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Turnus and his Ancestors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

C. J. Mackie
C. J. Mackie
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Extract

In Book 6.88–94 of the Aeneid reference is made by the Cumaean Sibyl to the fact that there will be terrible wars on the Trojans' arrival at Lavinium. The details given by the Sibyl evoke the war at Troy; there will be a Simois, a Xanthus, and a Greek camp. Moreover, there will be another Achilles in Latium and the war will again be fought over a woman. Aeneas, when he hears this, has just arrived in Italy after the war at Troy and a gruelling seven-year journey. The prophecy is therefore the last thing that he wants to hear, but he responds very stoically and then proceeds to ask the Sibyl's permission to enter the Underworld (6.103ff.). Aeneas' filial pietas is therefore stressed by his determination to meet with his father's shade in the face of forthcoming adversity.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , May 1991 , pp. 261 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 This is reinforced by the fact that the Sibyl's reference to horrida bella (6.86) in Italy is repeated by the poet at 7.41.

2 For some of these see Knauer, G. N., Die Aeneis und Homer (Göttingen, 1964)Google Scholar; Gransden, K. W., Vergil's Second Iliad (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar; Lyne, R. O. A. M., Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar; Mackie, C. J., The Characterisation of Aeneas (Edinburgh, 1988)Google Scholar; Cairns, F. F., Virgil's Augustan Epic (Cambridge, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For some different views on the significance of the reference see Norden, E., P. Vergilius Aeneis Buch VI (Stuttgart, 1957)Google Scholar, ad loc; Anderson, W. S., ‘Vergil's Second Iliad’, TAPA 88 (1957), 17–30Google Scholar; Thomas, Van Nortwick, ‘Aeneas, Turnus and Achilles’, TAPA 110 (1980), 303–14Google Scholar; Boyle, A. J., The Chaonian Dove (Leiden, 1986), pp. 154ff.Google Scholar; Lyne (above, n. 2), pp. 107ff.

4 For Turnus as a iuvenis see 7.420; 7.435; 7.446; 7.456; 9.16; 9.806; 10.623; 10.686; 11.123; 11.530; 11.897; 12.19; 12.149; 12.598: cf. 12.216ff.

5 For this aspect see especially 7.55 where he is ante alios pulcherrimus omnis (cf. Aeneas at 4.141 and Dido at 1.496); his beauty is re-affirmed at 7.649–50. When Turnus exhorts his men into battle his decus egregium formae is one of the three characteristics that impresses them (7.472–4).

6 Audax seems to be the characteristic adjective for Turnus when he is not in the mad rage (furor) that afflicts him throughout much of the poem; see 7.409; 9.3. Servius, ad 8.110, makes some pertinent comments on the subject of Vergil's use of audax to describe Turnus and Pallas: contrast Schenk, P., Die Gestalt des Turnus in Vergils Aeneis (Königstein/Ts., 1984), pp. 27ff.Google Scholar

7 For some of the major references to his ancestry (in addition to 6.90) see 7.56; 7.371–2; 7.409–10; 7.473–4; 9.3–4. Turnus is a very Roman figure when he passionately tells the Latins (11.440–2) that he, second to none of his forefathers in virtus, has devoted his life to the Latins and to Latinus.

8 See Servius, ad 10.76. On Venilia see Preller, L., Römische Mythologie (Berlin, 1865), pp. 158, 163, 503 and 581Google Scholar; and G. Radke, RE VIIIA, s.v. ‘Venilia’, cols. 787–8.

9 Ovid, , Metamorphoses, 14.332ff.Google Scholar; see too Varro, , De Lingua Latina, 5.72Google Scholar. The Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar s.v. ‘Venilia’, mistakenly cites Faunus as the husband of Venilia (Daunus?); cf. Preller (above n. 8), p. 163.

10 Servius ad 7.366. See too Latinus' statement (12.29–30) that he supported Turnus out of love for him, and because of kindred blood and the tears of his wife. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.64.2, also makes Turnus the nephew of Amata.

11 For Thetis' support for Achilles in the Iliad, see 1.357ff.; 8.371ff.; 15.75ff.; 18.50ff.; 18.368ff.; 19.3ff.: for Venus' support for Aeneas in the Aeneid, see 1.314–414; 2.588–621; 8.530ff.; 12.41 Iff.; and passim.

12 For some key moments in this process, see 10.653ff.; 11.215–24; 11.378–444; 12.1–106; 12.216ff.; 12.632–49; and passim. For a related discussion on Aeneas see Feeney, D., ‘The Taciturnity of Aeneas’, CQ 33 (1983), 204–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 See Juno's speech to Iuturna at 12.142–53.

14 Nor indeed does Daunus in the Aeneid have the same prominence as Peleus in the Iliad, who belongs to a great earlier generation of heroes whose feats are related in the course of the poem (e.g. 7.124ff.; 11.769ff.; 16.571ff.; 18. 84ff.; 18.429ff.; 19.334ff.). At Iliad 20.200ff. Aeneas compares his lineage with that of Achilles.

15 10.688; 12.22; 12.90; 12.723; 12.785. Turnus eventually pleads to Aeneas for the sake of his father Daunus (12.932ff.). There is an irony that Latinus urges Turnus to pity his father (miserere parentis / longaeui 12.43–4) and that Turnus ignores the plea and ends up pleading himself to Aeneas on much the same basis (Dauni miserere senectae 12.934): cf. the taunt of Drances (miserere tuorum 11.365) repeated at a critical moment by Saces (miserere tuorum 12.653).

16 Servius, ad 7.372. The story of Danae as a woman who escapes from unhappiness and founds a new city in a new land has certain parallels with the story of Dido.

17 Cf. Hera's boast (Il. 24.56ff.) that whereas Hector has two mortal parents, Achilles has a goddess mother.

18 See 7.286–7; 371–2; 789–92. Much is written on this aspect; see W. Ehlers, R.E. VIIA, s.v. ‘Turnus’, cols. 1409–13; Small, S. G. P., ‘The Arms of Turnus’, TAPA 90 (1959), 243–52Google Scholar; Foster, J. C. B., ‘Divine and Demonic Possession in the Aeneid’, LCM 2 (1977), 117–28.Google Scholar

19 See 10.497–8 and 12.942ff. See Quinn, K., Virgil's Aeneid, A Critical Description (London, 1968), pp. 274–5Google Scholar; Breen, C. C., ‘The Shield of Turnus, the Swordbelt of Pallas, and the Wolf. Aeneid 7.789–92; 9.56–66; 10.497–99’, Vergilius 32 (1986), 63–71Google Scholar. The blood-stained thalamus seems to be a favourite Vergilian motif; cf. the Sibyl at 6.93–4, and Deiphobus and Helen at 6.509ff.

20 Jupiter's stealing of Iuturna's virginity (12.140–1; 12.878ff.) is one such case: cf. Io (7.789ff.) and Danae (Servius, ad 7.372). See Fowler, D., ‘Vergil on Killing Virgins’, in Homo Viator, Classical Essays for John Bramble, ed. Whitby, M., Hardie, P. and Whitby, M. (Bristol, 1987), pp. 185–98.Google Scholar

21 See W. Ehlers (above, n. 18), 1412. Pliny, however (Ardea a Danae Persei matre condita N.H. 3.56), suggests an Argive tradition for Ardea which may have been independent of Vergil.

22 Stoltenberg, H. L., Etruskische Gottnamen (Leverkusen, 1957), pp. 36–7Google Scholar; contrast Cairns (above, n. 2) p. 67.

23 Dionysius, 1.27ff. and 1.64.

24 Cato (Schröder, W. A., M. Porcius Cato, Das erste Buch der Origines [Meisenheim am Glan, 1971]Google Scholar frs. and commentary 9a, 10, 11, 12); Dionysius, 1.64–5; Livy, 1.2.3.

25 See, inter alia, Gagé, J., ‘Les Étrusques dans L'Énéide’, MEFR 46 (1929), 115–44.Google Scholar

26 The troops who support Mezentius (7.647–54) are those presumably who followed him into exile.

27 See 3.94–8; 3.167ff.; 7.205ff.; 9.10: on the Etruscans and the Aeneid, see Bremmer, J. N. and Horsfall, N., Roman Myth and Mythography, B.I.C.S. Supplement 52 (London, 1987), 89ff.Google Scholar

28 I should like to thank the anonymous CQ referee for helpful criticisms.