O'Hara, 'Virgil: Aeneid, Book IX', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9507
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9507-o'hara-virgil
@@@@95.7.11, Hardie, ed., Vergil: Aeneid IX
Philip Hardie (ed.), Virgil: Aeneid, Book IX. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995. Pp. 259. $59.95. ISBN 0-521-35126-X. $22.95. ISBN
0-521-35952-X (pb).
Reviewed by J.J. O'Hara -- Wesleyan University
johara@wesleyan.edu
Aeneid 9, as Philip Hardie reminds us in the introduction to
this intelligent and richly informative commentary, is "the first book
proper of Virgil's 'Iliad.'" It tells how Turnus, in the absence of
Aeneas and at the urging of Iris, attacks the Trojans' camp and threatens
to burn their ships, which Cybele protects by turning them into nymphs.
Nisus and Euryalus set off to fetch Aeneas, kill many of the enemy and
then are killed, lauded by the poet, and mourned by Euryalus' mother.
Next Numanus Remulus insults the Trojans as effeminate, praises the hardy
Italians, and is killed in the first act of war by Ascanius, who is
praised and then forbidden to fight more by Apollo. Finally Pandarus and
Bitias let Turnus into the camp, where he fights prodigiously, but
disastrously neglects to let the other Italians into the camp, and
finally is driven off.
Apart from the Nisus and Euryalus episode, this book has
attracted less attention than most parts of the Aeneid, but now
Hardie has done much to make attractive the idea of focusing on Book 9
for all or part of an undergraduate or graduate course, perhaps paired
with Book 10 (in the light of Harrison's major 1991 commentary from
Oxford, also learned and mostly up-to-date[[1]]). H. offers an excellent
and provocative introduction, and fine introductory notes to each section
of the text: both types of introduction are crammed full of useful
information and interesting, intelligent observations, even though below
I shall not offer assent to every claim. The commentary offers learned
and useful comments on style (though without much help for students on
meter, on which there is no separate treatment[[2]]), textual
problems,[[3]] etymological wordplay (often but not always convincing),
poetic and other models (esp. Homer, Ennius, and the Alexandrians, but
also lesser known Republican sources in prose and poetry), later Silver
Latin imitations of Vergil (predictably, from the author of The Epic
Successors of Virgil: A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition,
Cambridge 1993), the relation of each section to other parts of the book
and poem, and the role numerous passages in Book 9 play in heated debates
about central issues of interpretation of the poem as a whole.
The commentary benefits from H.'s secure command of a vast amount
of scholarship, including the work of de la Cerda (the learned Jesuit
whose quirky but valuable 17th century commentary on Vergil is relatively
hard to consult in this country), and the material on Book 9 from the
planned commentary on 7-12 by Fordyce, of which only his notes on 7-8
have been published. H.'s competence seems to extend to every skill
required of the commentator, but no section of the volume displays merely
competence, for H. has interesting and stimulating things to say about
almost every aspect of Book 9. In this way H.'s book outstrips the
moderately helpful 1991 commentary of Gransden on Aeneid 11 for
the same series: where Gransden offered 76 pages of comment for about 915
lines of text, H. provides 186 for about 818. The range of material
covered is indicated by the names of sections of the introduction:
"Reworking Homer" (V.'s imitation "is not a makeshift in order to
construct a narrative with another poet's materials, but a self-conscious
and critical engagement with the models that challenges the reader to
compare and contrast earlier and later texts in a process that forces us
to rethink our interpretation of both Homer and Virgil; the resulting
combination of creation and criticism is very much in the manner of the
Alexandrian poets such as Callimachus and Theocritus"), "Cities and
Sieges" (on the ambivalence of the Trojan camp, which is both a besieged
city like Troy, which was destined to lose, and a camp like that of the
Greeks at Troy, who were destined to win), "Solidarity and Division,"
"Young Men at War," "Defining the Epic Hero," "Knowledge Human and
Divine," and within the section on Nisus and Euryalus, "the deaths of
young warriors," "the danger of excess and the taking of spoils,"
"symbolic underworlds," and "amicitia and amor" (where the
discussion of ancient sexuality is a little thin).
H.'s comments on the Nisus and Euryalus episode should attract
much attention; I shall discuss them first, then two parts of the
commentary I find less successful. H.'s treatment of Nisus and Euryalus
has two strengths: he views them in the context of other young warriors
who die in the poem, and he refuses to chose between conflicting
interpretations where Vergil is irresolvably ambiguous. With a brief nod
to Vidal-Naquet and the Athenian ephebeia,[[4]] H. offers useful comments
on the many youthful combatants in the poem who die before they reach
maturity, including Nisus and Euryalus, Pandarus and Bitias, Pallas,
Lausus, Camilla, and eventually Turnus himself. The difficulties that
young men have with "the crucially important challenge of growing up, of
making the successful transition from boyhood to adulthood," or "in
making the perilous transition from being a good hunter to being a good
warrior," are important aspects of both the Nisus and Euryalus episode,
and the depiction of Ascanius in the poem and especially in Book 9.
Ascanius is the exception to the pattern of young men destroyed by war,
for Apollo restrains his potentially dangerous enthusiasm (653-56), and
he will survive to be the ancestor of the Julians. A significant
omission, however, from H.'s list of warriors dying before maturity in
the Aeneid is Marcellus, the nephew and presumed heir to Augustus
whose death is lamented at 6.868-86. That Ascanius escapes the pattern
allows readers to look from the Homeric past towards the Augustan
present, but that Marcellus does not survive hampers our ability to look
with confidence beyond the present.[[5]] Still, H.'s treatment of the
dying young warriors is about as good as could be expected for one who
has not seen Mark Petrini's The Child and the Hero: Coming of Age in
Catullus and Vergil (forthcoming, Ann Arbor), which offers excellent
discussions of these and related issues.
In more general terms, H.'s treatment of Nisus and Euryalus is
successful in maintaining a balance between competing interpretations: H.
cites both scholars who find the episode sublime, noble, and optimistic,
and those who find it "a paradigm of futile behavior and the tragedy of
youth." He comments: "As with the death of Turnus at the end of the last
book, such contradictory judgments are provoked by Virgil's practice of
constructing complex moral, and even metaphysical problems, easy answers
to which are deliberately withheld." H. is a master of the techniques of
Knauer and Clausen and is also able to relate observations about models
directly to questions of interpretation: "one of the reasons for the
difficulty in deciding on the meaning of the episode is precisely the
conflating of many passages in earlier literature." The introduction
notes that when Vergil promises Nisus and Euryalus eternal fame "the
reasons for this commendation are made no clearer than is the exact
respect in which the two are declared to be fortunati." The
commentary offers an excellent discussion both of the "shock" of the
phrase fortunati ambo "after the tale of the unfortunate pair
(infelix 390, 430)," and of larger themes: "the futile tragedy of
these two adolescents exemplifies a particularly obsessive and memorable
set of themes in V.'s poetry.... The Aen. as a whole tells of suffering
and heroism in the remote past whose fruits endure to the present
(imperium Romanum), but in his final comment on the Nisus and
Euryalus story we see a more Homeric idea ..., that in the end the only
lasting result of heroic struggle and death is undying kleos."
When at 493-94 Euryalus' mother asks the Italians to kill her for the
sake of pietas H. offers the telling comment that "at the end of
an episode which resolves around various relationships of pietas
the only variety still available is a negative one;" he then cites Egan
on how "tensions in the use of pietas here foreshadow the problems
raised by the killing of T." at the end of the poem.
Where H. stands on the problems raised by the killing of Turnus
at the end of the Aeneid, however, is a difficult question. H.'s
first book, Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford 1986),
leaves little doubt that Aeneas, as champion of the side whose
imperium is as just and as divinely sanctioned as Jupiter's rule
over the cosmos, is completely justified in striking down Turnus, the
enemy of the gods and of the Romans. The Epic Successors of
Virgil, however, shows that ambivalence about the ending of the
Aeneid is both understandable, and a feature of much of the poetry
of the first century. Scholars fond of dividing up the Iliad and
Odyssey might suggest that Cosmos and Imperium and Epic
Successors were written by different authors--who then collaborated
on the commentary on Book 9. One could almost speak of the "two voices"
of Philip Hardie. At times, as in much of the introduction and in his
treatment of Nisus and Euryalus, H. displays a high tolerance for
ambiguity and ambivalence, and admirable concern for balance and for
sticking to the evidence in the discussion of controversial issues. On
at least two issues, however, H. is less successful in avoiding a role
like that of an advocate or prosecuting attorney, for his commentary
tilts the presentation of the evidence towards a less ambiguous and more
certainly negative view both of the Italians, as compared to their foes
the Trojans, and of Turnus. On both these issues H. strives for
fairness, but falls short; possibly this is a result of simply having so
much to talk about, and insufficient space for satisfying explorations of
these complex issues.
The cultural connotations of the presentation of the Trojans and
Italians are explored mainly in the context of the episode in which
Ascanius kills Numanus Remulus, both in the introduction, where H.'s
treatment is somewhat cramped and confusing, and in the commentary, which
I believe does not deliver the balanced picture promised by the
introduction. In the introduction H. is rather hard to follow: he
observes that Numanus' speech and death are related to the "the problem
of defining the ideal Italian and Roman national identity," and to
Augustus' "search for a renewed Roman identity after the chaotic passage
of the civil wars." He also sees connections between Numanus' criticism
of the over-civilized Trojans and the cultural sophistication of Romans
of V.'s day. But Numanus' idealized picture of the Italians is said to
be flawed: "an ideology that attempts to mold the future through a return
to an imagined past is doomed to internal contradictions, both because of
the impossibility of recreating primitive rural values in a highly
urbanized society, and because such idealization of ancient 'virtues' are
always partial, blind to the less attractive aspects of past societies."
A footnote citing the call to Victorian virtues in 1980's Britain does
not help me know whether the sentence I have just quoted is Vergil's
view, or Hardie's, or how it all relates to Augustus: is Numanus voicing
Augustan propaganda, of which Vergil is critical? This is too tough a
topic to handle in one page in an introduction, and I would like to see
H. tackle it at greater length in a less restrictive format.
I do like his next sentence, though: "The difficulty that critics
experience in deciding how qualified our admiration for the Italians in
the Aeneid should be, and how favorable we should be towards
Trojan civilization, reflects this ideological tension within the
Virgilian text." But in commentary on the Ascanius-Numanus episode,
unlike that on Nisus and Euryalus, H. has little difficulty in deciding
which culture should be admired, and which held at arm's length: he works
hard, often with strained or unconvincing arguments, to convince readers
that they should dismiss Numanus' criticism of the Trojans, and should
refrain from sympathizing with what he says about the Italians. For
example, on 595 he observes that digna atque indigna relatu
resembles part of 4.190, (Fama) pariter facta atque infecta
canebat, and claims that "the considerable overlap between what
Rumour (with the credulous Iarbas) and Numanus say about the Trojans
should prevent us from too readily giving credence to the latter's
words." It is hard to imagine a Roman reader or audience reacting to the
passage in this way: actually doubting or discounting what Numanus says
because it slightly resembles what Fama said in 4. Numanus' speech
is described in the introduction as "tendentious rhetoric" which leads to
his death, as if he would not have been killed if he had stuck to more
thoroughly verifiable claims ("you lousy Trojans stole Helen, and lost to
the Greeks"). That Numanus is killed with the help of the gods might
suggest that what he says is wrong, but there is little in the
Aeneid to indicate that only the bad or misinformed die (cf. esp.
2.428 dis aliter visum). On 603-13 H. notes that Numanus'
"picture [of the Italians] is one of 'hard primitivism'...; many details
would no doubt have struck the Roman reader as entirely praiseworthy, but on
some points they would have felt disquiet," but about the only place that
H. suggests much disquiet is on vivere rapto on 612-13. On
598-620 H. claims that "the model of Evander's account of Italian history
at 8.314-32 suggests the need for the replacement of the primitive
rawness of Italy with a new Saturnian age," but it is easier to see in
Evander's words the idea that each new arrival in Italy has brought a
worse race, and it is hard to associate the Trojans of Books 7-12 with
anything Saturnian as they fight Saturnian Juno's Saturnian people,
despite Anchises' reference at 6.792-95 to Augustus' refounding of the
golden/Saturnian age.[[6]] The campaign to direct the reader's sympathy
continues with the discussion of Ascanius: on 615 audacibus adnue
coeptis: "the word audax is particularly associated with
Turnus and his followers (3, 519 nn.). Ascanius is careful to ask for
divine approval of his own youthful boldness." The comment implies a
difference between Turnus and Ascanius because Ascanius carefully asks
for divine sanction, but in the passage cited at 9.3 audax Turnus
is probably to be thought of as waiting for a divine sign, which he gets,
from Iris. On 638 crinitus Apollo, H. notes that the phrase is
from a play of Ennius, in a context where Apollo is said to be shooting
the Furies: "this may add point to 621 dira [Numanus is said to be
dira canentem]; Ascanius kills the Fury-like Numanus with the
weapon of Apollo." Numanus is "Fury-like" because the things he says are
dirus and the boy who kills him is helped by a god described by a
phrase used by Ennius of Apollo killing Furies? H. is grasping at straws
here.
Three larger issues must be addressed. First, if Vergil means
for us to reject what Numanus or Iarbas or Amata says about the Trojans,
and what Numanus and others say about the Italians, why does he let these
voices be a part of his poem? Why relate things that are indigna
relatu? Are they fully contained and neutralized when (rather
indirectly) labeled incorrect? Is the reader effectively warned not to
sympathize with Numanus because of his death? If you're writing a
national epic about your city's and your emperor's Trojan heritage, why
not just leave out all mention of Trojans being effeminate or decadent?
Second, what about what Book 12 tells us about the Trojans, Italians, and
contemporary Romans? I believe H. never mentions the subordination of
the Trojan to the Italian in the compromise between Jupiter and Juno in
Book 12;[[7]] this and the death of Marcellus, discussed above, are the
two supplements to H.'s commentary I think most crucial for students
reading Book 9 in isolation. Even if Ascanius' divinely sanctioned
killing of Numanus to some extent suggested rejection of his views, the
compromise of Jupiter and Juno casts a different light back on the last
six books, and on the resistance of Turnus, Juno, and Numanus. Because
their side gets to contribute the most to the Trojan/Italian amalgam,
their resistance becomes a part of the divine plan, a part of what made
contemporary Rome: without it everything would be different.[[8]] Third,
is H. right in saying that Numanus' speech and death are related to the
"the problem of defining the ideal Italian and Roman national
identity" or that "the poem as a whole ... seeks to define the
ideal characters of Romans and Italians" (my emphasis each time)?
Why must it be "ideal"? When Vergil begins writing the Aeneid the
Romans have been through a century of great troubles. Thoughtful Romans
of the day, like Sallust or the Horace of Epodes 16 or 7 (7.16-17:
acerba fata Romanos agunt / scelusque fraternae necis) a little
earlier, might well have asked "why are we the way we are?--why all the
violence and civil war?" They might well have looked to the joint
Trojan/Italian heritage of their mythology as the source of powerful
positive and negative factors that both allowed them to conquer the
Mediterranean, and saddled them with decades of intermittent civil
strife. Both the Numanus episode, and much of the poem, make better
sense not as an attempt to define ideals, but as instead a probing
meditation on both the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman people: not
the "ideal," but the "real," character of the Romans.
For Turnus too the introduction promises a sophisticated
treatment of a figure with strong positive features, but some negative
ones as well, chiefly (in the introduction) the sense that he is a lesser
man than Aeneas, and that he shares with the other youthful figures in
Book 9 a tendency for rash behavior. The commentary offers a number of
acute observations, many of them new to me, on both positive and negative
features of the presentation of Turnus, but consistently highlights the
negative and downplays the positive, as though there were something to be
gained from showing that Turnus is not like you, me, and our hero
Aeneas. On 3 audacem, H. rightly observes that "a rash boldness
characterizes all [of Turnus'] actions in this book," but why not tell us
that the word is used of Ascanius later in this book, of Pallas in Book
8, and of the poet himself twice in the Georgics (some of this
information appears later in the commentary)? Especially useful could
have been Servius' comment on audax Pallas at 8.110, where he
defines audacia as virtus sine fortuna, and offers a
specific cross-reference to Turnus and 9.3. Such a reference could have
been helpful to H. in developing in the commentary the balanced picture
of Turnus the introduction promised, and could have led to a string of
comments on ways in which Turnus is similar to Aeneas except for being on
the wrong side of history (as well as, to be sure, being rather more
consistently impetuous and vicious).[[9]] Instead H. seems to bend over
backwards to read negative associations into the presentation of Turnus.
After the visit of Iris at the start of the book, H. asks whether Turnus
might not be "seeing things;" the attempt is made to suggest that divine
commands given to Turnus are less authoritative and less worthy of being
followed than those given to Aeneas. The attempt fails. Other scholars
have realized that the only way to condemn Turnus freely is to explain
that divine commands to Aeneas are real, those to Turnus are somehow
imaginary, or allegorical representations of his own nasty inner self,
especially the Allecto scene. H. does not go far on this road (to which
Feeney's Gods in Epic has now built formidable barriers), but he
occasionally gives aid to those who would make such feeble arguments, as
though the tradition of vilifying Turnus were simply too strong for him
to resist. On 24 oneravitque aethera votis H. suggests that
"there is a suggestion that Turnus' prayers are a tiresome burden," but
in 10.619-20, when Juno wants to save him from Aeneas, she reminds
Jupiter of his extensive offerings, with similar language: tua larga /
saepe manu multisque oneravit limina donis, and Jupiter in part
grants her request, with no sign that he is annoyed by the offerings. On
58 lustrat H. briefly notes the similarity of this to 8.230-31
(ter totum fervidus ira / lustrat Aventini montem), and other
passages from the Hercules-Cacus story. But in contrast to his excellent
and thorough handling of parallels to Hannibal, which put Turnus in the
position of Rome's assailant, H. does not draw the obvious conclusion,
that associations with Hercules cast Turnus in the role of Italy's
defender. On the omen of the Magna Mater and the changing of the ships
into nymphs, some of H.'s notes cite passages from the omens of Venus
interpreted by Aeneas in 8.520-36, but he never makes clear the extensive
resemblances between the two scenes, which suggest that the experiences
of Turnus and Aeneas are in some ways quite similar.[[10]] In discussing
Turnus' claim, sunt et mea fata mihi, H. says that "T. almost
redefines fate as 'that which is morally fitting', or even as 'that which
lies in the strength of my weapons'; the implied rejection of a
supernatural sanction brings him close to Mezentius, the contemptor
divum." The comparison to Mezentius is groundless; we need to
mention Allecto here, whose telling Turnus that Juno told her to speak to
him (ipsa palam fari omnipotens Saturnia iussit, 7.427) gives him
every right to say sunt et mea fata mihi. On 138 coniuge
praerepta H. says "in fact Lavinia is not even T.'s sponsa,"
but should also cite Allecto's words at 7.423-24, rex tibi coniugium
et quaesitas sanguine dotes / abnegat, externusque in regnum quaeritur
heres. Surely Turnus' problem is not that he is contemptuous of the
gods, like Mezentius, but that he is too trusting of gods who are
deceiving him.
H.'s explanation of passages that suggest conflicting viewpoints
of Turnus is unsatisfying, but he does usually lay out the information
necessary for the fuller, more sophisticated treatment from which he
shies away. In introducing the Pandarus and Bitias passage (672-755) H.
nicely explains how all of Book 9 leads up to the tense and dramatic
scene in which Turnus gets inside the Trojan camp and fights alone before
finally retreating. He also provides a wealth of information on Homeric
models, on a likely and important Ennian model, and on associations of
Turnus with Achilles, Hector, Pyrrhus in Aen. 2, Hannibal almost
sacking Rome, and, most interesting, Jupiter fighting a gigantomachy
against the enemies of the gods. H.'s discussion of gigantomachy builds
on Cosmos and Imperium, in which it is most often Aeneas and the
Trojans who seem to be fighting a gigantomachy against the enemies of the
gods. In Book 9, however, many passages point towards a different
reading: cf. H.'s comments on 705: "as figurative wielder of Jupiter's
thunderbolt T. strikes down the 'Giant' Bitias;" 733: "the fulmina
of 733 suggest the identification of T. with Jupiter striking down his
enemies;" and 762, where T. kills a Gyges, who bears "the name of one of
the hundred-handers." H. is excellent on the many passages that cast
Turnus as the enemy of Rome or of the gods, but he never satisfactorily
explains these other passages that instead suggest that Turnus is on the
right side, and that he is properly defending Italy against invaders.
Instead he chooses a rather easy way out: "there is irony here; at the
end of the poem it is Aen. who with a figurative thunderbolt prostrates
the enemy of the gods, T." But is irony the right word for the
phenomenon here? Is Vergil saying that Turnus is on the side of the
gods, but he doesn't mean it? How exactly are readers of Book 9 to
react: are they to see that the poet is associating Turnus with Jupiter
fighting the enemies of the gods, but resolve to keep that identification
only tentative just in case Aeneas might use a thunderbolt-like weapon in
the last thirty lines of the poem? Court TV tells us that jurors
in an American courtroom are admonished by a judge "not to form any
conclusions about the case until you've heard all the evidence," but it
is hard to expect this of readers. Something more complicated than irony
is going on. Cf. too H.'s comments on 815-18, on Turnus' final leap into
the Tiber: "it is impossible here not to think of the famous leap of the
great Roman patriot Horatius Cocles into the Tiber...: T., thoughout this
book cast in the role of a would-be sacker of Rome, at the end
surprisingly takes on the role of one of the most famous saviors of the
city." Some of us may be less surprised than others. H. also discusses
the question Servius reports was asked by "many," why the Tiber, whose
god is on A's side, saves Turnus at the end of the book: "[Servius']
solution, that the river reserves his defeat for the glory of Aen. will
satisfy few. Others see a sign that T. is a favourite of the gods of the
Italian countryside (cf. Faunus' favour at 12.766-82)." H. offers no
answer of his own. But he has provided much evidence that the
Aeneid is written is such a way that some passages urge the reader
to sympathize with Aeneas and the Trojans, while others stress the
admirable or sympathetic qualities of Turnus and the Italians. This
phenomenon may have something to do with the historical experience of the
Romans and Italians not only in the civil wars between first Caesar and
Pompey, and then Antony and Octavian, but also the Italian or Social wars
a few decades earlier. It must also be related to "Virgil's practice of
constructing complex moral, and even metaphysical problems, easy answers
to which are deliberately withheld," to quote the formulation H. presents
in discussing Nisus and Euryalus, but applies only inconsistently
throughout the commentary.
My last few paragraphs have focused on ways in which I believe
the commentary falls short of its goals, but it must be stressed that
these are extremely high goals, and I wish to end as I began, with praise
for H.'s considerable accomplishment in producing not only a useful
commentary, but also one that is original and consistently interesting
and provocative. The same piercing intelligence, command of Greek and
Latin literature, and refusal to be satisfied with tired old formulations
that are apparent in his earlier books and in his numerous articles make
this commentary a most valuable contribution, and I look forward eagerly
to further discussions by H. of the issues raised by Aeneid 9. As
much as anyone working on Latin poetry today H. is unpredictable, with a
rare tendency simply to go in the direction the evidence before him
indicates on any issue. When you see his name in a table of contents or
card catalogue, take and read.
NOTES
[[1]] Though see the thorough review of R.F. Thomas, Vergilius
38 (1992) 134-44, for HarrisonUs tendency to explain away features of
that book that might reflect poorly on Aeneas, and so "to protect Aeneas,
to dissuade us from seeing him, on occasion, in the same way that we see
Turnus, Mezentius, or other such figures." For Hardie's complementary
tendency, at times, to highlight negative aspects of the presentation of
Turnus, see below.
[[2]] H.'s comments on meter are learned enough, but he often cites
other commentators (Norden, Austin, Williams) rather than explaining
concepts like trochaic caesura or half-lines; students will need these
commentaries on a reserve shelf. There are helpful glosses, however, of
such terms as synizesis and enallage, and much translated Greek. But 383
is simply described as a "golden line," with references to Williams and
Wilkinson; better to say what a golden line is, especially since the note
on line 535 will say "a golden line (383 n.)".
[[3]] H. prints a number of different readings from Mynors' OCT, some
of the "you say tomato..." variety, others with a bit of evidence from
later imitators, or with a preference for ServiusU apparent text or for
readings attested only later or less often: 11 not manum,
collectos but manum et collectos, 54 not clamorem but
clamore, 68 not in aequum but the more dificult in
aequor (citing possible imitation by Valerius Flaccus), 119 not
aequora but aequore, 236 not soluti but
sepulti (w/ Murgia's argument about the scholiastic tradition),
369 not regi but regis w/ Servius, 380 not aditum
but abitum w/ Servius, 432 not transadigit but the less
well attested transabiit, 485 not data but date, 514
not MynorsU iuvet but iuvat, 584 not Martis but
matris, 646 not forma but formam (w/ both deemed
possible), 773 not unguere but tingere (w/ possible
imitation by Lucan), 782 not quaeve but quae iam (w/ both
deemed possible), 789 not pugna but the RGrecizing genitiveS
pugnae. H. punctuates differently in 47-50, 134, 289, 548, and
810, and brackets line 151; he also offers clear and intelligent
discussions of many passages where he agress with Mynors, but sees the
problems that have led others to suggest a different reading.
[[4]] Besides the original Vidal-Naquet article that H. cites, it would
have been helpful to cite also Vidal-Naquet's later discussion, "The Black
Hunter Revisited," PCPS 32 (1986) 124-44.
[[5]] Cf. G. Williams, Technique and Ideas in the "Aeneid" (New
Haven 1983) 214, who says that the Marcellus passage shows that "the
future beyond Augustus has collapsed." On 276 venerande puer, H.
comments that this is "a remarkable phrase bordering on oxymoron," but
doesnUt mention the like-sounding phrase miserande puer, used by
Aeneas of Lausus at 10.825 and of Pallas at 11.42, and by Anchises of
Marcellus at 6.882, or iuvenis memorande, used of Lausus by the
poet at 10.793. The similar-sounding phrases help to link Ascanius and
the others; they are the only vocative gerundives in the Aeneid,
except for the miserande iaceres of 10.327, used of
Cydon, the lover of the young Clytium.
[[6]] See O'Hara, "They Might Be Giants: Inconsistency and
Indeterminacy in Vergil's War in Italy," Studies in Roman Epic,
ed. H. Roisman and J. Roisman, Colby Quarterly 30 (1994)
206-32:223-24, and esp. R.F. Thomas, Lands and Peoples in Roman
Poetry: The Ethnographical Tradition (Cambridge 1982) 93-107.
[[7]] Cf. 12.827-28 and 834-36.
[[8]] See most concisely David Konstan, "Venus' Enigmatic Smile,"
Vergilius 32 (1986) 18-25:25: "Juno too is fate."
[[9]] Cf. Hardie's excellent remarks in Successors 19-26.
[[10]] See my "Dido as 'Interpreting Character' in Aeneid
4.56-66," Arethusa 26 (1993) 99-114, developing my discussion in
Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in VergilUs Aeneid (Princeton
1990) 49-51 and 74-78.