No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
‘Like Dreams That Delude The Sleeping Senses’: Aeneas' Moral Failure and Vergil's Imagery of The Insubstantial
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Extract
tum dea nube cava tenuem sine viribus umbram in faciem Aeneae — visu mirabile monstrum — Dardaniis ornat telis, clipeumque iubasque divini adsimulat capitis, dat inania verba, dat sine mente sonum gressusque effingit euntis, morte obita qualis fama est volitare figuras aut quae sopitos deludunt somnia sensus. (A. 10.636-642)
Then out of hollow mist the goddess makes a powerless phantom in the likeness of Aeneas — a sight marvelous to behold! — fits it with Trojan arms, simulates the shield and plumes on its godlike head, and gives it empty words, a voice without a mind, and the gait of a walking man; like phantom forms that flit about, it is said, when death is past, or like dreams that delude the sleeping senses.
Near the mid-point of his aristeia in Iliad 5, Diomedes crushes the hip bone of Aeneas with a great boulder (302 ff.). Before he can administer the coup de grâce, however, Aphrodite intervenes and attempts to protect her son by covering him with the folds of her garment (311 ff.). Not to be thwarted, Diomedes attacks the goddess herself, wounding her on the wrist (334 ff.). She immediately abandons Aeneas and returns, in pain, to Olympus.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Aureal Publications 1978
References
1. Nehrkorn, H., ‘A Homeric Episode in Vergil’s Aeneid,’ AJP 92 (1971), 566 ff.Google Scholar
2. Ibid., 584.
3. I find Nehrkorn’s interpretation of the ‘false-Aeneas’ episode the least convincing part of her argument — particularly her statement that the Aeneas-image ‘saves Turnus for the moment — and ruins him for the future’ (p. 582). It is true that Turnus is overwhelmed by a great sense of shame at having — as he thinks — deserted his comrades in arms; but this seems only to harden, not weaken, him for his final encounter with Aeneas in 12 (cf. 12.52 ff.). Moreover, Turnus’ highly emotional reaction (10.668 ff.) to his forced separation from the battlefield seems to enhance the nobility of his character and thereby generates in our own minds a certain amount of sympathy for him.
4. This imagery of the insubstantial has not, I think, been satisfactorily examined. For scattered comments on Vergil’s use of darkness and shadow, see, e.g., Pöschl, V., The Art of Vergil, trans. Seligson, G. (Ann Arbor, 1962), 139 ff.Google Scholar; Hunt, J. W., Forms of Glory. Structure and Sense in Vergil’s Aeneid (Carbondale 1973) 33 ff.Google Scholar
5. Cf., e.g., the remark of Henry, J.(Aeneidea, vol. 2 [Dublin, 1878], 176Google Scholar): ‘It is not literal night which flits about Aeneas and his companions; it is the night of the tomb, the darkness of the grave, the shadow of death.’ Henry then aptly compares 6.866, where the figure of Marcellus is surrounded by the same nox atra and umbra. For the words nox and umbra used metaphorically of death, see also 10.541 (ingenti umbra) and 10.746 (aeternam noctem). Useful for any study of the Latin vocabulary of darkness is Nováková, J., Umbra: Ein Beitrag zur Dichterischen Semantik (Berlin, 1964Google Scholar) = Deutsche Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin, Schriften der Sektion für Altertumswiss., vol. 36.
6. On the one hand, then, the word caecos (2.357) looks ahead to Aeneas’ subsequent combat per caecam noctem (‘through the blinding night,’ 2.397), at which time the darkness of night will make clear vision impossible; on the other, the word recalls 2.244, where Aeneas confessed that he and his fellow citizens were ‘blind (i.e., in a cognitive rather than in a physiological sense) with frenzy’ (caeci furore) when they dragged the infamous horse into the city.
7. Words denoting mist and shadow are commonly used to describe a state of mental incapacity. Cf., e.g., 12.669: Ut primum discussae umbrae et lux reddita menti (‘As soon as the shadows scattered and light returned to his mind’); Plautus Cist. 210: ita nubilam mentem animi habeo (‘so beclouded a mind have I’); Catull. 64.207: ipse autem caeca mentem caligine Theseus/consitus (‘but Theseus himself, his mind beset with blinding mist …’). See also Nováková (n. 5 above), 81 f. for Venus’ words at 2.594 f. as a condemnation of Aeneas’ actions, see Otis, B., Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1963), 241.Google Scholar
8. Putnam, M. C. J., The Poetry of the Aeneid (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 30 ff.Google Scholar
9. Contrast, e.g., 6.268–272: Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna, quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna est iter in silvis, ubi caelum condidit umbra Iuppiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem. They went in darkness through the shadow, beneath the lonely night, through the vacant halls of Dis and his empty realm; just as under the harmful light of an inconstant moon a path lies in the woods, when Jupiter has hidden the sky in shadow and black night has deprived the world of color. with 6.640 f.: largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt. Here an ampler airy brightness clothes the fields with rosy light; and they know their own sun and stars.
10. Otis (n. 7 above), 311.
11. For other observations on Vergil’s alternation of light and dark books, see, e.g., Conway, R. S., ‘The Architecture of the Epic,’ Harvard Lectures on the Vergilian Age (Cambridge, Mass., 1928), 129 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Duckworth, G. E., ‘The Architecture of the Aeneid,’ AJP 75 (1954), 5.Google Scholar
12. Vergil establishes another parallel between these two books by making the opening scenes of each one similar (yet at the same time different from the other ten opening scenes of the epic). Just as father Aeneas began book 2 by addressing the Carthaginians assembled in Dido’s palace (cf. pater 2, incipiam, 13), father Jove opens book 10 with a speech to the gods assembled on Olympus (cf. pater, 2, incipit, 5).
13. For recent discussions of the Aeneas-Achilles/Pyrrhus relationship, see Nethercut, W., ‘The Imagery of the Aeneid,’ CJ 67 (1971–1972), 133 ff.Google Scholar; Boyle, A. J., ‘The Meaning of the Aeneid’, Ramus 1 (1972), 70Google Scholar. On Aeneas’ (excessively) violent reaction to the death of Pallas, see, e.g., Quinn, K., Virgil’s Aeneid: A Critical Description (London, 1968), 18 f.Google Scholar; Camps, W. A., An Introduction to Virgil’s Aeneid (Oxford, 1969), 28Google Scholar f.; Boyle, op. cit., 132 f.
14. Cf., e.g., Servius, and Heyne, C. G. (ed., P. Virgilii Maronis Opera [London, 1793]Google Scholar), ad. loc.
15. So, e.g., Nettleship, (The Works of Virgil, with comm. by Conington, J. and Nettleship, H. [London, 1883]Google Scholar), ad. loc.
16. Cf. Plautus, Mostell. 766–770.
17. Johnson, W. R., Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil’s Aeneid (Berkeley, 1976), 96 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18. Putnam (n. 8 above), 199, notes the similar ‘atmosphere of dream and fantasy’ which Vergil creates in books 2 and 12.
19. Viewed in this way, Vergil’s use of this vocabulary of the insubstantial becomes comparable to his use of the epic’s other major symbolic images (e.g., serpent, fire). See esp. Boyle (n. 13 above), 81 ff.
20. For Creusa’s address as a condemnation of Aeneas’ actions, see the reference to Otis, n. 7 above.
21. Recent critics have, of course, become increasingly sensitive to the tragic failure of Aeneas’ actions at the end of the epic. Cf., e.g., Putnam (n. 8 above), 200 f.; Beare, R., ‘Invidious Success: Some Thoughts on the End of the Aeneid,’ Proc. of Vergil Soc. 5 (1964–1965), 18 ffGoogle Scholar.; Little, D. A., ‘The Death of Turnus and the Pessimism of the Aeneid,’ Aumla 33 (1970), 67 ff.Google Scholar, Boyle (n. 13 above), 84 f. and passim.
22. For a similar interpretation of Aeneas’ relationship with the ‘false dreams’ of 6.893 ff., see Boyle (n. 13 above), 113 ff. Vergil never makes it clear — to do so would detract from the epic’s richness and depth — whether he regarded Aeneas’ final shortcomings as an exclusively self-generated tragedy or one which was imposed on the Trojan hero by the dehumanizing forces of empire-building (the forces of which, whether willingly or not, Aeneas has become the primary instrument). What Vergil does suggest, however, is that the pressures inextricably linked to this pursuit of empire (rather like the ‘frenzy of war’ [belli rabies] and ‘lust for gain’ [amor habendi] which destroyed the Golden Age at 8.327) would inevitably magnify the frailties and potential for failure that are inherent in human nature. Cf. C. Segal, P., ‘Aeternum per saecula nomen: The Golden Bough and the Tragedy of History,’ Arion 5 (1966), 65Google Scholar and passim.