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Aeneas and Mount Atlas*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

J. H. W. Morwood
J. H. W. Morwood
Affiliation:
Harrow School
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Extract

In the fourth book of the Aeneid Mercury flies to Carthage on the orders of Jupiter to bid Aeneas be mindful of his destiny and sail away. First he binds his winged sandals on his feet; then he takes up his mystical wand, which he uses to make his way through the sky. Next, before he comes to Carthage and sees the glittering figure of Aeneas, he observes and touches down on Mount Atlas, which is arrestingly personified as an old man:

iamque volans apicem et latera ardua cernit

Atlantis duri caelum qui vertice fulcit,

Atlantis, cinctum adsidue cui nubibus atris

piniferum caput et vento pulsatur et imbri,

nix umeros infusa tegit, turn flumina mento

praecipitant senis, et glacie riget horrida barba.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 75 , November 1985 , pp. 51 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © J. H. W. Morwood 1985. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Calypso is the daughter of Atlas; Mercury is his grandson (8. 138–41). Pöschl, V. notes, in Die Dichtkunst Virgils, Bild und Symbol in der Aneis (1977), 177CrossRefGoogle Scholar, how Virgil has added to the Homeric picture of Hermes who gives and takes away sleep (Od. 5. 47 8) the Hermes who brings death, Hermes Psychopompos. This is certainly a possible significance of Virgil's introduction of Mercury's staff (4. 242–4), but there seems no reason, other than mere proximity, to allow this symbolism to run over into the Atlas picture.

2 Latin Explorations (1963), 39Google ScholarPubMed.

3 The Poems of John Dryden, ed. by Kingsley, J. (1958), III. 1003Google Scholar.

4 Virgil, ed. by Conington, J. (1884), n. at 4. 249Google Scholar.

5 The Aeneid of Virgil, Books I–VI, ed. by Page, T. E. (1894), n. at 4. 249Google Scholar.

6 Maronis, P. Vergili, Aeneidos Liber Quartus, ed. by Austin, R. G. (1973), notes at 248 ff. and 250Google Scholar.

7 The Aeneid of Virgil, Books I–VI, ed. by Williams, R. D. (1972), n. at 4. 238 fGoogle Scholar.

8 Aeneid IV, ed. by A. S. Pease (1967), 256.

9 Gislason, in Die Naturschilderungen und Naturgleichnisse in Virgils Äneis (Diss., Münster, 1937)Google Scholar. See Pöschl, op. cit. (n. 1), 176.

10 Pöschl, op. cit., 176.

11 From Kenney, E. J., New Frameworks for Old (1975). 8–9Google Scholar.

12 Virgil: Selections from Aeneid IV, Handbook, ed. by Muir, J. V. (1977), 35Google Scholar.

13 AJP 85 (1964), 225–53. The passages quoted are on pp. 226–7.

14 See Lyne, R. O. A. M., The Latin Love Poets (1980), 1–2Google Scholar. See also Cat. 64. 159.

15 Homer on Life and Death (1980), 3–6Google Scholar.

16 Most notably on the lips of the Trojans' enemies. See e.g. 9. 614–20 and 12. 97–100. Cf. the memorable statement of the motif of oriental glamour in the description of the Phrygian arms of Chloreus, priest of Cybele, in II. 768–77; though the Romans celebrated the Great Mother, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2. 19) tells us that the priest and priestess were Phrygians. For a native Roman to join in flute-playing processions or to participate in the Phrygian orgies was forbidden by a law and decree of the Senate. These foreign customs were considered unseemly for Romans. Cf. A. 9. 614–20.

17 I should prefer to take this line as meaning that Romulus rejoiced in being sheltered (literally ‘covered’) by a wolf rather than to clothe him in the skin of his deceased foster mother, as some would have it: ‘gay in a red-brown wolfskin’ is W. F. Jackson Knight's version in his Penguin translation of the Aeneid (1958). I cannot feel happy with this.

18 Griffin, J., ‘Augustan Poetry and the Life of Luxury’, JRS 66 (1976), 85–105Google Scholar. Griffin quotes Cicero's statement (De Off. I. 106) of the traditional point of view, more honoured, we may suppose, in the breach than the observance: ‘atque etiam si considerare volumus, quae sit in natura excellentia et dignitas, intellegemus, quam sit turpe diffluere luxuria et delicate, ac molliter vivere quamque honestum parce, continenter, severe, sobrie.’

19 ibid., 94.

20 This story may have had wide currency. Ovid assumes awareness of it in Am. 3. 1. See further Aeneid VIII, ed. by Gransden, K. W. (1976), 19–20Google Scholar. In addition, it is significant that, in the Hypsipyle episode in the Argonautica (1. 609–913) with its many parallels with the Dido story, it is Heracles who, after refusing to join in the romantic celebrations with the Lemnian women, persuades the Argonauts to leave. There is no glory, he says, in being cooped up for long with foreign women (869–70).

21 Austin, op. cit. (n. 6), n. at 262.

22 Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (1968), 385.

23 Most notably Muir, op. cit. (n. 12), n. at 262.

24 Suet., D. Iul. 43: ‘usum…conchyliatae vestis et margaritarum nisi certis personis et aetatibus perque certos dies ademit’—quoted by Griffin, art. cit. (n. 18), 92: he also cites (100) Cic., Att. 13. 7. 1. to show that Caesar's measure was a failure.

25 Otis, Brooks, Virgil, A Study in Civilized Poetry (1963), 82Google Scholar. Cf. Gransden, op. cit. (n. 20), 29.

26 For the parallelism between Aeneas and Hercules, see McGushin, art. cit. (n. 13), 232–42, and Binder, G., Aeneas und Augustus (1971), 61–2, 141–9Google Scholar.

27 cf. Cat. 51.

28 For a contrasting view, see J. Griffin, ‘The Fourth Georgic, Virgil and Rome’, G & R 26 (1979), 61–80. Rightly rejecting the idea of the bees’ representing ‘an absolute model for human society’, Griffin cannot accept that Virgil would be advocating a society that is ‘impersonal, collective, Stakhanovite, without art’ (63). He views the community of bees with jaundiced eyes. But the Aeneid similes at any rate surely do not suggest a grimly joyless society. On the contrary. See on the first of them Otis, op. cit. (n. 25), 65: ‘the simile suggests all the sweetness of security and happy employment’—while Johnson, W. R. (Darkness Visible (1976), 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar) finds in it an expression of Virgil's ‘own best dream, the unity of the City’. Aeneas' jealous exclamation ‘O fortunati…’ (1. 437) surely confirms an optimistic reading of this bee picture.

29 Worstbrock, F. J. (Elemente einer Poetik der Aeneis (1963), 87–9Google Scholar), noting the similarities between the bee simile of Book 1 and the worker ant simile of Book 4, observes the contrast between the observers in each case, Dido and Aeneas respectively: ‘Für den funktionalen Kontrast zwischen den beiden Gleichnissen ist von Bedeutung, dass im Bienengleichnis die Atmosphäre des Frühsommers gewahrt ist, im Ameisengleichnis aber bereits der Winter droht.’

30 But see 2. 592–3 and 8. 615.

31 Todd, R. W., Vergilius 26 (1980), 27:Google Scholar ‘For Aeneas in the underworld, Lavinia coniunx mentioned by Anchises (6. 764) is merely a vehicle which will enable the Trojans to establish in Italy the dynasty specified by destiny.’

32 op. cit. (n. 26), 62. The footnote on 4. 246–9 is on p. 60. Gransden, who does refer to the Book 4 Atlas, writes well on this (op. cit. (n. 20), 17–18).

33 A Vergil Concordance, compiled by Warwick, H. H. (1975)Google Scholar. See also Gransden, op. cit., 39, and Binder (op. cit. (n. 26), 61): ‘Atlas ist eine Gestalt des ewigen labor und gehört als solche zusammen mit drei anderen Gestalten der Aeneis: mit Hercules, Aeneas und Augustus.’

34 See Otis, op. cit. (n. 25), 276–7: referring to Juno's use of Allecto in Book 7 to provoke the Latin War, Otis remarks that ‘… this is the real test of his pietas (and indeed of his other great qualities as well) precisely because his problem here is not to escape or withdraw (as in 2, 4) but to endure, to depend on his own strength and fortitude’.

35 Strabo 14. 1. 23, Plut., Alex. 72. 5–8. See also Schol. Il. 14. 229. Cf. R. Jebb on the transformed Niobe (Sophocles, , Antigone (1971)Google Scholar, n. at 831) and E. A. Hahn in her spirited note (‘Vergil's Divine Beings’, TAPA 88 (1957), 64–5).

36 Walker, S. and Burnett, A., The Image of Augustus (1981), 3Google Scholar.

37 οἱ δὲ ἀκρογένειοι εὔψυχοι· ἀναφέρεται ἐπὶ τοὺς κύνας. If this does not refer to the Churchillian courage indicated by the prominent chin but, as W. S. Hett takes it in his translation (Loeb, 1936), to the stout-heartedness of those ‘with hair on the point of the chin’, it is still relevant to our passage since Virgil's Atlas is bearded.

38 Georgii, N., Die Antike Äneiskritik im Komm. d. Tib. Cl. Donatus (1893), 19Google Scholar.

39 See Kenney's contribution to West, D. and Woodman, T., Creative Imitation and Latin Literature (1979), 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Austin, op. cit. (n. 6), n. at 248 ff.; The Aeneid, ed. by Mackail, J. W. (1930), 142Google Scholar.

41 Aeneid XII, ed. by B. Tilly (1969), n. at 703.

42 Mackail, op. cit. (n. 40), n. at 704.

43 Bérard, V., Les Phéniciens et l'Odysée (1902), 240Google Scholar: ‘Les géographes gréco-romains comprennent dans Atlas toute la chaîne côtière de l'Afrique mineur.’

44 Plutarch (Cato Maior 5) felt that Cato had a mean and rigid nature. He wondered whether to ascribe his inhuman stinginess to greatness of spirit or meanness of mind (5. 6), and he refers to the excessive strictness and restraint of his life (20. 6). Also, see e.g. Cic., De Fin. 4. 78: ‘…[Stoici] horridiores evadunt, duriores et oratione et moribus.’