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Symbol and Contrast in the Aeneid1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

D. E. Eichholz
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Extract

Interpreting the Aeneid in terms of symbols is nowadays a fashionable and respectable procedure. It can also be highly dangerous, as some of its practitioners frankly admit. For example, Michael C. J. Putnam writes: ‘Any attempt, however sympathetic and careful, to delineate or clarify a poet's special, often private, symbolism, is subject to many hazards. I am not unaware of the difficulties of moving over a terrain wherein the already subtle boundary-line which separates critic from creator grows dimmer still.’ A sterner warning comes from Robert A. Brooks at the beginning of his article on the Golden Bough: ‘The oak-spirit and the King of the Wood, the mistletoe and the Queen of the Dead are all impressive concepts. But if the “real meaning” of the golden bough lies in these or near them, then Vergil must be considered an artist after the fashion of the late David Belasco, who painted the back of his stage sets as well as the front. What is happening on the stage or in the poem we may suspect to be illusory or subsidiary; the real action may be taking place in the carefully prepared but invisible recesses of the scene, approachable only by those who have a pass backstage. This is not Vergil's method …’ The warning should be heeded, even though the writer is citing an extreme case.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , October 1968 , pp. 105 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1968

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References

page 105 note 2 The Poetry of the Aeneid (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1965), xii.Google Scholar

page 105 note 3 ‘Discolor Aura’, AJP lxxiv (1953), 260.Google Scholar

page 106 note 1 The Art of Vergil: Image and Symbol in the Aeneid, translated by Seligson, Gerda, (Ann Arbor, 1962).Google Scholar In quoting, I have sometimes altered the translation slightly where it might mislead. The book was originally published as Die Dichtkunst Virgils: Bild and Symbol in der (Aeneis Innsbruck and Vienna), 1950.Google Scholar

page 107 note 1 Op. cit. 151.

page 110 note 1 Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1963).Google Scholar

page 110 note 2 Brooks Otis maintains (op. cit. 284, n. 1) that the thread is here given not to Ariadne so that she can help Theseus—Virgil mentions no name—but to Pasiphae so that she can visit her monstrous child the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. But does any ancient author mention the thread in this connection? It is true that the beneficiary is called regina, and that Pasiphae is a queen and Ariadne merely a princess. Conington points, however, to i. 273, where regina has already been used of a princess, namely Ilia.

page 111 note 1 This very obvious aspect of Virgil's poetry is sometimes overlooked by his modern interpreters. For example, some of them appear to assume that the pageant of Roman heroes in Book vi is staged entirely for the benefit of Aeneas. It is true that in the story this is so. It is also true that he is said to be impressed by the vision (854) and fired by it (889): we should think him very dull if he were not. But we too are meant to be impressed, and all the more so because we know that the lessons of the vision have been authenticated by its fulfilment. The effect of the vision on Aeneas is seemingly tenuous compared with the impact that Virgil hoped to make with it on his contemporaries and their descendants.

page 112 note 1 Op. cit. 261, n. 2.