of Rome's rise’; Hardie (n. 1), p. 348 (on the Shield): ‘It is a recurrent theme of the Aeneid that the greatness of Rome is ensured only by the destruction of other potentially powerful cities.’ Livy (1.23.1) describes this conflict as ‘civili simillimum bello, prope inter parentes natosque, Troianam utramque prolem, cum Lavinium ab Troia, ab Lavinio Alba, ab Albanorum stirpe regum oriundi Romani essent’. In Book 8, the revelation that Greeks and Trojans alike are descended from Atlas (127–42) means that the Trojan War, like that between the Trojans and Latins, was in effect a civil conflict.

²⁶ He quotes Livy 39.51.12; Plut. Pomp. 80.5; Tac. Hist. 3.34.1; Appian, BC 4.20; Veil. Pat. 2.53.3;Walbank, F. W., A Historical Commentary on Polybius, i (Oxford, 1957), pp. 19ffGoogle Scholar. This was especially true of Pompey's death: ‘neither before or since has the defeat of any general been surrounded with as much pathos as that of Pompey’ (Holliday, V. L., Pompey in Cicero's Correspondence and Lucan's Civil War [The Hague & Paris, 1969], p. 74)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: see Alfonsi, L., ‘Pompeo in Manilio’ Latomus 6 (1947), 345–51Google Scholar who quotes for instance Livy 9.17.5–7; Veil. Pat. 2.40.4,48.2, 53.3; Prop. 3.11.33–8; Ov. Pont. 4.3.41; Sen. Cons. Marc. 20.4, Ep. 94.64 Pliny, NH 7.95; Juv. 10.283–6. For Pompey as an example e contrario of the topos ‘opportunitas mortis’, see Woodman, A. J., Velleius Paterculus: the Caesarian and Augustan narrative (2.41–93) (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 78Google Scholar (on 48.2) and 148 (on 66.4); cf. pp. 172f. (on 72.1) for further bibliography on the ‘hie exitus’ formula. Add now Currie, H. MacL., ‘An obituary formula in the historians (with a Platonic connection?)’, Latomus 48 (1989), 346–53Google Scholar.

²⁷ The fullest treatment is Narducci, E., La provvidenza crudele: Lucano e la distruzione dei miti augustei (Pisa, 1979), pp. 43–8Google Scholar; cf. his earlier ‘II tronco di Pompeo (Troia e Roma nella Pharsalia)’, Maia 25 (1973), 317–25Google Scholar.

²⁸ OLD s.v. 2: Aen. 3.161 ‘non haec tibi litora suasit… Apollo’. Cf. Serv. ad 1.3 for another discussion of ‘litus’.

²⁹ Servius ad Aen. 2.506 and 507; cf. Wigodsky (n. 24), p. 83; Sen. Tro. 141 ‘Sigea premis litora truncus.’

³⁰ Cf. Donatus, , P. Virgili Maronis Vita 34Google Scholar: ‘Aeneida prosa prius oratione formatam, digestamque in XII libros, particulatim componere instituit’, and Augustus' lines on Virgil's desire for the Aeneid to be burned (ap. ibid. 58): ‘frangatur potius legum veneranda potestas / quam tot congestos noctesque diesque labores / hauserit una dies.’

³¹ On the narrative techniques of this passage, cf. Williams (n. 21), pp. 246–62, who shows how Virgil is concerned ‘to cancel the gap between the actual events and their narration; Aeneas, and his audience, are reliving the actuality of his experiences’ (p. 247; cf. p. 259 on the similes of the book: ‘Aeneas as narrator does his best to avoid coming between his audience and the events he narrates’). On tenses in Virgil, cf.Quinn, K., Latin Explorations: Critical Studies in Latin Literature (London, 1963), pp. 220–9Google Scholar. The vivid use of the present here after a run of perfects is in contrast to the more usual use of the perfect for such effects; Quinn, suggests that ‘the present tense also stands outside time, as though, when Aeneas tells his story to Dido years later, the corpse lay there still upon the deserted beach’ (p. 238)Google Scholar.

³² One might note here that the Servian commentaries are not given to finding Pompey in the text irresponsibly. He is mentioned as defeated by Caesar on 1.286, and is used as an example of how wives were not normally taken on campaign (on 8.688), of placing trophies on high places (on 11.6), and of biting the dust in death (on 11.418, with a quotation from Lucan [8.616]); on 1.287 (‘a magno demissum nomen Iulo’) there is the comment ‘sicut Alexander, sicut Pompeius’ (references from Rossi, R. F. in Enciclopedia Virgiliana [n. 2], p. 198)Google Scholar. By contrast, where Pomathios (n. 21), p. 97 sees a reference to the decorating of Pompey's house with the beaks of ships in 7.186 (cf. Cic. Phil. 2.28.68), Servius does not.

³³ Sest. 118.

³⁴ Aug. 53, 68; Tib. 45; Galba 13.

³⁵ An. 2.19.3 = 39.3 S.-B.

³⁶ Tusc. 1.85f.;Z)Div. 2.22.

³⁷ 10.258–72 and 283–6.

³⁸ 4.50–65; note especially 50 ‘quis te Niliaco periturum litore, Magne’ and 64 ‘Priamumque in litore truncum’.

³⁹ Cf. Narducci, , ‘II tronco’ (n. 27)Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Cf. also Camps (n. 2), p. 98.

⁴¹ Pliny, , NH 7.97f.Google Scholar; Plut, . Pomp. 45Google Scholar; Appian, , BM 116–17Google Scholar; Diod. 40.4.1.

⁴² 7.99.

⁴³ Appian, BC 2.67; Dio 42.5.5. Pomathios (n. 21), p. 35 notes that elsewhere in the Aeneid ‘regnator’ is used only of Jupiter (2.779, 4.269, 7.558, 10.437; in each case his will is stressed) and of Tiber (8.77).

⁴⁴ Cf. Seager, R. J., Pompey: a Political Biography (Oxford, 1979), pp. 44–55Google Scholar: ‘not merely individuals and cities but provinces and kingdoms acknowledged him as their patron. When the civil war with Caesar finally came, it could be taken for granted…that the resources of the East…would be at Pompeius’ beck and call' (p. 55).

⁴⁵ Aen. 6.831.

⁴⁶ Appian, BC 2.67. ‘Superbus’ is not always a negative word in the Aeneid: beside 6.853 ‘debellare superbos’ cf. 3.475 ‘coniugio, Anchisa, Veneris dignate, superbo’, 12.877f. ‘nee fallunt iussa superba magnanimi Iovis’.

⁴⁷ Plut, . Pomp. 14Google Scholar, Mor. 203e-f, 804f.

⁴⁸ 1.125f.

⁴⁹ BC 1.4.4. Cf. Ps.-Sall. Ep. 1.2.3 ‘nam particeps dominationis neque fuit quisquam neque, si pati potuisset, orbis terrarum bello concussus foret.’

⁵⁰ Ep. 94.65.

⁵¹ The main accounts of Pompey's death are to be found in Seager (n. 44), p. 184.

⁵² The significance of this nam e is not clear: the ‘citizen’ dies before the king whose end marks the fall of the whole city? In Homer, Iris disguises herself as Polites, a fast runner an d look-out who is sitting on the tomb of Aesyetes, to bring the message to the Trojans that they should line up for battle (Il. 2.790–5). This might mean that we are to see a ring here: Polites is involved in the preparations for the first battle in the Iliad and in the final battle of Troy in the Aeneid. It is also noteworthy that in the only other place where he appears in Homer he kills Echion (Il. 15.339), a man whose name, in the light of the Aeneid passage, ironically recalls the viper to which Pyrrhus is compared in Aen. 2.471ff.

⁵³ For the ancient sources and a narrative of these events, see Seager (n. 44), pp. 115–20.

⁵⁴ 42.2.4 and 5.3; cf. Cic. Pis. 48ff. (Seager [n. 44], p. 132).

⁵⁵ Cf. Woodman, (n. 26), pp. 99f. for the topos ‘cum fortuna statque caditque fides.’Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ BC 3.103.3.

⁵⁷ Pomp. 76.5.

⁵⁸ 42.3.2.

⁵⁹ BC 2.84;cf. 83.

⁶⁰ 17.1.11.

⁶¹ 8.692–7.

⁶² Veil. Pat. 2.53.2. Cf. Woodman, (n. 26), pp. 100f. for the blend of ‘commutatio fortunae’ and ‘conquestio'.Google Scholar.

⁶³ Val. Max. 5.1.10.

⁶⁴ For this pair of names, cf.Vidal-Naquet, P., ‘The Black Hunter Revisited’, PCPS 32 (1986), 136Google Scholar. Virgil thus wins a new pun from the name; Neoptolemus, according to Servius, was so called ‘quia ad bellum ductus est puer’ (on 263).‘Pyrrhus’ is found in 469, 491, 526, 529, 547, 662 (also 3.296, 319), ‘Neoptolemus’ when he is first introduced (263) and in 500, 549 (also 3.333, 469, 11.264).

⁶⁵ Cf. Wijdeveld, G., ‘De Vergilii Aen. II, 469 sqq.’, Mnem. 10 (1942), 238–40Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ One might note that Achilles' charioteer, Automedon, followed Pyrrhus (476f.).

⁶⁷ That Virgil should have chosen the detail of the severed head, in order that the deaths of Priam and Pompey should each enhance the pathos of the other, might suggest to the reader with a good historical memory the first victim of Pompey, Cn. Papirius Carbo. An opponent of Sulla, he was chased by Pompey to Africa and then Sicily, where he was executed and his head was sent to Sulla (Appian, BC 1.96; cf. Plut. Pomp. 10.3f.; Liv. per. 89). He had defended Pompey in 86, so that Ptolemy Dionysius was not the only one to find it expedient to forget past alliances. This circularity in Pompey's career is mirrored by a similar one in that of Pyrrhus. Having slaughtered Priam at an ancestral altar, shaded by a laurel, he perished in a comparable manner: ‘scelerum furiis agitatus Orestes / excipit incautum patriasque obtruncat ad aras’ (Aen. 3.331f.; the verb too echoes Priam's end, cf. 2.557, 663). The place is Delphi, where Pyrrhus was buried near the temple of Apollo with its laurel (the parallel is noted by Williams, R. D., P. Vergili Maronis: Aeneidos liber tertius [Oxford, 1962], p. 125Google Scholar; cf. Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans [Baltimore and London, 1979], pp. 118–41)Google Scholar. It is also ironic that Hector, the analogue of Priam and Pompey, should have thought of cutting offPatroclus' head and throwing his body to the dogs (Il. 17.125–7).

⁶⁸ Hardie, (n. 1), passim, esp. pp. 26ffGoogle Scholar., 95ff., 248ff. 340ff.

⁶⁹ Pöschl (n. 1), p. 24.

⁷⁰ Plut, . Cato Minor 44.3fGoogle Scholar.

⁷¹ Camps (n. 2), p. 8, n. 17.

⁷² On this concept, seeOgilvie, R. M., A Commentary on Livy Books 1–5 (Oxford, 1965), p. 536Google Scholar on Liv. 4.4.4.

⁷³ To the passages inAustin, R. G., P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Primus (Oxford, 1971), p. 68Google Scholar (Horn. Il. 2.144ff.; Cic. Cluent. 138; Liv. 28.27.11; Polybius 11.29.90 Harrison, S., ‘Vergil on Kingship: the First Simile of the Aeneid’, PCPS 34 (1988), 55–9Google Scholar, adds Hsd. Theog. 81–93, a much-quoted passage in works on kingship. Cf. Pöschl (n. 1), p. 21 ‘for the very reason that I am willing to accept the possibility of a connection between an event in the political career of Cato Uticensis and the first simile of the Aeneid, I must emphatically declare that it means very little’.

⁷⁴ As will be seen ‘east’ and ‘west’ do not carry with them any inherent moral qualities, but take them from the context. The Trojans/Romans, as easterners and westerners, might be said to mediate the opposition in a significant way: this point is now argued at length byCairns, F., Virgil's Augustan Epic (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 123–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who should be consulted for earlier discussions.

⁷⁵ In the Aeneid, cf. for instance 4.215f. (Iarbas on Aeneas): ‘at nunc ille Paris cum semiviro comitatu, / Maeonia mentum mitra crinemque madentem / subnexus’; also 9.141f., 9.614ff., 12.99.

⁷⁶ Cf. 217f. of the ‘regna’ of Troy, ‘quae maxima quondam / extremo veniens sol aspiciebat Olympo.’

⁷⁷ Because history has not literature's symmetries, Pompey married a daughter of Caesar.

⁷⁸ Cf. also 8.705f. ‘…omnes eo terrore Aegyptus et Indi, / omnis Arabs, omnes vertebant terga Sabaei’, 722ff. The Roman victory over the Greeks in the second and first centuries B.C. is also a repetition of the Trojan War, in which west now defeats east; compare Prop. 4.1.53f. and Lycophron's Alexandra. In the latter work, the passage on the movement from Troy to Rome (1226–80) is followed by a description of the conflict of Europe and Asia, which the ‘blazing lion’ (1439–41), descendant of Cassandra, will stop (1283–1450). Momigliano, who accepts the authenticity of the disputed passages, writes that ‘Lycophro n accepted the Herodotean philosophy of the contrast between Asia and Europe and included in this scheme the great power of the West as a representative of Asia. It is the first attempt known to us to introduce Rome into a design of universal history’ (Momigliano, A., Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici [Rome, 1960], p. 442Google Scholar, who should be consulted for earlier treatments of the problem). For Romans as men of the west and east, cf. the Sibylline oracle in Paus. 7.8.9, where the younger Philip will be δμηθε⋯ς ⋯σπερίοισιν ὑρ' ⋯νδρ⋯σι ἠῴοις τε

⁷⁹ Note the way that Caesar and Augustus are ‘blended’ in Jupiter's prophesy at 1.286ff. (Kenney, E. J., CR 18 [1968], 106)Google Scholar and that in 8.685 ‘ope barbarica’ of Antony's forces quotes from the same Ennian passage as used in 2.499–505 for the prelude to Priam's death (Wigodsky [n. 24], p. 78).

⁸⁰ The ambiguity in the lines is illustrated (but then rejected through a claim to knowledge of what was in Virgil's mind) byFordyce, C. J., P. Vergili Maronis: Aeneidos libri VII–VIII (Oxford, 1977), p. 122Google Scholar. For the expression ‘socer… gener’, cf. Cat. 29.24, and for the Aeneid, cf. Cairns, (n. 74), pp. 97fGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ See the discussion ofGransden, K. W., Virgil: Aeneid Book VIII (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 11–14Google Scholar.

⁸² On the importance of ‘concordia’, as opposed to simple peace, in the Aeneid, cf. Cairns, (n. 74), pp. 85–108Google Scholar.

⁸³ For parallels between the deaths of Priam and Dido, cf.Fenik, B., ‘Parallelism of Theme and Imagery in Aeneid II and IV, AJPh 80 (1959), 19–21Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ For this concept applied to Pompey, cf. Cic. Cat. 3.26 ‘unoque tempore in hac republica duos cives extitisse, quorum alter fines vestri imperi non terrae sed caeli regionibus terminaret’; for Pompey, cf. also his inscription describing himself as τ⋯ ⋯ρια τ⋯ς ⋯γεμονίας τοῖς ⋯ροις τῖς γ⋯ς προσβιβ⋯σας (Diod. Sic. 40.4) andWeippert, O., Alexander-imitatio und römische Politik in republikanischer Zeit (Augsberg, 1972), pp. 90fGoogle Scholar; for Caesar, Weinstock, S., Divus Julius (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar, index s.w. ‘dominus terrarum’ and ‘mastery of the world’; Michel, D., Alexander als Vorbildfür Pompeius, Caesar und Marcus Antonius (Brussels, 1967), pp. 81ffGoogle Scholar. (all quoted by Hardie [n. 1] pp. 377 n. 3, 378 n. 10).

⁸⁵ On this see Feeney, D. C., ‘History and Revelation in Vergil's Underworld’, PCPS 32 (1986), 1–24Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ So 1.265f. ‘tertia dum Latio regnantem viderit aestas, / ternaque transierint Rutulis hiberna subactis.’ Livy does not give an exact timing, but Aeneas' death clearly follows soon after his victory (1.2.5f.): ‘fretusque his animis coalescentium in dies magis duorum populorum Aeneas…in aciem copias eduxit. Secundum inde proelium Latinis, Aeneae etiam ultimum operum mortalium fuit.’ However, in Aen. 6.764f. ‘quern tibi longaevo serum Lavinia coniunx / educet’, there is apparently reference to a different and contradictory tradition.

⁸⁷ I am grateful to audiences at the ARLT Summer School in Cheltenham and at Belfast and Lampeter, to the Editors of CQ and the anonymous reader, and especially to Don Fowler, who read a draft of this piece and suggested not a few improvements, ⋯λλ' οὐκ αἶτιóς ⋯στι.…