Aeneid 75 Anita Frizzarin

The PROCEEDINGS of the VIRGIL SOCIETY

volume 29 2017 IN MEMORIAM D. W. BLANDFORD

Edited by Daniel Hadas email: [email protected]

Published by The Virgil Society, c/o Jill Kilsby, Treasurer, 8 Purley Oaks Road, Sanderstead, Surrey CR2 0NP

Text design and typesetting by Tetragon, London

Printed and bound by Short Run Press, Exeter

Cover illustration: Gillian Cooper

The Virgil Society is a Registered Charity (no. 313768) Contents

Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 1 Catherine Ware

“The Prophecies of Fferyll”: Virgilian Reception in Wales 31 Ceri Davies

“And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 49 Richard Danson Brown

Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 75 Anita Frizzarin

Virgil and the Unspoken 103 Richard Jenkyns

Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Laocoon 115 Danielle Frisby fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 135 Calypso Nash

Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 161 Ahuvia Kahane

Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 187 D. W. Blandford

Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity

Revised from a paper given to the Virgil Society on 9 March 2013*

Ware Virgil’s influence on late antique encomiastic poetry is well known: less so is the nature of his influence on prose encomia. Focusing on the 4th-century corpus of thePanegyrici Latini,1 this article will explore the role assigned to Virgil in imperial prose panegyric of late antiquity. The orators of late antiquity acknowledge Virgil asmagnus poeta and cite him directly, particularly to evoke battle scenes, while also drawing on his work generally for poetic language and epic phrasing. As poeta Romanus, Virgil was the greatest authority on all matters relating to imperium, and as the writer of the canonic Roman epic, Virgil was viewed as a master-panegyrist. Certain passages were particularly relevant to praise of the emperors’ numinous power, so that lines from the prophecy of Anchises, or the description of Jupiter’s lofty abode, were revisited and reworked by successive panegyrists. The encomiastic impact of such passages is further reinforced by supplementary references to Virgil, as well as intratextual allusion within the corpus, and citations from encomiastic passages by other authors. As a result, a type of Virgilian “micro-allusion” may be observed, in which a short phrase or even a word or two is enough, within the encomiastic context, to suggest a Virgilian reference. This paper will summarise the relationship between epic and panegyric as it was understood in late antiquity, and examine the use of Virgilian allusion in the Panegyrici Latini, showing in particular how the panegyrists’ approach to Virgil is consistent with that of contemporary scholars and literary critics. As an illustration of the orators’ techniques, the paper will take as a case study the orators’ treatment of the golden age, a theme which was developed in the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid, and which, as a staple of imperial ideology and panegyric, appears in various guises throughout the Panegyrici Latini.

* I would like to thank the Irish Research Council for their postdoctoral funding at the time when this paper was originally researched and presented; my thanks are also due to Daniel Hadas and Michael Hanaghan for their very helpful suggestions. 1 ThePanegyrici Latini text is that of R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1964), and I follow his system of numbering. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own. 2 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Virgil, epic and panegyric

Imperial encomium inspired much of Virgil’s work. The firstEclogue cast Octavian as the deus of the dispossessed countrymen (6–10),2 while the Georgics promised a “temple” in honour of Caesar, his family and his triumphs (3.13–36), a promise which the Aeneid fulfilled. In the Aeneid, Virgil defined the nature of Roman imperium and, in the character of Aeneas, the moral and personal qualities expected from a Roman ruler. He applied the language of contemporary politics and philosophical debate to a mythical narrative, creating in his foundation epic an empire sine fine, and making Roman imperium universal and relevant for all time.3 Without being an allegory, the poem had allegorical elements.4 Aeneas, addressed as Romane (6.851) when receiving instructions on how a Roman should rule, represented Augustus and every subsequent Roman emperor. Following Virgil, Lucan included an encomium to Nero in his epic, Statius praised Domitian, Silius invoked Vespasian, and, at the end of the 4th century, Claudian gave Theodosius legitimacy by comparing him to the Virgilian Augustus and Aeneas. Roman poets had always acknowledged the close relationship between epic and panegyric. In his Ars poetica, Horace defined Homeric epic as describing the deeds and grim wars of kings and generals (res gestae regumque ducumque et tristia bella, 73), but the language he chose was that of contemporary laudatory epic: tristia bella alludes to Virgil’s refusal to celebrate the military exploits of Varus (Ecl. 6.6–7).5 Literary critics gave increasing weight to the encomiastic aspect of epic, to the extent that Hermogenes of Tarsus, writing in the late 2nd century AD, declared poetry to be panegyric in metre and Homer to be the best poet, orator and speech-writer.6 This may have been an extreme view, but it is evident that the generic terminology used to describe the high style of epic could also refer to panegyric. Virgil had described the Iliadic half of the Aeneid as his maior opus

2 For encomium in the Eclogues, see Nauta (2006). In particular, the recreation of the golden age in the fourth Eclogue became a staple of imperial propaganda, and the influence of Virgilian pastoral on imperial praise is apparent in the anonymous Einsiedeln Eclogues, the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus and the Silvae of Statius: see Tarrant (1997) 64. As Karakasis (2016) 10 observes, “the notion of politics and of political panegyric is fully integrated into Calpurnius’ political eclogues”; cf. Statius, who compares the golden age of Jupiter, antiqui Iovis aureumque tempus, unfavourably with that of Domitian (Silv. 1.6.40). The preface of Sidonius Apollinaris’ panegyric to Maiorian shows the continuing association of bucolic and encomium. 3 Richardson (2008) 63–92 discusses the evolution of imperium in the late Republican period and particularly in the writings of Cicero. For a comprehensive analysis of Virgil’s use of Lucretius to create a cosmic setting for his epic, see Hardie (1986). 4 For Servius’ allegorisation of the Aeneid, see Jones (1961); of the Eclogues, Starr (1995) 129–34. 5 namque super tibi erunt qui dicere laudes, / Vare, tuas cupiant et tristia condere bella (“for there will be more than enough of those who wish to sing your praises, Varus, and to celebrate grim wars”). 6 Types of Style 2.10.389. For the increasing importance of epideictic oratory in late antique and medieval poetry, see Curtius (1953) 154–66. Walker (2000) 277 sums up the standard view of late antique poetry as being “for the most part a minor and often second-rate form of epideictic”. Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 3

(Aen. 7.44), words which Proba in the 4th century took to introduce the praise of Christ and the New Testament (Cento 334).7 Both Eutropius and Ammianus concluded their histories with the plea that to write more would be to write in the greater style, maior stilus, a phrase which here too denotes panegyric.8 In particular, Claudian’s popular verse panegyrics demonstrate the overlap between epic and panegyric in late antique culture: for Claudian to be honoured with a statue describing him as having the inspiration of Homer and the mind of Virgil would have seemed unremarkable to an audience who read the Aeneid primarily as an encomium.9 In late antiquity, therefore, laudatio was seen as a defining feature of epic, and commentators were ready to assign the role of panegyrist to Virgil. Symmachus, writing in honour of Gratian, wished that he could elevate his style so that he could rewrite Virgil for the new era (Or. 3.9). In the preface to his commentary on Virgil, Aelius Donatus, echoing Suetonius, argued that the Eclogues had been composed to praise Varus, Pollio and Gallus for enabling Virgil to keep his lands after the civil war, and that theGeorgics had been written to praise Maecenas for helping Virgil against a violent veteran (Donat. Vit. Verg. 19–20; Suet. Vit. Ve rg. 19–20). Servius’ definition of Virgil’s aim in writing theAeneid , to praise Augustus through his ancestors (Augustum laudare a parentibus, praef. ad Aen.) was developed by Tiberius Claudius Donatus, who asserted that the Aeneid belonged to the genus lauda tivum, the rhetorical classification of encomium Int.( Virg. 1.2.7–9). Aeneas, he claimed, as founder of the Julian race, must be shown to be a man without fault, whose praise had to be published widely, vacuum omni culpa et magno praeconio praeferendum debuit demonstrare (1.2.19–25).10 These texts were intended for the classroom. Aelius Donatus and Servius wrote their commentaries to aid in the teaching of Virgil,11 while Tiberius Claudius Donatus presented his Interpretationes Virgilianae as a supplement to the education being given to his son (1.2.7–9). By late antiquity, therefore, Romans grew up with the knowledge that Virgil’s poetry was encomiastic in intention.

7 Clark & Hatch (1981) 191; for the combination of epic and panegyric in Proba’s Cento, see Sandnes (2011) 153–54. Proba had earlier taken nova progenies from Ecl. 4.7 to refer to Christ (Cento 34). 8 Amm. 31.16.9; Eutr. 10.18.3. On panegyric and the historians see most recently Ross (2016); for the use of extollere in maius to denote exaggeration in panegyric, see Ware (2017) 349. 9 CIL 6, 1710; for Claudian’s encomiastic epics, see Schindler (2009); Ware (2012) 18–31; Gillett (2012). Wheeler (2007) 120 argues that Claudian grafted elements from theAeneid and heroic epic onto his panegyrics, and so made “panegyric the culmination of the epic tradition”. On the popularity of short encomiastic epics, see Cameron (1995) 268–71. 10 See Starr (1992) 159–64; Kallendorf (2015) 21–23. Kaster (2011) 47–56 demonstrates comprehensively how sincerely Servius made his assertion. Servius’ interpretation of Aen. 6.612–13, for example, is based on the (unwarranted) premise that these lines must be about Augustus and that they must be favourable to him (49–50). 11 Kaster (1997) 169–70. 4 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Virgil as authority: Virgilius poeta an orator?

Virgilian allusion in the Panegyrici Latini is consistent with this perspective.12 For the Gallic orators who were rhetoricians teaching in the great schools at Trier, Autun and Bordeaux,13 Virgil was the magnus poeta (12(9).12.2) or poeta Romanus (11(3).14.2) and the model for literary and grammatical excellence.14 Tacitus describes Roman orators taking Virgil as a model for poetic beauty (poeticus decor) and polished style, while, in listing authors who should be read, Quintilian rates Virgil as second only to Homer, praising him for his care (cura) and attention to detail (diligentia).15 Schooled in this tradition, it was natural for the Gallic orators to turn to Virgilian phrases for poetic colour and generic aggrandisement. For incursions into the heroic epic register and battle narratives, Virgil was a vital source of language and tropes.16 The description of the battle of the Milvian Bridge in the panegyric of 313 AD overflows with epic ornamentation. The night before the battle, Constantine’s oppo- nent, the villainous Maxentius, had terrifying dreams and premonitions of disaster;17 during the battle the river Tiber rolled the corpses along,18 and Constantine’s attack is described by an epic simile.19 When Constantine rushes into the thick of the fighting,in media hostium tela (12(9).9.4), he recalls Aeneas’ exhortation to his troops, moriamur et in media arma ruamus (“let us die and rush into the thick of the weapons”, Aen. 2.353). Similarly, the orator of 321 AD, who also described the Milvian Bridge, uses both Ennius and Virgil to give an epic tone to his narration, describing the golden splendour of Constantine’s armour in language drawn from epic,20 and employing such epic locutions as trabalis hasta (“beam-like spear”, 4(10).29.5), a phrase coined by Ennius and repeated by Virgil, Statius and Valerius Flaccus.21

12 Nixon (1983) 89 notes the influence of Virgilian commentators on thePanegyrici Latini. 13 With the exception of Pliny’s Panegyricus of 100 AD, which fronts the collection, the Panegyrici Latini corpus dates from c. 289 AD to 389 AD. For the authors, dates and circumstances of the individual speeches, see Nixon & Rodgers (1994). 14 On Virgil as the canonical school text, see Chahoud (2007) 80–81; Foster (2014). On the influence of Virgil in late antiquity, see Rees (2004a). 15 Tac. Dial. 20, 22; Quint. 10.1.86. Cf. the advice of Menander Rhetor that orators should seek amplification from Homer (2.369). For a comprehensive review of Virgilian borrowings in the collection, see Rees (2017). 16 Menander Rhetor 2.373 advised orators to praise the emperor as Homer had praised Achilles, Hector and Ajax. 17 12(9).14.3. This is the reversal of the epic trope of the delusionary dream of victory,e.g. Luc. 7.7–24, Claud. In Ruf. 2.330–35, but, as Rees (2004b) 40 notes, the Ultrices who haunt Maxentius suggest the Furies of the Aeneid. 18 12(9).17.3 (cf. also 4(10).30.1). Cf. Aen. 8.538–40; Luc. 2.209–19; Sil. Pun. 4.622–26. 19 Similis torrenti amni quem abruptae radicitus silvae et convulsa funditus saxa sequerentur (“like a river in torrent followed by woods, torn up from the root, and rocks lifted from the ground”, 12(9).9.5). Cf.veluti … rapidus montano flumine torrens / sternit agros, sternit sata laeta … praecipitesque trahit silvas (“as … a swift torrent from the mountain river lays low fields and abundant crops … and drags woods headlong”,Aen. 2.304–07). 20 Theinsultans equus of Constantine, for example, recalls the insultans sonipes at Aen. 11.600; corusca luce suggests Aen. 2.470, also Sil. Pun. 13.640. See Laudani (2014) 338. 21 Ennius, Ann. 589 Vahl. (Serv. ad Aen. 12.294); Aen. 12.293–94; Stat. Theb. 4.5–7; Val. Flacc. 8.301–02. See Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 375; Laudani (2014) 338. Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 5

Much of the language is Virgilian, but the orators do not see the need to make their source explicit: it was the familiar and appropriate language of heroic conflict. In his criticism of Maxentius, degeneris, ut dictum est, animos timor arguebat (“fear, as it is said, indicates ignoble minds”, 12(9).14.2), the orator of 313 AD alludes to Virgil’s degeneres animos timor arguit (“fear indicated ignoble minds”, Aen. 4.13), but the impersonal terminology, ut dictum est, turns the Virgilian line into an aphorism, a truth acknowledged by all. As the epic poet of Rome, Virgil could not be matched in authority. But the rhetoricians and scholars of late antiquity saw him also as a master of oratory. When the question posed in Florus’ dialogue (c. 100 AD), whether Virgil was an orator or poet (Virgilius orator an poeta), was raised at Macrobius’ Saturnalian gathering, the guests refused to commit themselves, but concluded by describing Virgil as the only one whose eloquence was derived from expertise in all branches of oratory.22 They spoke of Virgil as one of their own, a master of rhetoric whose works demonstrated the correct rhetorical techniques and stylistic devices.23 Like them, he was a scholar. Eustathius, one of the guests, deplores the fact that the learned Cornutus had described the detail of the cutting of a lock of Dido’s hair by Iris as typical of a poet, poetico more, as the well-read Virgil had clearly taken the story from Euripides’ Alcestis (5.18.21–19.5). It is likewise accepted that the Georgics was the result of scholarship on obscure Greek texts and that Virgil, doctus poeta (5.18.4), had done a lot of research to reach his profound conclu- sions, no doubt the same type of research which the speaker had undertaken in studying the Georgics.24 In turn, Virgilian commentaries were used by the writers of the Panegyrici Latini to support their arguments. The orator ofPL 10(2), claiming that Hercules consecrated the original seat of Maximian’s divinity in Rome, rejects the suggestion that this might be an invention, fabula de licentia poetarum (1.2), and gives proof by the presence of an altar to Hercules on the spot, a fact which comes from Virgilian commentary.25 Virgilian allusion within the text might itself attract commentary-style elucidation. PL 11(3), written in 291 AD, honours the birthday of Maximian, here addressed jointly with Diocletian (14.2):

Itaque illud quod de vestro cecinit poeta Romanus Iove, Iovis omnia esse , id scilicet animo contemplatus, quamquam ipse Iuppiter summum caeli verticem teneat supra nubila supraque ventos sedens in luce perpetua, numen tamen eius ac mentem toto infusam esse mundo, id nunc ego de utroque vestrum audeo praedicare: ubicumque sitis,

22 unus omnino Virgilius invenitur qui eloquentiam ex omni genere conflaverit, Macr. Sat. 5.1.5. Augustine describes Virgil as an outstanding speaker, egregius locutor (De trin. 16.25). 23 Virgil and the rhetores are compared at e.g. 4.4.12, 6.13; the entire surviving section of bk 4 of the Saturnalia examines Virgil’s use of rhetorical devices. 24 The speaker refers to Virgil’s hidden knowledge,occultissima diligentia (Sat. 5.18.15). 25 Serv. Auct. ad. Aen. 8.271. See Nixon (1983) 89–90; Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 54. 6 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

in unum licet palatium concesseritis, divinitatem vestram ubique versari, omnes terras omniaque maria plena esse vestri.

(“Accordingly, as the Roman poet sang of your Jupiter, all things are full of Jupiter, doubtless having considered in his mind that although Jupiter himself possesses the very summit of the sky, sitting above the clouds and the winds in perpetual light, even so, his divine nature and mind are diffused throughout the world. And this I now dare to proclaim of both of you: wherever you are, even if you withdraw to a single palace, your divinity extends everywhere, all lands and all seas are full of you”).

The passage is both panegyric on the emperors and commentary on a line of poetry. The source is poeta Romanus, and the quotation, Iovis omnia esse plena, comes from Ecl. 3.60. The audience, familiar with Virgil, would have been able to complete the extract (3.60–61):

ab Iove principium Musae: Iovis omnia plena. Ille colit terras, illi mea carmina curae.

(“in Jupiter is the Muse’s beginning, all things are full of Jupiter. He sustains the lands, my songs are dear to him”).

Ab Iove principium Musae is an ancient formula of dedication and specifically of encomiastic dedication.26 In his address to Tiberius, Valerius Maximus was explicit about the laudatory value of the lines, making a parallel between the invocation of Jupiter by ancient orators and his own humble solicitation of imperial favour.27 Servius glosses Iovis omnia plena with a passage from Lucan which extols both the omnipotence of Jupiter and the virtues of Cato, who was himself divinely inspired, deo plenus (9.564), while Ausonius uses the line to honour Gratian and prove the truth of the poets.28 This orator varies the theme by playing on the language of singularity, plurality and universality (vestro / vestrum / vestram / vestri vs eius; in unum vs omnes / omnia), so that the divinity of two emperors becomes a single entity which spreads throughout the world. The orator glosses the quotation by explaining what the poet intended id( scilicet animo contemplatus),29 phrasing his explanation in a composite of other quotations from Virgil. 26 The line dates at least to Alcman (Coleman 1977, 117) and appears in Theocritus’ panegyric to Ptolemy, Aratus and Calpurnius Siculus. For a variation on the theme, see PL 6(7).2.1. 27 Nam si prisci oratores ab Iove optimo maximo bene orsi sunt, si excellentissimi vates a numine aliquo principia traxerunt, mea parvitas eo iustius ad favorem tuum decucurrerit (1, pr). 28 Silius’ loca plena deo (Pun. 3.673), coming before praise of Jupiter, may also be indebted to this passage. Cf. also Cal. Sic. Ecl. 4.82. Macrobius glosses the full line at Somn. Scip. 1.17.14. 29 Cf. for example, Tib. Donatus’ glossing of pulchra Troianus origine Caesar (Aen. 2.286) as optima scilicet et honesta, ut non corporis, sed originis intellegatur pulchritudo (ad loc). Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 7

Jupiter’s seat comes from the first appearance of Jupiter in theAeneid , Iuppiter aethere summo / despiciens (“Jupiter looking down from the topmost air”, Aen. 1.223–24) … sic vertice caeli constitit (“this is his position at the summit of the heavens”, Aen. 1.225–26). Theaether is the topmost part of the sky, glossed by Servius as summus est, and this is made clear by the orator’s supra nubila supraque ventos.30 Jupiter’s ubiquity, numen tamen eius ac mentem toto infusam esse mundo, is from Anchises’ speech in Aen. 6, ‘totamque infusa per artus / mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet’ (“‘the mind, diffused throughout the limbs, motivates the whole mass and mixes itself with the great body’”, 726–27). The orator does not signal his allusion, but he surely did not need to: Servius uses these lines from the Aeneid without citation to gloss the Eclogue passage, and so it is reasonable to surmise that this was how it was taught in schools, even in the time of the earlier orator. Finally, having explained what Iovis omnia plena means for the emperors, the orator picks up the original Virgilian line and augments it by length and anaphora, omnes terras omniaque maria plena esse vestri, so that an elaborate compliment is paid to Maximian and Diocletian.31 A Virgilian quotation included in a didactic or moralising passage could be used as confirmation that an assertion was correct. Direct signalled quotations from Virgil are rare in the panegyrics, but in the oration on Constantine of 313 AD a passage from the Georgics is explicitly used to describe the swords of the defeated being beaten into fetters. Expounding on the irony of an implement of destruction becoming the instrument of salvation (the fettered soldiers were pardoned), the orator refers to the magnus poeta who had described the transformation of tools into weapons (12(9).12.3; Geo. 1.508):

Magnus poeta, dum bellorum toto orbe surgentium discursum apparatumque describit, ‘Et curvae’ inquit ‘rigidum falces ’.

(“The great poet, when he described the agitation and preparation for wars rising throughout the whole world, said: ‘And curved pruning hooks are being hammered into inflexible swords’”).

Describing the recent past, triste nimium tempus illud (“that was a very sad time”), the orator invites the listener to think of the context: a terrible civil war. It is a clever acknowledgment 30 The additional detail of light,in luce perpetua, suggests the abode of the gods in Lucretius, who live in the cloudless aether, in widespread light, diffuso lumine (3.22). 31 This final augmentation is typical of commentary style: Tib. Donatus glosses this passage by listing the elements which are inspired by this spirit: quicquid ad caelum pertinet et quicquid constat sub caelo, scilicet quicquid terra continet, quicquid mare conplectitur (“whatever pertains to the sky and whatever exists under the sky, by which is understood whatever the earth possesses, whatever the sea contains”, ad 6.725). As Rees (2004b) 38 observes, this overt invocation of Virgil, followed by other citations of Virgil, serves to confirm the exaggerated claim of the orator and elevate the stylistic register; cf. also Walker (2000) 308. 8 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

that Constantine was following the success of Augustus, who had brought an end to that earlier war, but that he was also surpassing his model, since he was acting without bloodshed. If the orator of this panegyric had been trained to compare poetic lines in the same manner as the guests of Macrobius, he would have associated the Virgilian line with two others, both supplying a relevant intertext (Sat. 6.1.63). The first describes the preparations for the war in Italy, recoquunt patrios fornacibus enses (“they reforge their fathers’ swords in furnaces”, Aen. 7.636), itself a forerunner of the civil war which Augustus would fight. The second line comes from Lucretius, inde minutatim processit ferreus ensis / versaque in obscenum species est falcis aenae (“then succeeded the iron sword and the shape of the bronze sickle was turned to something shameful”, 5.1293–94). The passage tells of man’s transition to the iron age, war and bloodshed, the intertext suggesting a potential danger now averted by Constantine’s merciful actions.32 The orator’s further comments on this passage illustrate the particular authority of Virgil. Commentators on Virgil are careful to absolve the magnus poeta from the charge of poetic licence. In the Saturnalia, for example, a speaker observes that Virgil usually disliked the inconsistency that resulted: solet tamen Virgilius temeritatem licentiae non amare (6.9.13).33 That the example from theGeorgics may be taken as authoritative and exempt from poetic licence is made clear by a comparison with other stories of transformations, tales of men changing into streams or animals or birds: a nod to the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Such transformations, the orator asserts, are base and ignoble and such stories cannot bring such pleasure, quid simile ad laetitiam fabulae ferunt? (PL 12(9).13.5).34 Rather, the actions of Constantine have proved the truth of the Virgilian lines, clearly now no fabula, and in return the Virgilian context gives authority to the panegyrist’s moral: vita enim hominum diu parta semper servanda est, si liceat (“for the life of man takes long to create and should always be saved, if it is possible”, 13.4). Because a learned audience knew Virgil’s works intimately, and were trained to make connections between different lines in different works, a short allusion could carry considerable weight. In the panegyric of 313 AD, a seemingly slight Virgilian reference gives justification to the orator’s condemnation of Maxentius, and allows him to convey a comprehensive attack in just a few lines (12(9).18.1):35

Sancte Thybri, quondam hospitis monitor Aeneae, mox Romuli conservator expositi, tu nec falsum Romulum diu vivere nec parricidam Urbis passus es enatare.

32 On Virgil’s use of Lucretius here, see Gale (2000) 34–35. 33 For a full discussion, see Ware (2017). 34 On the conflict of Virgilian and Ovidian allusions, see Ware (2017) 357–58. 35 On this passage, see Roberts (2005) 551. Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 9

(“Sacred Tiber, one time adviser of your guest Aeneas, then the saviour of Romulus when he had been exposed, you did not allow that false Romulus to live long nor did you let the murderer of the City swim to safety”).

The river Tiber had appeared to Aeneas in a dream Aen.( 8.31–65), advising him of the location of his future settlement, hic tibi certa domus (“here assuredly is your home”, Aen. 8.39). Knowledge of this passage makes clear the link to Romulus, Aeneas’ descendant and founder of Rome. The attribution of the epithetconservator links the whole to Constantine.36 The panegyric opened with his rescue of Rome and his preservation of Roman authority, de recu perata Urbe imperioque Romano (1.3), and his desire to save, conservare, even the unworthy is emphasised throughout.37 But the similarities between Constantine, Aeneas and Romulus are merely corroborative: what is at stake is the denunciation of Maxentius as the false Romulus. Although the panegyrist gives no idea of the reign of Maxentius in Rome, presenting him only as a usurper, he had ruled in Rome since 306 and had promoted himself as the saviour of the city.38 A common slogan on his coins was conservator urbis suae39 and his ambitions were further suggested by the name of his son, Romulus.40 For the orator of 313 to strip him of the title of Romulus and replace it with parricida Urbis is pointed. The adjectivefalsus reminds the audience of the claims of illegitimacy made earlier in the panegyric (4.2), so that Maxentius is Romulus neither in blood nor as founder of Rome. The allusion to the Tiber as the adviser of Aeneas leads to another Virgilian reference. The river’s fury against Maxentius is contrasted with the aid it once gave to Horatius Cocles and Cloelia: tu quietus armatum Coclitem revexisti, tibi se placido Cloelia virgo commisit (“peacefully, you carried armed Cocles back, the young girl Cloelia entrusted herself to your calm waters”, 18.2). The selection of these two figures in the context of saving of the city from a tyrant suggests the expulsion of Tarquin from Rome on the shield of Aeneas (Aen. 8.646–51):

Nec non Tarquinium eiectum Porsenna iubebat accipere ingentique urbem obsidione premebat; Aeneadae in ferrum pro libertate ruebant. Illum indignanti similem similemque minanti 36 For the rescue of Romulus by Tiber, see Livy 1.4.4–5. On the association of the Tiber and Rome’s foundation, see Roberts (2005) 551. 37 4.5; 11.2; 13.3. 38 The son of the emperor Maximian, Maxentius had as great a dynastic claim as Constantine. For a summary of the contemporary sources, see Cullhed (1994) 14–31; for Maxentius and Rome, Curran (2000) 43–69; for Constantine and Maxentius, Humphries (2008). 39 See Cullhed (1994) 46–47. 40 For Maxentius’ use of Romulean iconography, see Hekster (1999) 9–11. 10 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

aspiceres, pontem auderet quia vellere Cocles et fluvium vinclis innaret Cloelia ruptis.

(“And Porsenna, oppressing the city with a heavy siege, was giving the order that Tarquin, expelled, should be readmitted; the descendants of Aeneas were seizing swords for liberty. You would have seen him portrayed as angry, as threatening, because Cocles was daring to pull down the bridge and Cloelia, breaking her bonds, was swimming the river”).

Maxentius combines the roles of Tarquin, the overthrown tyrant, and Porsenna, the besieger: several lines later, the people of Rome come to look at their liberator, ut viderentur eum a quo obsidione liberati fuerant obsidere (“so that they seemed to besiege the man who had freed them by means of a siege”, 19.4). Allusively, therefore, Constantine is associated with Virgil’s Aeneadae who fight for their own freedom and for that of their city. Through these allusions, the death of Maxentius becomes part of the sequence of Roman salvation represented on the shield of Aeneas.41 Finally, Virgilian allusion could be suggested in patterns of speech, as shown in this passage which honours Maximian and Constantine (7(6).14.1):

Te , pater , ex ipso imperii vertice decet orbem prospicere communem caelestique nutu rebus humanis fata decernere, auspica bellis gerendis dare, componendis pacibus leges imponere ; te , iuvenis , indefessum ire per limites qua Romanum barbaris gentibus instat imperium, frequentes ad socerum victoriarum laureas mittere, praecepta petere, effecta rescribere

(“It becomes you, father, to survey from your pinnacle of command the world you share, and with celestial nod decide the fate of human affairs, to announce the auspices for wars which have to be waged, and to impose the terms when peace is to be concluded; you, young man, it behoves to traverse the frontiers tirelessly where the Roman Empire presses upon barbarian peoples, to send frequent laurels of victory to your father-in-law, to seek instructions, and to report what you have accomplished”).42

The structure of these lines is strongly reminiscent of the culmination of Anchises’ speech to Aeneas (Aen. 6.851–53):

41 Cf. Claudian’s allusion to the shield in his De Bello Gildonico (see Ware 2012, 153–54). For the shield and images of salvation, see Harrison (1997). Behind Virgil we may see Ennius, whose narration of Horatius’ exploit begins with the soldiers’ prayer to the Tiber, te pater Tiberine tuo cum flumine sancto (Ann. 54 Vahl), lines which are summarised in the panegyrist’s Sancte Thybri; see Goldschmidt (2013) 184–85. 42 trans. Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 209. Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 11

‘Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento, (hae tibi erunt artes), pacisque imponere morem, parcere subiectis et debellare superbos’.

(“‘You, Roman, remember to rule the people with authority (these will be your arts), to impose the custom of peace, to spare the downtrodden and make war on the proud’”).

Virgil’s opening tu … Romane becomes te, pater, and the series of instructions expressed as infinitives, regere … imponere … parcere … debellare, is echoed in prospicere … decernere … dare … imponere, the orator’s pacibus leges imponere taken from pacisque imponere morem. There then follows a variation addressed to Constantine:te, iuvenis, then mittere … petere … rescribere. Both emperors take on the role of the Romanus addressed in the Vergilian passage, both follow the footsteps of Aeneas and Augustus. Constantine, who is to be the young and active member of the partnership, will go to barbarian lands: qua Romanum barbaris gentibus instat inperium, just as Augustus would extend imperium to the east (super et Garamantas et Indos / proferet imperium, Aen. 6.794–95). The Virgilian citation goes beyond the single verbal echo; the structural resonances argue for a strong Virgilian consciousness in the speech.

Virgilian panegyric, reinforcement and micro-allusion

Virgilian citation, therefore, appears in the Panegyrici Latini in the form of direct quotation, to make a point, to give an epic or poetic flavour to a particular passage, and also, as the passage on the defeat of Maxentius shows, to create a sustained ideological intertext. One further type of reference must be considered: Virgilian language of praise and its intertextual reuse throughout the corpus.43 As will be shown, the orators layer encomiastic allusion from different Virgilian texts and from earlier speeches in the collection, to intensify praise of the emperors. The comparison between Virgil’s Jupiter and the emperors, as it appears in several of the panegyrics, is a good illustration of this technique. Consider again this passage in honour of Diocletian and Maximian (11(3).14.2):

43 The earliest nuclear collection of thePanegyrici Latini is thought to comprise the first seven speeches, ending with that of 311 AD; studies of intertextuality show that the later orators were familiar with the earlier speeches. A comprehensive survey remains to be done, but Ware (2014) offers a case study of the complex intertextuality between two panegyrics, 6(7) and 7(6). 12 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

As we have seen, to explain the quoted line from the Eclogue (Iovis omnia plena, 3.60), and to define the nature of Jupiter’s power, the orator combines different Virgilian texts:

Aen. 1.223–24: Iuppiter aethere summo / despiciens Aen. 1.225–26: sic vertice caeli / constitit Aen. 6.726–27: totamque infusa per artus / mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet

In placing Jupiter at the summit of the sky, Virgil had deviated significantly from the model of Homer’s Zeus who had looked down on the war between Trojans and Greeks from nearby mountain tops. With this alteration, Roman imperium was given a cosmic dimension.44 For the panegyrist, the might of the emperor was even more far-reaching than that of Jupiter. Anchises had explained to Aeneas how a life force, mens, animated all creatures: this now becomes the mind, mens, and power, numen, of Maximian and Diocletian, who are everywhere, even when confined to a single palace.45 The orator of 313 AD elaborated on this passage (12(9).26.1):

sive tute quaedam vis mensque divina es, quae toto infusa mundo omnibus miscearis ele mentis, et sine ullo extrinsecus accedente vigoris impulsu per te ipse movearis, sive aliqua supra caelum potestas es quae hoc opus tuum ex altiore Naturae arce despicias.

(“whether you are some kind of force and divine mind spread over the whole world and mingled with all the elements and move of your own accord without the influence of any outside force acting upon you, or whether you are some power above all heaven which look down upon this work of yours from a higher pinnacle of Nature”).46

Supra omne caelum varies and sums up the earlier supra nubila supraque ventos, while despicias recalls the Virgilian despiciens (Aen. 1.224). Here, however, the focus is on the ambiguous divina mens, which is distinct from Constantine but with which the emperor has a unique

44 See Hardie (1986) 314–15. 45 For the divina mens in the collection, see 5(8).10.2; 7(6).7.1; 8(5).4.3; 9(4).6.4, 10.1; 10(2).8.2; 11(3).4.8. 46 trans. Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 332–33. Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 13 connection (12(9)2.5).47 Coming at the end of the panegyric and in the familiar context of Jovian praise, this particular instance of mens divina recalls the Stoic anima mundi, the spirit which animates and pervades the world. In the Georgics, this spirit inhabits all lands, sea and sky: deum namque ire per omnis / terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum (4.221–22). Servius glossed this line with the same citation from Lucan which he had used to clarify Iovis omnia plena in Ecl. 3.60; he could also have referred to the divina mens of Jupiter in Cicero’s De consulatu meo.48 In 313 AD, after the victory at the Milvian Bridge, the orator may have been hesitant in affiliating Constantine with a particular deity, but the intertext suggests that, in terms of encomium at least, the mens divina belongs to Jupiter, who is the divine counterpart of the emperor.49 Phrasing the philosophical question in Virgilian terms implicitly guarantees that whatever the nature of the divine power might be, its favourable manifestation towards the emperor will continue. An even more layered version appears in Mamertinus’ panegyric to Julian (3(11).28.5):

Poetae ferunt altissimum illum et cuncta potestate cohibentem deum, qui ditione perpetua divina atque humana moderatur, cum despiciat in terras, habitu oris tempestatum incerta mutare, eius nutu mundum tremescere, illius hilaritate turbines abigi, nubes fugari, nitentia per orbem serena diffundi.

(“Poets say that the highest god who holds everything in his power, who in universal authority governs divine and human affairs, alters the changing weather by the expression on his face when he gazes down upon the earth; and at his nod the world shakes, when he is merry windstorms are driven away, clouds are put to flight, shining calm is spread throughout the globe”).50

The opening,poetae ferunt, might suggest that the orator is disparaging the truthfulness of his sources, but the words are here a literary signpost, directing the audience to Virgil and Ennius, panegyrists par excellence, and also to Homer’s portrayal of Zeus. Virgil’s Jupiter looking down from heaven (Aen. 1.223–24), a familiar sight from earlier panegyrics, is here in despiciat in terras. In the following habitu oris tempestatum incerta mutare, García Ruiz notes the combination of a later line from the prophecy of Jupiter, vultu quo caelum tempestatesque serenat (“the countenance with which he calms the sky and weather”, Aen. 1.255) and a reference to Ennius, Iuppiter hic risit tempestatesque serenae / riserunt omnes risu Iovis omnipotentis (“here

47 At 16.2 the divina mens is the spirit of Rome which acts in support of Constantine. 48 fr. 11 Morel; Hardie (1986) 314–15 cites this passage in his discussion of the cosmic setting of Jupiter’s prophecy. 49 See Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 292–93; Rodgers (1986) 85–87. 50 trans. Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 432. 14 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Jupiter laughed and all the bright weather laughed at the laugh of all-powerful Jupiter”).51 The orator’s eius nutu mundum tremescere suggests the Virgilian totum nutu tremefecit Olympum (Aen. 9.106) and tremefacta solo tellus (Aen. 10.102), which latter phrase, Macrobius notes, is itself an echo of Ennius.52 Macrobius also comments on the fact that Virgil’s inclusion of Jupiter’s nod at Aen. 10.101–03 is in imitation of Homer (Il. 1.528–30) and is motivated by his desire to give Jupiter equal reverence to Zeus.53 The orators of thePanegyrici Latini, from Pliny onwards, had also contributed to this encomiastic chorus. Pliny supplied quae ille mundi parens temperat nutu, si quando oculos demisit in terras (“which he, the father of the world, governs with his nod, whenever he casts his eyes down to the earth”, 1(1).80.4), while verum hoc Iovis sui more nutu illo patrio, quo omnia contremescunt … consecutus est (“but he [Diocletian], in the manner of his Jupiter, accomplished this with that nod of his paternal head, at which all things tremble”) appears in the panegyric of 289 AD (10(2).7.5). There is a more elaborate version in Eumenius’ address, cuius nutum promissionem confirmantis totius mundi tremor sentit (“the whole world trem- bles at his nod, the confirmation of his promise”, 9(4).15.3). Again, a quotation from Virgil is good, a quotation from Virgil which is supported by other Virgilian lines and by citations from other panegyrists is better. To conclude: the passage of Mamertinus incorporates imagery from the storm in Aen. 1 and in doing so combines the attributes of two separate gods in the Aeneid, attributes which symbolise imperium. The first is the power of Jupiter to rule the weather, the storms, the clouds and with his nod to make the world and sky tremble. The second, which in this passage is very similar (illius hilaritate turbines abigi, nubes fugare, nitentia per orbem serena diffundi) actually belongs to Neptune in Aen. 1 and the calming of the storm, fugat nubes acting as signpost to Aen. 1.142–43:

Sic ait, et dicto citius tumida aequora placat collectasque fugat nubes solemque reducit.

(“Thus he spoke and quicker than speech, pacified the swollen waters and put to flight the massed clouds and brought back the sun”).

The storm in theAeneid is a highly politicised one:54 the winds struggle against authority, imperio (1.54). When Neptune regains control, he is compared to a statesman calming the

51 Ann. 456–57 Vahl; García Ruiz (2006) 151; Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 432. In the quiet which Jupiter brings, Goldschmidt (2013) 198 sees an echo of Ennius, Scipio 9–12 Vahl. Cf. also Lucretius 3.22. 52 Sat. 6.26.2. 53 Macr. Sat. 5.13.37–38. 54 See Lyne (1974) 65. Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 15 mob, a Roman politician and leader, pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem / conspexere (“if by chance they caught sight of a man weighty with righteousness and merit”, 1.151–52).55 In the Aeneid, this leader, vir, is associated with Aeneas, the hero (vir, 1.1), and so with the emperor who is now endowed with the characteristics of imperium which belong to Jupiter and Neptune.56 Or, to paraphrase the orator of PL 11(3).14.2 (audeo praedicare … omnes terras omniaque maria plena esse vestri), his power stretches over all land and sea. In this composite allusion, Mamertinus may have been inspired by an earlier speech in the corpus which employed Virgilian reference to give the emperor the powers of Jupiter, Neptune and Apollo. PL 7(6) is addressed to Maximian, who in 306 AD had just emerged from retirement. The orator speaks in the voice of the personified Roma, to rebuke the emperor for having abandoned his post as captain of the ship of state (11.4). In a complicated series of metaphors, Roma urges him to resume the burden of government, breathe life into the moribund empire and pick up the reins again (12.3, 7–8):

Solus hoc, ut dicitur, potuit deus ille, cuius dona sunt quod vivimus et videmus, ut habenas male creditas et currum devio rectore turbatum reciperet rursumque dirigeret … Statim igitur ut praecipitantem [ut] rem publicam refrenasti et gubernacula fluitantia recepisti, omnibus spes salutis inluxit. Posuere venti, fugere nubes, fluctus resederunt, et sicubi adhuc in longinquioribus terris aliqua obversatur obscuritas aut residuus undarum pulsus immurmurat necesse est tamen ad tuos nutus dilucescat et sileat.

(“They say that only that god, by whose gifts we live and see, was capable of taking up the reins which had been unwisely entrusted and steering the chariot again when it had been thrown off course by its errant driver … Then as soon as you curbed the State in its headlong course, and took back the helm as it wavered, the hope of salvation dawned for everyone. The winds dropped, the clouds scattered, the waves subsided, and if anywhere in some distant lands some darkness hovers still or some residual dashing of waves still sounds faintly, yet at your nod light must dawn and silence reign”).57

Allusions to the Aeneid and the Georgics are combined to suggest a multitude of deities. As previous examples have shown, Jupiter is present in ad tuos nutus and in the power to make the skies lighten, dilucescat. Neptune’s ability to calm the storm is present in posuere venti, fugere nubes, fluctus resederunt. The abilities of both of these gods, however, are subsumed into

55 For Servius (ad Aen. 1.151), Cicero was the statesman in question. 56 Hardie (1986) 302–03 discusses the universality of Aeneas’ sphere of action, terris iactatus et alto / vi superum (Aen. 1.3–4). 57 trans. Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 207. 16 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

the power of a single deity, solus … potuit deus ille, who, as the god by whose gifts we see and live, is Apollo or Sol Helios.58 The reference is to the myth of Phaëthon, who tried to control the chariot of his father, the Sun, and came close to burning up the earth.59 In panegyric, this myth became a model for good or bad government.60 The main source, indicated byut dicitur, is probably Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but the political implications are borrowed from the final lines ofGeo. 1. Concluding his description of the civil wars just past, Virgil ends the book as follows (511–14):

Saevit toto Mars impius orbe, ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigae, addunt in spatia, et frustra retinacula tendens fertur equis auriga neque audit currus habenas.

(“The whole word’s at loggerheads, a blasphemous battle, as when, right from the ready, steady, go, chariots quicken on a track until the driver hasn’t a hope of holding the reins and he’s carried away by a team that pays heed to nothing, wildly away and no control”).61

Phaëthon and the ineffectual charioteer have much in common,62 and verbal parallels between the Georgics passage and the storm of Aen. 1 have also been observed: the winds described as horses struggling to leave the starting barrier (Aen. 1.54), their king Aeolus able to hold them with a tight or loose rein (1.63).63 Thus, through different but interrelated Virgilian texts, Maximian moves from being captain of ship of state to the power which calms the storm threatening that ship.64

The Golden Age

The panegyrists’ treatment of the Virgilian aurea aetas illustrates the effective resonance of a short reference, and also the complex layering of Virgilian allusion. The notion that the idyllic golden age could be restored dominated imperial ideology for centuries and in various manifestations, just as Virgil had provided his successors with a number of possible models. The 58 It is tempting to assume a pun in the foregrounding of solus. 59 See Galletier (1949–55) vol. 2, 26; Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 207. 60 See Ware (2012) 131–34. 61 trans. Fallon (2006) 23. 62 See Gale (2000) 35. 63 Lyne (1974) 64–65. 64 Virgilian allusion would also suggest a model for the combination of metaphors, since Neptune travelled in his chariot to quell the Virgilian storm: flectit equos curruque volans dat lora secundo (Aen. 1.156). Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 17 aurea aetas appeared initially as a fantastic vision in the fourth Eclogue, was given a temporal and geographical reality in the laudes Italiae of Geo. 2, and became a future inevitability under Augustus and Roman imperium in Aen. 6. The trope was so familiar that a very few details were enough to invoke the presence of the golden age, and the panegyrists could chose from the catalogue compiled by Virgil and elaborated by other writers:65 temperate, vernal weather with the Zephyr blowing, the absence of savage animals or snakes, flocks heavy with milk and fleeces, the bounty of untilled Nature, no laws, no land boundaries, no warfare, no mining, no sailing and – the rather surreal touch which Virgil mentions only in the Eclogue – sheep with multi-coloured wool. The explicitly encomiastic opening lines of the Eclogue and the fact that the recurrence of the golden age coincided with the birth of an unnamed child defined the poem as a laudatio. Servius, in fact, describes it as a genethliacon for Pollio (ad. Ecl. 4.1).66 The inspiration which this poem could provide for a verse panegyric is illustrated by Claudian’s Laus Serenae, in which the bounty of nature is commandeered by imperial largitio. At Serena’s birth, the river Tagus overflowed with gold, the sea cast jewels on the shore and the white sheep became purple (70–75).67 Claudian’s version of the golden age is clearly indebted to Virgil’s Eclogue and the variations of Virgil’s pastoral successors, but he had also drawn on the Georgics by specifying the location: this golden age will begin in Spain, where Serena was born.68 For those who preferred a more realistic model, the Georgics was at hand. The golden age of the Eclogue had been presented in mythical rather than real time: it would come to pass when a second Troy had fallen and a second Argo had sailed (34–36). The defining words are Saturnia regna (6), a phrase which is not explained in the Eclogues but in the Georgics. Here the reader learns that it refers to Italy, which Virgil hails salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus, / magna virum (“hail, Saturnian land, great mother of the harvest and of heroes”, 2.173–74).69 Italy possesses the characteristics of the idyllic golden age, being blessed with eternal spring, free from snakes and savage animals (2.149–54), and abundant in fertile crops and cattle, but it is also rich in the wealth which is rejected in the earlier poem. The walled cities of Italy praised in the Georgics (2.155–57) would have been evidence of ancient error in the Eclogue (priscae vestigia fraudis, 31), while the wealth of gold and silver brought about by mining (Geo. 2.166–68) had no place in the earlier idyll. Virgil makes it very clear that his Italy is a real and not mythological landscape (Geo. 2.140–42):

65 Ecl. 4.21–45. Cf. for example Hor. Epod. 16.40–65; Ov. Met. 1.89–112. Virgil had not invented these details (with the possible exception of the coloured sheep), but he had tied the golden age’s restoration to the reign of Augustus. 66 Menander Rhetor 2.412–13 describes the types of praise required in such a speech (Russell & Wilson, 1981, 159–60). 67 See Ware (2012) 177–78. Cf. also Sidonius Apollinaris’ panegyric to Anthemius, where the golden age brought about by the emperor’s birth is marked by an upheaval in nature and roses blooming in winter (102–11). 68 Claudian is also influenced by the praise of Spain in Pacatus’ panegyric to Theodosius,PL 2(12).4.2–5. 69 For hyperbole and Saturnia regna in the Georgics and the Aeneid, see Hardie (1986) 257–58. 18 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Haec loca non tauri spirantes naribus ignem invertere satis immanis dentibus hydri, nec galeis densisque virum seges horruit hastis.

(“Here no bulls, breathing fire from their nostrils, ploughed the teeth of the monstrous dragon, nor did the crop bristle with the close-packed helmets and spears of men”).

This is a variation on the rhetoricians’ trope of thefabulae poetarum: the absence of fantastic fire-breathing bulls and earth-born warriors adds credibility to the fertility of the land and the perfection of the climate. Thelaudes Italiae also appealed to the panegyrists of late antiquity as being a text-book panegyric. As Servius asserted (ad. Geo. 2.136):

Iam incipit laus Italiae, quam exsequitur secundum praecepta rhetorica: nam dicit eam et habere bona omnia et carere malis universis.

(“Now begins the praise of Italy, which he executes according to the rhetorical guide- lines, for he says that it both possesses all goods and is free from all evils”).

The final evolution of the golden age took place in theAeneid , where the Saturnia regna became political, appearing first in the vision of Augustan rule (6.791–95):

‘Hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis, Augustus Caesar, divi genus, aurea condet saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arva Saturno quondam, super et Garamantas et Indos proferet imperium’.

(“‘This is the man, this is he, whom you have so often heard promised, Augustus Caesar, race of the gods, who will found again in Latium, in fields once ruled by Saturn, golden ages, and over the Garamantes and Indies will extend his empire’”).

Since no further explanation of Saturnia regna is given here, the reader has to rely on the Georgics and the description of this land as the mother of heroes: an appropriate birthplace for Augustus Caesar, race of the gods. Only later in the Aeneid is Saturnia regna glossed by Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 19

Evander as the golden time long ago, when Saturn had fled from Olympus and hidden in Latium, where he had given laws to the inhabitants and ruled them in peace (aurea saecula: sic placida populos in pace regebat, 8.324–25). In Aen. 6, therefore, Virgil subordinates the aurea saecula of Saturn, characterised by placida pax, to those of the pax Augusta, characterised by military expansion and imperium.70 The centrality of the emperor to theaurea saecula and the incorporation of righteous domination over the world completed the encomiastic whole, providing inspiration for imperial progaganda from Augustus onwards. The characteristics and vocabulary of the golden age were so familiar that the writers of the Panegyrici Latini could be selective, often focusing only on a single element. For instance, the eternal spring of the aurea aetas was reflected in the clemency of the weather which greeted the emperor: while the rest of the world was frozen with ice and snow, Maximian’s journey was springlike: vos solos aurae lenes vernique flatus et diductis nubibus ad itinera vestra directi solis radii sequebantur (“gentle breezes and gusts of spring followed you alone; the clouds parted and the rays of the sun shone directly on your journey”, 11(3).9.2). The fertility of the land could be another detail evocative of the golden age. InPL 8(5)3.1, the joint reign of Diocletian and Maximian was described in the following terms:

O felix beatumque ver novo partu, iam non amoenitate florum nec viriditate segetum nec gemmis vitium nec ipsis tantum favoniis et luce reserata laetum atque venerabile, quantum ortu Caesarum maximorum!

(“O fortunate spring, blessed with new birth, happy and honoured now not so much because of the beauty of your flowers nor the verdure of the crops nor the jewels on the vines nor the westerly breezes and the light revealed, but because of the coming of the greatest of emperors!”)

There is no explicit link to a single Virgilian model, but the references to birth innovo partu and ortu, to spring and the west wind, the abundance of flowers and crops, are a Virgilian composite of the Eclogue, Georgics and Aeneid, idyllic and yet credible, and all made possible by the reign of the Dyarchy. Familiarity with the topos could also give a golden age lustre to the sudden fertility of the earth in a particular reign. Under Diocletian and Maximian, a dou- bling of flocks and harvests was anticipated in accordance with the words of the poets binos( gregum fetus et duplices arborum fructus, 10(2).11.3).71 This motif is varied in thegenethliacon

70 Peace, that is, in the sense of keeping the enemies of Rome in check: pacisque imponere morem (Aen. 6.852). For the association of pax Augusta and the golden age, see Bardill (2012) 46. 71 For fertility associated with the emperor, see Cal. Sic. Ecl. 4.102–16. 20 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

to Maximian, where the lives of men are also increased (hominum aetates et numerus augetur … cultura duplicatur, 11(3).15.4). In the panegyric of 310 AD, the emperor Constantine was linked with the child of the Eclogues through the idyllic landscape of Britain. Constantine had been hailed as emperor by the army in York, and so Britain became the birthplace of his imperium. In a mini-panegyric, the land is addressed as O fortunata et nunc omnibus beatior terris Britannia (“O Britain, fortunate and now more blessed than all lands”, 6(7).9.1). The adjectivesfortunata and beatior link Britain with the Fortunate Islands or the Isles of the Blest, the arva beata of Horace (Epod. 16.40), which, as Servius asserts (ad Aen. 6.638), were associated with the sedes beatae of Elysium.72 That Constantine was not born in Britain is glossed over: he has come from there, the panegyrist declares, because Britain is so far north that sky and sea meet and it is from regions close to the heavens that an emperor is sent by the gods, loca vicina caelo … a dis mittitur imperator (9.5).73 There is here a hint of the Virgiliannova progenies caelo demit- tur alto (Ecl. 4.7), and the landscape is clearly that of the fourth Eclogue. The linepecorum mitium innumerabilis multitudo lacte distenta et onusta velleribus (“a countless multitude of gentle sheep swollen with milk and laden with fleeces”, 9.2) suggests Virgil’sipsae lacte domum referent distenta capellae / ubera (“the goats themselves bring home udders swollen with milk”, Ecl. 4.21–22), with onusta velleribus perhaps recalling the multi-coloured ram in the Eclogue: aries … iam croceo mutabit vellera luto (“now the ram will change his fleece to saffron yellow”, 43–44). The absence of snakes, described in the Eclogue asoccidet et serpens (“the serpent also will perish”, 23) is present in the line nemora sine immanibus bestiis, terra sine serpentibus noxiis (“woods without wild animals, land without deadly snakes”, 9.2), which also conflates Virgil’simmanis dentibus hydri from Geo. 2.141. This engagement with the golden age is quite different from that of an earlier panegyric in the collection, a speech written c. 298 AD in honour of Constantius I, the father of Constantine.74 The orator of 310 was familiar with this oration,75 but the only corresponding detail in this passage is the fertility of the land. Thereafter, the earlier orator had continued with a list of other types of prosperity (8(5).11.1):

terra tanto frugum ubere, tanto laeta numero pastionum, tot metallorum fluens rivis, tot vectigalibus quaestuosa, tot accincta portibus, tanto immensa circuitu.

72 See Lovejoy & Boas (1935) 290–303. 73 Britain had already been described in this oration as being on the edge of the world, intimum terrarum limen (7.1) and associated with Ultima Thule and the Fortunate Islands (7.2), lands which are often described as golden age locations (e.g. PL 3(11).23). The description of the long days without night (9.3) comes from Tacitus’Agricola 12.2, another encomiastic text. 74 On the dating of this oration, see Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 105. 75 Intertextual influence e.g.( the siege of Bononia, 6(7).5.1–3 and 8(5).6–7) shows that the orator of 310 knew this speech. Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 21

(“a land with such wealth of crops, rejoicing in such a number of pastures, overflowing with so many streams of ore, so profitable with tax revenue, surrounded by so many ports, so mighty in circumference”).

Here is quite a different Britain to that ofPL 6(7). This is a land which has benefited from Roman civilisation and is proud of the wealth brought about by metals, taxes and trading. It is a landscape derived not from the utopia of the fourth Eclogue but from the more realistic golden age attributes of the laudes Italiae in the Georgics. Virgil’s Italy was also rich in crops, gravidae fruges (Geo. 2.143) and in mineral resources, the tot metallorum fluens rivis of Britain summarising the streams of silver, bronze and gold in Italy, haec eadem argenti rivos aerisque metalla / ostendit venis atque auro plurima fluxit (“this same land displayed streams of silver and mines of copper, and it flowed abundantly with gold”, 165–66). Virgil’s Italy owed its prosperity to military strength, and Virgil referred to war horses, triumphs and the victories of Caesar: the passage is an implicit celebration of the restoration of order after the civil war chaos at the end of the first book of theGeorgics .76 PL 8(5) ends with the liberation of Britain and the joy of the inhabitants (19.1, 4). In the allusion to the laudes Italiae, therefore, and the restoration of peace by Augustus, the orator anticipates the restoration of order under Constantius. In 389 AD, Pacatus drew on the earlier panegyrist’s descriptions of Britain and the laudes Italiae of the Georgics to praise Spain, the birthplace of Theodosius, a land which was more blessed, felicior, than all other lands, of temperate climate (PL 2(12).4.2–3) and rich in wealth (4.4):

Adde tot egregias civitates, adde culta incultaque omnia vel fructibus plena vel gregibus, adde auriferorum opes fluminum, adde radiantium metalla gemmarum.

(“Add so many outstanding cities, add land cultivated and fallow, abundant in either fruit or herds, add the wealth of gold-bearing rivers, add the lustre of shining jewels”).

The opening words echo Virgil’sadde tot egregias urbes (Geo. 2.155), combined with the streams of precious metals, argenti rivos aerisque metalla (165): Virgil and the earlier panegyrists serve to reinforce praise of Theodosius. The need for security in the 4th century expanded the remit of the Virgilian golden age. In the oration of 298 AD, the orator praises the military reinforcements which the reign of Diocletian and Maximian had brought to the frontiers, and the fact that now trees could be

76 See Nappa (2005) 84–85. 22 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

replanted and cities rebuilt. Trees, crops and city walls alike seem to spring up in the temperate weather which resulted from the new golden age of the emperors (9(4).18.4–5):

Qua veris autumnive clementia tot manu positae arbores convalescunt, quo calore solis tot depressae imbribus segetes resurgunt, quot ubique muri vix repertis veterum fundament orum vestigiis excitantur! Adeo, ut res est, aurea illa saecula, quae non diu quondam Saturno rege viguerunt, nunc aeternis auspiciis Iovis et Herculis renascuntur.

(“How many trees set out by hand grow strong in the mild weather of spring or fall, how many crops, once beaten down by rain, rise up again in the heat of summer, as walls, the traces of their old foundations scarcely discernible, are being erected everywhere! Thus in actual fact that golden age which once flourished briefly when Saturn was king, is now reborn under the eternal auspices of Jupiter and Hercules”).77

The notion of the rebirth of ages, saecula … renascuntur, echoes Ecl. 4, saeclorum nascitur ordo (5), but a frontier fortified against barbarian invasion seems an unlikely attribute of the idyllic golden age. It is however intelligible as a late antique interpretation of the aurea saecula which Augustus was to found and which involved the extension of imperium. The verbal echoes of Aen. 6 are explicit (aurea … saecula, Saturno quondam, 792, 795) and the change of tense from future to present is emphatically encomiastic. In this newly secure environment, the arts can flourish and schools can be rebuilt: the orator’s purpose in this panegyric is to plead for the restoration of schools of rhetoric at Autun.78 Golden age imagery could also be applied to political office, as Mamertinus’ panegyric to Julian demonstrates. Following the familiar theme of abundant harvests, multiplices fructus … vindemia triplex … multiplicata fecunditas (“multiple crops … triple vintages … fertility mul- tiplied”, 3(11).22.1), Mamertinus surveys the wealth of resources which Julian had brought to imperial administration and bureaucracy, and compares it favourably with the bounty of nature apparent in the Isles of the Blest (23.1–4).79 In place of corn and grapes, power and wealth appear of their own accord, sponte.80 The various adaptations of the Virgilian golden age in the prose orations of thePanegyrici Latini suggest that the orators were influenced above all by the ideology ofAen. 6. The

77 Adapted from Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 170. 78 See Nixon & Rodgers (1994) 146–48. 79 quas Fortunatorum insulas vocant, quod per eas non arato solo frumenta nascuntur, fortuitis vitibus iuga collium vestiuntur, sponte pomis arbor gravatur (“which they call the Islands of the Blessed, because crops grow there without tillage, the slopes of the mountains are clothed with vines by chance, of their own accord the trees are heavy with fruit”, 23.1–4). 80 sponte, in the context of generous nature, is a golden age marker: e.g. Virg. Ecl. 4.45; Ov. Met. 1.90. Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 23 renewal of the golden age in these panegyrics may have some some unlikely characteristics, but this is a natural extension of the prophecy in the Aeneid, where extended imperium characterises the return of the aurea saecula under Augustus. His reign had made the laudes Italiae of the Georgics possible. For the Gallic orators of the Panegyrici Latini, familiar with the devastation suffered by their country during the upheavals of the 3rd century,81 the fortified prosperity of Augustan Italy represented the ideal and the real. The panegyrists omit the more fanciful details of the fourth Eclogue and instead exaggerate what is possible: unseasonal warmth accompanying the emperor in icy weather, double harvests under his auspices.

Conclusion: Virgil and the language of encomium

In the context of panegyric, therefore, it is clear that certain words and phrases from Virgil have particular encomiastic resonance. Fugat nubes, deo plenus, eius nutu are enough to invoke the boundless power of the emperor, Jupiter’s earthly representative, while a reference to unex- pectedly vernal temperatures or super-abundant crops signals the golden age. The source of a particular allusion, however, is not always clearcut. As demonstrated, the panegyrists liked to layer their allusions, so that a reference to Virgil is also a reference to several earlier imperial panegyrists or to other encomiastic passages. Because so few panegyrics have survived, we cannot assess the influence of other rhetoricians, although there is a reference to Fronto’s praise of Antoninus Pius and Fronto himself is commended as the equal of Cicero.82 Nor can we be sure what poetic references are missing. Ennius, for example, who is the only other poet explicitly cited in the collection, must have been a significant source of encomiastic material. It is suggestive that the one direct citation of Ennius in the Panegyrici Latini (11(3).16.3) is from his epitaph on Scipio (epigr. 5.21 Vahl), and so laudatory.83 The final difficulty in assessing the scale of Virgilian allusion in the panegyrics is Virgil’s own practice of allusion. Macrobius’ Saturnalia 6.1–5 gives some indication of the extent of Virgil’s borrowing from Ennius and others, but the loss of the sources make certainty impossible. Disentangling even an apparently simple allusion is not necessarily straightforward. Consider Pacatus’ line, dum ultra terminos rerum metasque Naturae regna Orientis extendis

81 See Drinkwater (1987). 82 Romanae eloquentiae non secundum sed alterum decus (“not the second but the other glory of Roman eloquence”, 8(5).14.2); for the orators of the Panegyrici Latini, Cicero was the summus orator (12(9).19.5). 83 On this passage, see Ware (2017) 359. The role of Ennius, hailed by the Gallic panegyrists assummus poeta (9(4).7.3), is very similar to that of Virgil. Any citation from the work of pater Ennius brought the authority of antiquity (Rees, 2004b, 37), but the encomiastic function of his work was as well recognised as that of Virgil. Ennius was the poet whose Annales had brought fame to Scipio, Cato, Maximus, Marcellus and Fulvius (Hor. Carm. 4.8.13–22; Cic. Arch. 22; Dominik 1993, 50) and he was the main source of the parade of heroes in Aen. 6 (Goldschmidt, 2013, 166–79 discusses exemplarity and Virgil’s debt to Ennius in Aen. 6). 24 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

(“while you extend your reign in the east beyond the boundaries of empire and the limits of Nature”, 2(12).23.1). This seems in words and theme a clear citation ofAen. 1.278, 86–87:

‘his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono … Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris’.

(“‘for these, I set limits neither of place nor time … A Trojan Caesar will be born of this noble race who will limit his empire with Ocean, his fame with the stars’”).

A word search of the Panegyrici Latini shows that the juxtaposition of imperium and termini is a popular one,84 and it would seem reasonable to assume that the orators had this Virgilian passage in mind. In one case at least, however, the model is not Virgilian but Ciceronian. Vos, vero, qui imperium non terrae sed caeli regionibus terminatis (“You, indeed, who limit your power not by the regions of the earth but of the sky” (10(2).10.1) comes from Cicero’s praise of Pompey and himself as the men who had protected Rome: quorum alter finis vestri imperi non terrae, sed caeli regionibus terminaret, alter huius imperi domicilium sedisque servaret, (“one of whom limited the bounds of your power not by the regions of the earth but of the sky, while the other protected the home and abode of that power”, Cat. 3.26).85 In Cicero’s speech, Pompey is the man who extended Roman power to the boundaries of the sky, and he himself is the one, alter, who protected the seat of that power. This division of government and imperium makes the allusion a very suitable parallel for Diocletian and Maximian, who, in this panegyric, divide their spheres of influence so that Maximian, as the Herculian emperor, is victorious over the whole world (2.1), assisting the Jovian Diocletian as Hercules had supported Jupiter in the war against the Giants (4.1).86 What, then, is the allusion hunter to do with the other combinations of imperium and termini in such phrases as omnemque illam rabiem extra terminos huius imperii in terras hostium distulistis (“you have pushed away all that fury beyond the bounds of this empire into the lands of the enemy”, 11(3).16.2), or eat quin immo in immensum felicis cursus imperii, nec humanorum terminos curent qui semper divina meditantur (“rather, let the course of his blessed reign continue without measure, and let those who think always of divine matters not concern themselves with mortal boundaries”, 4(10).2.6)? The safe answer is to speak of

84 10(2).7.2, 10.1; 11(2).16.2; 8(5).3.3; 4(10).2.6; 2(12).23.1. 85 The contextual parallels are too close for this line to be dismissed, as Klotz (1911) 533 suggests, as a rhetorical commonplace. 86 This is in no way a denigration of Maximian, but rather a skilful way of acknowledging the power and seniority of Diocletian in a panegyric in honour of Maximian alone. Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 25 encomiastic language rather than specific allusion; equally, it could be argued that Virgil had made the Ciceronian language his own. In his writings, Cicero had expanded the meaning of imperium to refer to the abstract power of the Roman people rather than the specific authority of magistrates.87 Praising Pompey, Cicero had utilised the encomiastic potential of imperium,88 and this model, possessing the exaggerated qualities of panegyric, was to hand when Virgil created the prophecy of Jupiter. Virgil’s imitation became more memorable than the original and so the term became “Virgilian”. Or, as Praetextatus summed up in the Saturnalia (6.1.6):

Denique et iudicio transferendi et modo imitandi consecutus est ut quod apud illum leger imus alienum, aut illius esse malimus aut melius hic quam ubi natum est sonare miremur.

(“In short, [Virgil] followed his models with such discernment in allusion and manner of imitation that when we read another’s lines in Virgil, either we prefer to accept it as his or we wonder at how much better it sounds than in the original”).

Virgil found similar aggrandisement in the language of philosophy. Lucretius tells of the gods as living in the cloudless aether, a region undisturbed by winds and rain, smiling in widely diffused light,large diffuso lumine ridet (3.22). In the Aeneid, this becomes Jupiter’s abode, high above clouds and storms, from where he can view earth, sea and sky. Lucretius had given the name divina mens to the inspiration for Epicurean philosophy, whether referring to Epicurus or some inspirational deity (1.15),89 and had argued that the vital spirit, anima, spread throughout the limbs, was governed by the nod and inclination of the mens, ad numen mentis momenque movetur (3.143–44).90 For the Stoics, god was the anima mundi or mens universi, which was diffused throughout the universe.91 Such descriptions underpin Anchises’ account of the souls waiting for rebirth. He tells Aeneas that mankind and all living creatures are animated by an unnamed god or divine spirit, which spreads throughout the limbs and motivates the whole (Aen. 6.724–27). Anchises’ explanation prefaces the Parade of Heroes, creating a cosmic setting for Roman history.92 Acting on the principle that all aspects of the Aeneid relate to imperial praise, the Gallic orators identified thedivina mens with Jupiter and, by extension, with the emperors. Their fondness for this passage meant that philosophical language, through the medium of Virgil, became part of imperial panegyric. 87 See Richardson (2008) 63–92. 88 Cf. de vestri imperi dignitate et gloria (“concering the dignity and glory of your power”, Cic. Pro leg. Manil. 11). Braund (1988) 55 describes Cicero’s Caesarian speeches as “proto-panegyrics”; on the influence of Cicero on panegyric, see Manuwald (2011). 89 See Fratantuono (2015) 164. 90 See Bailey (1947) 1013. 91 Sen. Nat. quaest. 1, pr. 13; Cic. Nat. D. 1.39. 92 Hardie (1986) 66–67. 26 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

In short, Virgil may not have created the highflown language of universal dominion, but he had made it applicable to Roman imperium and to the universality of Rome under Augustus. If, for example, Cicero was the first to praise a statesman forimperium without limits, Virgil had applied this locution to imperial panegyric. The epideictic technique of reinforcing one laudatory phrase with another meant that all encomiastic discourse could be drawn into the orbit of Virgilian panegyric. As Vereeke rightly observes: “nothing resembles a panegyric more than another panegyric”.93 Vereeke was concerned with rhetorical models, but his conclusion also applies to language. The same words and phrases recur and Virgil, whether as borrower or creator of imperial discourse, is the unifying factor. What emerges from a survey of Virgil’s influence on the prose panegyrics is that Virgilian intertextuality among the Gallic orators was a highly complex technique, incorporating multiple allusions to Virgil from a variety of sources, and influenced by critical writings on the meanings of his work. While Virgil as the poet of battle is used to add poetic colour and epic style as required, his value above all was as the voice of Romanitas and imperium. Certain passages were of particular relevance in affirming the quasi-divine power of the emperor and the boundless sway of Rome. Frequently, Virgilian allusion was supported by reference to other encomiastic passages, whether another line from Virgil, a reference to an earlier work in the collection, or an encomiastic passage from Cicero or Ennius. When the Panegyrici Latini is read as a corpus, Virgilian allusion seems to be a communal effort, as the same themes, phrases and words are repeated throughout the speeches. In the preface to his Saturnalia, Macrobius had described scholars and teachers as performing the work of bees, blending different kinds of nectar to give a single flavour pr.( 5–6). He advised that they should gather together and make a single unity from the various sources (ex omnibus colligamus unde unum fiat, pr. 8), just as different voices join together to form a chorus.94 It is a simile which perfectly describes the Gallic panegyrists’ use of Virgilian allusion.

University College Cork CATHERINE WARE ([email protected])

93 Vereeke (1974) 155. 94 On this passage, see MacCormack (1998) 81–82. Ware – Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity 27

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“The Prophecies of Fferyll”: Virgilian Reception in Wales

Revised from a paper given to the Virgil Society on 18 May 2013

Davies Whenever I make the short journey from my home to Swansea’s railway station, I pass two shops which remind me of Virgil. Both are chemist shops, both belong to large retail empires. The name-boards above their doors proclaim that each shop is not only a “pharmacy” but also a fferyllfa, literally “Virgil’s place”. In bilingual Wales homage is paid to the greatest of poets every time we collect a prescription! The Welsh words for a chemist or pharmacist fferyllydd( ), for pharmaceutical science (fferylliaeth), for a retort (fferyllwydr) are – like fferyllfa,the chemist’s shop – all derived from Fferyll, a learned form of Virgil’s name regularly used by writers and poets of the Middle Ages in Wales.1 For example, the 14th-century Dafydd ap Gwilym, in one of his love poems, pic- tures his beloved as an enchantress and the silver harp that she is imagined playing as o ffyrf gelfyddyd Fferyll (“shaped by Virgil’s mighty art”).2 This is, of course, the Virgil “of popular legend”, as Comparetti describes him: the Virgil of the Neapolitan tales narrated by Gervase of Tilbury and Conrad of Querfurt, Virgil the magician and alchemist, whose literary roots may be in Ecl. 8, a fascinating counterfoil to the prophet of the Christian interpretation of Ecl. 4.3 Not that the role of magician and the role of prophet were so differentiated in the medieval mind as they might be today. An early, perhaps pre-12th-century, Welsh poem – a long work of nearly 250 lines – entitled ‘Kat Godeu’ (in modern orthography, ‘Cad Goddau’), “The Battle of Trees”, recalls a series of magical events, including the conjuring up of trees, and has its protagonist undergo all sorts of transformations. But at its end the poem “reminds us”, as its editor, Professor Marged Haycock puts it, “of the momentous events of Christian chronology – the Flood, the Crucifixion, the Day of Judgment”.4 It concludes with the following assertion:

1 See J. Lloyd-Jones, Geirfa Barddoniaeth Gymraeg Gynnar, 1931–63, Cardiff, 505. Now see also P. Russell, Reading Ovid in Medieval Wales, 2017, Columbus OH, 222–26, 233–34. 2 ‘Telynores Twyll’ (poem 135, l. 56), in D. Johnston, H. M. Edwards et al. (eds), Cerddi Dafydd ap Gwilym, 2010, Cardiff, 530. All the poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym can be accessed in this edition, together with English translation, via www.DafyddapGwilym.net. 3 D. Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages, trans. E. F. M. Benecke, 1895, London, part II, passim. 4 M. Haycock (ed. and trans), Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, 20152, Aberystwyth, 173. 32 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Eurem yn euryll mi hud wyf berthyll, ac ydwyf drythyll o erymes Fferyll.

(“[Like] a magnificent jewel in a gold ornament thus am I resplendent and I am exhilarated by the prophecy of Virgil”).5

Fferyll, “Virgil”, is the last word of the poem, as the poet claims for himself a share in the prophetic power of Virgil. ‘Kat Godeu’ is one of many medieval Welsh poems attributed to Taliesin, an emblematic personage regularly seen as the founder of the Welsh poetic tradition.6 As a historical figure he belongs to the late 6th century and appears to have been court-poet to Urien, ruler of the northern Brythonic territory of Rheged, with its capital at or near today’s Carlisle. A dozen poems probably by him, mostly eulogies in praise of his patron, have come down to us in the much later (14th-century) manuscript usually referred to as Llyfr Taliesin (“The Book of Taliesin”), now Peniarth MS 2 in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. There also grew, around the Taliesin persona, a body of continually evolving legend, and poems that incorporate some of this later material, composed over many centuries and ascribed to him, are also preserved in Llyfr Taliesin.7 ‘Kat Godeu’ is of the number of the legendary poems. The figure presented as claiming that he is “exhilarated / by the prophecy of Virgil” is none other than Taliesin himself. He is a wonder-worker, a magus like the Virgil of the popular legends. But he also stands in the tradition of the Christian interpretation of Ecl. 4, and calls to mind the Flood, the Cross, Doomsday. A Welsh Virgil, he too is both magician and prophet.8

5 Ibid, 186 (‘Kat Godeu’, ll. 246–49). 6 See, for example, E. Humphreys, The Taliesin Tradition. A Quest for the Welsh Identity, 1983, London. For a succinct discussion of the beginnings of Welsh poetry, see A. O. H. Jarman, The Cynfeirdd. Early Welsh Poets and Poetry, 1981, Cardiff. 7 On the poems of the historic Taliesin, see I. Williams, Canu Taliesin, 1960, Cardiff; English version: J. E. Caerwyn Williams (trans), The Poems of Taliesin, 1975, Dublin. On the legendary poems, see Haycock (n.4 above). 8 For a comparative study of Virgil and Taliesin as magician figures, see J. Wood, ‘Virgil and Taliesin: The Concept of the Magician in Medieval Folklore’, Folklore 94 (1983), 91–104. Wace’s 12th-century Roman de Brut provides evidence of the extension of Taliesin’s reputation as magus and prophet beyond Wales: “En Bretainne aveit un devin / Que l’on apelout Teleusin. / Pur buen prophete esteit tenuz / E mult esteit de tuz creüz” (“There was a soothsayer in Britain called Teleusin; he was considered a good prophet and everyone gave him much credence”), J. Weiss (ed. and trans), Wace’s Roman de Brut: A History of the British, 1999, Exeter, 122–23 (ll. 4855–58). (I owe this reference to Haycock, n.4 above, 238). Davies – “The Prophecies of Fferyll”: Virgilian Reception in Wales 33

What, however, of Virgil, the poet of the 1st century BC, and the place of his Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid in Wales? It is not surprising that, after the departure of the Roman legions from Britain, and through the Middle Ages, what awareness there is of Virgil’s poetry among writers connected with Wales emerges mainly in works written in Latin.9 It would be anachronistic to try to make a Welshman, in any modern sense of the word, of the 6th-century Gildas. Even so, tradition connects him with the monastic school at Llanilltud Fawr (Llantwit Major) in Glamorgan, and Maglocunus (probably Maelgwn, ruler of Gwynedd) is a particular butt for his attack in De Excidio Britanniae (“On the Ruin of Britain”). Gildas’ De Excidio has in it a number of borrowings and adaptations from the Aeneid, especially – and tellingly – from the first two books.10 Come to the 12th century, and the writings of the Pembrokeshire-born and Paris-educated Gerald of Wales, author of (among many other works) Itinerarium Kambriae (“Journey through Wales”) and Descriptio Kambriae (“Description of Wales”), show easy familiarity with Virgil and with a whole gamut of Latin authors, from Terence to Jerome and Sidonius Apollinaris.11 Not that Gerald’s creative use of Virgil compares with that of his won- derfully imaginative predecessor Geoffrey of Monmouth.12 In his Historia Regum Britanniae (“History of the Kings of Britain”), Geoffrey exploits the parallel between two foundation myths, the one rooted in the journey of Aeneas from Troy to establish his new city, the other in that of Aeneas’ supposed descendant Brutus to become the eponymous occupier of Britain. Echoes of specific Virgilian material, particularly fromAen. 3, are used to good effect in the account of Brutus’ travels and his adventures along the way. For example, early in the Historia, Brutus and his followers reach the deserted island of Leogetia, where they discover a temple to Diana. Accompanied by an augur and twelve elders, Brutus offers appropriate sacrifices and makes an appeal, in elegiac couplets, to the goddess’s statue. The goddess subsequently appears to him in a dream and gives instructions, also in elegiacs, as to how he is to proceed, with the promise of future glory for him and his descendants:

‘Insula in occeano est habitata gigantibus olim, nunc deserta quidem, gentibus apta tuis. Hanc pete: namque tibi sedes erit illa perhennis. Hic fiet natis altera Troia tuis.

9 For the (very few) allusions to Virgil the classical poet in medieval Welsh-language sources, all translations from Latin texts, see Russell (n.1 above) 223–24. 10 See M. Winterbottom (ed. and trans), Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and other works, 1978, London, 10. 11 See R. Bartlett, Gerald of Wales: 1146–1223, 1982, Oxford, 209; C. Davies, Welsh Literature and the Classical Tradition, 1995, Cardiff, 37. 12 See H. Tausendfreund, Vergil und Gottfried von Monmouth, 1913, Halle, passim; E. Faral, La légende arthurienne: Études et documents, 1929, Paris, vol. 2, 69–92; J. Hammer, ‘Remarks on the sources and textual history of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae’, Quarterly Bulletin of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, Jan. 1944, 509–21. 34 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Hic de prole tua reges nascentur, et ipsis tocius terrae subdita orbis erit’.

(“‘An island there is in the ocean, once occupied by giants; now it is deserted and ready for your people. Seek it: for down the years this will be your home; here will be a second Troy for your descendants. There, from your stock, kings will arise: the circle of the whole earth will be subject to them’”).13

Without being slavishly imitative, the situation is modelled on the account of Aeneas’ visit to Delos. Both command and promise echo those of Apollo, Diana’s brother, to Aeneas and his companions. True, Apollo’s words were misinterpreted by Anchises, but they too contain the promise of greatness to come:

‘Antiquam exquirite matrem. Hic domus Aeneae cunctis dominabitur oris et nati natorum et qui nascentur ab illis’. (Aen. 3.96–98) Likewise, Geoffrey’s earlier story of Brutus coming upon the descendants of Priam’s son Helenus recalls, with some intriguing alterations, the account of the arrival of Aeneas and his fellow- Trojans at Buthrotum and their meeting with Helenus and Andromache (Aen. 3.294–355).14 Geoffrey may have owed his connection with Wales to the chance that his family, which was perhaps of Breton descent, played some part in the Norman occupation of the Monmouth area.15 It is evident that he knew south-east Wales well, and Caerleon-on-Usk (Urbs Legionum, as he calls it), which he has as the scene of a plenary court at which King Arthur welcomed the kings and leaders of Europe, was a locus amoenus whose description he was able to embellish on the basis of local knowledge.16 Most of Geoffrey’s adult life, however, was spent in Oxford and its environs, and his natural milieu was the world of scholarship and the ecclesiastical politics of his day. Like Gerald of Wales, he wrote in Latin for that narrow band of readers and scholars for whom Latin was the international language of learning. The same can be said, four hundred years later, of the not inconsiderable number of Welsh 16th- and early 17th-century humanists: classical allusions, not least to Virgil, are part of the common coinage of their writings in Latin.17

13 Geoffrey of Monmouth,The History of the Kings ofBritain, ed. and trans. M. D. Reeve and N. Wright, 2007, Woodbridge, 21 (book 1, ll. 307–12). 14 Ibid, 9 (book 1, ll. 67–87). 15 See K. Jankulak, Geoffrey of Monmouth, 2010, Cardiff, 11. 16 Geoffrey of Monmouth (n.13 above) 208–11 (book 9, ll. 306–26). 17 See Davies (n.11 above) 64–65. Davies – “The Prophecies of Fferyll”: Virgilian Reception in Wales 35

* Writing in Latin is one thing; writing in Welsh is another matter. As we turn to the reception of Virgil’s poetry in Welsh-language literature, especially of the post-medieval world, it behoves us to remember that, since the Edwardian Conquest of the late 13th century, and even more firmly after the 1536 / 1543 Tudor “Act of Union” (as it is conveniently, if impre- cisely, called), Wales was politically assimilated to England. The 16th-century imposition, in Wales as in England, of the Anglican version of the Protestant Reformation, and with it a sense of the urgency that the Scriptures be made available in a language the people could understand, meant that during that century Welsh found its way into print, in translations of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and other religious texts. On the other hand, as Wales had very few endowed grammar schools and (unlike Scotland) no university of its own, Welshmen with scholarly aspirations had to look to England for their education, certainly at university level, and many of them chose to stay there. There was, however, a steady stream of Oxford- or (less usually) Cambridge-educated men who returned to Wales and gave expression, in the Welsh language, to what they had learnt. Classical interests played a major part in that. Thus, early in the 18th century, a fine prose writer like Ellis Wynne, rector of parishes in the Harlech area and author of Gweledigaetheu y Bardd Cwsc (“Visions of the Sleeping Bard”, London, 1703), has echoes of the Aeneid, especially the sixth book, in the text of his “visions”.18 Later in the same century the pastoral poet Edward Richard is creatively aware of the tradition of Virgil’s Eclogues (and of Theocritus’ Idylls before them).19 But 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century Wales had no Spenser or Milton, certainly no Dryden. In the words of one of the most authoritative of 20th-century historians of Welsh literature:

“In a country which possessed neither a university nor a cultural centre of any kind, and lacked the wealth to dispense to its children that education which might enable them to comprehend the heritage of other peoples and assimilate it to their own, the period from 1650 till the middle of the nineteenth century is merely one unbroken effort to give the Welsh sufficient education for understanding the things which belonged to the salvation of their souls. Literature of every kind had to struggle for existence as it could; sometimes it was disparaged, sometimes ignored, sometimes used for the purpose of religion, but very rarely was it nurtured for the sake of its own special glory”.20

By the middle of the 19th century, however, there were in Wales several nonconformist

18 See S. Lewis, Meistri’r Canrifoedd, ed. R. G. Gruffydd, 1973, Cardiff, 217–24; G. Thomas,Y Bardd Cwsg a’i Gefndir, 1971, Cardiff, 175–78. 19 See D. E. Evans, ‘Edward Richard’, Y Beirniad 7 (1917), 252–62. 20 T. Parry, A History of Welsh Literature, trans. H. I. Bell, 1955, Oxford, 237. 36 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

academies and seminaries that gave considerable place to learning Greek and Latin and to the study of classical literature, as part of the training of men who would later minister to Welsh- speaking congregations. Significantly it wasY Traethodydd (“The Essayist”), a nonconformist periodical which is still with us, that published in the late 1860s the first serious discussion of Virgil’s work to appear in Welsh. Its author was John Peter, who taught at a seminary in Bala, and in it he gave brief accounts of the Eclogues, the Georgics and the Aeneid, with translations into Welsh of Ecl. 1 and 4 and of selections from Geo. 1 and from Aen. 1‒4.21 John Peter’s contribution is symptomatic of a great ferment of interest in matters educational and cultural that characterized all sections of Welsh society in the second part of the 19th century, soon to result in the establishment of university colleges, first in Aberystwyth, then also in Cardiff and Bangor, and subsequently in their federation in 1893 as the University of Wales. The widening of educational opportunities, in County Grammar Schools as well as in the University of Wales itself, meant that, by the 20th century, far more Welsh men and women than ever before were given an opportunity to study Latin. Virgil’s central position in the new curricula, at all levels, is reflected in works by classically trained poets like D. Gwenallt Jones, Pennar Davies and J. Gwyn Griffiths (the last a professor of Classics and Egyptology in Swansea).22 Another prolific poet of the 20th century, Euros Bowen (who graduated in classics and philosophy from the University of Wales, and in theology from Oxford, and spent his whole adult life as an Anglican priest in rural Wales), turned all ten Eclogues into Welsh, and also the first book of theAeneid , in translations that are both engaging and technically interesting.23 No one, however, has yet rendered Virgil’s complete oeuvre into Welsh.

Among 20th-century works written in Welsh, ‘Marwnad Syr John Edward Lloyd’ (“Elegy for Sir John Edward Lloyd”), a long poem by Saunders Lewis (1893‒1985), stands out for its notably precise engagement with Virgil. The way in which a complex intertextual relationship is maintained with book 6 of the Aeneid is key to unlocking much of the Elegy’s meaning. The remainder of this paper is devoted to it.24 The poem’s author, Saunders Lewis, was a major, and often disturbing, player on the

21 Y Traethodydd 22 (1867), 309–22; 23 (1868), 23–36. 22 See Davies (n.11 above) 133–35. 23 Bugeilgerddi Fyrsil, 1975, Cardiff; Aenëis Fyrsil: Y Llyfr Cyntaf, 1983, Bala. On Euros Bowen’s innovative application of cynghanedd, the distinctively Welsh system of alliteration and sound-chiming, to the translation of Aen. 1, see C. Davies, ‘TheAeneid and twentieth-century Welsh poetry’, in M. Gale (ed), Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry, 2004, Swansea, 235–52 (237–40). 24 Two seminal studies are C. Davies, ‘Marwnad Syr John Edward Lloyd a Fyrsil’, Llên Cymru 12 (1972), 57–60, and J. Rowlands, ‘Marwnad Syr John Edward Lloyd gan Saunders Lewis’, in R. G. Gruffydd (ed),Bardos. Penodau ar y Traddodiad Barddol Cymreig a Cheltaidd, 1982, Cardiff, 111–27. Both are also available in M. Hughes (ed), Saunders Lewis y Bardd, 1993, Denbigh, 46–50; 106–23. Davies – “The Prophecies of Fferyll”: Virgilian Reception in Wales 37

Welsh scene in the 20th century. He was brought up, in a notably cultured and Calvinist Welsh family, not in Wales but in Liverpool (often jokingly referred to, on account of its large number of citizens of Welsh descent, as “the capital of north Wales”), and there was always something of the outsider about him. He graduated in French and English from the University of Liverpool, and served with distinction in the First World War. Ireland and its political awakening played a crucial part in Saunders Lewis’s discovery of his Welshness. He was a founding member of the National Party of Wales (today’s Plaid Cymru), and became its first president. In 1937, he was famously imprisoned, along with two other men of standing, for setting fire to building material which was to be used for an RAF bombing school at Penyberth on the Llŷn Peninsula. As a writer, dramatist and literary critic, Saunders Lewis transformed the cultural perceptions of 20th-century Wales, especially by his emphasis on the European dimension of pre-Reformation Welsh literature. That European vision, among other things, led him to convert to Roman Catholicism. He constantly explored the creative relationship between Wales’s own historical and literary past and that of Christendom, the Europe which held the Catholic and the classical within its embrace.25 The classical heritage mattered immensely to him, especially Virgil. In November 1947, in a letter to Kate Roberts, herself a Welsh novelist and short-story writer of distinction, he writes of his regular reading of Welsh and French authors, “a rhyw hanner awr o Ladin bob dydd … rhag imi ei golli, byddaf felly’n mynd drwy Fyrsil bob blwyddyn” (“and about half an hour of Latin every day … in order not to lose it, and so I go through Virgil every year”).26 ‘Elegy for Sir John Edward Lloyd’ belongs to exactly the same period: J. E. Lloyd died in 1947; the poem was first published in 1948.27 Sir John Edward Lloyd (born in 1861) was, like Saunders Lewis, a product of Welsh Liverpool, and so shared the same bicultural background. Unlike the younger man’s, however, Lloyd’s values throughout his life remained those of the religiously nonconformist and politically Liberal tradition in which he grew up. As a sixteen-year-old, he went to the then new University College in Aberystwyth, and studied there for four years, before proceeding

25 Saunders Lewis has been the subject of many studies, mainly in Welsh; among the most recent is a biography: T. R. Chapman, Un Bywyd o Blith Nifer: Cofiant Saunders Lewis, 2006, Llandysul. Two important introductions to his work in English are A. R. Jones & G. Thomas (eds),Presenting Saunders Lewis, 1973, Cardiff, and B. Griffiths, Saunders Lewis, 19892, Cardiff. 26 D. Ifans (ed), Annwyl Kate, Annwyl Saunders: Gohebiaeth 1923‒1983, Aberystwyth, 1992, 137–38. Like Euros Bowen (see n.23 above) Lewis here uses “Fyrsil”, the usual form for Virgil’s name in modern Welsh, not the more antiquated “Fferyll”. 27 ‘Marwnad i Syr John Edward Lloyd, Hanesydd Cymru Gatholig’ (‘An elegy for Sir John Edward Lloyd, Historian of Catholic Wales’) was the poem’s title when first published, inEfrydiau Catholig3 (1948), 3–5. It was subsequently re-published, entitled ‘Marwnad Syr John Edward Lloyd’, in S. Lewis, Siwan a Cherddi Eraill, [1956], Llandybïe, 13–15; in T. Parry (ed), The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse, 1962, Oxford, 463–66; in R. G. Gruffydd (ed),Cerddi Saunders Lewis, 1986, Newtown, 36–38; and in R. G. Gruffydd (ed),Cerddi Saunders Lewis, 1992, Cardiff, 31–33. 38 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

to Oxford, to Lincoln College. In 1883 he gained a “first” in Classical Moderations, and then transferred to the final school of Modern History, established only a decade earlier. In 1885 he gained the best “first” of his year in History Finals. After that he returned to Wales, as a lecturer first in Aberystwyth, then at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he was promoted to the Chair of History in 1899. In that post, which he held until his retirement in 1930, he was to become the father figure of 20th-century academic study of the history of Wales.28 J. E. Lloyd’s eloquent writings on early and medieval Wales, especially his two-volume A History of Wales, from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest29 and his Oxford Ford Lectures of 1920, on the champion of Welsh independence Owain Glyndŵr, published over ten years later as Owen Glendower: Owen Glyn Dŵr,30 were nothing short of epoch-making. That is the figure commemorated, after his death in 1947, in Saunders Lewis’s elegy. It is not, however, to the annals of Welsh history that the poet takes his reader in the first 2 (of 11) stanzas, but rather to the Aeneid, book 6:

Darllenais fel yr aeth Eneas gynt Drwy’r ogof gyda’r Sibil, ac i wlad Dis a’r cysgodion, megis gŵr ar hynt Liw nos mewn fforest dan y lloer an-sad, Ac yno’n y gwyll claear Tu draw i’r afon ac i Faes Wylofain Gwelodd hen arwyr Tro, hynafiaid Rhufain, Deiffobos dan ei glwyfau, drudion daear,

Meibion Antenor ac Adrastos lwyd; A’i hebrwng ef a wnaent, a glynu’n daer Nes dyfod lle’r oedd croesffordd, lle’r oedd clwyd, A golchi wyneb, traddodi’r gangen aur, Ac agor dôl a llwyni’n Hyfryd dan sêr ac awyr borffor glir, Lle y gorffwysai mewn gweirgloddiau ir Dardan ac Ilos a’r meirwon diallwynin.

28 His achievement is splendidly explored in H. Pryce, J. E. Lloyd and the Creation of Welsh History. Renewing a Nation’s Past, 2011, Cardiff. J. E. Lloyd’s contribution was also celebrated in a poem by D. Gwenallt Jones, ‘Gorffennol Cymru’ (“Wales’s Past”), inCnoi Cil, 1942, Aberystwyth, 18–19; re-published in C. James (ed), Cerddi Gwenallt: Y Casgliad Cyflawn, 2001, Llandysul, 126–27. 29 London, 19111 (henceforth usually History.) 30 Oxford, 1931. Davies – “The Prophecies of Fferyll”: Virgilian Reception in Wales 39

The poem is carefully wrought and has an intricate metrical pattern. Each stanza contains 8 lines, all except the 5th of 10 or 11 syllables, the shorter 5th of 5 or 6 syllables. There is a regular rhyming pattern: a b a b c d d c. Joseph P. Clancy’s fine translation of the two opening stanzas reads as follows (henceforth the text of the poem will be given in this version, with only occasional reference to the original Welsh):31

I read how, long ago, Aeneas went Through the cavern with the Sibyl, and to the land Of Dis and the shades, like a man wayfaring In a wood by night beneath the inconstant moon, And there in gentle dusk Beyond the river and the Field of Wailing, He saw Troy’s ancient heroes, ancestors of Rome, Deiphobus with his wounds, earth’s daring men,

The sons of Antenor and pale Adrastus; And they guided him, and crowded close behind him, Till they came to a crossroads, to a gate, Where his face was washed, the golden bough presented, And a dale opened and groves Delightful under stars and a clear purple sky, Where Dardanus and Ilus and the griefless dead Were lying in green meadows at their ease.

From the beginning we are taken into the text of Aen. 6: Darllenais (“I read”). The first four lines are a virtual paraphrase of ll. 268–71:

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.

31 J. P. Clancy (trans), Saunders Lewis: Selected Poems, 1993, Cardiff, 31–33. I am grateful to the late Professor Clancy (d. 27 February 2017) for permission to quote liberally from his version. The 1993 translation is a reissue, with minor revisions, of the version in J. P. Clancy, Twentieth Century Welsh Poems, 1982, Llandysul, 83–85. For other versions of the poem in English, see S. R. Reynolds (ed), A Bibliography of Welsh Literature in English Translation, 2005, Cardiff, 177–78. 40 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

The details of the journey through thelugentes campi are equally precise, and Virgil’s pre sentation of Deiphobus (Deiphobum, lacerum crudeliter ora, 495), the Antenoridae (484) and Adrastus (Adrasti pallentis imago, 480) is carefully echoed. These dead Trojans led Aeneas to where the road parted in two (540), one way leading to Tartarus, the other to Elysium. Aeneas, of course, glimpsed the walls of Tartarus, girdled by the waters of Phlegethon and guarded by Tisiphone; he heard the sounds and groans of torment, and the Sibyl gave him a long description of the punishments endured by the Tartarean sufferers (548–627). Saunders Lewis, however, chooses at this point to pass over that part of Aeneas’ underworld experience. Rather he describes only the entry into Elysium, the sprinkling of the water and the fixing of the golden bough, based on ll. 635–36:

Occupat Aeneas aditum corpusque recenti spargit aqua ramumque adverso in limine figit.

Then follows the entry into thefortunata nemora, a summary of Virgil’s ll. 638–41, with Dardanus and Ilus (650) and the “griefless dead” meirwon( diallwynin), felices animae (669) indeed, at their ease in green meadows. Joseph Clancy has conveyed the sense and feel of the Welsh text to excellent effect. It should be noted, however, that the order of the last two lines of the 2nd stanza has been reversed in the English translation. Saunders Lewis, in fact, ends his summary of this part of Aen. 6 with Dardanus and Ilus and the “griefless” – or, perhaps better, “undejected” – dead.32 As will be demonstrated later, the stanza’s final word,diallwynin (“undejected”), rare negative of the uncommon adjective allwynin (“dejected”), carries an important resonance as the epithet used to sum up the panoramic view, not of sufferers in Tartarus, but of Troy’s old heroes and of the blessed dead in Elysium. In the 3rd stanza, the poet turns to John Edward Lloyd, hen ddewin Bangor, “Bangor’s ancient seer”. The historian is his Sibyl, the one by whose writings he has been led into the mysteries of Welsh history. The Virgilian imagery is maintained, in an evocation of the crossing of the Styx in Charon’s boat (Aen. 6.384–416). Also present is a sense of the place J. E. Lloyd gave to prehistoric epochs at the beginning of his History of Wales. Discussing Palaeolithic Wales he wrote: “in Wales … our knowledge of the period is entirely derived from the caves which abound in the carboniferous limestone”.33 Lewis couples with this a suggestion of Plato’s allegory of the cave (in Republic, book 7):

32 G. Thomas (translator of one of the other versions referred to in n.31 above) in Jones & Thomas (n.25 above) 186–89 (187), translates diallwynin as “undejected”, but the last line of the Welsh stanza is penultimate in his version also. 33 History (n.29 above) 2. Davies – “The Prophecies of Fferyll”: Virgilian Reception in Wales 41

So I, one evening, led by Bangor’s ancient seer, I went down to the river, dared the boat, Left the shoals of today where there is no anchor And crossed the water, like ashes in night’s pit, To the darkness of the caves Where among the trees stern phantoms stared Whispering dead hunters’ faint dead cry I could not hear; a mere shape on a den’s walls.

The “darkness of the caves” is followed, however, by light and by the ever-increasing revelation of a pageant of characters from Welsh history, corresponding to the ghosts of dead Trojans that Aeneas encounters in the underworld, and especially to the vision, at the end of Aen. 6, of the procession of unborn Romans. Significantly, the Welsh pageant begins with the Roman conquest and occupation of Wales (the subject of the third chapter of Lloyd’s History, ‘Wales under Roman rule’):

Then light came, and a form like a smiling dawn, Helmet and cuirass sparkling and a brazen eagle And trees were felled, ponies in the tide of Menai, Hills were paved and fortresses roped in a row.

The symbol of what the occupation meant for Wales is Agricola and his attack on Anglesey (as described by Tacitus).34 Agricola personifies Roman ideals of conquest, ideals encapsulated in Anchises’ famous words to Aeneas, Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (Aen. 6.851). Saunders Lewis has Agricola quoting Anchises on the shores of the Menai Straits:

Tu regere … populos, I saw the image of Agricola standing On a beach in Môn, he was murmuring Virgil’s prophecies, The brine on the toga’s hem like a snowdrift at nightfall.

It is noteworthy that, in what may be a deliberate attempt to catch something of the sense of Virgil as seer, Saunders Lewis uses here the medieval Welsh form of the Roman poet’s name, murmurai frudiau Fferyll (“he was murmuring Virgil’s prophecies”), although in the near- contemporary letter to Kate Roberts he had deployed the modern form, Fyrsil.35

34 Agricola 18.3–5. For J. E. Lloyd on Agricola, see History (n.29 above) 58. 35 Cf. n.26 above. 42 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

After the Romans in the 4th stanza there comes, in the 5th, a picture of Christianity in Wales in the Age of the Saints, as the poet continues to follow the sequence of Lloyd’s History. This then leads, in the 6th stanza, to an expression of Saunders Lewis’s conviction that European civilization was founded on the fusion of Christianity and the classical:

I hesitated: ‘I know, while Europe lasts, will last The memory of these; they will not wholly die, Builders of the empires of the Cross and the Eagle’.

Geographically, from Anglesey (Môn) to North Africa (Cyrenaica); culturally, from Dante to Hugo Grotius (Huig de Groot), the Dutch jurist and theologian of the early 17th century; politically, from the 13th-century Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, to King Philip II of Spain, the dream of the “builders of the empires of the Cross and the Eagle / … that tied beneath a single toll, / One people [un giwdod, one civitas] on one rock, was a ground of hope”.36 In the 7th stanza, however, the poet turns to the historian and asks after those Welshmen, “the bitter lineage of Cunedda”, whose lot is that of Sisyphus. According to early sources like the Historia Brittonum (attributed to “Nennius”), Cunedda was a chieftain who migrated in the 5th century to what is now Wales from the northern Brythonic territory of Manaw Gododdin (in the area of Edinburgh), expelled the Irish from Gwynedd, and was the pro- genitor of a dynasty of Welsh rulers who extended their sway throughout north and west Wales. The story, whose historicity has been much debated (and about which Lloyd is suitably circumspect), has about it elements of an origin or foundation myth not unlike the legends of Aeneas and Brutus.37 The Welsh often viewed themselves as belonging to “the lineage of Cunedda” and his sons, much as the Romans thought of Aeneas and the Trojans as “ancestors of Rome” (stanza 1):

‘But here in the region of the shades is a race Condemned to the pain of Sisyphus in the world, To push from age to age through a thousand years A stone nation to Freedom’s hill-crest, and when – Oh bitter lineage of Cunedda –

36 On some of this stanza’s resonances, especially the image of King Philip II of Spain, see M. P. Bryant-Quinn, ‘Phylip Brudd o Sbaen’, Llên Cymru 38 (2015–16), 95–99. Bryant-Quinn suggests that Grotius’ contribution to developing ideas of international law is particularly in Saunders Lewis’s mind here. 37 Historia Brittonum 62: J. Morris (ed. and trans), Nennius: British History and The Welsh Annals, 1980, London, 37, 79. On Cunedda, see R. Bromwich, Trioedd Ynys Prydein / The Triads of the Island of Britain, 20063, Cardiff, 316–18; J. T. Koch (ed), Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, 2006, Santa Barbara CA, 518–20. For J. E. Lloyd on Cunedda and his sons, see History (n. 29 above) 116–22. Davies – “The Prophecies of Fferyll”: Virgilian Reception in Wales 43

The hill’s summit is in sight, through treachery or violence The rock is hurled to the valley and the effort fails’.

Sisyphus belongs to Tartarus (saxum ingens volvunt alii, “some are rolling huge rocks”, as the Sibyl puts it, Aen. 6.616), the part of the Virgilian underworld that Saunders Lewis omitted from his account of Aeneas’ journey in the first 2 stanzas. Those who strove for the freedom of Wales share the kind of frustration to which his punishment consigned Sisyphus. And the next stanza opens with the question, Pa le mae’r rhain? (“Where are these?”). In response, another spectacle, or pageant, of the underworld unfolds, again in the manner of Aeneid 6, its content made possible thanks to the works of Lloyd: the characters revealed were all discussed and brought to life by him. They mostly belong to the heroic age of the princes who struggled to defend Wales against the Normans. In the 8th stanza the reader witnesses the sad end of Gruffudd ap Cynan, ruler of Gwynedd in the late 11th and early 12th centuries and a leading figure in Welsh political and cultural life for over fifty years,Cambrorum regum rex (“king of the kings of Wales”).38 He died, “old, decrepit and blind”, in 1137, attended by Bishop David of Bangor and other ecclesiastics.39 The poet has events from his turbulent life come back to him on his deathbed: the support he received from “Gothri”, King Godfrey of Denmark; his taking refuge against local enemies in a cave in Ardudwy, and the battle fought at Bronyrerw; his imprisonment at one time in Chester, in the “gaol of Hu Fras”, Hugh of Avranches, the Norman baron who was earl of Chester: Helbulon saga oes a’i loes dan ennaint (“The trials of the saga of an age and its agony under the ointment”).40 In the 9th stanza, the pageant moves into the 13th century, which (in Lloyd’s words) “may, in Welsh history, be appropriately described as the age of the two Llywelyns”.41 First, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth (d. 1240), “Llywelyn the Great”, a figure whose prominence dominated the whole of Wales in the first forty years of that century. He has “a starring role”, as Huw Pryce describes it, in Lloyd’s History.42 It is, however, the fragility and personal sadness of Llywelyn’s life that the poet recalls. Llywelyn was married to Joan, illegitimate daughter of the English King John; but she was imprisoned for infidelity and her lover, the marcher lord William de

38 P. Russell (ed. and trans), Vita Griffini Filii Conani: The Medieval Latin Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan, 2005, Cardiff, 68–69 (§17). 39 History (n.29 above) 468–69. 40 The events are all in Gruffudd ap Cynan’sVita (n.38 above), a work unique for being the only extant biography of a Welsh prince. It was also translated from Latin into Welsh: see D. S. Evans (ed), Historia Gruffud vab Kenan, 1977, Cardiff. J. E. Lloyd draws “without hesitation” on the evidence provided by it, “despite some inaccuracies and the inevitable disposition to magnify the deeds of its hero” (History, n.29 above, 379). The phrase dan“ ennaint” (“under the ointment”) refers to the anointing of the dying prince’s body, as described in the last paragraph of his Vita. 41 History (n.29 above) 612. 42 Pryce (n.28 above) 160. 44 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Braose, hanged. Llywelyn and Joan were reconciled, but their felicity was cut short by her death, its circumstances described by Lloyd in these words:

“She died at Aber, the royal seat of the commote of Arllechwedd Uchaf, now becoming a favourite residence of the princes of Gwynedd, on 2nd February, 1237, and the best proof of her complete restoration to the old footing of trust and affection is to be found in the honour paid by Llywelyn to her memory. Her body was borne across the sands of Lafan and ferried to the Anglesey shore, where, not far from the prince’s manor of Llanfaes, a new burying-ground had been consecrated by Bishop Hugh of St Asaph. Here she was laid to rest, while for monument Llywelyn built on the spot a house for Franciscan friars, so that the most saintly of the religious, as they were then accounted, might pray for her soul”.43

For all Llywelyn’s political and military successes, Saunders Lewis’s focus is on the circumstances surrounding Joan’s imprisonment and death:

And I saw a gallows on a lawn and audacious hands Reaching toward it between bars of iron, Till a ship came from Aber and silent oarsmen, Torches on the tide and ashes on a monarch’s hair And a cross between hands on a shrine.

So much for the beginning of the 13th century. Before its end, any hope of an independent polity in Wales was gone, with the defeat of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, grandson of Llywelyn the Great. In Lloyd’s stately words:

“The younger Llywelyn comes to the front as the one leader of the Welsh people, pursuing his grandfather’s policy for many years with all his grandfather’s success, until in the last quarter of this century, so fateful in the annals of the Welsh, his good fortune deserted him and he fell a victim to the power and skill of Edward I, bringing down with him in his ruin the edifice of Welsh independence”.44

In December 1282, in a battle against English forces near Builth Wells, Llywelyn, “the Last Prince”, was separated from his troops and struck down by an enemy horseman. His head was cut off, and sent to King Edward, who arranged for it to be paraded in London.45 His

43 History (n.29 above) 686. 44 ibid. 612. 45 ibid. 763–64. Davies – “The Prophecies of Fferyll”: Virgilian Reception in Wales 45 brother, Dafydd, tried to continue the struggle, but the following year he was caught and was executed in Shrewsbury, his body dragged through the streets. The pageant continues, but its picture, at the end of the 9th stanza, is one of desperation:

And there, a head upon a spear, and horses’ hair Dragging in Shrewsbury’s dust behind their harness The battered body of the feeblest last of his line.

The pageant’s culmination, in the 10th stanza, is with Owain Glyndŵr. The hopes of a nation were pinned on him. For a brief moment, at the beginning of the 15th century, it looked as if those hopes might be realized. Owain, “heir of the two houses of Wales”, Powys and Deheubarth, took Harlech and Aberystwyth castles:

And for a moment, like a lighthouse’s shaft of flame Across the night’s deluge, flashed the clefts of the fort That stands on a cliff at Harlech, the heir of the two houses Of Wales wearing a crown, a dance for the heir.

(The words remind one of Glendower in Shakespeare’sHenry the Fourth, Part One [Act III, Scene 1]: “At my nativity / The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, / Of burning cressets; and at my birth / The frame and huge foundation of the earth / Shak’d like a coward”). Is there a chance that the nation’s stone will at last reach the top of the hill of freedom?

Then near Glyn y Groes A second Teiresias in the dawn of Berwyn gave The verdict of fate’s oracle, and there was an end: His shade melted in the mist that covered him.

The story, as recorded by the 16th-century chronicler Elis Gruffydd, was that Owain Glyndŵr was out walking early one morning near Valle Crucis Abbey, Glyn y Groes, in the Dee valley beneath the Berwyn mountains of north-east Wales, and that he met the abbot. “Ah, Sir Abbot”, he said, “you have risen too early”. “No”, replied the Abbot, “it is you who have risen too early, by a hundred years”.46 “The verdict of fate’s oracle” was that Owain was a century ahead of his time. For Saunders Lewis, the abbot is a Sophoclean figure, “a second Tiresias”. What remains

46 ‘A Sr Abaad, chychwi a godasogh yn hry uore’. ‘Nage’ hebyr yr abad, ‘chychwi a gyuodes yn hry uore o gan mlynnedd’. National Library of Wales MS 3054D (Mostyn 158), 285 (quoted in J. Hunter, Soffestri’r Saeson. Hanesyddiaeth a Hunaniaeth yn Oes y Tuduriaid, 2000, Cardiff, 115). The story is alluded to by Lloyd (n.30 above) 1–2. 46 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

with us is a picture of failure and of hopelessness. After all the suffering, despondency is what characterizes the Welsh panorama. It was emphasized earlier that, in the first two stanzas, Saunders Lewis selected characters from Elysium to end his Virgilian section. These were the “undejected dead” ofAen. 6, not Tartarean sufferers like Sisyphus. When the poet calls the dead in Virgil’s Elysium “undejected” (diallwynin: diis a negative prefix), he is echoing the opening of another elegy, one of the most famous and poignant of Welsh medieval poems, the Elegy of Gruffudd ab yr Ynad Coch after the death of Llywelyn, “the Last Prince”, in 1282:

Oer galon dan fron o fraw – allwynin Am frenin, dderwin ddôr, Aberffraw.

(“Cold heart under a breast of fear – dejected For a king, oak door of Aberffraw”).47

As we saw, Llywelyn and his brother Dafydd have already featured in the 9th stanza’s list of ill-fated Welshmen. It is a picture of defeat and disaster. The Welsh pageant is one of nothing but sadness and dejection, in total contrast to the Elysian picture drawn at the beginning from Aen. 6. The importance of Virgil for the poem is such that, in the final stanza, Saunders Lewis ends by comparing John Edward Lloyd, not with the Sibyl any more, but with Virgil himself:

Like him who climbed the cliffs of the land of despair I turned to my leader …

This is now not only Virgil the author of theAeneid , but also Dante’s guide, that other Sibyl-like figure, who (in Canto 30 of thePurgatorio ) vanishes at the appearance of Beatrice. Dante has, in fact, been present in the poem from at least the 3rd stanza onwards: in taking the Virgilian journey to the underworld as a paradigm, Saunders Lewis was following what Dante had done on a vastly larger scale. Likewise, the only two literary authorities named in the poem are Virgil (Fferyll) in the 4th stanza, and Dante in the 6th. Now, at the end, the poet questions the historian, his Dantean “Virgil”, about a prophecy:

47 Poem 36, ‘Marwnad Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’, ll. 1–2, in R. M. Andrewset al. (eds), Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion VII: Gwaith Bleddyn Fardd a Beirdd Eraill ail hanner y Drydedd Ganrif ar Ddeg, 1996, Cardiff, 423. The translation is from A. Conran (ed), Penguin Book of Welsh Verse, 1967, Harmondsworth, 128 (with “dejected” substituted for Conran’s “grieved”). The poem is quoted by Lloyd,History (n.29 above) 763, in the closing paragraph of his magnum opus. Davies – “The Prophecies of Fferyll”: Virgilian Reception in Wales 47

‘Can your thought Ascend the steep of time and see a hope? Their language they will keep, will the prophecy hold true?’

If Virgil and Dante are the only poets named, the only two quotations in the poem are Anchises’ words, Tu regere … populos (in the 4th stanza) and the words here, “Their language they will keep” (Eu hiaith a gadwant). They come from lines attributed to Taliesin: not the historic Taliesin of the 6th century, but, rather, Taliesin the wonder-worker, magician and prophet represented by the poem ‘Kat Godeu’. Taliesin as magus was also the subject of Ystoria (or Hanes) Taliesin (“The Story of Taliesin”), a medley of prose and verse preserved in various forms in several manuscripts. The oldest surviving version is in the 16th-century chronicle of Elis Gruffydd, the source which also gives the story about Owain Glyndŵr meeting the abbot of Valle Crucis.48 In a long poem (of 30 four-line stanzas) that concludes the Ystoria, the legendary “Taliesin” has it that the descendants of the ancient Britons may suffer defeats, but their language will endure:49

Their Lord they will praise, their language they will keep, their land they will lose except wild Wales.

Thus, at the end of Saunders Lewis’s poem the question of the survival of the Welsh language, by the middle of the 20th century perhaps the one remaining badge of a meaningful Welsh identity (that identity established by Cunedda and defended – fruitlessly, it seems – by his descendants), is posed to John Edward Lloyd:

48 The earlier part of Elis Gruffydd’s chronicle, containingYstoria Taliesin, is National Library of Wales MS 5276D: cf. n.46 above for the manuscript source of the later part. For an edition of the text of Ystoria Taliesin, with introduction and notes, see P. K. Ford (ed), Ystoria Taliesin, 1992, Cardiff. 49 Ystoria Taliesin (n.48 above) ll. 618–737 (722–25) (p. 86). This stanza (the 27th) was quoted in John Davies, Antiquae Linguae Britannicae … Rudimenta, 1621, London, sig. b4v, the first time (as far as I am aware) for it to be put into print. Davies also provided his own Latin version (in a Sapphic stanza): Usque laudabunt Dominum creantem, Usque servabunt idioma linguae, Arvaque amittent sua cuncta, praeter Wallica rura. The prophecy,Eu hiaith a gadwant (“Their language they will keep”), carries, as Daniel Hadas commented to me, an uncanny echo of Jupiter’s decree that the Latins were to retain their language, sermonem Ausonii patrium … tenebunt (Aen. 12.834), although it is unlikely that Saunders Lewis is alluding to it here. 48 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

‘Their language they will keep, will the prophecy hold true? Will the last relic Of Cunedda be kept by his sons’ painful labour?’

The historian, however, has disappeared, like Dante’s Virgil, and left no answer:

But he, the lantern-bearer of lost centuries, He was there no longer, neither his lamp nor his word.

Saunders Lewis’s unusual “elegy”, with its discomfiting end, stands out as an extraordinary work, not least for the complexity of its response to the figure of Virgil,Fferyll , and to Aen. 6. It is also an example of Virgil being appropriated and put to use in a specifically Welsh context. Bruce Griffiths, one of the most perceptive critics of Saunders Lewis’s literary output, is surely justified in claiming that “this is among the most majestic and moving poems” of the 20th century.50

Swansea University CERI DAVIES ([email protected])

50 Griffiths (n.25 above) 76. “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene

Revised from a paper given to the Virgil Society on 25 January 2014*

Brown

This paper is concerned with errors and incompletions: to use an Elizabethan term, “vnper- fections”, of which my original title fortuitously included one.1 The half-line I intended to use as a title is in fact “And dearest loue”, not “And sweetest loue”, but my memory inadvertently slipped to the final line of the stanza in question and transposed the epithets:

And all about grew euery sort of flowre, To which sad louers were transformd of yore; Fresh Hyacinthus, Phoebus paramoure, And dearest loue, Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watry shore, Sad Amaranthus, made a flowre but late, Sad Amaranthus, in whose purple gore Me seemes I see Amintas wretched fate, To whom sweet Poets verse hath giuen endlesse date. (III.vi.45)2

My confused epithets communicate something important about Spenser’s poetic idiom, as well as his debt to Virgil, and, in this case, to Ovid.3 To a significant extent, it doesn’t seem important who is “sweet” or what is “deare” in this stanza: Spenser’s poetic language does not

* My thanks go to Syrithe Pugh and to David Lee Miller for illuminating comments on an earlier draft of this essay. 1 See ‘unperfection, n.’, OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2016. 2 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton, 20012, Harlow, 349. All quotations from The Faerie Queene are from this edition, unless otherwise stated. After this note, as is customary in quoting Spenser, I give in text references to book, canto and stanza number. Hence above the reference is to book III, canto vi, stanza 45. A fourth number, where used, refers to a line or lines within a stanza. 3 See Hamilton’s notes in The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 349, and S. Pugh, Spenser and Ovid, Aldershot, 2005, 135–45. 50 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

admit of the sharply turned, affective epithets which he would have found in Virgil. One of Spenser’s staunchest twentieth-century advocates, C. S. Lewis, went so far as to describe his use of adjectives as “abdications of the poet’s true office”.4 Dear, sweet, sad, it doesn’t seem to matter, we might think, so long as it scans. I put it like this because I do not fully believe that to be the case. Spenser’s language is complex, various and and devious in the ways it aims to affect its readers. By focusing onThe Faerie Queene’s half-lines, I want to try to illuminate how Elizabethans read Virgil, and to develop an understanding of Spenserian unperfectness in the context of how we should read such moments in The Faerie Queene. Are they deliberate? What – if anything – is going on in these minute stylistic allusions to Virgil’s poem? What do they tell us about Spenser’s attitudes to literary form? Such work is necessarily speculative, since The Faerie Queene is, like the Aeneid, unfinished; it may have been that had he lived, Spenser might have tidied up all the remaining half-lines. But this is itself a form of biographical speculation. As I show, there are sound textual reasons for believing that Spenser intended the majority of these half-dozen lines as a deliberate counterpoint to the more uniform appearance of the rest of his poem. Part of the connection between Virgil and Spenser’s half-lines is that they tend not to leave gaps in the sense, so that it is possible for the reader to make sense of metrically “vnperfit” fragments: “FoolishNarcisse ” follows on logically from “And dearest loue” in the list-lament of III.vi.45 without the need of further emendation. Still, the half-lines demand interpretation: what is at issue is whether they should be read mimetically (that is, as relating to the poem’s meaning), or as more or less decorative allusions to the Aeneid. As will become clear, my hunch inclines to the former position. Prior to this, I consider how the Aeneid’s half- lines appeared to Elizabethan readers in translations, to illustrate how 16th-century writers sought to render these eccentric elements of the Virgilian text.

Virgil’s Half-lines

There are some fifty half-lines in the Aeneid.5 According to Aelius Donatus’ 4th century AD Life of Virgil, these are remnants of Virgil’s compositional process – “little struts or props … to support the structure until the solid columns arrived” – which remained in the text because he could not finish the poem to his satisfaction before his premature death.6 Donatus’ text is a strange amalgam of different sources. As David Scott Wilson-Okamura explains, in the Renaissance it was further added to, producing a composite which he calls “the humanistic vita”, and it is this text which was usually printed during the period.7 I quote the most important

4 C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, 1936, repr. 1985, Oxford, 319. 5 See D. S. Wilson-Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance, 2010, Cambridge, 102; see also idem, ‘Belphoebe and Gloriana’, English Literary Renaissance 39 (2009), 47–73 (49). 6 Quoted in Wilson-Okamura, Virgil (n.5 above) 102. 7 Wilson-Okamura, Virgil (n.5 above) 54. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 51 passage from the Elizabethan translation, probably by Thomas Twyne. This first appeared in the 1573 edition of Thomas Phaer’s translation,The whole .xii. bookes of the Æneidos of Virgill, which Twyne completed after Phaer’s death:

“Varrus at Augustus commaundment did set forth nothinge, as Virgil willed he shuld not: but generally perused all, leauing also those verses as they were, still vnperfect. Whiche verses diuers afterward tooke in hand to make vp, but they could not for the difficulty therof, for they be all Hemistichia, that is to say half verses[.]”8

My concern is not the precise meaning of this passage in relation to the textual condition of the Aeneid, a problem considered in depth by John Sparrow, but is rather what it tells us about the Elizabethan view of the half-lines.9 Though written long after the events it purports to describe, Donatus’ Vita is a work of the first importance to understanding Virgil in Renaissance England. Wilson-Okamura comments that the Vita “was probably known to more readers (including, presumably, more poets) than Servius himself ”.10 Certainly, it was given a prominent place in the later editions of Phaer’s translation. Even though the header describes it somewhat sceptically as “Virgils life, set forth, as it is supposed, by Aelius Donatus”, a description which perhaps indicates Twyne’s awareness of some of the problems in its transmission, the Donatus Life is the most significant interpretive matter offered to readers in the translation.11 Phaer’s translation is an important, and in my view underestimated, facet both of the transmission of Virgil in 16th-century England and of the poetic Renaissance in England.12 Here the central point is that 16th-century readers believed on the authority of “Donatus” that the half-lines in the Aeneid were evidence of the “vnperfect” state in which the poem was left after the death of its author. Sparrow’s argument – that some of the half-lines may have been deliberate and that Virgil used this device as a conscious innovation13 – is relevant to Spenser’s half-lines, yet it is not a view which 16th-century readers would have adopted on the basis of Donatus’s Vita.

8 Virgil, The whole .xii. bookes of the AEneidos of Virgill, trans. Thomas Phaer with Thomas Twyne, 1573, London, sig. C2v. Twyne’s contributions to the new edition are signalled on the title page: “the first .ix. and part of the tenth, were conuerted into English meeter by Thomas Phaër Esquire, and the residue supplied, and the whole worke together newly set forth, by Thomas Twyne, Gentleman. There is added moreouer to this edition, Virgils life out of Donatus, and the argument before euery booke”, sig. A1r. Twyne signs the dedicatory letter to Sir Nicholas Bacon which immediately precedes the Life (sigs A2r-v), so it is a reasonable assumption that he was also responsible for the translation and its heading discussed below. Unless otherwise stated, all pre-1700 printed materials were consulted through Early English Books Online (EEBO). 9 J. Sparrow, Half-Lines and Repetitions in Virgil, 1931, Oxford. 10 Wilson-Okamura, Virgil (n.5 above) 49–50. 11 Virgil (n.8 above) sig. A3r. 12 See R. D. Brown & J. B. Lethbridge, A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene, With Two Studies of Spenser’s Rhyme, 2013, Manchester, 49–52, for comparisons between Phaer, Golding and Spenser in terms of rhyming practice. 13 Sparrow (n.9 above) 45. 52 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Half-lines in English translations

How should a translator of Virgil deal with these half-lines?14 The answer to this question is a combination of “it depends when you’re writing” with the related supplementary “it depends on your chosen verse form”. Such caveats betray broader issues of poetic taste and style at particular points in time. Wilson-Okamura has recently revived the idea of “period style”, which he characterises as “the style that, when you are in a period, does not seem like a style at all. It’s not the cut of your clothes, it’s the fabric they are made of ”.15 Translation is a pre-eminent witness to period style, in which we read the tastes of a culture rather than those of the individual, as when Edward Fairfax’s translation of Gerusalemme liberata as Godfrey of Bulloigne (1600) effectually “Spenserianises” the original: Spenser’s then fashionable idiom conditions the kind of poetry Fairfax finds for the job of translating Tasso.16 So, for example, John Dryden’s celebrated 1697 translation of the Aeneid into rhyming couplets generally avoids half-lines altogether, although he had used them in his earlier version of the Nisus and Euryalus episode.17 Book 2, which has 10 half-lines in the original, the largest for any single book,18 has none at all in Dryden’s version; each half-line is smoothed out into regular rhyming couplets and occasional triplets. Virgil’s abrupt, brilliant truncated image of Trojan civilians as prisoners of war, pueri, & pauidae longo ordine matres / Stant circum (Aen. 2.766–67)19 becomes Dryden’s almost too elegantly poised couplet, “A ranck of wretched Youths, with pinion’d Hands, / And captive Matrons in long Order stands”.20 Note the way Dryden adds the detail of “with pinion’d hands” to fill out the couplet form, and subtly ages Virgil’s pueri to “Youths”. The details are certainly plausible, but they are also characteristic expansions of the Virgilian text. Conversely, modern translations tend to have fewer problems accommodating the metrical eccentricity of half-lines. Robert Fagles’s version, with its looser unrhymed lines pitched between five and seven main stresses, easily accommodates shorter lines as a useful variant. In this passage, Fagles has: “Children and trembling mothers rounded up / in a long, endless line”, though the half-line is then filled out as the translator embarks

14 For an overview of 16th- and 17th-century translations, see S. Brammall, The English Aeneid: Translations of Virgil, 1555–1646, 2015, Edinburgh. 15 D. S. Wilson-Okamura, Spenser’s International Style, 2013, Cambridge, 9. 16 Torquato Tasso, Godfrey of Bulloigne: A Critical Edition of Edward Fairfax’s Translation of Tasso’s “Gersalemme Liberata”, together with Fairfax’s Original Poems, ed. K. M. Lea & T. M. Gang, 1981, Oxford (15–25 for discussion of Fairfax’s idiom). 17 John Dryden, Sylvae, or, The second part of Poetical miscellanies, 1685, London, 1–31. On the two Dryden translations, see R. Sowerby, ‘Translations of Nisus and Euryalus by Dryden and Byron’, PVS 28 (2014), 1–18. 18 Virgil, Aeneidos Liber Secundus, ed. R. G. Austin, 1964, Oxford, 55, commenting on disce omnes, l. 66. 19 Virgil, Pub. Virgilii Maronis opera, 1570, London, 173. This edition was printed by Henry Bynneman, who was to publish the Spenser-Harvey Letters in 1580. For the importance of consulting Renaissance texts when discussing the Renaissance Virgil, see Wilson-Okamura, Virgil (n.5 above) 4. 20 Virgil, The Works of Virgil, trans. John Dryden, 1697, London, 265. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 53 on a new verse paragraph.21 The original is respected, but not literally. The comparison of Dryden with Fagles emphasizes the different period styles of the late 17th and early 21st centuries. Where Dryden gives his readers a polished English version of Virgil which edits out the original’s rough edges, Fagles capitalizes on those same roughnesses as a license for his more flexible measures. Similar contrasts between competing styles may be observed within the 16th century, inasmuch as choices about verse form betoken often complex cultural affiliations. The rhyming couplet in iambic pentameter has not yet established itself as the dominant poetic form in English, and the (almost) natural choice for heroic poetry. The translations Spenser would have known employ a range of forms. Gavin Douglas’s Middle Scots Eneados of 1513 (there was an edition printed in London in 1553) is in decasyllabic couplets and avoids half-lines. Douglas was following the precedent of Chaucer rather than anticipating the practice of Jonson and Dryden. His version of the passage quoted above is the more angular and (according to taste) more prolix “The young children, and frayit matrons eik, / Stude all on raw, with mony piteous skreek / About the treasure whimpering wonder sair”.22 Douglas’s version was an important crib for the Earl of Surrey’s pioneering translation into unrhymed blank verse (printed by Richard Tottell in 1557),23 probably the nearest equivalent in English to the poetic effect of the Latin dactylic hexameter.24 Surrey’s practice is inconsistent in respect of half-lines. On the one hand, he includes several short measures. For instance, his version of book 2’s first half-line (66) is powerfully epigrammatic: “The Grekes deceit beholde, and by one profe / Imagine all the rest”.25 On the other hand, the stant circum passage becomes two full lines: “The children orderly, and mothers pale for fright / Long ranged on a rowe stode round about”.26 Surrey’s first line is an English alexandrine (twelve syllables with six major

21 Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. R. Fagles, 2006, London, 101. For Fagles’s remarks on his procedures as translator, see 389–401. 22 Douglas, The Aeneid (1513), 2 vols, ed. G. Kendal, 2011, London, vol. 1, 96. Kendal’s text presents an even more modernised and anglicised text than the 1553 edition, which reads: “The yong children, and frait matronus eik / Stude all on raw, with mony pietuous screk /About the tressour, quhymperand wordis sare” (Virgil, The xiii bukes of Eneados of the famose poete Virgill, trans. Gavin Douglas, 1553, London, sig. H1v). Arguably, the 1553 variant “wordis sare” (Douglas’s addition to this passage) is as plausible as 1513’s “wonder sair”, given the vocalizations implied by “quhymperand”. 23 See Tottel’s Miscellany: Songs and Sonnets of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Others, ed. A. Holden & T. MacFaul, 2011, London, ix-x, for Tottel’s career. As with most London booksellers, literature was something of a sideline for Tottel, though inevitably it is for his few literary publications that his name has survived. 24 The notion of poetic equivalence is necessarily a complex one; see Wilson-Okamura (n. 15 above) 44–47, who suggests that one complete Spenserian stanza offers a “functional equivalent or analogy” (46) for the aesthetic impact of a single line of Virgilian dactylic hexameter, with Spenser’s final alexandrine substituting for Virgil’s final spondee, and Hardison’s comment on Surrey’s blank verse quoted below. 25 Virgil, Certain bokes of Virgiles Aeneis turned into English meter by the right honorable lorde, Henry Earle of Surrey, 1557, London, sig. A3r. The Bodleian has two copies of this book, both of which are reproduced on EEBO; I quote from STC / 944:08, because this preserves the beginning of book 2. 26 Virgil (n.25 above) sig. D2r-v. 54 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

stresses), the form which incidentally Spenser came to use as the tailpiece for each of his nine- line stanzas. Surrey is inventive and prophetic – O. B. Hardison suggests that “he invented a true English equivalent of sustained heroic verse” – but he had little interest in the accurate representation of the “unperfections” of his Latin original.27 The most extreme Elizabethan Virgil is Richard Stanyhurst’s quantitative version of the first four books (1582). Though widely mocked, Stanyhurst is an important reminder that the triumph of accentual rhyming verse was not a foregone conclusion during the later 16th century.28 Humanists across Europe wanted vernacular verse forms to mirror what they saw as the specialized artifice and technique of Latin verse. The experiment to wrest modern languages to the same metrical demands as Latin was almost natural to a culture educationally and psychologically rooted in classical literature. Spenser was a vocal exponent of quantitative meters at the same moment in time, in the late 1570s and early 1580s. Though Andrew Hadfield’s recent biography suggests that he never invested much faith in the quantitative movement, Spenser published a quantitative poem, and advocated the radical subjugation of conventional English pronunciation, to make it fit better with Latin notions of quantity, even to the extent of insisting that the median vowel of carpenter could be extended to make it scan in a classical fashion, on the grounds that “Rough words must be subdued with Vse”.29 Derek Attridge’s study provides the quantitative movement with an epitaph which pays tribute to its curious fascination:

“Probably at no other time have the attitudes towards metre engendered in English minds by a rigorous training in Latin prosody using an unclassical pronunciation fused so completely with the cultural and aesthetic ideals of the age as during the reign of Elizabeth; and however futile the quantitative movement may seem in retrospect, its achievements remain as impressive testimony to the power exerted by that synthesis”.

As Attridge notes, the problem with Stanyhurst’s version is that it “makes very few concessions to the native tradition of English verse” because of his “strict imitation of Latin accentual patterns and restrictions on word lengths”.30 Because he is strict, Stanyhurst imitates the half-lines

27 O. B. Hardison, Jr, Prosody and Purpose in the English Renaissance, 1989, Baltimore, 129. 28 For reaction to Stanyhurst, see D. Attridge, Well-Weighed Syllables: Elizabethan Verse in Classical Metres, 1974, Cambridge, 170–71, 228–29. 29 Edmund Spenser, Spenser’s Prose Works, ed. R. Gottfried, 1949, Baltimore, 16; A. Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life, 2012, Oxford, 106–09. Spenser’s poem ‘Iambicum Trimetrum’ was published in the correspondence with Harvey: see Spenser’s Prose Works, 7–8. Although this is at one level a relatively slight variation on Petrarchan conventions (“Tell hir, that hir sweete Tongue was wonte to make me mirth”), it remains an experimental text which shows the poet willing to imagine the metrical restructuring of English, in line with the aggressive attitude towards linguistic change shown in the letter to Harvey. See also R. Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England, 1992, Chicago (1–3, 25–40) for a historicist and political reading of Spenser’s position in the Letters. 30 Attridge (n.28 above) 235–36, 195. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 55 directly; his version of the stant circum passage is curiously effective as it focuses on the terror of the captured “mothers”:

thear ar eke yoong children in order With cold hart moothers, for Grekish victorie quaking, Setled on al sides31

It should be said that this is Stanyhurst at his best. His version of a different half-line passage, (Aen. 2.345–46), on Coroebus’ inability to heed Cassandra’s prophecies, is more typical of his clotted syntax and unusual word choices: “His pheers woud prophecyes not at all the yooncker unhappie / Herd”.32 Lexically, Stanyhurst has always been challenging: thus “pheers” means “fere’s” (that is Cassandra, his wife’s mad prophecies),33 while the decision to put the subject – “the yooncker unhappie” – at the end of the line fights against English’s natural tendency to want to have the subject ahead of the verb.34 By the same token “not at all” struggles for a grammatical function as the reader makes unsteady progress through the line before the arrival of that postponed subject. Phaer’s version of this passage is – perhaps inevitably – closer to the norms of modern English, and is therefore less exciting, though easier to construe: “Vnhappy man, that what his spouse him rauing told in traunce: / Wold not regard”.35 Nevertheless, Stanyhurst’s dedication to getting an English equivalence to the Virgilian text produces a text which is at once curious and impressive in its distinctive poetic idiom. Consider the single broken line, “Herd”, which successfully mimics Virgil’s Infelix, qui non sponsae praecepta furentis / Audierat.36 The satirist Thomas Nashe pilloried Stanyhurst for his “Thrasonical huffe snuffe”, yet as Colin Burrow notes, the strange diction is partly a product of Stanyhurst’s cultural location as an Irish Catholic who emigrated to Leiden, and whose version of Virgil resists the cultural hegemony of Protestant English.37 Nevertheless, Stanyhurst is a stylistic cul-de-sac: what might be called an “unherd” argot in an unspoken language.38

31 Virgil, Thee first foure bookes of Virgil his Aeneis, trans. Richard Stanyhurst, 1582, Leiden, 43. 32 Virgil (n.31 above) 31. 33 See ‘fere’, n.1, OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2016. 34 A literal translation of this passage into modern English would be “The unfortunate young man did not hear his wife’s mad prophecy at all.” 35 Virgil (n.8 above) sig. D4r. 36 Virgil (n.19 above) 159. 37 Nashe in Elizabethan Critical Essays, 2 vols, ed. G. G. Smith, 1904, Oxford, vol. 1, 316; C. Burrow, ‘Virgil in English Translation’, in C. Martindale (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, 2006, Cambridge, 25. 38 For a more positive view of Stanyhurst’s linguistic difference, see W. Maley, ‘Spenser languages: writing in the ruins of English’, in A. Hadfield (ed),The Cambridge Companion to Spenser, 2001, Cambridge, 168: “The Tudor borderlands were at the cutting edge of linguistic innovation and variation”. See also Brammall (n.14 above) 37–48. 56 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

In contrast, Phaer’s Aeneidos squarely reflects English poetic tastes of the 1550s and 1560s. Its rather lumpen rhyming fourteener couplets embody a period style: a widely used convention shared by a number of writers at the time, but which fell into disuse during the last two decades of the century. Phaer merits longer discussion, both because his version is the one with the largest cultural reach during the 16th century, and because it is the least familiar to modern readers. Phaer’s Virgil also takes us closer to Spenser. It was first published in the decade of his birth, and it is precisely its limitations which can work to remind us of the radicalism of what Spenser was attempting in The Faerie Queene. Apart from Douglas’s version, Phaer’s is both the fullest translation and the most often reprinted. Between 1558 and 1620, it went through eight editions; this compares well with the three editions of The Faerie Queene published between 1590 and 1609.39 Phaer died in 1560, having completed books 1–9 and a portion of book 10; the translation was finished by Twyne in 1573, who added a version of Maffeo Vegio’s humanistic thirteenth book in 1584. Modern commentators take a dim view of Phaer’s abilities as a poet: Hardison describes the Aeneidos as a “competent paraphrase but not a work that conveys the elevation of the original to an English reader”, while Ezra Pound had dismissed it as “tenebrous”.40 Pound was however a huge admirer of Arthur Golding’s 1564 translation of the Metamorphoses, also into fourteeners. Arguably, his stylistic radar was off beam in both cases: Golding is probably not as good as Pound suggests, while Phaer is certainly not as bad. Pound’s opinion was in any case not shared by Elizabethan readers. William Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), saw in Phaer’s version a demonstration of the heroic potential of English, even going so far as to suggest that “the coppy it selfe [i.e. Virgil’s poem] goeth no whit beyond it [i.e. Phaer’s version]”.41 Webbe was also a strenuous advocate of quantitative metres, so this judgement shows the force of his embattled linguistic patriotism, as he wills the Phaer version against his own stylistic predilections into being an epic contender. Even the usually scabrous Nashe described it as “heauenly verse” in the same text which rubbishes Stanyhurst.42

39 It compares even better with Douglas’s Eneados: though Douglas’s version is manifestly superior poetically, it was printed only once in London (in 1553: n.22 above); Phaer’s success is partly a consequence of his use of a more standard English. See Kendal (n.22 above) vol. 1, xxxix, for the manuscript circulation and printing history of Douglas’s version. See also Brammall (n.14 above) 19. 40 Hardison (n.27 above) 202; The Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot, 1954, London, 244; for Pound’s admiration of Golding, see ibid. 38, 237–39. 41 Webbe in Smith (n.37 above) vol. 1, 259. For Webbe’s “conference” of Phaer with Virgil, see ibid. 256–62. For Webbe’s use of “coppy” to mean “that which is copied”, see ‘copy’, n. and adj. IV. 8, OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2016, citing this passage. 42 Nashe in Smith (n.37 above) vol. 1, 315. In the same sentence Nashe was more waspish about Phaer as a man, enigmatically noting that “had it not bin blemisht by his hautie thoghts England might haue long insulted in his wit, and corrigat qui potest haue been subscribed to his workes”. “Insulted” here has the sense of “boasted”; see ‘insult’, v, 1.c, OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2016, citing this passage. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 57

Like Stanyhurst, Phaer observes all the half-lines in book 2. His rendering of the stant circum passage gives a flavour of his translation as a whole. In this case I give a slightly longer excerpt:

Amids the flore the kéepers stoode, the chief of capteines stout, Both Phenix and Vlisses false with them their trayn about The praie did kéepe, and Greekes to them the Troian riches brought, That from the fiers on euery syde was raught: all temples sought And tables from the gods were take, and basons great of gold, And precious plate and robes of kyngly state, and treasours old, And captiue childern stoode, and tremblyng wifes in long aray Were stowed about and wept.43

John Thompson long ago pointed out the predictable quality of the caesura in the fourteener, which usually falls after the eighth syllable. For Thompson, this helps to account for the ultimate triumph of the shorter iambic pentameter line, which became freer and less predictable in its placement of caesura.44 Though there are exceptions to this rule, the point remains that in the fourteener, metrical pattern tends to “overwhelm” speech rhythm and the rhythm of phrase.45 In Robert Lowell’s evocative summary, Golding’s fourteener “seems like some arbitrary and wayward hurdle, rather than the very backbone of what is being said”.46 The fourteener is not a metrically flexible form: rather, it tends to constrain syntax and meter to its demands. This passage demonstrates the uneasy dance Phaer has to perform between faithfully rendering the Latin and the exigencies of the form. There is virtually no ambiguity of stress – the iambic pattern is observed almost mechanically. This is why Phaer writes “the gods were take” in place of the more natural English perfect tense, “were taken”: the latter would add a syllable and disrupt the meter, so the inflected participle is sacrificed to the metrical pattern. But he has some success in varying caesura position; sense is not always contained by the couplet form, with some effective enjambments in phrases like “all temples sought / And tables from the gods were take”. The half-line itself helps him to combat the

43 Virgil (n.8 above) sig. F2r. 44 There are problems with this argument, particularly in relation to the idea that the iambic pentameter line is always flexible in terms of caesura. Both George Gascoigne and George Puttenham argued that the caesura should always fall after the fourth syllable in a decasyllabic line, and there is significant evidence in the work of poets like Gascoigne, Ralegh and Churchyard that this form – which I characterize elsewhere as the 4 / 6 line – was all but hegemonic in poetic practice during the 1570s and -80s. See Gascoigne in Smith (n.37 above) vol. 1, 54; Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy, ed. F. Whigham & W. A. Rebhorn, 2007, Ithaca NY, 162, and C. M. Bajetta, ‘Ralegh’s Early Poetry in its Metrical Context’, Studies in Philology 93.4 (1996), 390–411. 45 J. Thompson,The Founding of English Metre, 1961, repr. 1989, New York, 36. 46 Cited by Thompson (n.45 above) 36 n.2. For the full essay, see R. Lowell,Collected Prose, ed. R. Giroux, 1987, London, 152–60 (155). 58 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

fourteener’s tendency to monotony, by virtue of its brevity, its avoidance of rhyme, and the emphasis which the syntax inevitably throws onto the metrical fragment. Nevertheless, this is far from the pointed syntax and imagistic sharpness of the Latin, or the versions of Surrey and even Stanyhurst. Notice the way Phaer introduces the strictly redundant “stowed” to qualify “the tremblyng wifes”, because he does not want to repeat “stoode” which qualifies the “captiue children”. Spenser learnt much from writers like Phaer about keeping a steady beat, but he also varied their practice by his use of syllabic ambiguity, in which stress is shifted according to poetic context. A good example of this is the line “But in lewd loues, and wastfull luxuree” from the climax to book II of The Faerie Queene, the Bower of Bliss (xii.80). While this is a perfect decasyllabic line which can be stressed as an orthodox iambic pentameter, I would suggest you miss its full weight unless you are prepared to read the powerful alliterative phrase “lewd loves” as two consecutive syllables which take a strong accent.47 There is a similar quasi-spondaic pattern to the line “To which sad louers were transformd of yore”, quoted above.48 The Faerie Queene is full of these metrical grace notes to a far greater extent than is usually acknowledged. Spenser achieves metrical variety neither through quantitative experiment, nor through the wrenching of the conventional accent later practised by Donne, but through the cultivation of syllabic ambiguity and variety of caesura in decasyllabic lines and alexandrines.49 The imitation of the Virgilian half-lines is part of this commitment to metrical experiment: by interpreting Virgil’s poetic lesions as poetic lessons, Spenser achieves variety of effect. What emerges from these comparisons is that poetic and intellectual fashions in English verse dictate what is picked up in translation in the 16th century. The status of the half-lines varies accordingly. The translations most influenced by humanism are those of Stanyhurst and Phaer, which arguably fail in different ways: one is too eccentric, while the other is too predictable. Both poets urgently want to find English equivalents for the Virgilian half-lines, but they do not turn these features to decisive artistic advantage. The idealist Stanyhurst rigorously reproduces each one; the more pragmatic Surrey, whose verse form would soon become hegemonic, is less determined to follow the patterns of the Latin original.

47 See G. T. Wright, Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, 1988, Berkeley CA, 149–59, for the argument that Shakespeare cultivated “metrical ambiguity” (158). The conventional view is succinctly expressed by J. Dolven, ‘Spenser’s Metrics’, in R. A. McCabe (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser, 2010, Oxford, 389: The Faerie Queene shows a “massive commitment to iambic movement”. While this is true, my point is that such “iambic movement” necessarily makes room for the spondaic, trochaic and even pyrrhic iambs observed by Wright in Shakespeare. For another example, consider III.vi.1, “Seemeth that such wild woods should far expel”, which on Dolven’s account would be scanned as a trochee followed by four iambs. Using Wright’s model of syllabic ambiguity, I read this line as a trochee, a pyrrhic, a spondee, and then two iambs. 48 My emphases. 49 See Wilson-Okamura (n.15 above) 31–32, for Spenser’s preference for a looser, Italian model of caesura placement. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 59

Writing “Virgil” into stanzas

Spenser’s debt to Virgil is both well known and widely discussed.50 At what was probably an early stage his career, certainly prior to the death of the Earl of Leicester in 1588, Spenser translated the pseudo-Virgilian Culex as Virgils Gnat. It was eventually published in the Complaints volume of 1591. As Spenser’s title indicates, he was confident of theCulex ’s connection with Virgil; he was later to borrow the Ciris for aspects of Book III of The Faerie Queene, again underlining the extent to which he maintained what Colin Burrow suggests was an unusual interest in the Appendix Vergiliana.51 The extraordinary dedicatory sonnet to the long dead Earl of Leicester, which prefixesVirgils Gnat, makes explicit the connection Spenser felt between himself and “Virgil”. As Spenser feels himself to have been “Wrong’d” by Leicester, so the translation gives a “clowdie”, or allegorical, account of Spenser’s “evill plight”.52 For the purposes of understanding the half-lines in The Faerie Queene, and how they may or may not imitate Virgil, the still relatively marginal Virgils Gnat provides a template for the ways in which Spenser reprocessed dactylic hexameter verse paragraphs into rhyming stanzas. Spenser’s most important stylistic decision was to render Latin dactylic hexameters as stanzaic verse: he chose ottava rima, the eight-line stanza form with the interlaced rhyme scheme, Abababcc, used by Ariosto and Tasso in their epics. This recasting of theCulex into a modish verse form gives a flavour of how Spenser reworks Virgil. Wilson-Okamura’sSpenser’s International Style worries at an analogous problem: why is The Faerie Queene so unclassical, given the importance of Virgil to Spenser and his contemporaries? “Why stanzas for epic”?53 In effect, he suggests, neither Phaer’s fourteeners nor Stanyhurst’s quantitative verse sounds any more “classical” than Spenser’s stanzas. Contemporary epic was pervasively stanzaic.54 Virgils Gnat then demonstrates at once Spenser’s interest in Virgil as a precedent, and his sense of the possible equivalence between hexameter verse paragraphs and rhyming stanzas. I do not mean to suggest that Spenser (or indeed Sir John Harington)55 seriously thought ottava rima stanzas were “like” dactylic hexameter; I want rather to underline that Elizabethan culture

50 See Wilson-Okamura (n.15 above) 20–24, for an overview. 51 C. Burrow, ‘English Renaissance Readers and the Appendix Vergiliana’, PVS 26 (2008), 1–16. 52 Spenser, Complaints. Containing sundrie small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie, 1591, London. Quotations are from Spenser, The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund Spenser, ed. W. Oram et al, 1989, New Haven CT, 297–98. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from Spenser’s non-Faerie Queene poetry are from this edition; line references are given parenthetically in text. 53 Wilson-Okamura (n.15 above) chapters 1 and 6. 54 This is not an unvarying rule: the chorographical epics by William Warner,Albion’s England (1586; 1589, London) and Michael Drayton, Polyolbion (1612, London) use fourteeners and alexandrine couplets, respectively. See also Wilson-Okamura (n.15 above) 33, for Italian experiments with versi sciolti da rima, the Italian equivalent of blank verse. 55 Sir John Harington, The Sixth Book of Virgil’s Aeneid, ed. S. Cauchi, 1991, Oxford. As Cauchi notes, the choice of ottava rima was “unusual”, particularly in England, though there were Italian precedents (xviii). 60 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

thought stanzaically. Stanzas were the fashionable idiom of poetry and song; the misanthropic Jacques contemptuously asks the singer Amiens for another song in the Forest of Arden by saying, “call you ’em stanzos?”, yet in the same scene shows himself to be an accomplished parodist of the form.56 Stanzas were ubiquitous: thus the phenomenon of stanzaic Virgils shows the readiness of 16th-century writers to adapt his works to their own preferred tunes. Despite the massive differences in tone, language and quality between the Latin originals, comparing Virgils Gnat with Sir John Harington’s ottava rima version of Aeneid 6 is instruc- tive.57 As English poetry, Spenser’s version is generally elegant and pointed, where Harington’s serves to emphasise the huge aesthetic differences and lack of intrinsic formal reciprocity between the two forms. Virgil of course did not think in stanzas, and Harington’s version shows the pressure of trying to splice the matter of semantically freewheeling verse paragraphs into predetermined, unvarying poetic units. These are not always happy accommodations: Virgilian matter often seems cramped in Harington’s pokier poetic spaces.58 In contrast, Virgils Gnat shows Spenser assimilating the Latin into a stanzaic idiom chiefly through processes of leisurely expansion: the work of translation is one of unhurried formal transformation. This significantly adds words and lines59 to the sparser languours of the Latin original:

O pecudes, ò Panes, & o gratissima Tempe, Fontis Hamadryadum: quarum non diuite cultu Aemulus Ascraeo pastor sibi quisque poëtae Securam placido traducit pectore uitam.60

Spenser was in his element in the blissful locus amoenus, and his version shows the poetic equi valent of the process described by John Donne in ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’ as “an expansion / Like gold to airy thinness beat”, as four Latin lines become eight English ones:61

56 Shakespeare, As You Like It, II.5.15–56. 57 See R. D. Brown, The New Poet: Novelty and Tradition in Spenser’s Complaints, 1999, Liverpool, 57–61. Colin Burrow’s 2004 paper to the Virgil Society observes, in the context of his scintillating close reading of the poem as an inventive attempt to find equivalents for untranslatable Latin terms like “the neoteric code-wordtenuis ”, that my study does not directly say whether Virgils Gnat is enjoyable. Burrow is right, yet my silence on the aesthetic quality of Virgils Gnat does not betoken indifference. See Burrow (n.51 above) 9–10. 58 See Brown (n.57 above) 57–58, on stanza 17 of Harington’s version. 59 Culex has 414 lines, Virgils Gnat has 688. Even allowing for the greater semantic weight within an individual dactylic hexameter line in contrast with a decasyllabic iambic pentameter line, this is a significant lengthening. 60 Culex 94–97 in Spenser, The Minor Poems: Part Two, ed. C. Grosvenor Osgood and H. Gibbons Lotspeich, 1947, Baltimore, 552. This edition reprints theCulex Spenser probably used, printed by Dumaeus in Antwerp in 1542. See Virgil, Aeneid VII-XII; The Minor Poems, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G. P. Goold, 2000, Cambridge MA, 410. 61 John Donne, The Major Works, ed. J. Carey, 1990, Oxford, 120. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 61

O flocks, O Faunes, and O ye pleasaunt springs Of Tempe, where the countrey Nymphs are rife, Through whose not costly care each shepheard sings As merrie notes upon his rusticke Fife, As that Ascræan bard, whose fame now rings Through the wide world, and leads as joyfull life, Free from all troubles and from worldly toyle, In which fond men doe all their dayes turmoyle. (145–52)

As Burrow suggests, Virgils Gnat is characterized by an almost voluptuous delight in phrase- making. There is a particular enjoyment evident in additions like the line “As merry notes vpon his rusticke Fife”, an activity implied rather than stated in the Latin, and which aligns the shepherd with Spenser’s pastoral persona Colin Clout as a “rusticke” poet.62 But this is more than just rich writing – as I have noted, the cultural transaction we witness here is a movement from thinking in verse paragraphs to thinking stanzaically. Each ottava rima stanza is a meshed grid of interlaced rhymes, leading to the definitive closure of the couplet. In this case, the stanzaic implications of the work Spenser does with “Virgil” is shown by the fact that the couplet expands on the single word securam in the Latin. Spenser’s couplet at once indulges the fantasy of a world free of troubles while taking the opportunity this vista affords for gentle, almost generous moralizing.63 It’s a characteristic touch in a poem which shows Spenser subordinating a classical original to the discipline of the stanza, and experimenting with how stanzaic form may be used in an extended poem. Donne, another poet fascinated by the creative affordances of stanzas as a kind of new poetic technology, anticipated “build[ing] in sonnets pretty rooms”.64 This is akin to what Spenser does in Virgils Gnat, as the “pretty room” of ottava rima becomes a way of reframing the Culex.

62 Though not used directly by Spenser inThe Shepheardes Calender, “rusticke” is an important part of E. K.’s defence of archaism (a device to “make his rymes more ragged and rustical”), while the gloss to “Januarye” makes a direct allusion to Virgil’s use of the term in the Eclogues. Later poems such as Daphnaïda and Colin Clouts Come Home Againe explicitly identify Colin through epithets like “my rustick quill”; see The Shorter Poems (n.52 above) 14, 33, 541. 63 The c-rhyme,toyle: turmoyle, was probably experienced as a full rhyme by Elizabethan readers, with turmoyle sounded as a natural iamb. This is suggested by Spenser’s practice inThe Faerie Queene, where the word is typically rhymed with terms like spoile, soyle as well as toyle; see Brown & Lethbridge (n.12 above) 333. 64 Donne, ‘The Canonization’ (n.61 above, 96); compare also ‘The Good Morrow’: “love … makes one little room an everywhere” (ibid. 90). In each case, Donne puns on the etymology of stanza from the Italian for room; see ‘stanza’, n, OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2016. 62 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Half-lines in The Faerie Queene

Compared with the Aeneid, there are only a few half-lines in The Faerie Queene. The ratios seem wrong: where The Faerie Queene has around 35,000 lines to the Aeneid’s less than 10,000, the latter has 50 half-lines where the former musters around 6. The projected poem Spenser described in the Letter to Ralegh (appended to the 1590 edition) would have been a mammoth of 12, or possibly even 24 books.65 As my formulations indicate, there is some uncertainty about the precise number of half-lines. It partly depends on which of the primary texts you consult: The Faerie Queenewas published in different editions in 1590, 1596 and 1609.66 Wilson-Okamura gives the following tally based on A. C. Hamilton’s standard modern text: II.iii.26.9; II.viii.55.9; III.iii.50.9; III.iv.39.7; III.vi.45.4; and III.ix.37.5. He plausibly suggests that these instances “all occur in a Vergilian context”.67 I would add to this a few significant anomalies. II.x.24.8–9 in some copies of the 1590 edition is garbled, presumably as the compositor struggled to understand the Welsh text in the manuscript.68 The reader of III.vi.26.4 in 1590 encounters a half-line, “To seeke the fugitiue” (the runaway is Cupid, who has fled from Venus in high dudgeon), which sticks out in the same way as “And dearest loue” would later in the same canto in the 1609 edition. By 1596, this loose end is tidied up with the rhyming formula “both farre and nere”.69 Finally, though it does not create a half-line, the change to I.x.20 in the 1609 edition is significant. In 1590 and 1596, this stanza is an “unperfect” eight-liner; in 1609, it is completed with the addition of a fifth line, “Dry-shod to passe, she parts the flouds in tway”. Though some scholars have argued in favour of the eight- line version on the basis of numerological and theological patterning, the change is clearly authorial, and suggests that Spenser generally placed the satisfaction of the stanzaic pattern ahead of other considerations.70 What follows from this is that those remaining half-lines are stylistically and thematically significant: the correction of I.x.20 supports the view that the “And dearest loue” fragment, introduced in the same edition, is authorial.

65 Wilson-Okamura (n.15 above) 132. For the Letter to Ralegh, see The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 714–18. 66 All published in London; conventionally abbreviated as 1590, 1596 and 1609; see The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) xx, 736. 1590 contains books I-III; 1596 reprints these books with some alterations and adds books IV-VI. 1609 adds the Mutabilitie Cantos, with again a number of textual changes, many of which appear to be authorial. 67 Wilson-Okamura, ‘Belphoebe and Gloriana’ (n.5 above) 49. 68 The correct reading is “That notScuith guiridh it mote seeme to bee, / But rather y Scuith gogh, signe of sad crueltee”; i.e. “not the green shield as it may seem to be but rather the red shield”; see The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 251. Uncorrected copies reduce this to: “That not [ ] he mote seeme to be. / But [ ]”, where visually the gaps on the page seem to recall the lacunae in Eumnestes’ library in the previous canto, “worm-eaten, and full of canker holes” (II.ix.57); see The Faerie Queene, 1590, London, 332, using the British Library copy on EEBO, and The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 742, and Fig. 1 below. 69 See The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 745. 70 See The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 128, 738, and A. Fowler, Spenser and the Numbers of Time, 1964, London, 145 n.1. See below for discussion of the probable authorial revisions incorporated into the 1609 edition. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 63

Yet it is important to be clear that this textual evidence points in different directions. That the attractive half line of 1590, “To seeke the fugitiue”, could be resolved into a full penta meter in 1596 may imply that Spenser’s unrealised intention was to fill all such gaps. On this account half-lines may be – as with Virgil – relics of the compositional process, and of the difficulties imposed by the search for rhyme.71 “And dearest loue” might conceivably have been plugged by a six-syllable iambic formula, such as “lamented more and more”.72 Spenser’s stanza makes his half-lines typographically apparent as ruptures in the fabric of his poem, which are invariably surprising to readers trained to expect stanzaic unity and uniformity. This is why I cite the press variant of II.x.24: the violence of the semantic gaps in the British Library copy illustrates the way in which any deviation from the typographic form of the stanza impinges on the reader’s consciousness, and potentially disrupts and reorientates the reading experience (see Fig. 1).73 When we see gaps like this, we are predisposed to try to make sense of them, either by filling them in (as I have with III.vi.45), or by allegorizing them as symbolic spaces.

Fig. 1 showing the uncorrected version of II.x.24.8–9 in the British Library copy, reproduced from EEBO.

71 See Brown & Lethbridge (n.12 above) 71–75, for discussion of the ways in which The Faerie Queene is ordered around the search for rhymes. 72 Improvised from Arthur Golding’s phrase “His flames augmented more and more” in his version of the Hyacinthus story; see Arthur Golding, Ovid: Metamorphoses, ed. M. Forey, 2002, London, 300 (10.184). 73 For discussion of Spenser’s use of the white spaces around stanzas to manipulate readerly attention, see T. Krier, ‘Time Lords: Rhythm and Interval in Spenser’s Stanzaic Narrative’, Spenser Studies 21 (2007), 1–19. 64 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

One of the most widely discussed half-lines is the blazon of the virgin huntress Belphoebe (a symbolic representation of Elizabeth I), itself an echo of the description of Venus as a huntress in Aen. 1:

So faire, and thousand times more faire She seemd, when she presented was to sight, And was yclad, for heat of scorching aire, All in a silken Camus lylly whight, Purfled vpon with many a folded plight, Which all aboue besprinckled was throughout, With golden aygulets, that glistred bright Like twinckling stares, and all the skirt about Was hemd with golden fringe (II.iii.26)

Again, the rupture of the formal design is visually striking. The Spenserian stanza’s formal design interlaces three different rhymes on the patternAbabbcbcc , where the final line is an alexandrine. The special character of the alexandrine within the stanza is shown by the typography in all early editions (and most modern ones), whereby the first and ninth lines of each stanza are justified to the left while the median seven lines are set slightly to the right. Poetically and spatially, the slouching alexandrine rounds out the stanzaic space (see Fig. 1). Spenserian alexandrines have a marked tendency to fall into two equal six-syllable hemistichs, as in a line from a few stanzas prior to this: “She broke his wanton darts, and quenched base desire” (II.iii.23).74 In the case of stanza 26, the final line is a maimed half measure, blatantly failing to satisfy the pattern. What then is the function of such half-lines – are they oversights, or are they deliberate attempts to turn poetic shortfall to artistic advantage? In this case, there is no simple explanation. Louis Montrose suggested that the incomplete alexandrine is a moment of spectacular poetic tact, or “conspicuous silence”, on Spenser’s part: as the blazon goes down Belphoebe’s body, from her “Camus”, or chemise, to her “skirt”, the poet refuses to go beyond “the golden fringe” of Belphoebe’s attire to what lies beneath.75 As A. C. Hamilton puts it, the half-line potentially “indicates the poet’s distraction when he contemplates Belphoebe’s genitalia, and necessarily moves lower”.76 To the contrary, Wilson-Okamura insists: “There

74 See J. Hollander, ‘Alexandrine’, in A. C. Hamilton et al. (eds), The Spenser Encyclopedia, 1990, Toronto, 15–16 (15). 75 L. A. Montrose, ‘The Elizabethan Subject and the Spenserian Text’, in P. Parker & D. Quint (eds),Literary Theory / Renaissance Texts, 1986, Baltimore, 327. 76 In The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 184. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 65 are crotch lyrics, but no crotch epics, and no epic crotches. For blazonneurs, the epic subject is breasts” – the half-lines are “allusion-markers” to Virgil and nothing more.77 What this doesn’t explain is why Spenser should formally allude to Virgil here, beyond the fact that that this episode is “modeled on Aeneas’ encounter with Venus” in Aeneid 1, a passage, it should be said, which does not include any half-lines.78 Perhaps this stanza tells us little more than that Spenser’s half-lines are, like Virgil’s, both tantalizing and hazardous to interpret categorically. And yet the failure to correct this half-line in either 1596 or 1609 suggests deliberation. Similarly, the fact that it occurs in the middle of what A. C. Hamilton calls the poem’s “longest and most ecstatic blazon” – a passage which at one level idealises Elizabeth I – is also provocative. Surely a “mistake” in a set piece of this kind would have been corrected?79 Such questions should lead back to the extraordinary poetry of this stanza, which embodies much of the charge of Spenser’s diction and his invention of a poetic language which seemed strange even to his contemporaries.80 Spenser’s archaic diction is another gesture in Virgil’s direction.81 In the process of blazoning Belphoebe, Spenser deploys a consciously inflated vocabulary with archaic lexis, where words are chosen partly for their unfamiliarity and partly for their ornamental glitter. “Purfled”, “plight”, “besprinckled” and “aygulet” contribute to a richly ornate surface, which underlines Belphoebe’s exceptional exceptionalness. Spenser, we might say, polishes his verse to convey verbally a sense of Belphoebe’s shimmer “That quite bereau’d the rash beholders sight” (II.iii.23). In this context, it could be suggested that the non-alexandrine mimetically enacts the narrator’s amazement at the character he describes. Like David Lee Miller, I tend to think the half-line comprises both that amazement and “a displaced representation of what cannot be displayed” beneath Belphoebe’s clothing.82 Syrithe Pugh offers a different perspective:

77 Wilson-Okamura, ‘Belphoebe and Gloriana’ (n.5 above) 49–50. For a rejoinder, see D. Lee Miller, ‘Spenser and Historical Stylistics; or, The Case Against the Case Against Close Reading’,Spenser Review 45.2.29 (Fall 2015: http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenseronline/review/item/45.2.29): “this argument assumes the half-lines can only be doing one thing: not that, but this. There is no reason the half-line in question can’t be doing both of those things and more”. 78 Wilson-Okamura, ‘Belphoebe and Gloriana’ (n.5 above) 49. Virgil, Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid I-VI, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G. P. Goold, 1999, Cambridge MA, 282–91, Aen. 1.314–417; the first acknowledged half-line is at 1.534. See also Virgil (n.19 above) 130–33. 79 The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 183–84. Hamilton also notes that the line stands at “the centre of the ten stanzas” that describe Belphoebe. 1590 includes a final sheet of “Faults escaped in the Print”, which does not correct this line; see The Faerie Queene, 1590, 606 (British Library copy). 80 For examples of contemporary reaction to Spenser’s “grandam words”, see R. M. Cummings (ed), Spenser: The Critical Heritage, 1971, London, 280–314 (288). 81 See Wilson-Okamura (n.15 above) 60–62, a discussion which defends Spenser against the strictures of in particular Sidney and Jonson. 82 Lee Miller (n.77 above). 66 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

“The gap here is about what is unrepresentableeither because it is numinous and sacred, like a Platonic Idea, or because the viewer is so lewd and the narrator so chaste, or because there are some (satirical) things which it is dangerous to mention out loud. All of these are difficulties of representation, and by leaving a gap, Spenser is leaving it up to the reader to decide which difficulty is at stake. We have to fill in the gap, as it were, and in doing so we must decide whether The Faerie Queene is to be a praise poem, or a dramatic poem … or satirical”.83

Spenser’s failure to complete his description of Belphoebe’s skirt shows him failing to finish the edge – the fringe – of his stanza. What we read here is a gap which betokens poetic bewilderment in the face of his subject. Rather than being a sign of the poet’s constraint, it is a mark of his inventive formal freedom, which underlines the difference between stanzaic verse and verse paragraphs, as the unfinished edge hovers into semantically uncertain space on the white page.84 At the same time, as Pugh highlights, the gap underlines the interpretative work the reader has to do. Allusion markers they may be, but the half-lines demand more active interpretation from the alert reader. Elsewhere in the poem, there is less ambiguous evidence that half-lines are a deliberate variation of Spenser’s usual stylistic palate. Later in Book II, he uses a similarly curtailed alexandrine to suggest the delicate reciprocity which is developing between the book’s hero, Sir Guyon, and his rescuer, Prince Arthur:

As to the Patrone of his life, thus sayd; My Lord, my liege, by whose most gratious ayd I liue this day, and see my foes subdewd, What may suffise, to be for meede repayd Of so great graces, as ye haue me shewd, But to be euer bound

To whom the Infant thus, Faire Sir, what need Good turnes be counted, as a seruile bond, To bind their doers, to receiue their meede? Are not all knights by oath bound, to withstond Oppressours powre by armes and puissant hond? Suffise, that I haue done my dew in place. So goodly purpose they together fond[.] (II.viii.55–56) 83 In correspondence with the author. 84 Compare Montrose’s conclusion: “the poet protects himself by conspicuously censoring himself, marking the constraint upon his text with a lacuna” (n.75 above, 328). Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 67

The suggestion that Arthur interrupts Guyon goes back to Ralph Church, who in his 1758 edition noted that, because neither the 1596 nor 1609 editions complete the hemistich, he was “inclined to think Spenser never intended to fill it up. The speech of SirGuyon is plainly finished: The Prince breaks in upon him:Faire - Sir, &c”.85 Church’s reading is lent further support by the way in which the b- rhyme of stanza 56 modulates from Guyon’s interrupted word, bound. In interrupting Guyon, Arthur suggests that he need not be “bound … as a seruile bond”. Appropriately, the narrative moves forward with the line “So goodly purpose they together fond”, in which the past participle of find punningly comprises the fondness which is developing between the two knights. Indeed, this rhyming cluster is noteworthy because it includes two metaplasmic rhymes, fond and hond, in which Spenser changes conventional orthography for the purposes of rhyme, as though to draw attention to his transgressive freedom with word forms.86 These are relatively small gestures, yet they take place against the backdrop of the repudiation by Pyrochles (a personification of intemperate anger) of Arthur’s “princely bounty” and his subsequent decapitation earlier in the canto (II.viii.51–52). Read in the light of John Kerrigan’s Shakespeare’s Binding Language, which pays meticulous attention to the language of bond and obligation in Shakespeare, this passage shows the way in which Spenser was similarly attuned to the register of social contract and (here) amicable or chivalric obligation. As Kerrigan notes: “During Shakespeare’s lifetime the cluster of words around bind, bound, and bond was used of so many kinds of connection – bonds of kin, allegiance to a monarch, material threads and cords, being bound by good will or service … that usage was coloured with implications that allow binding as act and description to draw fields of meaning together”.87 Similarly, Guyon’s truncated alexandrine, with its restitution in the following stanza, shows a Spenser prepared to manipulate lineation on the basis of hints he found in the Aeneid, for symbolic effect. In Kerrigan’s terms, Arthur repudiates the notion of the “seruile bond” outlined by Guyon, to reassert the old-fashioned – yet still operative within the idealist structures of The Faerie Queene – chivalric oath which binds knights “to withstond / Oppressours powre”. Meanwhile, these literal, metaphorical and textual works of severing and restoration anticipate the allegory of the human body in the House of Alma in the next canto. It is striking that the half-lines listed by Wilson-Okamura occur in the first half ofThe Faerie Queene. The anomalies I have added to this list further stress that this is a phenomenon – or perhaps more strictly an epiphenomenon arising from Spenser’s imitation of Virgil and his complex stanza form – of Books II and III. It may be therefore that the half-lines’

85 The Faerie Queene, ed. Ralph Church, 4 vols, 1758–59, London, vol. 2, 164–65. Accessed via Eighteenth Century Collections Online. 86 See Brown & Lethbridge (n.12 above) 26–27, 259, 366. 87 J. Kerrigan, Shakespeare’s Binding Language, 2016, Oxford, 10–11. 68 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

appearance is significant in terms of the allegorical agendas of these books. Book II is the Legend of Temperance, a core Aristotelian virtue; Book III is the Legend of Chastity, usually understood in a broader sense of appropriate sexuality, while both books further Spenser’s epideictic concern with British chronicle history – what he calls “matter of iust memory” in the Proem to Book II – in the episodes in the House of Alma and Merlin’s cave.88 Moreover, like Phaer and Surrey, Spenser would have been aware of the differential numbers of half-lines in different books of theAeneid : thus the concentration of half-lines in these books of The Faerie Queene may be another aspect of Spenser’s intertextual allusion to Virgil. As I suggested earlier, though the Donatus Vita explains the Aeneid’s half-lines as compositional relics, Spenser could well have read them more in the manner of Sparrow, as stylistic variables. In this view, the occurrence of half-lines in The Faerie Queene Books II and III would echo the higher number of such lines in Aeneid 2. The half-lines of II.iii.26 and II.viii.55 might be read in terms of the book’s symbolic concern with sexual conduct and bodily function: Spenser breaks his alexandrines at moments which lend themselves to mimetic reading. I turn now back to Book III to see if the half-lines there may be approached in the similar ways. Book III’s half-lines fall into two categories. Those at III.iii.50 and III.ix.37 are part of the dynastic matter which runs through both Books II and III, modelled both on the Aeneid and on the Virgilian strategies employed by 16th-century poets like Ariosto.89 The second example undermines an unreliable speaker, the philandering Paridell, whose narrative recaps the fall of Troy. As his story turns to his “linage”, which he claims to “deriue aright” from Paris, the gap in lineation serves to suggest the wrongness of that derivation: “To Paridas his sonne. / From whom I Paridell by kin descend” (III.ix.37).90 The incomplete line at III.iii.50 shows a different pattern. It stands in the place of an alexandrine but is only a pentameter line in the 1590 and 1596 editions, and was extended in 1609 to produce a full alexandrine. The 1590 line “(S)He turnd againe, and chearfull looks did shew” becomes in 1609 “(S)He turnd againe, and chearefull looks as earst did shew”.91 This is a passage which uses strong caesuras thematically: the same stanza begins with the abrupt ending of Merlin’s prophecy, “But yet the end is not. ThereMerlin stay e d”. 92 Ruptures of this kind – to line length and to

88 Proem to Book II, stanza 1. For overviews with bibliographies, see The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 5–17, and R. Graziani, ‘The Faerie Queene, Book II’, and T. P. Roche, Jr, ‘The Faerie Queene, Book III’, both in Hamilton (n.74 above) 263–70 (Graziani); 270–73 (Roche). 89 Wilson-Okamura, ‘Belphoebe and Gloriana’ (n.5 above) 49; for Ariosto and Virgil, see idem, Virgil (n.5 above) 189–90. 90 See D. Fried, ‘Spenser’s Caesura’, English Literary Renaissance 11 (1981), 261–80 (271). 91 My emphasis. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 1590, London, 440; The Faerie Queene, 1609, London, 139, both with the erroneous reading of “Shee” for “He”, picked up in the “Faults escaped in the Print” added to some copies of the 1590 edition; see The Faerie Queene, 1590, London, 606, using the British Library copy on Early English Books Online. See also The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 744, for textual commentary. 92 See Lee Miller (n.77 above) for discussion of this caesural break in the context of Aen. 6.882–83. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 69 line shape – are useful counters in a tertiary epic which is committed to what W. H. Auden waspishly called “history in the future tense”, but which is always ominously conscious that “the end is not” yet ideologically certain.93 The second grouping of half-lines takes us back to where we began, with “And dearest loue”. These are affective hemistichs, where the verse seems to break down in response to the pressure of the events. As many scholars have noted, Cymoent’s lament94 for her son, Marinell (who turns out not to be quite as dead as he at first appears) alludes to the lament of Euryalus’s mother in Aen. 9:

But if the heauens did his dayes enuie, And my short blisse maligne, yet mote they well Thus much afford me, ere that he did die That the dim eyes of my deare Marinell I mote haue closed, and him bed farewell, Sith other offices for mother meet They would not graunt. Yet maulgre them farewell, my sweetest sweet; Farewell my sweetest sonne, sith we no more shall meet. (III.iv.39)

Again, the deliberation and poetic design of the rupture is glaring. Not only does the broken line occur at an emotional high point, but Spenser – as so often – breaks his pattern in order to confirm it by other means thereafter. The broken b-rhymewell: ( Marinell: farewell), though strictly closed by the unrhyming “graunt”, is immediately followed by the internal rime riche of a second then a third “farewell” in lines 8 and 9.95 The rhetorical hardwiring of this passage is shown by the anaphora of “my sweetest sweet”, modulated to “my sweetest sonne”: the repetition of simple intensifiers and epithets heightens the emotion.96 These are virtuoso effects of rhyme and repetition by a writer who senses the way in which an opportune shortfall may serve to emphasise the skilful fashioning of his verse. Spenser was

93 W. H. Auden, ‘Secondary Epic’ in Collected Poems, ed. E. Mendelson, 1976, London, 455–56. Auden’s poem pokes fun at Virgil with a mixture of parody and half-lines: “No, Virgil, no … Wouldn’t Aeneas have asked:– ‘What next? / After this triumph, what portends?’” For commentary on Spenser’s history in the future tense, see B. Van Es, Spenser’s Forms of History, 2002, Oxford, 55–58. 94 The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 328; Wilson-Okamura, ‘Belphoebe and Gloriana’ (n.5 above) 49. Confusingly, by Book IV, “Cymoent” has become “Cyomodoce”; see The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 325, 779. 95 See Brown & Lethbridge (n.12 above) 341 (for the cluster), and 38–42 (for rime riche). 96 For anaphora, see Puttenham (n.44 above) 282. Puttenham stresses the formal character of the device – it makes “one word begin, and … lead the dance to many verses in suit” – though his examples (including one from Ralegh) are also passages of heightened emotion. 70 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

always a show-off poet, which is perhaps partly why the epithet of “the poet’s poet” stuck to him for so long.97 The passage from theAeneid which is paraphrased in this stanza – nec te tua funera mater / Produxi, pressiue oculos, aut volnera lavi – does not include a half-line.98 Just before this moment, however, Virgil describes the Rutulians exalting over the dead Trojans with a striking half-line:

Quin ipsa arrectis (visu miserabile) in hastis Praefigunt capita, & multo clamore sequuntur, Euryali, & Nisi.99

Mimetic reading is once again hard to resist: as Euryalus and Nisus’s heads are speared, the half-line of forlorn genitives seems to enact the brutal severing the text describes. Cymoent’s lament – with its sense of shortfall and the “maligne” interruption of natural processes – clearly takes some of its stylistic impetus from the deaths of Euryalus and Nisus. In the case of the Ovidian stanza which I begun with, as already noted, the publication history of The Faerie Queene suggests that Spenser corrected it to look as it does. Moreover, that history suggests that Spenser was looking to place a half-line in this canto, and adjusted his intentions at some point after the 1596 edition. In the two editions published during Spenser’s life time, the stanza is a line short:

And all about grew euery sort of flowre, To which sad louers were transformd of yore; Fresh Hyacinthus, Phoebus paramoure, Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watry shore, Sad Amaranthus, made a flowre but late, Sad Amaranthus, in whose purple gore Me seemes I see Amintas wretched fate, To whom sweet Poets verse hath giuen endlesse date.100

97 See P. Alpers, ‘The Poet’s Poet’, in Hamilton (n.74 above) 551, for the history of this phrase and its connections with the Romantic view of Spenser. 98 Aen. 9.486–87, quoted from Virgil (n.19 above) 365. “I am your mother and did not walk before you at your funeral; nor close your eyes, nor wash your wounds” (Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. D. West, 2003, London, 201). 99 Aen. 9.465–67, quoted from Virgil (n.19 above) 365. “They even stuck the heads of Euryalus and Nisus on spears – what a sight that was! – and paraded along behind them shouting” (trans. West, n.98 above, 200). 100 The Faerie Queene, 1596, London, 490. 1590’s misprint of “Marcisse” for “Narcisse” was corrected in this edition. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 71

In both 1590 and 1596, it is printed over two pages, which may have contributed to its missing line, though again there are only a very few incomplete stanzas in this massive poem, and many “perfect” stanza which are printed over two pages.101 The version with the half-line is first printed in the posthumous edition by Matthew Lownes in 1609. During the 1590s, Spenser’s publisher was William Ponsonby; when Ponsonby died in 1604, Lownes acquired the rights to his stock. As Andrew Zurcher has suggested in relation to the Mutabilitie Cantos (which first appeared in the 1609 edition), Lownes almost certainly inherited manuscripts and a copy of the 1596 edition marked up with Spenser’s corrections. The 1596Faerie Queene was relatively poorly printed by Richard Field, who incidentally printed Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and Lucrece in 1593 and 1594, and was a fellow native of Stratford.102 As J. C. Smith observed long ago, “And dearest loue” seems “a touch beyond an editor”,103 particularly given the way the half-line assonates with the a- and the b- rhymes: as I have just noted, Spenser’s ruptures to his patterns often turn out to confirm them by other means. In the 1590 and 1596 editions, the stanza has a preponderance of rhymes on related sounds: the heavy diphthongs of both the a-rhyme (flowre: paramoure) and the b-rhyme (yore: shore: gore) are relieved by the introduction of the hemistich in 1609. “Loue” neatly assonates with the surrounding rhymes without precisely repeating a pattern which otherwise risked becoming cloying. Repetition with difference is one of the key aesthetic tricks of the Spenserian stanza, and the later version of III.vi.45 is in this respect manifestly superior to the earlier version.104 Finally, as Hamilton suggests, “There may be a witty point … the poet’s verse is cut short even as lovers’ lives have been cut short ‘of yore’ and ‘but late’”.105 Amintas in this stanza alludes to Thomas Watson’s Latin poem of the same name (1585). This sequence of eleven laments was translated by Abraham Fraunce in 1587, a text which may co-opt Watson’s poems to the mourning of Sir Philip Sidney, who had died in 1586.106 In these contexts, the isolation of “And dearest loue” serves both to amplify the loss of Hyacinthus and “Amintas wretched fate”. There is a further aspect to this half-line which has not been previously discussed, as far as I am aware. This concerns the half-line at III.vi.26 in the 1590Faerie Queene, noted above. The uncorrected stanza reads:

To search the God of loue her Nimphes she sent, Throughout the wandring forest euery where:

101 See above for I.x.20. 102 A. Zurcher, ‘The Printing of theCantos of Mutabilitie in 1609’, in J. Grogan (ed), Celebrating Mutabilitie: Essays on Edmund Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos, 2010, Manchester, 42, 59 (n.8). 103 Quoted in Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton, 1977, Harlow, 363. 104 See Brown & Lethbridge (n.12 above) 243, 348, for the rhyming clusters. 105 The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 349. 106 See M. Eccles, ‘Watson, Thomas’, in Hamilton (n.74 above) 727–28, andThe Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 349. 72 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

And after them her selfe eke with her went To seeke the fugitiue. So long they sought, till they arriued were In that same shadie couert, whereas lay Faire Crysogone in slombry traunce whilere: Who in her sleepe (a wondrous thing to say) Vnwares had borne two babes, as faire as springing day. (III.vi.26)107

My aim here is not reinstate the line as printed in 1590, although it is in its own way just as effective as “And sweetest loue” or “They would not graunt”. Cupid’s errancy here is stressed as “the fugitiue” is given prominence – a prominence partly underscored by the half-rhyme of “fugitiue” with “the God of loue” in line 1. In turn, the strong break at the close of line 4 marks the transition from the hunt for Cupid (unresolved in this poem) to the discovery of Chrysogone in the second half of the stanza. The correction of 1596 – inserting “both farre and nere” – is a formulaic rhyming phrase of the kind we encounter throughout The Faerie Queene.108 While it is not semantically necessary (since the same information is conveyed by the second line and the close of the preceding stanza),109 the change shows two things. Firstly, it reinforces the sense that Spenser generally wanted to comply with the form he had created: we see the poet recognising an anomaly which might be easily tidied up. Secondly – and more interestingly – the gap at III.vi.26 in 1590, coupled with the half-line added to III.vi.45 in 1609, hints at Spenser’s sense that this canto in some way required a half-line. Why should it have done so? This canto is one of the symbolic pageants which occur in every book of the poem. It is an aetological myth of the conception and birth of the twins, Belphoebe (who we have encountered already in Book II) and Amoret (whose travails are one of the central foci of Books III and IV). Imitating Moschus’ ‘The Fugitive Love’, the first part of the canto narrates the story of “the fugitiue” Cupid. In the course of their search for him, Venus and Diana find Chrysogone, who has unconsciously given birth to the “two babes”, that is, Belphoebe and Amoret.110 The second half of the canto turns to the Gardins of Adonis – Venus’s “ioyous”

107 The Faerie Queene, 1590, London, 485. For a critical text of the canto, see http://talus.artsci.wustl.edu/ spenserArchivePrototype/html/fq1590.bk3_canto_6.html. This gives the text which will be used in theCollected Works of Edmund Spenser, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. 108 For rhyming formulae, see Brown & Lethbridge (n.12 above) 115–56, where Lethbridge argues for the comprehensively formulaic cast of The Faerie Queene. While I have reservations about his interpretation of these formulae, their existence – and poetic importance – is clear from his evidence. 109 III.vi.25: Venus “forth her damzells sent / Through all the woods, to search from place to place / If any tract of him or tidings they mote trace”. 110 See The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 343. E. K.’s notes to the ‘March’ eclogue of The Shepheardes Calender indicate that Spenser had translated Moschus’ poem “into Englishe Rymes”; this lost poem may well be incorporated into this canto. See Spenser, The Shorter Poems, ed. R. McCabe, 1999, London [Penguin ebook], and J. L. Black & L. Celovsky, ‘“Lost Works”, Suppositious Pieces, and Continuations’ in McCabe (n.47 above) 352. Brown – “And dearest loue”: Virgilian half-lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene 73 vegetative “Paradise”, where she takes Amoret after her discovery (III.vi.29). III.vi.45 describes the “pleasaunt Arber” at the heart of the Gardins, where Venus has stowed Adonis and where she continues to “reape sweete pleasure of the wanton boy” (III.vi.44, 46). It is a floral as well as an erotic paradise, which in its turn emphasises the subordination of these gardens to “wicked Tyme” (III.vi.39). The relocation of the half-line from the hunt for Cupid to the Gardins suggests Spenser’s sense that the pathos of the second half of the canto was greater than the first. By removing the line, he stressed the importance of the Gardins of Adonis passage, since the few scattered half-lines in The Faerie Queene have the function of Virgilian grace notes, echoes of the Aeneid which sparingly demonstrate allegiance and literary affiliation. Though taking place within an Ovidian portion of the poem, the revised half-line conveys a Virgilian sense of lacrymae rerum, as it stresses that the Gardins provide no protection against mortality.111 I began by citing C. S. Lewis’s dismay with Spenser’s bland adjectives – “dearest”, “sweetest”, “sad”, “wretched”, which seem almost chosen from a list of words typically vetoed by creative writing classes on the grounds that they are exhausted clichés, overdetermined by cultural expectations. How can a sad lover not seem, well, sad?112 Spenser, like Virgil, wrote and thought differently. What connects III.vi.45 with III.iv.39 is Spenser’s determination that the evanescent sweetness of affection will be turned to poetic account through devices such as anaphora and half-line. The revisions to canto VI enable us to see Spenser thinking through these affective questions of placement. One further related point emerges from this revision: Spenser may simply have liked the sound of half-lines, while realising that they had to be used with restraint.113 To fail to meet the terms of an elaborate stanza form on a regular basis speaks more of poetic incompetence than poetic premeditation: therefore the half-line is a trick you have to deploy with the utmost care, however pleasing you may find it. In their different ways, all of my examples show the elegant appropriation of the phenomenon of the Virgilian half-line for exceptional purposes. Most formal readings of The Faerie Queene unsurprisingly tend to emphasise its uniformity and compliance over and above its few moments of formal eccentricity. For Susanne Woods, Spenser is an aesthetic rather than a mimetic metrist: that is, his formal effects aim for pleasingness of sound which does not

111 Virgil (n.19 above) 135, where modern texts read lacrimae rerum; the full line sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt is translated by West (n.98 above, 16) as “there are tears for suffering and men’s hearts are touched by what man has to bear”. 112 See ‘sad’, adj., n., and adv, particularly Special Uses, S2, OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2016. 113 The evidence of Spenser’s other work is that he liked stanza forms with varying line lengths: see the inset lyrics in ‘Aprill’ and ‘November’ in The Shepheardes Calender, and the weddings songs, ‘Epithalamion’ and ‘Prothalamion’, in The Shorter Poems (n.52 above) 72–76, 189–94, 662–79, 761–69. See Wilson-Okamura (n.15 above) 177, for the ingenious argument that Spenser’s decision to incorporate feminine rhymes in the 1596 edition was because “he was trying to make a big, fat sound”, and my rejoinder in Brown & Lethbridge (n.12 above) 22–23, 47–60. Though I prefer to see literary effects as semantic, this approach does not rule out a sonal angle to the half-lines in Books II and III. 74 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

affect “the lexical meaning of the poem’s statement”.114 Similarly, Wilson-Okamura challenges the paradigmatic view that poetic form is related to content: teachers of literature have been propagating a “Noble Lie”, whereas in fact writing poems is more like baking: “the cake comes first, and frosting goes on when the cake is cool. Writing a poem is no different”.115 Ornament is the icing on the cake of content, and readers of Renaissance poetry should be more willing to accept this than we usually are. Spenser’s half-lines, I suggest, point in a different direction. What intrigued Spenser about Virgil’s half-lines was the same thing which intrigued trans- lators whose sensibilities were informed by humanism: that the most perfect poem which had ever been written was studded with moments of poetic shortfall.116 In this respect, the formal purpose of the half-lines is well captured by one of the early commentators on The Faerie Queene. In 1751, John Upton suggested that although Spenser had “fettered himself with rhime, yet he found a way of disengaging himself sometimes from these fetters” through the Virgilian device of the hemistich.117 Like Upton, my suspicion is that the half-lines were something which Spenser very much liked about the Aeneid, in addition to the moral allegory of Aeneas as “a good gouernour and a vertuous man”, which he mentions in the Letter to Ralegh.118 As well as being epic and fixed, Spenser’s forms are in practice both tactical and flexible, and he saw the Aeneid as a justification for this.

The Open University RICHARD DANSON BROWN ([email protected])

114 Susanne Woods, Natural Emphasis: English Versification from Chaucer to Dryden, 1984, San Marino CA, 15, 141. 115 Wilson-Okamura (n.15 above) 150. For my comments on this idea, see R. D. Brown, ‘The Scope of Spenser’s Strangeness’, Spenser Review 43.3.53 (Winter 2014: http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenseronline/review/ volume-43/433/spensers-international-style-1/the-scope-of-spensers-strangeness/). 116 For related reflection on the way Spenser latches onto the ambiguities of theAeneid , see S. Pugh, ‘Reinventing the Wheel: Spenser’s “Virgilian Career”’, in P. J. Hecht & J. B. Lethbridge (eds), Spenser in the Moment, 2015, Madison WI, 3–34, particularly 19–25 on Spenser’s reading of Virgil’s Fama. 117 John Upton, A letter concerning a new edition of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, 1751, London, 28. Upton’s discussion cites Cowley’s erroneous claim to be the first poet to use half-lines in English, and approvingly quotes from his remarks on the aesthetic nature of many of Virgil’s hemistichs, 28–29. Accessed via Eighteenth Century Collections Online. 118 The Faerie Queene (n.2 above) 715. Counterfactuals in the Aeneid

Revised from a paper given to the Virgil Society on 8 March 2014

Frizzarin This is a version of a talk on counterfactuals in theAeneid I gave as a Royal Holloway PhD student. The layout is as follows. Sections (1) to (18) present views on and relevant to counterfactuals. (20) to (23) are analyses of four instances of counterfactuals in the Aeneid of the if-not type (A would have happened, if B had not prevented it). (19) presents the most dramatic of the Homeric if-not models on which those four instances are based (Il. 20.288–91). My argument is that the counterfactual at Aen. 2.54–56 (20), just as the one at Il. 20.288–91 (19), points to the possibility that the text may not exist. That works against the notion of fate as leading to current-day, Augustan Rome, the rise of which the text relates. The other three instances, at (21)-(23), I take to reinforce that message. Aen. 6.358–61 (21) follows the Homeric pattern but for a less momentous situation than the original, whereas Aen. 11.112 (22) and 12.731–33 (23) maintain some key features of the pattern, while increasingly departing from it. All four Virgilian instances also make use of a typical trait of the Homeric counterfactuals of Virgil’s contemporary Livy, which is the indicative main clause. I am interested in these if-not counterfactuals with indicative apodosis, because they contravene normal Latin usage, while also being relatively popular at the time the Aeneid was being composed. I take the indicative to emphasize the closeness between factuality and counterfactuality, and the possibility that the counterfactual alternatives presented may have become factual.1

(1) – Counterfactuals are conditional sentences. Kaufmann defines conditionals as “complex sentences built up from two constituent clauses, called the antecedent and the consequent, or protasis and apodosis”. 2 Examples in English are: (1a) “If the sun comes out, Sue will go for a walk”; (1b) “If the sun came out, Sue went for a walk”; (1c) “If the sun had come out, Sue would have gone for a walk”. The first two are often calledindicative , and the third sub junctive, or counterfactual. In Wakker’s functionalist classification, they are allpredicational conditionals. Wakker’s three principal types are: the propositional: (1d) “If I am not mistaken, Peter is at home”; the illocutionary: (1e) “If you are thirsty, there is some beer in the fridge”, both if-clauses relating to the higher level of the main clause and constituting a comment

1 Translations of the longer passages are provided (either mine or as indicated). Some of the arguments and phraseology are from my PhD dissertation (2017). 2 Kaufmann (2006) 6. 76 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

on it by the speaker; and, identical with (1a), the predicational: (1f) “If it rains, I’ll take the umbrella”, the if-clause defining a domain for the main clause.3 Martín Puente, contributor to the 2009 anthology Sintaxis del latín clásico, which also takes a functionalist approach, thus emphasizing communication and pragmatics, identifies similar categories to Wakker for Latin conditionals which use si. The counterfactuals (18) to (23) are predicational.

(2) – Other expressions regarded as conditionals are: (2a) “Buy one – get one free”; (2b) “Give me £ 10 and I will fix your bike” (“paratactic conditionals”).4 How do we know that clauses relate conditionally to one another?

(3) – The early Stoics Philo of Megara and Diodorus Cronus asked similar questions: “‘If it is day, it is light; but in fact wheat is being sold in the market; therefore it is light’ … Neither the clause ‘if it is day’ has any relevance and connexion with the clause ‘wheat is being sold in the market’, nor either of these with the clause ‘therefore it is light’, but each of them is inconsistent with the others” (Sextus, Against the Logicians 2.430).5 Chrysippus, quoted in Cicero’s De Fato (6.12), questioned the observations by astrologers of apparently related events: “If … a man was born at the rising of the dogstar, he will not die at sea”.6 In the 20th / 21st century, “relevant” or “relevance” logic developed to examine what connection is desirable in a conditional between antecedent and consequent.

(4) – But is a counterfactual even thinkable? Stephen Barker has concluded that in a phys- ically deterministic world, the divergence between the counterfactual and the real world results in inconsistency of natural laws. It is not possible to imagine a world which diverges from materialised history in too much detail, because the laws of nature prevent the possibility of that world. Barker supports the “pragmatic or metalinguistic approach”, which views counterfactuals as “incomplete representations of divergence, representations that never register the inconsistency”.7 That approach involves a game “between assertor and assessor depending on how much detail” they may want; an uncooperative audience may well ask too many questions about the precise causal path and lead to a collapse of the counterfactual.8 That possibly means that we can utter counterfactuals, but they are not events or states that could have ever occurred.

3 Wakker (1994) 34, 49, 59. 4 Haiman (1983). 5 trans. Bury (1935). 6 trans. Rackham (1942). 7 Barker (2011) 573. 8 ibid. Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 77

(5) – Another useful concept for dealing with conditionals and counterfactuals is modality. It refers to the way the speaker’s attitude toward the proposition is coded: the speaker makes a judgement which can be epistemic (expressing probability or certainty) or evaluative / deontic (expressing desirability, intent, obligation), and often both. Givón, a functional linguist, talks of a modal “shell”, or “envelope” which encases the event, as in the following examples (cases a to d illustrate the traditional “epistemic modalities”):9

a) John ate the sandwich. (Speaker takes it for granted). b) It’s too bad that John ate the sandwich. (Speaker asserts strongly but expects challenge). c) If John eats the sandwich … (Speaker asserts possibility weakly; does not back up assertion; this is a CONDITIONAL). d) John didn’t eat the sandwich. (Speaker strongly asserts falsity of proposition; this includes COUNTERFACTUALS). e) He told John that he should eat the sandwich. (reported speech). f) Eat the sandwich, John! (command). g) Did John eat the sandwich? (question).

The event in all these cases is the same, but the speaker takes a different position towards it in each case. This linguist separates conditionals (casec ) from counterfactuals (case d), rather than seeing the latter as a subgroup of the former.

(6) – Thompsonet al. consider indicative versus subjunctive as the basic opposition of verbal moods.10 This view also distinguishes conditionals from counterfactuals.

(7) – But what are non-indicatives moods? They have been considered to involve “layers of past morphology”. These are markers of the past tense, such as the ending- ed in English; would has been analyzed as woll plus -ed. “If he had come …, he would have been …” contains a further layer of past morphology than “If he came …, he would be …”.11 The use of past tense meanings (“temporal distance”) has been observed cross-linguistically to be closely related to conditionals, and also to perform social and epistemic distancing functions. The term “distal” has been used for past forms of modals and other auxiliaries, to include both temporal and epistemic distance.12 The subjunctive, a non-indicative mood, refers to a world which is

9 Givón (2001) vol. 1, 300–02, 311–12. 10 Thompson, Longacre & Ja Hwang (2007) 102, 108–09. 11 Ippolito (2002) 9. 12 Dancygier & Sweetser (2005) 60–01. 78 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

further from the speaker than the indicative: the speaker of the subjunctive is not pointing at anything, i.e. there is no deixis. But there is continuity between indicative and subjunctive, as the use of past morphology indicates. Also, Latin subjunctive forms became future indicative, and Latin optative forms became subjunctive.13 Both optative and subjunctive were former past tenses or connected with the perfect aspect. Close links between past and non-indicative moods have been observed in many languages. Repeated past, for instance, is expressed in the optative in Homeric Greek subordinate clauses (Il. 12.268: “whenever they saw, ἴδοιεν, a man hang back from the fighting”).14

(8) – Some linguists have challenged the view that the speaker of a counterfactual believes the relevant event did not happen. The only true counterfactuals in modern English in Dancygier and Sweetser’s view are American colloquial forms which written down may be hadda, woulda, or had’ve, would’ve or had of, would of. In the protasis of “If I hadda known you were coming, I woulda stayed home”, the auxiliary is derived from the contraction of the non-occurring form had have. The speaker here specifically emphasises his / her belief in the non-actuality of the event.15

(9) – The position of theif -clause in a conditional has been the object of study. Theif -clause will play a different role depending on its position, as illustrated in this example from a novel: “If they had not seen him already, they would not see him if he remained still”. 16 The different “grounding properties” of the two cases oppose semantics to pragmatics: “A post-posed ADV-clause [adverbial clause] tends to have more local, semantic connections to its main clause”; “a pre-posed ADV-clause tends to have more global, diffuse pragmatic connections to its discourse context”. The pre-posed clause reaches “diffusely back across several preceding chains” (rifles shooting, then silence … ), whereas the post-posed clause remains fixed to the main clause, what has to happen for it to take place.17 Pre-posed adverbial clauses are “coherence bridges”, which link back to the preceding discourse and forward to the main clause.18 Further aspects of the importance of the position of the if-clause are explored at (10) to (13).

(10) – Iconicity is linked to the respective positions of the if-clause (or antecedent or protasis) and then-clause (or consequent or apodosis). It refers to the way syntax mirrors events,

13 See Calboli (2005b). 14 See Benveniste (1951) 17–18. 15 Dancygier & Sweetser (2005). 16 L’Amour (1962) 2; Ramsay (1987) 405. 17 Givón (2001) vol. 2, 345–46. 18 ibid. vol. 2, 345–47. Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 79 or perception of events. Givón thinks there is such a thing as “naturalness of grammar”.19 Chomsky’s argument that animal communication consists of signals associated with the non-linguistic, whereas human language is arbitrary and symbolic, Givón sees as a good summary of the views of Aristotle and Saussure on the arbitrariness of the sign, and of those (1920s–30s) of Leonard Bloomfield, “the father of American structuralism”.20 On the opposite side, Peirce (1940), like Givón, found that most grammatical constructions contain a mixture of devices which go from the more iconic to the more arbitrary.21 Predictable or unimportant information is left out, whereas important information is fronted, and “the temporal order in which events occurred will be mirrored in the linguistic report of the events”.22

(11) – It is assumed that if-clauses are “naturally” placed before their main clauses. ‘Universal of Word Order’ 14 by J. H. Greenberg states: “In conditional statements, the conditional clause precedes the conclusion as the normal order in all languages”.23 There is some cross-linguistic evidence in favour of that view:24 the if-clause temporally and logically precedes the main clause (iconicity); given information (if-clauses) precedes new information.25

(12) – Some studies have developed Greenberg’s Universal 14, by arguing that, pragmatically speaking, if-clauses have a Theme or a Topic function. Themes precede the main clause, on a pattern parallel to “My brother, I haven’t seen him for years”.26

(13) – Wakker argues that at least some Greek if-clauses are extra-clausal constituents which may precede, follow or interrupt their main clause, on a pattern parallel to: “Ladies and gen tlemen, shall we start the game?” and “The circumstances being thus, you may go”.27

(14) – Timberlake offers the interesting view that past narrative may be a record of conditions and consequences that are fulfilled, without a conditional construction being explicitly shown. He illustrates his thesis with a passage from Darwin: “On one occasion I saw two of these monsters, probably male and female, slowly swimming one after the other, within less than a stone’s throw of the shore” (Darwin, ‘Tierra del Fuego’, 22 Jan. 1833). The speaker here points to the expected, that whales do not come close to the shore, and informs the addressee that

19 ibid. vol. 1, 34. 20 Chomsky (1968) 69–70; Givón (2001) vol. 1, 36, 5. 21 ibid. vol. 1, 34. 22 ibid. vol. 1, 34–35. 23 Greenberg (1966) 84; Wakker (1994) 50. 24 See Comrie (1986) 83–86. 25 See Haiman (1980) 528. 26 See Haiman (1978); example in Wakker (1994) 64 n.16. 27 Wakker (1994) 50–103; examples, 87. 80 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

the opposite was the case: whales did come very near to the shore. The passage demonstrates that alternative courses of events are always present in language, although not fully spelled out.28 Action theory makes a similar point: “Every description of an action contains, in a concealed form, a counterfactual … When we say, e.g., that an agent opened a window, we imply that, had it not been for the agent’s interference, the window would, on that occasion, have remained closed”.29

(15) – Prince talks of “the disnarrated”, which points to possibilities mentioned in the text but unrealised: “A less truthful man might have been tempted into … a less sane man might have believed … but Silas was both sane and honest” (George Eliot, Silas Marner).30 The third possibility is the only one which is realised. The disnarrated can delay the presentation of action, function as a device to add to characterisation, or show that the narrator has the power to multiply potential lines of development. But its most important function is to say why the narrative is worth telling: it is because it could have been, or it normally is, otherwise.

(16) – The disnarrated has predecessors in Shklovsky’s 1917 essay on the role of art to make the familiar look fresh, and Labov on “comparators”, such as negatives and modals, as devices for comparing unrealised with realised events: “The use of negatives … expresses the defeat of an expectation that something would happen. Negative sentences draw upon a cognitive background considerably richer than the set of events which were observed”.31

(17) – Marie-Laure Ryan’s 1991 Possible Worlds comments on the pragmatic purpose of counterfactuals: it “is not to create alternate possible worlds for their own sake, but to make a point about the actual world”.32 Counterfactuals point out how close an event came to happening, thus commenting on the present world.

(18) – Counterfactuals can be “upward” (considering better alternatives to reality; these stimulate regret) or “downward” (considering worse alternatives; these stimulate satisfaction). People tend to regret things they did not do rather than the opposite. Much popular fiction presents worse alternatives to reality, such as a Nazi victory in World War 2, so generating satisfaction with the real world.33

28 Timberlake (2007) 321–322. 29 von Wright (1967) 124. 30 Prince (1992) 35. 31 Labov (1972) 380–81. 32 Ryan (1991) 48. 33 Dannenberg (2008) 112–13. Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 81

(19) – Armed with this variety of concepts, we will look next at the Homeric if-not counterfactual at Iliad 20.288–91 (quoted with the following line):

ἔνθά κεν Αἰνείας μὲν ἐπεσσύμενον βάλε πέτρῳ ἢ κόρυθ᾽ ἠὲ σάκος, τό οἱ ἤρκεσε λυγρὸν ὄλεθρον, τὸν δέ κε Πηλεΐδης σχεδὸν ἄορι θυμὸν ἀπηύρα, εἰ μὴ ἄρ᾽ ὀξὺ νόησε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων: αὐτίκα δ᾽ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖς μετὰ μῦθον ἔειπεν …

(“Then would Aeneas have smitten him with the stone, as he rushed upon him, either on helm or on the shield that had [or: would have] warded from him woeful destruction, and the son of Peleus in close combat would with his sword have robbed Aeneas of life, had not Poseidon, the Shaker of Earth, been quick to see. And forthwith he spake among the immortal gods, saying: …”).34

Narrow escapes in the Iliad are related in this way, generally the last-minute rescue of a hero by a god or a human, or the last-minute rescue of one side in the war.35 These constructions, 38 in the Iliad according to de Jong, present the unreal but likely alternative first then( would Aeneas have smitten him … and the son of Peleus … would with his sword have robbed Aeneas of life), and the real event in the if-not clause second (had not Poseidon, the Shaker of the Earth, been quick to see). Counterfactuals which do not qualify as if-nots exist in Homer, but they have a reverse order of clauses, by comparison with if-nots, and have fully hypothetical meaning, the factual event coming in a later main clause (rather than the protasis, as is the case in if-nots): And if the course had been still longer for the two of them, / then he would have passed him by … / But Meriones … was a spear-cast behind glorious Menelaus … (Il. 23.526–31).36 The factual course of action in the negative in the protasis of anif -not, following the counterfactual apodosis, emphasises the clash between audience’s expectation and actuality. We saw at (16) that negatives are often used to defeat expectation. As Marouzeau commented, there is no need to say that it is not raining, unless someone thinks it is.37 In this case, the negative expression conveys the actual course of events following the presentation of the one that seemed most likely at that juncture. In the light of Timberlake’s remarks, moreover, outlined at (14), on the implicit alternatives hidden in language, we can read Homer’s if-not constructions as manifestations of that intrinsic feature. The narrator of anif -not articulates

34 trans. Murray (1946). 35 de Jong (2004) 68–78. 36 trans. Murray (1946). 37 Marouzeau (1949) 185. 82 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

some of the possibilities that are generally left lurking in the text, to varying degrees invisible to the audience, but always present. The most important feature of this particular Homericif -not, as opposed to the others in the Iliad, is that in it Poseidon only just succeeds in stopping a course of events that would be disastrous for the text: the Iliad would collapse, as an actualized Il. 20.288–91 would oppose fate and poetic tradition.38 Neither Aeneas nor Achilles can die at this juncture in the narrative: Poseidon warns Aeneas not to act against destiny shortly later (Il. 20.336). The remainingif -nots of the Iliad describe less dramatic situations, which do not involve the chief characters in combat with each other. The two Aiantes stop a fight between Hector and Automedon at Il. 17.530–31 in an if-not, but whether the actualization of that hypothetical sequence challenges fate is debatable. These constructions are just staple ingredients of epic, and no risk to any of the characters is ever seriously intended by the narrator beyond the level of game. Theif -not protasis, factual and subsequent to the apodosis, just redirects the narrative.

(20) – We can now look at the counterfactual in the Aeneid that comes closest to the Homeric one just analysed (Il. 20.288–91) in sense and – perhaps less, but still to an extent – in syntax. It is spoken by Aeneas to Dido and the Carthaginian court (Aen. 2.54–56):

Et, si fata deum, si mens non laeva fuisset, impulerat ferro Argolicas foedare latebras, Troiaque nunc staret, Priamique arx alta maneres.

(“Had not god-given fates, divine minds (and our own) been against us, That would have driven our swords to turn Argive lair into bloodbath, Troy would endure to this today; you’d still stand, fortress of Priam”).39

An unburnt Troy means no mission to Italy, no Rome and no Aeneas uttering the counterfactual to Dido and the Carthaginians. The apostrophe to a defunct Troy, technically the tail-end of Aeneas’ counterfactual, has a precedent in Poseidon’s soliloquy at the opening of Euripides’ Trojan Women (45–47):

ἀλλ᾽, ὦ ποτ᾽ εὐτυχοῦσα, χαῖρέ μοι, πόλις ξεστόν τε πύργωμ᾽: εἴ σε μὴ διώλεσεν Παλλὰς Διὸς παῖς, ἦσθ᾽ ἂν ἐν βάθροις ἔτι.

38 See Bakker 1997 (178). 39 trans. Ahl (2007). Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 83

(“Farewell, O city once prosperous! farewell, you ramparts of polished stone! If Pallas, daughter of Zeus, had not decreed your ruin, you would be standing firmly still”).40

Poseidon’s counterfactual has a negative protasis preceding the apodosis just like Aeneas’; the latter, however, has probably two protases and certainly three apodoses. Horsfall,41 following Page42 and against Conington’s43 application of laeva only to mens (with another protasis parallel to si fata fuissent of 2.433), reads non laeva fuisset applied to both si-clauses; deum he also allocates to both members, although he does not exclude mens, which he reads as mens deum, referring also to humans (the Trojans who failed to spot the ruse). But a most important aspect of the syntax separates Aeneas’ counterfactual from both Poseidon’s in Euripides and the narrator’s in Il. 20.288–91: the verbal mood of the first apodosis. If we were to read only impulerat ferro Argolicas foedare latebras, what would we understand? An agent “had driven us to defile the Argive hiding-places with a weapon”. Aeneas’ words would seem to relate a fact, because the sentence has an indicative verb (pluperfect). In the Greek parallels, of course, the indicative produces no such effect, since with ἄν and κε(ν), and on occasions without, it has hypothetical value. We know that impulerat is not factual by the preceding pluperfect subjunctive protases (si fata deum, si mens non laeva fuisset), and subsequent imperfect subjunctive apodoses (Troiaque nunc staret, Priamique arx alta maneres). The full attack on the Trojan horse (impulerat), therefore, is clearly only a non-actualized alternative, like the survival of Troy and Priam’s palace narrated in the two subjunctive apodoses. Aeneas moves from the technically factual though clearly hypothetical past (impulerat), to the fully hypothetical present (staret, maneres). That movement, past to present, also occurs between the pluperfect subjunctive fuisset and the two imperfect subjunctives staret and maneres. The consequence of a past course of action which did not materialize is conjectured by Aeneas as the possible, current survival of Troy. Theimpulerat apodosis encroaches into that with an apparent fact, but ultimately joins the counterfactual past. Another important difference concerns the likely role of Aeneas’ counterfactual. Whereas the instance from the Iliad is in the narrator’s voice, Aen. 2.54–56 is spoken by Aeneas, as an interruption of his own story of the fall of Troy, to an audience, that of Dido and her court. We know that, as more clearly revealed in two other of Aeneas’ counterfactuals, obviously intended to defend his flight from Troy (2.291–92 and 2.431–34, not analysed here), it is vital for the hero to attempt to reassure his audiences, internal (at Carthage) and external (in Virgil’s Rome), of the blamelessness of his behaviour. Stories of Aeneas’ betrayal of Troy circulated in

40 trans. Coleridge (1891). 41 Horsfall (2008) ad 2.54. 42 Page (1970) ad 2.54. 43 Conington (1876) ad 2.54. 84 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

antiquity, as discussed by Powell:44 it may occur to Aeneas that the Carthaginians could know them too; so could Virgil’s contemporaries. Aeneas’ current counterfactual, therefore, has a pragmatic function, which the Homeric model does not have. Aeneas, moreover, expresses regret that the Trojans did not destroy the wooden horse. This is an upward counterfactual, one which portrays a better alternative to a past event, and therefore a negative comment on current reality by its speaker. It conveys the thought “things could have been better”, and, like the majority of its real-life counterparts, as outlined at (18), expresses regret for inaction. When witnessing upward counterfactuals, Dido and the Carthaginians will feel dissatisfied with the actual world, and may try to improve it. That is indeed what happens: Aeneas receives assistance from his interlocutors. And one of the verbal ploys Aeneas has used to bring this about is the description of a key event as both real and unreal: with impulerat, Aeneas has presented the beginning of an unmaterialized, better alternative world as partly materialized, and has used that ambiguity to his own advantage. Two features make si fata deum and Euripides’ εἴ σε μὴ διώλεσεν not Homeric if-nots. The main one is the initial position of the protasis, which follows Greenberg’s Universal 14 (12). This protasis does not erase the action reported in an initial apodosis.If -nots that do are 6.358–61 (discussed next), also with indicative apodosis, and, with subjunctive apodosis, 10.324–30 (not discussed). The second feature that probably makesAen. 2.54–56 not a Homeric if-not is the use of si non as the conditional conjunction rather than ni or nisi. There is disagreement on the distinction, or otherwise, between Latin if-nots with indicative and those with subjunctive apodoses, and between si non and ni / nisi. Cum-clauses in final position have been compared to ni-clauses too. Chausserie-Laprée and Mellet classify the following two examples, which stand not far apart in Livy, as similar:45 cedebatque inde Romanus, cum … consul …:‘Hoc iurastis’, inquit, ‘milites?’ (“the Romans were giving way at that point, when … the consul … cried: ‘Was this your oath, men?’’’, 2.46.5)46 and cessissentque loco, ni consul … rem inclinatam sustinuisset (“they would have yielded the position, had not the other consul … put a stop to their wavering”, 2.47.3).47 The first contains cuma -clause in final position, which is not a ni-clause, but performs a similar function: it interrupts ongoing action. The subjunctive of cessissent, on the other hand, as argued by Torrego,48 makes the apodosis unreal, and therefore unlike an indicative main clause which reports a fact, such as cedebatque inde Romanus and impulerat ferro Argolicas foedare latebras, the first apodosis of Aeneas’ counterfactual. Synonymy between si non and ni / nisi is also rejected by Torrego: “Je ne pense pas que ce type 44 Powell (2011) 189–95. 45 Chausserie-Laprée (1969) 598; Mellet (1988) 231. 46 trans. Foster (1919). 47 trans. ibid. 48 Torrego (1999) 395 n.7. Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 85 de périodes [indicative main clause followed by subjunctive nisi-clause] puisse se présenter avec les autres conjonctions conditionnelles, tout au moins pas avec si”. 49 She specifically disagrees with Kühner-Stegmann’s inclusion of the following as examples of main clause interrupted by a protasis: si per L. Metellum licitum esset matres … veniebant (“If Metellus had allowed, the mothers … would have come”, Cic. Verr. 2.5.129).50 Kühner-Stegmann’s reasoning is that the mothers wanted to come, and would have come, but were not allowed. Kühner-Stegmann also list the following as instances of unfinished main clauses presented as finished, generally taking the pluperfect:51 me truncus inlapsus cerebro sustulerat, nisi Faunum dextra levasset (“As for me, the tree that fell on my crown would have carried me off had not Faunus lightened the blow with his hand”, Hor. Carm. 2.17.27–29);52 Inclusam Danaën … excubiae munierant satis … si non Acrisium … custodem Iuppiter et Venus risissent (“Watchdogs would have protected the locked-up Danaë well enough … had not Jupiter and Venus laughed at Acrisius the jailer”, Hor. Carm. 3.16.1–7);53 and our et, si fata deum … impulerat ….54 However, even if we agree with the equivalence of si non and ni / nisi, the initial position of et si fata deum … fuisset would seem to place the resulting counterfactual in a different group from the other two. The initial protasis removes the element of surprise that comes with a protasis which is final. In summary, whereas the similarity between finalcum -clauses and finalni -clauses is generally acknowledged, there is no consensus on how close they are to each other, whether si non (and possibly si) and ni / nisi have the same value in a potential Homeric-style Latin if-not, whether indicative apodoses of Latin if-nots can be assimilated to subjunctive ones, and what role precisely in those structures is played by the respective positions of protasis and apodosis. It is, therefore, difficult to assess how far ouret, si fata deum constitutes a Homeric if-not. Both Il. 20.288–91 and Aen. 2.54–56 portray the risk of the collapse of the text and both have a recognizable if-not construction, but a number of factors in the latter, and in particular the initial position of the protasis, would seem to rule out full Homeric status. Orlandini’s discussion of mitigators might shed a different light on the question. Mitigators can be “bushes”, “hedges” or “shields”;55 they convey a speaker’s distance from deixis (pointing at something), and modify the factuality of sentences by reducing the speaker’s commitment to utterances. In Latin, “bushes” are quasi, tamquam, velut, quidam; “hedges” are features of verbs, described below;56 “shields” resemble “bushes”, distancing the speaker from deixis

49 ibid. 395 n.6. 50 Kühner-Stegmann’s (1955) vol. II.2, 404d. 51 ibid. vol. II.2, 403c. 52 My translation, modified from Rudd’s (2012), which has “the tree … had carried off, had not …”. 53 My translation, rearranged from Rudd’s (2012). 54 Horace’s two counterfactuals are probably contemporaneous with Virgil’s, the dramatic date of Horace’s Carm. 2 being 25–24 BC and that of Carm. 3 being 23 BC, according to Hutchinson (2002) 524–25, 528–29. 55 Hare (1970); Lakoff (1973); Caffi (1999). 56 Orlandini (2005) 621–22. 86 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

(ego-hic-nunc) and attributing the assertion to a different speaker. The second group of mitigators (hedges) involves tenses, moods and constructions which operate on the degree of speakers’ commitment to the illocutionary act.57 The perfect subjunctive constitutes an example of extreme non-deixis: aliquis dixerit has no deictic reference in the past and no deictic perspective point.58 It can also express the speaker’s opinion of improbability: CH nescit quid faciat auro. NI Mihi dederit velim (“CH: He doesn’t know what to do with the gold. NI: I wish he would give it to me”. Plaut. Bacch. 334).59 Another group, “false conditionals”, has non-deictic, indicative modal auxiliaries which signal a possibility (or obligation) but simultaneously its non-actualization: At si ita esset, hac lege accusatum oportuit, qua accusatur Habitus (“But had it been so, he ought to have been prosecuted under the same statute as Habitus is now”, Cic. Clu. 90).60 In false conditionals, past possible worlds are annihilated by reality: Cato qui Sicilia tenere nullo negotio potuit et, si tenuisset, omnes boni ad eum se contulissent (“Cato, who could have held Sicily without any difficulty (and if he had, all the honest men would have joined him)”, Cic. Att. 10.16.3).61 The indicative enables a contrast: between the high degree of probability of actualization of the utterance, and the lack of its actualization.62 In this category, Orlandini lists Latin indicative if-nots. The predicated event would have happened, if another circumstance had not stopped it. The tense of the apodosis is the indicative, but the apodosis is not deictic. The oldest have a perfect withpaene or prope: paene inprudentia admissum (fuit) facinus miserabile, ni utrimque praemissi equites rem exploravissent (“a lamentable deed almost resulted from their misapprehension if horsemen sent ahead by both sides had not reconnoitered”, Sall. Iug. 53.7).63 Orlandini’s Virgilian example is Aen. 6.358–60:64 iam tuta tenebam / ni gens crudelis … invasisset (this is analysed next). In these conditionals, there is a move towards the realization of the predication which is not carried through, despite the high probability of realization.65 By this logic, et, si fata deum probably qualifies as a Homericif -not. As we saw in the previous case (19), the principal feature of a Homeric if-not consists in the interruption of a course of action that is about to materialize, conveyed in a clause introduced by if not (εἰ μή). There is certainly a move towards the realization of the first apodosis inet, si fata deum … non laeva fuisset, impulerat … latebras, due to the use of the indicative. But in the Homeric if-not analyzed, the indicative κεν … βάλε (Il. 20.288) does not produce that effect, because it has full hypothetical meaning. And what

57 Orlandini (2005) 622. 58 Bertinetto (1994) 796; Orlandini (2005) 623. 59 Orlandini (2005) 623–24. 60 trans. Grose Hodge (1927). 61 trans. Shackleton Bailey (1999). 62 Orlandini (2005) 626. 63 trans. Rolfe-Ramsey (2013); See Chausserie-Laprée (1969) 602. 64 Orlandini (2005) 627–28. 65 ibid. 628. Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 87 about the initial position of the protasis? We may ask perhaps where precisely the apodosis starts. While we know for sure where the protasis begins (si fata), the start of the apodosis seems somewhat diffuse. By the time we reachsi fata, we already know of an event that belongs to the apodosis. We know that Laocoon has thrown a spear at the wooden horse: Validis ingentem viribus hastam / in latus inque feri curvam compagibus alvum / contorsit. Stetit illa tremens, uteroque recusso / insonuere cavae gemitumque dedere cavernae (2.50–53). The action of destroying the horse has very noticeably started. The protasiset si … follows, and interrupts the continuation of the action. There is, therefore, some degree of similarity between this and Homeric if-nots: the protasis does reverse the logical continuation of a course of action. With impulerat foedare next, there is a partial repetition of the act of destroying the horse: hastam / in latus inque feri … alvum / contorsit (preceding the protasis) is partly replicated by impulerat foedare latebras (following the protasis). A similar semantic overlap is absent, for instance, from Horace’s if-not in Carm. 2.17.27–30, with second-position ni-clause and initial indicative apodosis, to which Austin draws attention.66 What precedes these lines is not an earlier statement of any part of the counterfactual:

Te Iovis inpio tutela Saturno refulgens eripuit volucrisque Fati

tardavit alas, cum populus frequens laetum theatris ter crepuit sonum; me truncus inlapsus cerebro, sustulerat, nisi Faunus ictum

dextra levasset, Mercurialium custos virorum.

(“In your case, the protective power of Jupiter, shining brightly in the face of the malign Saturn, snatched you away and slowed down the wings of flying Fate at the time when the crowds of people at the theatre gave three happy rounds of applause. As for me, the tree that fell on my crown would have carried me off had not Faunus, the guardian of Mercury’s men, lightened the blow with his hand”).67

66 Austin (1964) ad 2.55. 67 Rudd’s translation (2012), with conditional emphasized by me (“the tree … would have carried me off …”; cf. n.52 above). 88 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

If the impulerat counterfactual qualifies as a Homericif -not, the sense will be: “Laocoon would have pushed us to destroy the horse, if we and the fates had not been adverse; and Troy would now be standing”. But Virgil’s protasis in the initial position prevents that reading. No if-clause intervenes to reverse an almost factual main clause. Ahl’s translation, on the other hand, quoted above (“That would have driven our swords to turn Argive lair into bloodbath”), encourages the resumption of the events which precede the protasis as the immediate precursors of impulerat: Laocoon’s arrival, his warning against the horse, and his attack on it with the javelin (2.40–53). We can observe, finally, that the duplication of immediately pre- and immediately post-protasis material is the opposite counterpart of the splitting of Trojan responses to the arrival of the horse: Aeneas says that some favour bringing the horse in (pars … / … Thymoetes, 2.31–34), and others its destruction (at Capys, 2.35–38). One line summarizes that split: scinditur incertum studia in contraria vulgus (2.39). Two paths are open to the Trojans, and the first (allowing the wooden horse in) becomes actualized, in the poem and Rome, whereas the second (destroying the horse) becomes counterfactual.

(21) – Closer to the Homeric if-not outlined at (19) in syntax but not in structural significance is Aen. 6.358–61:

‘Paulatim adnabam terrae; iam tuta tenebam, ni gens crudelis madida cum veste gravatum prensantemque uncis manibus capita aspera montis ferro invasisset praedamque ignara putasset’.

(“‘Slowly but surely I swam towards land, I was grasping at safety, Hooking my hands round the crags of the cliff-top. And I would have made it Had cruel people, ignorant men, not attacked me with cold steel, Thinking I was fair game, weighed down as I was by my wet clothes’”).68

The negative protasis ni( gens … ferro invasisset praedamque ignara putasset) in this case follows the apodosis (iam tuta tenebam) and redirects the narrative (nunc me fluctus habet, 6.362), in parallel with the Homeric pattern. As in the previous instance (2.54–56), however, and differently from Homeric ones, the apodosis is apparently factual: read by itself, iam tuta tenebam states a fact. That is due to the indicative, imperfect in this case, oftenebam . This formulation is that popular among Latin historians, contemporaries of Virgil and later. Chausserie-Laprée identifies 14 indicative apodosisif -nots in Livy, 3 of which are perfect (2.10.2, 65.4; 22.60.17),

68 trans. Ahl (2007). Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 89

1 pluperfect (34.29.10) and 10 imperfect (2.50.10; 3.1.4, 43.7; 4.52.5; 5.26.10; 7.14.5; 23.40.8; 28.33.5; 40.32.5; 45.19.7), plus 3 infinitive and 76 subjunctives (7 of the subjunctives have nisi).69 Palinurus speaks 6.358–61 in the Underworld, where Aeneas asks his shade how he came to die. The military language, therefore, is appropriate: in a conflictual situation, as in Livy, one course of events is related as factual (tenebam), while another interrupts it in a ni-clause which reverses that factuality (ni … invasisset … putasset). There is, in Orlandini’s language,70 a step towards the realization of the predication, but that realization does not happen. Palinurus is not safe. The imperfect is fitting too, as the most widely used tense for this effect by Livy. Also the use ofiam is typical of these constructions: iamque haud procul iusto proelio res erat, ni celeriter diremptum certamen per centurionem esset (“And now the mêlée was likely to end in a regular battle, had not the centurions speedily parted the combatants”, Liv. 7.14.5;71 cf. 4.52.5; 40.32.5). A second important feature of this if-not is the lack of a clear connection between iam tuta tenebam and ni gens crudelis … / ferro invasisset praedamque ignara putasset. Scholars often suggest ways of filling gaps in these cases; they add a supplement to the existing apodosis, a continuation of the stated action. Austin offers “I held safety in my grasp (and would have reached it) had not …”.72 Tarrant finds a disconnection between main and secondary clauses which is less audacious than that of ensis / frangitur … deserit … / ni fuga subsidio subeat (12.731–33, examined below).73 Horsfall suggests an infill similar to Austin’s. He also observes that, in view of 6.360, tenebam has to be either inceptive or conative: Palinurus’ reference to himself in the ni-clause as grabbing the cliffs signals his movement towards safety, rather than the actual state.74 The unfinished quality of the imperfect indicative may also allow an apodosis which needs no supplement in order to make sense. In that case, the ni-clause would have to be read as a cum-clause: this presents a one-off action which redirects the narrative against the background of an ongoing process.75 Palinurus would then claim to have been grasping at safety when enemy people struck, and would continue with a reflection on his present status as a corpse in need of burial (nunc me fluctus habet). How does Virgil’s iam tuta tenebam relate to Livy’s similar constructions? Some of Livy’s indicative if-not apodoses suggest a similar truncation to that of Aen. 6.358–61. How an apodosis can be extracted from a component of the grammatical protasis is shown by Foster’s

69 Chausserie-Laprée (1969) 637. 70 Orlandini (2005) 628. 71 trans. Foster (1924). 72 Austin (1977) ad 6.358. 73 Tarrant (2012) ad 12.733. 74 Horsfall (2013) ad 6.358. 75 As in Livy 2.46.5, quoted above as similar to his ni-counterfactual with subjunctive apodosis at 2.47.3, according to Chausserie-Laprée (1969) 598 and Mellet (1988) 231: cedebatque inde Romanus, cum … consul …: ‘Hoc iurastis’, inquit, ‘milites …?’ 90 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

translation (1919) of Livy 2.65.4 with the perfect indicative apodosis and prope, which of course makes the apodosis unreal rather than inceptive:

Sic prope oneratum est sinistrum Romanis cornu, ni referentibus iam gradum consul increpando simul temeritatem, simul ignaviam, pudore metum excussisset

(“The left wing of the Romans was nearly overwhelmed, and had already begun to retreat, when the consul, reproaching them at once with rashness and with cowardice, succeeded in shaming them out of their fear”).

Foster transfers referentibus iam gradum into a second apodosis; ni becomes cum and the apodosis (“the left wing … was nearly overwhelmed”) merely a main clause. We can see the retroactive effect of an object from the protasis which comes to modify the apodosis:referen tibus iam gradum describes sinistrum cornu, just as prensantemque uncis manibus capita aspera montis describes the subject of tenebam, without however the slight contradiction that we find in the latter (the inapplicability ofiam tuta tenebam once we know that Palinurus was not grasping at safety yet; that inapplicability, as discussed, is attenuated by the unfinished quality of the imperfect). A missing apodosis left unsupplemented can be observed in Foster’s translation (1924) of Livy’s instance cited above: “And now the mêlée was likely to end in a regular battle, had not the centurions speedily parted the combatants” (for iamque haud procul iusto proelio res erat, ni celeriter diremptum certamen per centurionem esset, 7.14.5). This apodosis states the direction the narrative is taking, but falls short of pinpointing the state of affairs or course of events prevented by theni -clause: what precisely the centurions’ action interrupts is left unexpressed. Foster adds no material, relying rather on the future sense of “was likely to” (haud procul) for a continuation of the apodosis. But it is not exactly the likelihood of battle that the ni-clause interrupts. It is rather the next, unspoken step in the narrative: the battle taking place. For an even clearer gap between apodosis and protasis, we may consider Foster’s translation (1919) of Livy 2.50.10: “and a handful of men, with the aid of a good position, were winning the victory, when the Veientes who had been sent round by the ridge emerged upon the crest of the hill” (for vincebatque auxilio loci paucitas, ni iugo circummissus Veiens in verticem collis evasisset): ni has been translated as “when”, because no precise state of affairs or course of events is specified in the apodosis for theni -clause to interrupt. The ni-clause has been treated as a cum-clause again. An alternative without “when” would have to include a continuation of the existing aposodis along the lines of “were winning the victory [and would have won] if the Veientes had not …”. A third aspect to note is the absence in Livy’s indicative apodoses if-nots of first person speakers. Most of Livy’s text is in third person narrative, only 22.60.17 featuring in a speech Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 91

(in third person). Palinurus’ iam tuta tenebam shares more in that respect with the counterfactual of Horace’s ode seen above (2.17.27–29). But there the if-not indicative apodosis is in the pluperfect (sustulerat), and so without the sense that the action is ongoing, provided by the imperfect (tenebam). To conclude section (21), we can say that Palinurus’ counterfactual observation to Aeneas is structured like a Homeric if-not, with a negative protasis truncating the action reported in a preceding apodosis, but also with that apodosis partly factual, just as we find in Livy. Aeneas’ counterfactual to Dido (20), on the other hand, comes closer in meaning to the narrator’s one at Il. 20.288–92. Both narrate the possible non-existence of the present, including the text in which they figure.

(22) – A negative protasis in end position also features in the counterfactual spoken by Aeneas to the Latin envoys, who have come to ask for a truce to bury their dead (Aen. 11.110–19):

‘Pacem me exanimis et Martis sorte peremptis oratis? Equidem et vivis concedere vellem. Nec veni, nisi fata locum sedemque dedissent, nec bellum cum gente gero; rex nostra reliquit hospitia et Turni potius se credidit armis. Aequius huic Turnum fuerat se opponere morti. Si bellum finire manu, si pellere Teucros apparat, his mecum decuit concurrere telis: vixet cui vitam deus aut sua dextra dedisset. Nunc ite et miseris supponite civibus ignem’.

(“‘Peace for the dead, for the losers in Mars’ game of chance, that’s the only Favour you beg? I’d be willing to grant the same terms to the living! I wouldn’t be here, if fate hadn’t granted me this place to settle. I’m not at war with your people. Your king walked out on the welcome We offered, choosing to hazard his fortunes on Turnus’s weapons. Turnus, not they, should have faced this death. That would have been fairer. If he’s prepared to end war with his hand, and get rid of the Teucrians, These are the weapons, and I am the man honour called him to challenge. Life would have been the survivor’s reward from a god or his own strength. [Fairclough-Goold (2001): “the one of us should have lived to whom heaven or his own right hand had granted life”] Go now, and kindle the flames beneath your poor citizens’ bodies!’”)76

76 trans. Ahl (2007). 92 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

The clash of not only moods, but particularly of the tenses of those moods is probably the most striking aspect of the one-line counterfactual nec veni … dedissent (11.112). A perfect indicative apodosis (veni) followed by a pluperfect subjunctive protasis (dedissent) is not unprecedented. In Plautus and Livy, however, there is an adverb (paene) to remove factuality: paene in foveam decidi, ni hic adesses (Plaut. Pers. 594–95); pons sublicius iter paene hostibus dedit, ni unus vir fuisset, Horatius Cocles (Liv. 2.10.2). Virgil’s version, with no softening of the factuality of veni (except for the negative, discussed shortly), is radically different from those cases. Aeneas is not claiming that he “nearly” did not come to Italy. But, like Il. 20.288–91, the counterfactual portrays a state of affairs which challenges the existence of the present, thus of the text. Another question is whether the counterfactual warrants the addition of a supplementary apodosis: we have seen that a continuation of the event or state represented in the visible apodosis is often necessary in similar constructions, if theni -clause is to make sense. No addition is necessary on this occasion according to Williams, who compares the current case to 2.54–56, with impulerat in the apodosis (“where however the more natural pluperfect is used”).77 Other critics are silent on the matter, perhaps because the perfect applied to venio designates a completed state which cannot be extended, and, more importantly, because the sense of the counterfactual is not that of a Homeric if-not. No course of action that the audience may reasonably expect is interrupted by the protasis. The resemblance to a Homericif -not, then, is only apparent. Virgil produces no other perfect indicative if-not apodosis, and none of Livy’s indicative if-not apodoses uses a perfect without de-actualizing it (prope oneratum est …, ni …, 2.65.4, discussed above). Virgil, therefore, appears to be experimenting with the if-not format more daringly than Livy. Tacitus offers five imperfects, two pluperfects and one perfect, but with prope (which removes factuality: prope in proelium exarsere, ni Valens … admonuisset, Hist. 1.64).78 The perfect could also be viewed differently. As a statement by Aeneas about his current circumstances, nec veni conveys a sense of present. Aspect is generally acknowledged as less important in Latin than in Greek, memini as a fossilized perfect used as a present being a rarity, along with novi.79 But Conington’s observation would seem appropriate: Aeneas, “to show the sincerity of his plea, says that he has not come, as if the present could be annulled by the absence of a condition operating in the past”.80 Aeneas’ statement is definitely about the time of speaking, a denial of his current presence. The apodosisnec veni probably does share the reference to the present proper to memini and novi.

77 Williams (1973) ad 11.112. The initial position of the protasis at 2.54 makes the two quite different. 78 Cf. Chausserie-Laprée (1969) 637. 79 See Pinkster (1990) 231. 80 Conington (1876) ad 11.112. Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 93

Aeneas’ nec veni is interesting also for other reasons. Livy’s indicative if-not apodoses have no negatives.81 Homer has comparable cases (Il. 11.504–07; 12.290–93; Od. 5.177–79; 10.342–44; 19.343–47). Aen. 11.112 conceivably resembles these Homeric instances, particularly those spoken by characters (the Odyssey cases). The marked use of the indicative, however, clearly does not apply to Homer, and Aeneas’ nec veni claim involves no interrupted action. The adventurousness of Aeneas’ utterance perhaps underlines his reluctance to participate in the events forced upon him by fate. That is one of the clearest motifs in the poem. Worth exploring is also the relationship of nec veni with the indicatives used hypothetically that follow, fuerat and decuit in the next five lines:

‘Aequius huic Turnum fuerat se opponere morti. Si bellum finire manu, si pellere Teucros apparat, his mecum decuit concurrere telis: vixet cui vitam deus aut sua dextra dedisset’. (11.115–18).

In a sentence which resembles an apodosis without protasis (115), followed by a conditional with two protases and one final apodosis (116–17), and by either another apodosis or a wish (118), Aeneas proposes an alternative to war. The expressionsaequum / difficile / longum / melius / satius est and verbs that indicate power, convenience and obligation (possum, debeo, oportet, decet, necesse est) are commonly expressed in the indicative also when portraying hypothetical situations.82 In the first case aequius( … morti), sum takes the pluperfect indicative. One critic at least appears to have taken that literally: Conington, while acknowledging one instance of aequius fuerat as hypothetical in Plautus (Trin. 119), argues that “fuerat here is hardly for fuisset, but refers to the combat of the day before”.83 As huic morti is acknowledged to denote the dead bodies from the battle, that temporal reference is correct. The more widespread opinion, however, is thatfuerat is hypothetical.84 That sense of fuerat is also supported by the similar use in Latinus’ wish for an earlier decision in the forthcoming Latin council (fuerat melius, 11.303). In both, an alternative and preferable course of action, as estimated by the speaker, to what has happened is presented. In these constructions, the content of a protasis is in the complement framed in the infinitive:huic Turnum se opponere morti. Latinus’ version is more clearly hypothetical, because of ante and the subjunctive of vellem, which underlines that the wished-for events did not happen: Ante

81 See Chausserie-Laprée (1969) 637. 82 See Ernout & Thomas (1953) § 264, § 375c. 83 Conington (1876) ad 11.115. 84 As shown, for instance, in Ahl’s (2007) translation: “That would have been fairer”. 94 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

equidem summa de re statuisse, Latini, / et vellem et fuerat melius (11.302–03). If Latinus wishes something, it means it is not there now. That is also the logic of the indicatives aequum / melius est, possum etc, and as used in the next conditional (decuit concurrere): a judgment on what is desired, possible, or better generally implies that there are at least two states or courses of action, one materialized and one not. That also applies tovolo , of course, but whereas for volo the subjunctive is perceived as necessary in Latin,85 it is not for the other expressions: the speaker’s estimation that there is an alternative is seen to make sense in the indicative. Aeneas expands his wish that Turnus alone rather than his whole army had faced death with more conditional material: si bellum finire manu, si pellere Teucros / apparat, his mecum decuit concurrere telis (11.116–17). The present indicativeapparat in the initial protasis suggests that the speaker considers the materialization of apparo possible. The perfect indicative decuit in the apodosis, however, refers to the past, a temporal reference confirmed by mention of the weapons of the earlier battle (his telis). Aeneas judges that fighting with him would have been the right thing for Turnus to do on the day before, in alternative to the fight which did take place. Aeneas then goes on to express a further counterfactual estimation, in a pluperfect subjunctive line which extends the apodosis: vixet cui vitam deus aut sua dextra dedisset (11.118). This wish for a different past is interesting. Conington finds thatvixet “has a potential or quasi imperative sense, ‘vivere debuerat’”. He also finds the alternative, divine favour and human prowess, perplexing, as Aeneas would know that both are needed for success.86 That, and the fiction that either contender may have won, construct Aeneas as rather disingenuous. While he occupies an ontological sphere which prevents him from seeing the entire poem, for the narrator to present the privileged hero talking as if the outcome is undecided seems mischie- vous. That fiction perhaps imitates that operating atIl. 20.288–91, where the possibility of either Achilles or Aeneas being killed is presented as plausible. Aeneas’ wish, then, in that respect brings us close to the Homeric narrator’s threat to the text at Il. 20.288–91. Aeneas’ complex counterfactual plays a significant role, which is that of announcing the mechanism that will lead to the resolution: a duel. The preponderance of indicatives in the largely counterfactual region underlines that connection. The end is gradually materializing. The influence on that gradual materialization of the verbs that have a hypothetical sense though indicative has been identified by Gransden: the perfect indicative ofveni “may perhaps be seen as an extension of the common use of the indicative of sum, possum, etc. in an apodosis implying possibility”. Gransden gives Aen. 4.18–19 as another instance of that: si … / si … /

85 See Handford (1947) § 105, § 114–16. 86 Conington (1876) ad 11.118. Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 95 forsan potui succumbere culpae;87 the indicative used in a counterfactual apodosis coincides with the beginning of actualization (in this case, of Dido’s succumbing to Aeneas).

(23) – A more extreme case of dislocation between the two components of a counterfactual, and with Homeric if-not syntax if not quite sense, features in the narrator’s tale of the breaking of Turnus’ sword (Aen. 12.731–41):

Arrectaeque amborum acies: At perfidus ensis frangitur in medioque ardentem deserit ictu, ni fuga subsidio subeat. Fugit ocior Euro ut capulum ignotum dextramque aspexit inermem. Fama est praecipitem, cum prima in proelia iunctos conscendebat equos, patrio mucrone relicto, dum trepidat, ferrum aurigae rapuisse Metisci: idque diu, dum terga dabant palantia Teucri, suffecit; postquam arma dei ad Vulcania ventum est, mortalis mucro, glacies ceu futtilis, ictu dissiluit; fulva resplendent fragmina harena.

(“Both forces rise to their feet. The perfidious sword-blade, however, Shivers to pieces on impact, betraying its fiery owner. Only his feet come to help. He runs faster than gusts of the east wind Once he has glanced at the unknown hilt and his weaponless right hand. Rumour reports he was rushed as he harnessed and mounted his horses When battle started, and that he forgot to bring out his ancestral Sword in his nervous excitement, grabbed that of his driver, Metiscus. This sword, as long as the Teucrians scattered, retreated, and turned tail, Served well enough. But against weapons forged by a deity, Vulcan, Mortal steel was as brittle as ice and it shattered on impact: Strewn on the tan-coloured sand, lying scattered as glistening fragments”).88

Theif -not consists of two main present indicative sentences: perfidus ensis frangitur (12.731– 32), and in medioque ardentem deserit ictu (12.732), followed by a protasis in the present subjunctive, ni fuga subsidio subeat (12.732). Theni -clause, we may assume, either attempts the reversal of the events narrated previously, as at (21), or relates in some way to those events,

87 Gransden (1991) ad 11.112. 88 trans. Ahl (2007). 96 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

as at (22). What are the events in the current instance? Neither the sword breaking nor its leaving the fiery hero can be the development thwarted by theni -clause (flight bringing help). There is no relationship at all between the first two and the third. For comparison, we can look again at what is possibly the nearest case in the poem: nec veni, nisi fata locum sedemque dedissent (11.112). Thisif -not contains the same discrepancy between indicative apodosis and subjunctive protasis. The two clausesnec veni, nisi … are however semantically consistent (“I came, the fates sent me”). But the two apodoses taken together and the protasis of ensis … subeat are not. The three units sound rather like a succession of events: “the sword breaks, it leaves the fiery hero, flight brings help”. On that reading, there is no conditional involved at all. The resemblance between this counterfactual and thenec veni one is clearly only grammatical, each in reality constituting a case unto itself. An added apodosis, on the other hand, may render the conditional structure more palatable. But in this case, as opposed to the three explored above, it is because there is no apodosis at all, the two main clauses, perfidus ensis frangitur, and in medioque ardentem deserit ictu, rather representing facts. The sword really broke, and it really left its user. Tarrant follows scholarly consensus in proposing an apodosis implied by deserit: “[he would have been helpless] if flight had not come to his aid”. He sees no need for a lacuna, however, as suggested by others, finding that “the condensed expression reflects the speed with which Turnus responds to his imminent danger”.89 The narrator leaps ahead, so breathless is the action. Traina offers “rimarrebbe indifeso”.90 Maguiness presents no suggestion but finds the conditional “an extreme and barely rational instance”, and supports the lacuna hypoth- esis.91 Virgil has clearly stretched the Homeric model quite substantially, by describing the mechanism that allows the hero to survive in a line-initial protasis which follows the apodosis, in parallel with εἰ μὴ ἄρ᾽ ὀξὺ νόησε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων (Il. 20.291; this is also line-initial), but there is no real counterfactual, because the main clause is fully factual, and does not quite relate to the ni-clause. The agent of rescue,fuga , is noteworthy too. As Tarrant comments, it appears human.92 The act of fleeing is not odd in itself: Hector flees, like Turnus, atIl. 22.136–38 (not a conditional), but Homer’s if-not agents are never abstract. The identity of the sword that shatters and then abandons Turnus also deserves some attention. Left with the hilt, we learn in the following lines, Turnus discovers his sword was not his own: he had snatched his charioteer’s sword accidentally. That background information, introduced by fama est, makes the story uncertain; but as the narrative resumes the

89 Tarrant (2012) ad 12.733. 90 Traina (1997) on 12.733. 91 Maguiness (1953) ad 12.731–33. 92 Tarrant (2012) ad 12.733. Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 97 indicative, the career of the sword is related as fact: idque diu … / suffecit. We know, then, that the sword which may have been Turnus’ charioteer’s did its job in Turnus’ hand, but, when faced by Vulcan’s armour, broke. Why would the sword be rumoured not to belong to Turnus? It is to avoid having both heroes using weapons made by Vulcan, according to West.93 Reference to Aeneas’ armour by its manufacturer’s name is made twice in the poem in the heightened form Volcania arma (8.535 and here, postquam arma dei ad Volcania ventum est); that Turnus’ sword was by the same smith is specified at 12.90–91 Volcania( ). That weapon, West explains, “is never engaged in a losing battle”;94 in due course, Turnus attacks Aeneas with a stone, although his sword was returned to him (12.896–907). What are we to make of the identity of the sword? Mainly, that the two heroes are deeply intertwined, with Turnus the worse alternative. Whereas Aeneas’ access to the supplier of weapons Vulcan receives wide publicity, Turnus’ only gains a brief mention, and he loses use of the weapon anyway; upon retrieval, he does not use it. His attempt to retaliate by throwing a stone, which would confer Homeric status to him, also fails due to lack of strength. The two heroes are presented, here as throughout the poem, as unequal members of a couplet. This is one of the many instances of synkrisis, comparisons between unequal doubles, present in the poem. But the identity of the sword mentioned at this stage, just after thefrangitur … deserit counterfactual, also draws attention to different types ofsynkrisis : that between indicative and subjunctive, and that between factual and counterfactual states or events, the former member of each pair being the more actualized of the two, and the second the less. We have seen that the indicative apodoses of if-nots are both factual and counterfactual (impulerat, tenebam, nec veni). In the current instance (frangitur … deserit), the indicative is literal: the confusing identity of the sword highlights the game played in the poem between factuality and counterfactuality, emphasized by the reversal of that game.

We have analysed four counterfactuals from the Aeneid, modelled to varying degrees on the if-not constructions of the Iliad. The four illustrate Virgil’s use of the Homeric pattern combined with two features typical of Livy: the indicative apodosis, which presents a hypothetical course of action as factual, and the disconnection between apodosis and protasis; Horace, writing in the same period, also makes use of the device. In one of the four cases, the course of action expressed in the indicative is interrupted by a subsequent ni-clause (6.358–61), as in the Homeric pattern. In two other cases (11.112 and 12.731–33), there is no such interruption, although the Homeric syntactic pattern is recognizable; in the second of these two, 12.731–33, the apodosis remains factual after the protasis is taken into consideration.

93 West (1974) 28–29. 94 ibid. 29. 98 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

In the fourth case (2.54–56), the clause positions are reversed, without consequent reversal of action, and the usual Latin conditional conjunction ni (or nisi) is replaced by si non. That particular counterfactual, however, retains the sense of the principal Homericif -not (Il. 20.288–91), which is that current reality, and therefore the text, risked at one time not coming into existence at all.95 The following is a concise summary of the relevant features of the four counterfactuals and the Homeric if-not, with protasis underlined and (Latin) indicative apodosis in bold:

(19) ἔνθά κεν Αἰνείας μὲν ἐπεσσύμενον βάλε πέτρῳ … τὸν δέ κε Πηλεΐδης σχεδὸν ἄορι θυμὸν ἀπηύρα, εἰ μὴ ἄρ᾽ ὀξὺ νόησε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων … (Il. 20.288–91).

(20) et, si fata deum, si mens non laeva fuisset, impulerat … (Aen. 2.54–56).

(21) iam tuta tenebam, ni gens crudelis … ferro invasisset praedamque ignara putasset. (Aen. 6.358–61). 95 Earlier still than the night of Troy burning is the time reference of Aen. 1.58–59: ni faciat, maria ac terras caelumque profundum / quippe ferant rapidi secum verrantque per auras (“If he did not, they would tear straight out and swirl away with them / Oceans, land, vast sky, swept off like dust upon breezes” – trans. Ahl, 2007). The subject of ni faciat is the guardian of the winds, Aeolus, whose constant attention is said to be necessary to keep them from escaping. The parts of the world would collapse if this counterfactual was actualized, so civilization would not have started at all, or may founder now. A related counterfactual, a Greek Homeric if-not, relates the duel between Zeus and Typhoeus at Hesiod Theogony 836–39: καί νύ κεν ἔπλετο ἔργον ἀμήχανον ἤματι κείνῳ καί κεν ὅ γε θνητοῖσι καὶ ἀθανάτοισιν ἄναξεν, εἰ μὴ ἄρ᾽ ὀξὺ νόησε πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε. (“And truly a thing past help would have happened on that day, and he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals, had not the father of men and gods been quick to perceive it” – trans. Evelyn- White, 1914). This conjures up the possibility that the current universe may have failed to start, or may collapse at any time (since the defeated is only imprisoned, like the winds in ni faciat, but may escape). Frizzarin – Counterfactuals in the Aeneid 99

(22) nec veni, nisi fata locum sedemque dedissent (Aen. 11.112).

(23) at perfidus ensis frangitur … deserit …, ni fuga subsidio subeat. (Aen. 12.731–33).

ANITA FRIZZARIN ([email protected]) 100 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

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M.-L. Ryan (1991) Possible Worlds. Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory. Bloomington IN. M.-L. Ryan (2006) ‘From Parallel Universes to Possible Worlds: Ontological Pluralism in Physics, Narratology, and Narrative’, Poetics Today 27, 633–74. V. Shklovsky (1917) ‘Art as Technique’, in L. T. Lemon & M. J. Reis (eds) (1965), Russian Formalist Criticism, Lincoln NE, 3–24. T. Shopen (ed.) (2007) Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Cambridge. R. Tarrant (2012) Aeneid XII, Cambridge. S. A. Thompson, R. E. Longacre & S. Ja Hwang (2007) ‘Adverbial Clauses’, in Shopen (ed.) (2007), 171–234. A. Timberlake (2007) ‘Aspect, tense, mood’, in Shopen (ed.) (2007), 288–333. T. Todorov (1969) Grammaire du Décameron, The Hague. S. Torrego & M. Esperanza (1999) ‘Cohésion et rupture dans les propositions irréelles latines en ni- nisi’, LEC 67, 391–411. A. Traina (1997) L’utopia e la storia: il libro XII dell’ Eneide e antologia delle opere, Turin. G. H. von Wright (1966) ‘The Logic of Action – A Sketch’, in Rescher (ed.) (1967), 121–36. G. C. Wakker (1994) Conditions and Conditionals: An Investigation of Ancient Greek, Amsterdam. D. West (1974) ‘The Deaths of Hector and Turnus’,G&R 21, 21–31. R. D. Williams (1973) The Aeneid of Virgil. Books 7–12, London. Virgil and the Unspoken

A presidential address given to the Virgil Society on 17 May 2014

Jenkyns In the tenth book of the Aeneid, Virgil provides a catalogue of the Etruscan forces who come to join the Trojans – “from the Tuscan shores”, as he says, Tuscis … ab oris (164).1 But the largest space is given to forces who, although Tuscan by blood, do not come from Tuscan shores at all. They come from Mantua (198–206). The story is about a small war in central peninsular Italy, but for some reason the poet imports a contingent from somewhere much more distant: from the eastern half of the plain of the Po valley. It seems very odd, or rather, it would seem odd, did we not know the reason: Virgil came from Mantua, and this is a personal touch. So in one sense we know why Virgil did it. But in some ways his motives are not so obvious. Did he expect his readers to know what he was up to? His first readers are likely to have known that he was a Mantuan (that is clear enough from the Georgics), but his eye will also have been on posterity. Could he be sure that later generations would know? We do not know for sure where Apollonius of Rhodes came from (it wasn’t Rhodes). Did Virgil? No one knew where Homer came from. Would future readers retain the knowledge of Virgil’s birthplace? Would they have the Georgics to hand? Even if they did, they were still likely to read the Aeneid first. There is a further personal touch to the passage on Mantua. In theEclogues , in an incon- gruous context, Virgil had provided a very brief picture of the river Mincius (7.12–13). In the Georgics he had expanded that picture, in the proem to the third book, where he talks about his poetic plans. The distinctive character of Mincius where it flows round Mantua – the slow current, the wide curves, the reed beds, the greenness – acts as Virgil’s sphragis or seal-stone: it is the stamp of his individuality (13–15). In the Aeneid, Mincius is once more described, although in different language – Mincius coming from father Benacus (that is, Lake Garda), veiled in grey reed (10.205–06). The reader who knows theGeorgics at once feels the impress of Virgil’s personal mark. However, there is not here a single word that overtly expresses any personal interest on the poet’s part in these Mantuans, or a connection to them. All that is left unspoken. Well, it may be said, there is a simple reason for this: epic poetry is impersonal, and it would be a breach of generic decorum for the poet to intrude himself directly. Homer tells us nothing

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about himself at any time; he does not even have the kindness to tell us how many people he is, which would have saved scholars a world of trouble. But here we should remember that many of our ideas of what epic is like are actually ideas that Virgil imposed on the epic tradition, and not ones that the ancients themselves would have thought essential. If you look, for example, at Samuel Johnson’s account of the nature of epic, in his life of Milton, you will see that only the Aeneid and Paradise Lost fit it completely, the Iliad and the Odyssey fit it to a fair degree, and several of the classical epics hardly fit it at all. “My poem’s epic”, says Byron in Don Juan (1.200), and proceeds to give a satirical account of what an epic poem should contain. Only one poem comes close to matching his list of contents, and that, indeed, is the Aeneid. Yes, for sure, Homer was impersonal, but an epic poet was not in fact required to be that. After all, Ennius told near the start of hisAnnals about his vision in which Homer appeared to him and transmigrated his soul into Ennius’ body. In other words, he talked about himself and his experience within an epic poem. Lucan does not do that, but he does intrude his presence – he is constantly haranguing his characters, questioning them, rebuking them, grabbing them by whatever equivalent Roman costume supplied to the lapels. Virgil’s decision to be impersonal was a decision to be like Homer – and indeed Virgil’s decision to hew so close to Homer was highly distinctive. Although the Greeks applied the word epos to any extended poem composed in hexa meters, it is clear that they recognised the distinction, indeed obvious, between heroic epic and the didactic mode, or in other terms, between one stream of tradition descending from Homer and another descending from Hesiod. The author of didactic epos could be positively chatty, as we can see from Hesiod’s Works and Days. In fact, we may feel that we hear more about the poet’s testy relationship with his brother Perses than a gentleman ought to reveal; but then Hesiod wants us to know that he is not a gentleman. Hesiod’s Theogony is rather different – nothing personal there, except for the brief scene in which the Muses appear to the poet on Helicon and inaugurate him as a poet. That is quite like the vision of Homer in Ennius’ Annals; it is not much like Hesiod’s dour mutterings about his life in the Works and Days. For the composer of didactic epos, then, it was a matter of choice: you could disclose yourself, like Hesiod, but also withdraw yourself, like Aratus. Let us try a couple of thought experiments. Suppose that the Aeneid alone had survived of Virgil’s works, and we knew next to nothing about him outside his poem (this is after all more or less the position we are in with Homer and Apollonius of Rhodes). What would we make of the passage about Mantua in Aen. 10? We would surely wonder why the poet should linger in this way so far from the scene of action. And why are we taken up the river to its source in Lake Garda, even farther from the area of battle? We would feel, I suggest, that something unspoken is at work here, and perhaps we would guess that Mantua had some Jenkyns – Virgil and the Unspoken 105 special significance for the author. Whereas Homer never tells us that he is a Greek (or perhaps I should say “Achaean”), this poet has lightly indicated that he is Italian (litoribus nostris, “on our shores”, in the very first line of book 7). We might naturally ask: which part of Italy? And when we reached that place in book 10, we might sense that we had been given the clue. Suppose, alternatively, that the Eclogues, the Georgics and the Aeneid had all survived but that we had no external evidence about them (again, a situation where we often find ourselves in regard to classical authors). TheGeorgics tells us that Virgil is the author’s name, and that he previously wrote the Eclogues. Those two works together give us the poet’s origin in Mantua and the peculiar significance that he attaches to the river Mincius. We would immediately see that this was picked up in Aen. 10. At a minimum, we would know that Aen. 10 was in some kind of relation to those passages in the Eclogues and Georgics. And even before taking considerations of style and quality in account, we would be pretty sure, I think, that the poet of the Aeneid was the same man: the one who identifies himself in theGeorgics as Virgil. Perhaps, after all, Virgil was confident that all his works would survive, along with some further knowledge about their author (although we should always remember how hard it was to secure immortality in the ancient world, a subject which had exercised Cicero a great deal). Yet however great or small a given reader’s knowledge may be, he or she is likely to detect a personal element in book 10. But that personal element remains unspoken. We may well ask why, or ask what effect this reticence has. In the previous book, Virgil had briefly broken his self-imposed rule of impersonality to affect a passionate feeling about the tale of Nisus and Euryalus: “Happy pair! if my song has any power, no day shall ever erase you from the memory of time, as long as the house of Aeneas shall dwell upon the immovable rock of the Capitol and the Roman father hold sway” (9.446–49). Likewise, there could easily have been some passing exclamation about “my Mantua” in the tenth book. Virgil decides against that, and it is an aesthetic decision. As with the author’s person, so with his influences: throughout his career Virgil’s practice was to indicate the poets behind his work without the full explicitness of naming them. Every schoolboy knows that Virgil imitates Theocritus in theEclogues , Hesiod in the Georgics, and Homer in the Aeneid. The more advanced schoolboy also knows about the imitations of Lucretius, Catullus, Aratus and Apollonius. But none of those names appears anywhere in Virgil’s œuvre. Contrast Lucretius: he names Homer, Ennius and Empedocles. Equally significant are the names of poets who do not appear in his poem: Hesiod and Aratus. Lucretius is asserting, through what he says and through what he does not say, that he is not in the didactic line that descends from Hesiod to Aratus and the Hellenistic metaphrasts such as Nicander; rather, he is in the heroic line of Homer and Ennius. The one didactic poet whom he names – and indeed praises lavishly – is Empedocles, whose verse does have a rugged grandeur and some Homeric flavour, and is also strongly alliterative, like Ennius’ and Lucretius’ own. We 106 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

can also look forward to Statius, who at the end of his own epic, the Thebaid, will name the Aeneid, acknowledging an inferiority: “Live, I pray”, he tells his book, “and do not essay the godlike Aeneid, but always follow at a distance and worship its footsteps” (12.816–17). That shows that within one epic poem one could talk directly about another epic poem, although I must allow that Statius surely intends this parting touch of humility to surprise us. Of course, Virgil does acknowledge his debts, although those acknowledgements become increasingly implicit, more subterranean, in the course of his career. In the opening lines of three Eclogues he addresses the Sicilian muses and Arethusa, the fountain of Syracuse, and describes his poetry as Syracusan verse (Ecl. 4, 10 and 6). Short of naming Theocritus, who disobligingly will not fit into a hexameter line, he is as explicit as he can be, and this within a work which is in general notable for its elusiveness. Moreover, a contemporary poet, Gallus, is present by name, and is indeed conspicuous, in two of the Eclogues (6 and 10). TheGeorgics is a little more covert in this respect. The very first line alludes to theWorks and Days, implying, correctly, that only the first book is based on Hesiod. In the second book, Virgil describes himself as singing “Ascraean song” – referring to Hesiod’s home village of Ascra – but already there is a something a little teasing about this, for he is calling himself Hesiodic at a point where he has left Hesiod far behind (2.176). Perhaps we may go further. Virgil is here at the climax of his laus Italiae; he has been glorifying his native land for some thirty lines. Recall what Hesiod said about Ascra: “a miserable village, foul in winter, harsh in summer, never good” (Works and Days, 640). That is what “song of Ascra” is like. So there is paradox in Virgil calling his own verse Ascraean as he concludes the most glorious panegyric to a land ever written. It is in the second book of the Georgics too that he pays his tribute to Lucretius: “Happy the man who has been able to understand the causes of things, and to trample all fears and inexorable fate and the roar of voracious Acheron beneath his feet” (2.490–92). Although Lucretius is not named, the allusions are clear enough, as almost everyone has recognised. Nevertheless, one scholar has doubted that a specific reference to Lucretius is meant, and although I am sure that he is wrong, it is at least possible to have that doubt, whereas to doubt the references to Theocritus in theEclogues would be absurd. Virgil is becoming just a little more subterranean than before. Lucretius was the poet who influenced Virgil more than any other, and so it is worth asking what he may have learnt from him about reticence and disclosure. Hardly anyone reads Lucretius, I imagine, without receiving the sense of a strongly distinctive personality behind the work, and yet that personality remains inscrutable and unreachable. I have described his voice as being like a voice on the radio: it may be highly individual, but you do not know where it is coming from, and you cannot put a face to it.2 It is significant that we know less

2 Jenkyns – Virgil and the Unspoken 107 about Lucretius than about any other major Latin author, since most of what we are told about ancient poets comes from information found in their works or deduced from them, not always intelligently; Lucretius tells us nothing at all about himself, and the critics and biographers therefore had no material to work upon. Lucretius’ passionate reticence, the combination of urgent and immediate appeal to us with pride and secrecy, is an essential part of his poem’s unique character. Now we cannot be sure that our reading of a classical author is a good one, and if it is, we cannot be sure that any particular person in antiquity saw the text in the same way as we ourselves do. But it seems to me likely that Virgil saw Lucretius in the way that I have described, and saw too that he could learn from it. In the Aeneid, his idea, I suggest, was that at rare moments something personal should break through, or at least come close to doing so. In the Everglades of Florida I once saw a manatee, a marine mammal that likes to float just under the surface of the water: you make out a shape, but not much more than a shape. The personal element in theAeneid seems to me a bit like that. I have mentioned three places in the poem where there is something like a personal touch. I think that they are the only three places. True, at the start of the poem he says Musa, mihi causas memora (“Muse, tell me the cause”, Aen. 1.8), but that “me” (mihi) is a direct translation of μοι in the first line of the Odyssey: “Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways who …” It is not, in reality, personal at all. And each of the three personal moments is so in a limited or equivocal way. To indicate that one is Italian, as Virgil does at the start of book 7, is not to indicate very much. To exclaim over Nisus and Euryalus is to claim a personal emotion, and it does imply that the poet is moved by self-sacrificial love, but that is as far as it goes towards displaying his individual character or experience. The digression on Mantua alone is individually significant, and that is the one where the personal element is left entirely unspoken. And surely we do not regret that. I pointed out that Virgil could have reminded us here that Mantua was his own patria, but it is better that he did not. The Lucretian hiddenness is more powerful. I believe that we can see a response to this aspect of Lucretius in the Georgics too, but it was a different response. The first book is entirely impersonal, and since this is the Hesiodic book, that impersonality is striking. In this respect the poet will be entirely unlike his notional Greek model. No doubt we expect him to continue in the same vein, but he is going to surprise us. In the second book comes that talk about the literary situation of his poem – its relation to Lucretius. He implies that he lacks Lucretius’ sharply scientific intellect, but he remains rather elusive. This Lucretius talk is woven into the great panegyric in praise of country life, and it is with the countryman that Lucretius is finally contrasted – the man who knows the rural gods, and is undisturbed by the political turmoil of the greater world. One of the best Latinists of our time – I am imitating Virgil in not naming great men directly – once wrote an article in which he suggested that this part of the Georgics was a bit of a mess. On this account 108 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

the confusion between Virgil the country-loving poet and the country-dweller himself is just that – a confusion. So much of what is written these days about Latin poetry is so completely uncritical that I find this robust approach rather bracing, but I do not agree. I find the way in which Virgil at once discloses and eludes masterly and fascinating. Is Virgil modest here or self-assertive? He suggests that a direct challenge to Lucretius’ intellectual system is one that he must duck, but he also seems to suggest that Lucretius’ materialism leaves something missing, that “there are more things in heaven and earth … than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. However, he does not quite say that. Why not? Perhaps it is out of deference to the master. This is a tribute to Lucretius, and therefore not the moment to be ticking him off. But perhaps we feel a touching uncertainty in Virgil himself, a man no longer satisfied with his youthful Epicureanism, but not sure where he might belong instead. In mentioning the young Virgil’s Epicurean beliefs, I am perhaps indulging in the so-called biographical fallacy, importing into the poem a fact about the author’s life which he has left outside it. But Virgil’s biography apart, I still maintain that we can feel a sense of the poet’s uncertainty, mingled with his delight, and that this is achieved through what is not directly spoken. At the start of the third book of the Georgics, we get more of Virgil the individual: the man of Mantua, the poet who has had enough of fancy Alexandrian mythologizing and has plans for a future work on a heroic or panegyric theme (3–8, 12, 26–39). In the fourth book, personal anecdote breaks in for the first time – the old market-gardener that the poet knew down in the deep south of Italy; and the poem ends with a sphragis that is more individualised than any had been before: Virgil gives us his name, his place (Naples), an indication of his age (no longer young), the date of composition (while Caesar was by the Euphrates) and a list of previous publications (just one: the Eclogues). Little is left unspoken there. But this final impress of the seal gains part of its force from one of the movements through the poem: from reticence towards an increasingly open self-presentation. I have been speaking of things in Virgil that are subterranean, that lie below the surface, unspoken, but so far they have been things that one may feel lie not very far below. I now turn towards things that are more profoundly hidden, where Virgil’s silence may take us nearer the heart of his moral imagination and understanding of the human condition. I will approach this by an indirect route. A few years ago I became interested in how Roman architecture had developed expressiveness in the shaping of interior space.3 Classic Greek architecture had been an architecture of the exterior. With the Parthenon and the Erechtheum it was always the exterior that mattered most, architecturally speaking. But in the Roman period, for the first time, an architecture developed in which the interior had the aesthetic dominance, and it found its finest expression in Trajan’s complex of his Forum and

3 Jenkyns – Virgil and the Unspoken 109 the Basilica Ulpia, which are lost, in the Pantheon, which survives, in Trajan’s Baths, which are mostly lost, in the other great imperial bathhouses, and then in the great churches of late antiquity. I then asked myself whether classical authors had taken an interest in interior space, and if so, how they had described it. So I looked through classical literature and the result was, in a way, rather disappointing. It seemed to me that there was only one man who was much interested in describing or evoking in words the spatial quality of interiors, and that was Virgil. It was the more disappointing for me in that I had written a long book on Virgil, and was hoping to move on to new ground; but no, the Mantuan still had me in his grip. There are many descriptions of palaces in Latin poetry. Most of them are broadly similar: they concentrate on expensive and gleaming surfaces – marble, ivory, onyx, and the gilded laquearia or coffering on the ceiling. The palace of Peleus in Catullus 64 (43–49) is the blithest and perhaps the most appealing of these set-piece descriptions; Lucan’s palace of Cleopatra is, unsurprisingly, the most frantically hyperbolic (10.111–22). Personal poets, like Horace and Propertius, affect modesty by saying that they don’t have houses with all these luxurious materials. The one poet who writes about palaces quite differently is Virgil. Take Dido’s palace in Aen. 1. Only the furnishings are described as luxurious. For the palace itself, rather than a set-piece description, Virgil gives us snatches of evocation across almost a hundred lines. Not until the meal is over and the tables cleared do we get any account of the banqueting hall itself, and this mostly evokes the innerness of the room, deep within the heart of the house, not surface but space – echoing voices, the lamps hung from the high ceiling. Only briefly is there a mention of that gilded coffering high above the diners (725–27). As for the material of walls and floor – the main interest of other poets when they take us into palaces – nothing is said at all. All that remains unspoken. Virgil shuns fact and detail, concentrating on space, mood, atmosphere. Or take Latinus’ temple palace in Aen. 7. Again, the more one looks at other palaces in Latin literature, the more idiosyncratic this one becomes. It has a hundred towering columns, but none of the usual palace apparatus. It is augustum, ingens (“venerable, huge”), “shudder- some with woods and ancestral awe” (170–72). But as for materials, walls, ceilings – again nothing is said, and the evocation is all the more effective for the absence of direct description. We might also think of the simile early in Aen. 8, where Aeneas’ anxiety is likened to sun- or moonbeams reflected off water, darting about and striking thelaquearia of the ceiling (22–25). Virgil does not say that the laquearia are gilded, and gleam aloft as the beam of light strikes them. He does not need to. There is an impressive economy in this. If readers can supply the detail for themselves, then the poet can leave it unspoken. When we think of interiors, we think mostly of buildings, the works of man. But there are also interiors that are not man-made: there are caves. Again, I looked through Latin literature. There are a number of caves in narrative poetry, and a few elsewhere, but again I found that 110 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Virgil was more interested in caves and their spatial feeling than anyone else. (By the way, Virgil apart, the best cave that I found was in Apuleius’ Golden Ass 2.4 – a marvellously subtle and vivid depiction of an artificial grotto). Virgil gave us a spectacular cave the very first time he attempted an extended piece of narrative. This is the underwater home of Cyrene, in the story of Aristaeus in the fourth book of the Georgics. It is the most spectacular piece of cavern evocation in Latin poetry (363–67). And when Cyrene sends her son Aristaeus to capture Proteus, he finds him at another mighty cavern (418–22). That suggests how much Virgil liked caves. And of course there are caves in the Aeneid – the caves of Aeolus, of Polyphemus, of the Sibyl, of Cacus. The Underworld itself is one vast cavern, and although I suppose that we forget this most of the time, there are moments when we are reminded of the fact – as Aeneas prepares to plunge into the cavern’s opening (6.237–41), or when the poet explains that Elysium, although underground, is flooded with light because it has its own sun and stars (6.640–41). But the most momentous and moving cave of all is surely the one in the fourth book, where Dido and Aeneas come together. I have dwelt on Virgil’s interest in describing or evoking caves to bring out the extent of the surprise that awaits us here. Speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem deveniunt (“Dido and the Trojan chief come to the same cave”, 165–66). Speluncam – the cave is given to us in a single word, and that is all. Can you imagine another Latin poet taking his chief characters to a cave where something would happen to change the history of the world, and saying nothing about it at all? And this is not the only thing that is unspoken. Virgil does not tell us what happened in the cave. I stress this – this time, not even one word. Instead, he tells us what happened outside the cave – lines of such astonishing beauty that you will not mind my quoting them (166–68):

Prima et Tellus et pronuba Iuno Dant signum; fulsere ignes et conscius Aether conubiis, summoque ulularunt vertice Nymphae.

(“Both primal earth and nuptial Juno give the sign; fires gleamed and Air, witness to the bridal, and the Nymphs wailed on the mountain top”).

Some may say that Virgil’s reticence here is a matter of genre and decorum: epic poetry does not describe sex. But if they say that, they will be wrong. Virgil does describe sex in the Aeneid – in the voluptuous depiction of the love-making of Venus and Vulcan (8.387–93) – lines so sensual that they shocked Montaigne.4 Virgil could have written in that fashion in book 4 had he wished to do so. Some years ago, I implied that Virgil’s choice was another

4 Essais 3.5 (‘Sur des vers de Virgile’). Jenkyns – Virgil and the Unspoken 111 way of representing the bleakness of Aeneas’ lot: gods can be shown in lavishly enjoyable copulation, but the poet does not allow poor Dido and Aeneas that privilege.5 I now think that this was a mistake. Of course what happened in the cave was wonderful – it must have been – it transforms Dido at once: no longer does she care how things look or what anyone thinks (4.170–72) – famous and much debated lines. On a technical level, there is the matter of narrative skill. Virgil’s texture is dense and tightly woven. If you don’t need to say a thing, why say it? Jane Austen once advised that the novelist should avoid “too many particulars of left hand and of right”,6 and when I read modern novels, I think it a bad sign when the author piles in irrelevant details in the hope of persuading us that the work is observant or true to life. Perhaps Virgil had learnt from an earlier generation how much can be left out of narrative. At all events, Catullus had managed in his poem 64 to tell two stories – the story of Peleus and Thetis and the story of Theseus and Ariadne – with almost no narrative at all. The most conspicuous example of leaving things out in Virgil comes of course at the end of the poem, or perhaps one should say, after the end of the poem. It is a masterpiece of narrative economy that, while the story has not been brought to its conclusion, the poem is none the less complete. The end is abrupt and yet entirely satisfying, and we realise, as we roll up that twelfth scroll and put it back in its box, that we know all that we need to know. But I return to the lovers in the cave. Almost every possible and impossible thing that can be said about Virgil has already been said, but no one, as far as I know, has ever doubted that Dido and Aeneas had sex in the cave. On one level, Virgil is silent about this because no words are required. It is an impressive piece of narrative economy. But I believe that he has profounder purposes too. Let us go back to Cyrene’s cave, and indeed beyond Cyrene to what is, I suppose, the best cave in Greek literature – the cave of Calypso in the fifth book of theOdyssey . Unusually for Homer, this is shown to us empathetically: we see it as it appears to the god Hermes, who has come to tell Calypso that she must let Odysseus go. It is through his eyes that we are entranced by the lush herbage and fruitage around the cave mouth, and the song of the goddess, emerging from a dark, hidden interior (55–74). Virgil picked this up when he came to create his own first cave, for he was already finding his way to the empathetic style of narrative that he was to develop so fully in the Aeneid. We see the underwater realm through Aristaeus’ marvelling eyes, and it is extensively described because he is taking it all in, rapt by what he sees. Dido and Aeneas, by contrast, have eyes only for each other, and the cave itself is of no interest to them at all. Virgil’s narrative follows their example.

5 6 Letter of 9 September 1814. 112 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

On the other hand, Aeneas and Dido were very much interested in one another; so why no word of that? One reason, I suggest, is the unknowability of the most intimate experiences. It is partly that what these two feel and do is none of our business. Venus and Vulcan can copulate in our presence because no depth of emotion is involved. Indeed, in the lightest part of what is generally not at all a light poem, we may feel that their embraces are as much for our pleasure as for their own. But Dido and Aeneas preserve their autonomy. There is also a psychological truth here. In such circumstances people may not know themselves quite what happened and how. The sexual pressure has been getting stronger and stronger, and in the cave the passion explodes. How did they find themselves locked in embrace? It is enough that they did, and Virgil’s narrative, or lack of narrative, expresses that truth. In any case, Virgil has had another idea of genius. He has displaced the lovers’ passion into nature. Their act itself is both natural and supernatural, the wildness is both within and without. The cave is savage landscape, but also their shelter; their passion is both the wild weather and a human huddling from the wild. Virgil’s silence about the event in the cave also has a larger importance in the poem’s moral economy. Much talk about Dido and Aeneas is concerned with the question of blame: was it her fault, or his, or the gods’, or some mixture of these things? Those of us who are classical teachers know that our pupils really enjoy debating this question. I do not want to spoil their fun, but to guide them towards the best possible answer. At a crucial moment, the poet has deprived us of evidence. Who first shed those dripping clothes? Who first reached out a hand to touch? We have only to pose these questions, I think, to feel that they are not only prurient but absurd. As I have already suggested: did the lovers know themselves? We might contrast the seduction of Tess by Alec d’Urberville in Hardy’s novel. There, presumably for reasons of late Victorian propriety, it is not quite clear what happened, and the unclarity does seem problematic. But here in the Aeneid, the unclarity is profound. Virgil has a deep understanding of the ambiguity of moral agency. It is not that guilt and blame do not matter, but that an exact assignation of responsibility may be beyond anyone’s power, even that of the agents themselves. Fantastical though the cave is, there is also realism here, and truth to life. Throughout theAeneid , I believe, there is a sense that there are things which must be unspoken because they are unknown, and perhaps unknowable. In the Homeric epics, the human actors may not know the gods’ minds and motives, but the poet can tell us. In the Aeneid, however, there is a sense that there are things hidden even from the omniscient poet himself. Why should the innocent Palinurus be unable to cross the Styx? We are left with the Sibyl’s assertion that the gods have decreed it, and prayer cannot move them (6.376). Why should Aeneas not settle in Carthage, in a noble city with a loving wife? In the words of the hero in another place, dis aliter visum (“the gods thought otherwise”, Aen. 2.424). Jenkyns – Virgil and the Unspoken 113

The farther side of death is the ultimate unknown, in Virgil’s words “things hidden in deep earth and darkness” (6.267). Here he faced a technical problem: he wanted to suggest that the realm of the dead was hidden, beyond knowledge, but at the same time he must describe it, or he has no narrative. His solution, an appeal to Chaos and Phlegethon to be permitted to reveal these secret matters, is bound to be a kind of fudge, but it is fudge of the highest quality (6.264–67). Across the underworld narrative as a whole, he keeps revelation and mystery in balance through the unspoken. After all the elaborate preparations for Aeneas’ descent, we hear nothing about the descent itself – nothing either, apart from two gates, about his return to the world above, which was expected to be so difficult: suddenly we find him by his ships. These inconsequences or discontinuities impart a dreamlike quality. We are told that the personifications that Aeneas meets are terribiles visu formae (“shapes terrible to behold”), but there is no description (6.277). Contrast, to look no further, the personifications in Ovid’sMetamorphoses : Hunger is skeletally thin, Sleep is for ever nodding off (8.798–808; 11.618–21). That is what we expect a poet to do. But in the Aeneid, Death, Sleep, the Evil Joys of the Mind and all the rest of them remain undescribed, and that leaves us unsure of their ontological status (6.274–79). Are these independent, self-subsistent beings, or are they the hero’s psychic nightmare? Why is there an enormous elm in the underworld (6.282–84)? I think of the World Ash Tree of Germanic myth, but I do not suppose that Virgil knew about that, and even if he did, what use has he made of it? Yet it seems powerfully impressive. One day, perhaps, I shall grasp the mystery of the golden bough. That too all readers find impressive, and yet who knows what it signifies? I do not know of any explanation that appears plausible. It is one of those places that justifies the dictum of a former President of this society, T. S. Eliot, that great poetry can be appreciated before it is fully understood. I want to tread carefully here. I do not wish to say that with the elm and the bough Virgil is merely creating a vague mystification, a sphinx without a secret. These things somehow seem absolutely right, they reach atavistically deep. When I was an undergraduate the book that we were all sent off to read was calledVirgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry. This poet is often presented to us as supremely civilised, educated, deeply read, literary, calculating, controlled. All of that is true, but it should not allow us to miss another side of him, the side that is intuitive and instinctive, that reaches into the unconscious parts of experience, that finds dark and wonderful places. We shall find that side if we are willing, when reading him, to listen to the sound of silence.

Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford RICHARD JENKYNS ([email protected])

Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Laocoon

Revised from a paper given to the Virgil Society on 24 January 2015*

Frisby

1. Expectation and subversion

To readers of the Aeneid, Statius’ Amphiaraus, the ill-fated prescient priest who resists the initial Argive push toward self-destruction, will swiftly bring Virgil’s Laocoon to mind.1 This observation is verified by the wider influence of Virgilian epic on the 1st century AD Thebaid of Statius.2 The figures of Amphiaraus and Laocoon have several parallel features, including awareness of the self-destructive madness their people are about to embrace, which they cannot stop,3 and verbal links: Amphiaraus asks quo, miseri, fatis superis obstantibus, arma / quo rapitis? (“Where, you poor citizens, where are you taking your weapons, with the fates and the gods opposed to it?” Theb. 3.629–30), drawing on Laocoon’s O miseri, quae tanta insania, cives? (“O you poor citizens, what great madness is this?” Aen. 2.42). This makes for

* With many thanks to those who commented on drafts of this article: Daniel Hadas, Ruth Morello and Will Leveritt. 1 See Fantham (2006) 159–60. Seo (2013) 146–184 sees similarly that Amphiaraus is a composite of earlier vatic models, but rather emphasises Amphiaraus’ surpassing his previous models through apotheosis. See also Tuttle (2013) 78–87 and Manolaraki (2013) 89–107 on Amphiaraus’ augury in Theb. 3: both show how his vatic performance draws on earlier models. 2 In turn a greater understanding of Statius’ epic has been shown to contribute meaningfully to readings of the Aeneid. Hardie (1993) 22 observes that post-Virgilian epic in general is extremely useful for understanding the potential in the Aeneid’s text for generating meaning: “modern readers will find in the epics of Lucan, Statius, Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus some of the most penetrating readings available of the Aeneid”. The most prominent of the studies on the interaction between the Thebaid and the Aeneid is perhaps Ganiban (2007). Important studies also include Criado (2000); Hardie (1993); Pollmann (2001). The editions used throughout are Hill’s of the Thebaid (1983) and Conte’s of the Aeneid (2011); all translations are my own. 3 On Amphiaraus as a composite and deliberately representative example of the “prescient but ill-fated priest” figure see Seo (2013) 147. Ganiban (2007) 57 also sees the Odysseus-Calchas dynamic as a model for Capaneus vs Amphiaraus: in both cases, war is perpetuated in spite of warnings to the contrary. But he argues that the model also undermines the pairing of Capaneus and Amphiaraus, because of the treachery in Odysseus’ and Chalcas’ cooperation in the deception of the Trojans involving Sinon (Aen. 2.126–29). Stover (2009) 440–51 sees multiple models in this particular confrontation. There is also a close resonance between Amphiaraus and Laocoon, in that Laocoon is traditionally, if not ostensibly in Virgil, associated with Apollo, as noted by Servius ad Aen. 2.201, on which see Tracy (1987) 451–53. On Virgil’s Laocoon against the backdrop of the wider and older tradition see further Heinze (1993) 9–14, 39–42; Harrison (1970) 327–28; Lynch (1980); Most (2010) 326–29. 116 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

a straightforward allusion which frames the Argive expedition as self-destructive, validates Amphiaraus’ foresight and foreshadows his own destruction. The allusion is contextualised, however, by the relationship which is set up between Capaneus and Amphiaraus.4 Amphiaraus, just prior to his Laocoon-esque question, turns to Capeneus himself: nam te, vesane, moneri / ante nefas; (“for it is an impious act for you to be warned, crazy man, in advance”, 3.627–28). He does then go on to warn Capaneus, creating in his own actions violation of the divine order.5 This itself is no wild departure from the precedent set by Laocoon, who is (though perhaps less knowingly) set against the divine machinations surrounding the Trojan Horse. Capaneus’ own role as contemptor divum, inherited from the epic and tragic tradition and Theban mythology more widely,6 then accentuates the sense of resistance to the divine, for we might very well observe that this precisely is what we expect from him. Not only that, but Capaneus is also on a self-destructive path, imposed ultimately by the divine. The straighforward allusion of Amphiaraus to Laocoon is further compromised in this direction, as Capaneus’ first speech inThebaid 3, which comes before Amphiaraus’ allusive question, has links to Laocoon’s repudiation of the Horse in Aeneid 2.7 Identity slippage occurs between contemptor divum and priest: the prophetic voice which urges delay of self- destruction is supplanted by one which incites it. A further nexus of voices from the Aeneid, both prophetic and bellicose, generates overlaps in conflict proposed, hastened or fore shadowed. Both Amphiaraus and Capaneus have been identified with the voice of the poet, and their drawing on vatic models enhances this: here we find them moving in the direction of ashared vatic link. But, since Laocoon is an “emergency” priest, it is one which is not quite stable in its prophetic, and thus poetic identity.8

4 There has been considerable discussion of this. On their dispute see Lovatt (2001) 118; Masterson (2005) 291–92; Stover (2009); Dominik (1994b) 44 (for the structure surrounding the exchange), 147–148; Fantham (2006). 5 Fantham (2006) 159 points to the illogicality of Amphiaraus’ point here. 6 Much of current scholarship on Capaneus himself focusses on his supernatural, monstrous or gigantomachic overtones, often as part of his (unsuccessful) attempt to transcend mortal existence, along with his poetic pretensions. See Lovatt (2005) 128–139; Leigh (2006); Parkes (2009) 486–87; Fucecchi (2013) 112–17; Chaudhuri (2014) 256–97. See also Harrison (1992) 251; Criado (2000) 107–10; McNelis (2007) 140–05; Ganiban (2007) 145–48; Parkes (2012) 126 ad 4.65–86; Marinis (2015) 349–51. 7 Mezentius is another Vergilian model for Capaneus, and has been much treated in this light. I will not delve into that link in this paper. See Caiani (1990) 265–76; Ganiban (2007) 60, 146. 8 On Capaneus, and particularly the sublimity of his endeavours relating to the poet, see Leigh (2006) 225–35, and see Masterson (2005) passim on Amphiaraus as generating a new poetics of Roman manhood. See also Ash (2015) 207–08 on the problems of military success in the Domitianic context, where the emperor himself lacks the genuine capacity for exemplarity in this arena. See Austin (1964) 100 ad 201 (following Heinze, 1993, 15), who points to Laocoon as potentially an “emergency priest” and observes that his priestly status is only emphasised at the point where it contrasts with his status as sacrifice. Frisby – Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Laocoon 117

I give both Laocoon’s and Capaneus’ speeches in full below. Subsequent to that, I treat their links in detail, in line with other allusions to key figures such as theAeneid ’s Tarchon, as well as the Thebaid’s own Tydeus. Tarchon’s and Tydeus’ more obviously martial context acts to overlay the home-front with the immediacy of the battlefield, allusively capturing the duality of that contested space occupied at Troy. Capaneus’ taking on of a prophetic voice also encompasses Helenus, and his future-facing turn to the chthonic is therefore set in dialogue with Aeneas’ own immediate descent into the Underworld. Finally, I delve beyond the boundary of Amphiaraus’ home, as pointed out by Capaneus, to explore the ways in which his disparaging attitude to what lies within presents an attempt to undermine celestial power, which is in dialogue with Laocoon’s take on the Horse. Laocoon’s speech:

‘O miseri, quae tanta insania, cives? Creditis avectos hostis? Aut ulla putatis dona carere dolis Danaum? Sic notus Ulixes? Aut hoc inclusi ligno occultantur Achivi, aut haec in nostros fabricata est machina muros, inspectura domos venturaque desuper urbi, aut aliquis latet error: equo ne credite, Teucri. Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis’.

(“‘O you poor citizens, what great madness is this? Do you believe the enemy to have sailed away? Or do you think any Greek gifts to lack trickery? Is Ulysses thus known? Either Greeks, closed up in the wood, are secreted here, or this machine has been made to go against our walls; it’s ready to spy on our homes and come into the city from above, or some other deception lies hidden: don’t trust the Horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts’”). (Aen. 2.42–49)

Capaneus’ speech comes as the narrator shifts the focus from the Argives gearing up for war to the specific scene at Amphiaraus’ door (3.604–05):9

9 Dominik (1994b) 147 calls this speech “one of the most rhetorically violent speeches in the Thebaid”. 118 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

‘Quae tanta ignavia’, clamat, ‘Inachidae vosque o socio de sanguine Achivi? Unius (heu pudeat!) plebeia ad limina civis tot ferro accinctae gentes animisque paratae pendemus? Non si ipse cavo sub vertice Cirrhae (quisquis is est, timidis famaeque ita visus) Apollo mugiat insano penitus seclusus in antro, exspectare queam dum pallida virgo tremendas nuntiet ambages. Virtus mihi numen et ensis quem teneo! Iamque hic timida cum fraude sacerdos exeat, aut hodie, volucrum quae tanta potestas, experiar’.

(“‘What great cowardliness is this?’ he shouted, ‘O sons of Inachus, and you, O allies of Argive blood? At the commoner’s door (for shame!) of one citizen are we waiting, so many races with ready minds and armed? Not if Apollo himself, closed off deep within his frenzy-inspiring cave beneath hollow Parnassus’ heights (whoever he is, so he seems to the fearful and to rumour), were to bellow, would I be able to wait while the pale girl spouted her terrible prophecies. My manliness and the sword I hold are my god! And right now let this priest with his over-cautious trickery come out, or this very day I will test out what power there is in birds!’”) (Theb. 3.607–18)

Both speakers open with questions which sets them apart from their listeners. They attempt to undercut the supernatural through foregrounding of the human, and focus on the contents of internal spaces which are hidden or mysterious, with a threatening overtone. They couple this with strong statements and a militarily aggressive stance – reinforced for Laocoon when he couples words with action and throws a spear at the Horse (Aen. 2.50–02). The occasion of Capaneus’ speech is his introduction in theThebaid , a moment shared with Amphiaraus’ Laocoon-like resistance to the war. Amphiaraus has already been framed by Capaneus as a pacifist, in contrast to the latter’s warlike attitude.10 While Laocoon embodies

10 See Masterson (2005) 291–92. Frisby – Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Laocoon 119 delay at the narrative level in his command to be wary of the Horse, his actual behaviour is both hasty and seeks to perpetuate violence suspended. In his marked reluctance to take action, Amphiaraus thus departs from the military assertiveness expressed in Laocoon’s injury to the Horse.11 Amphiaraus is reluctant to speak, while Laocoon cannot wait to start: he speaks before arriving on the scene (procul, “from afar”, Aen. 2.42),12 and throws the spear straight after his speech, without any pause.13 Laocoon’s enthusiasm for action, with his hasty entry into the space and overtly aggressive stance, are in fact evoked more clearly in Capaneus’ enthusiasm than Amphiaraus’ delay. Laocoon has had to come to the location – like Capaneus and his crowd, and unlike Amphiaraus, around whose home the crowd are gathered. His belligerent, exemplary act is echoed in Capaneus’ self-promoting statement of strength (Theb.3.615–16), which is accen- tuated by the contrast the hero makes in his own speech. The punchyvirtus mihi numen et ensis (615) is augmented only by the enjambed relative quem teneo (616), to contrast with the elaborate syntax preceding it, which contains an unreal condition built around a parenthesis, and lengthened by a temporal clause (611–15).

2. Opening questions

When we turn further to the content of the speeches of Capaneus and Laocoon, we find verbal echoes and structural similarities. The first of these is Laocoon’s initial question, Capaneus’ echo of which opens up the issue of the speaker’s isolation and configuration of the collective. Capaneus and Laocoon respectively ask quae tanta ignavia and quae tanta insania, almost verbatim repetition in the same metrical pattern. The questions, pointing to a collective attitude which the speaker is able to comment on, and thus be apart from, suggest that the speaker is isolated from the wider community. However, in the Thebaid it is Amphiaraus who is really isolated, for Capaneus reveals that both he and the people are ready to fight. He states that the Argive populace have their swords drawn (610), and sets in opposition the “lone citizen” (unius civis, 609), Amphiaraus. This draws on Laocoon himself being presented as part of a collective – he descended magna comitante caterva (“accompanied by a large crowd”, Aen. 2.40) – but sensitises us to Laocoon’s self-isolation here, as he makes no mention of their psychological accompaniment. Indeed, it is precisely at the mental level that he places the collective apart from himself, in their “madness”, in spite of our awareness that those who have spoken before, like Capys, have largely shared Laocoon’s mistrust of the Horse. Capaneus, through his somewhat undermined

11 On the marked vigour of Virgil’s Laocoon, see Austin (1964) 44 ad 40–56. 12 See Lynch (1980) 171. 13 On the logic and structure of Laocoon’s speech, see Austin (1964) 45 ad 40–56. 120 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

outspokenness (for how can one be truly outspoken when everyone is ready to act in the same way?) reveals the way in which Laocoon imposes a psychological barrier between himself and the collective.

i. insania vs ignavia

A departure in the allusion to Laocoon within Capaneus’ first question is the verbal trade of insania in the Aeneid for ignavia in the Thebaid. A vice which stands in opposition to virtus, at the level of ethics and military assertiveness, ignavia is deployed frequently in a rhetorical context.14 Capaneus thus takes a more obviously military stance, rather than drawing attention to the madness of the collective, as Laocoon does.15

14 On virtus McDonnell (2003) 236 notes: “In Rome … physical prowess, or courage, especially as displayed in war, remained the central element of manliness throughout the Republican period and into the Empire”; see further 238–10 on “martial virtus”. On mid-Republican uses of the contrast of virtus and ignavia see McDonnell (2006) 61, who points out that Plautus and Naevius use virtus in an ethical sense. He also notes (293) that, by the time we get to the late Republic, virtus has acquired the full range of meanings in Latin. He points to a shift in the conceptualisation of Roman manliness in the late Republic (293–384), which sees martiality and ethics in a complex relationship to the term, and he subsequently maps a harmonisation in the imperial period, noting of the Flavians in particular that a heroic, military sense of virtus is brought to the fore around the person of the emperor (387–88), though the actuality of Domitian’s capacity for exemplarity is questionable (see n.16 below). We see ignavia used prominently at Cic. Cat. 2.25.12, where Cicero lists it among other vices, so too Tusc. 3.17.2. Then seeInv. 1.22.15 and 2.165.1, where it is opposed to fortitudo (“bravery”), as it is at Fin. 1.49.20; Rep. 2.68(fr.4).9, where it is also juxtaposed with fear, as at Fin. 1.50.10 and Tusc. 3.14.14. At Pro Rab. 21.21, the defendant’s action is contrasted with the ignavia he might have shown, were he not to have acted decisively and militarily. Besides Cicero, Sallust employs the word at Cat. 52.29, where Caesar attempts to rouse the senate to action and accuses it of ignavia in taking none; 58.4, where Catiline sets Lentulus’ ignavia in opposition to the action he and the other conspirators must now take; Iug. 31.2, where Memmius decries the sloth which degeneracy has led the Roman citizenry into, as opposed to the action they should be taking; and Iug. 85, where Marius’ speech uses the word four times in drawing contrasts between his suitability as a general, though he is a novus homo (“new man”), given the merits of his action to date, and the weakness or inaction of the senatorial classes. Livy uses the word 23 times, notably in Tullia’s empassioned speech to Tarquinius (2.3.3), inciting him to kill Tullius; when (24.16.12–14) Gracchus makes a distinction between military virtus (“manly qualities”) and ignavia (“cowardice”); just such a contrast is also used at 22.60.8. Nor are these themes confined to the early imperial and republican usage of the word: Valerius Flaccus has his Jason express concern about the ignavia of his men (Arg. 3.376), setting it in opposition to fama (“renown”) and their homes, both recognisably heroic objectives, especially for an epic involving travel. Silius Italicus (Pun. 11.33) lists ignavia alongside other vices, as well as having Pedianus address the beautiful youth Cinyps with the superlative ignavissime (12.236). Cinyps is crucially not warrior enough to wear the spoil which is Paulus’ helmet, and thus fits the negative configuration of the word in a martial context. More widely, Suetonius has his Caesar bemoan his ignavia in contrast to Alexander’s conquest of the world (Iul. 7.1.5), the word appears in a list of typical vices at Tib. 66.1.8 and Calig. 45.1.8, in contrast to military assertiveness on the part of Caligula. 15 Austin (1964) ad loc, detects archaism in insania (“madness”), especially when combined with other elements, such as ne plus imperative. Lynch (1980) 171 takes this further, pointing to both stylistic and syntactical features of Laocoon’s speech which bring him into close alignment with archaic diction and particularly that of Cato. Frisby – Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Laocoon 121

Capaneus puts himself forward as an inspirational figure atTheb. 3.615–18, and in allusion to Laocoon, as an exemplary one.16 His emphasis on his virtus (“manly qualities, virtue, military prowess”) and sword reinforces physical action as part of exemplary behaviour. This is of course what we see happening with Laocoon, who backs up his advice to the Trojans on not trusting the Horse with an act which realises that mistrust. In contrast, Capaneus’ stance does not actually engender any action on his part.17 ii. Intermediaries: Tarchon and Tydeus

There is however more than Capaneus and Laocoon in this intertextual dynamic. Statius alludes to Tarchon, Virgil’s Etruscan leader, who adds another layer of bellicosity. He and Laocoon are remarkably similar in the way they couple encouragement with exemplary action. Laocoon hurls his spear at the Horse (2.50), and Tarchon too backs up his words through activity: Haec effatus equum in medios moriturus et ipse / concitat (“Having said these words he spurred his horse into the midst of the fray, even ready to die himself ”, 11.741–42). Tarchon reproaches his men thus: ‘Quae tanta animis ignavia venit?’ (“‘What great cowardice has come upon your minds?’”, 11.733). This is the only such line in theAeneid , and Lactantius, the ancient commentator on the Thebaid, believed that Statius was alluding to it in Capaneus’ speech.18 I have no reason to differ from Lactantius, with the clear verbal echo plain to see, but take the allusion as being in dialogue with the situation that draws Laocoon into the picture at the same time. There is more of Tarchon alluded to in Capaneus. The readiness of weapons, brought out by Capaneus at Theb. 3.610–11 (‘tot ferro accinctae gentes animisque paratae / pendemus?’)19 evokes Tarchon’s ‘Quo ferrum, quidve haec gerimus tela irrita dextris?’ (“‘Where are your swords? Or what are these weapons we are wielding vainly in our right hands?’” Aen. 11.735). This draws attention to the fact that Capaneus and his audience need not be so ready for battle, as

16 This fits into a wider pattern of Capaneus’ attempts to reinforce links between his own heroic persona and that of positive exemplary figures. He accompanies another notable deed, the killing of the sacred snake (5.565–70) with a narrative placing expectation on his own role and its relationship to the mythological past, in what Parkes (2009) 487 reads as a bid to retain a Hercules-like heroic persona. This is in sharp contrast to his close ally Hippomedon, who simply acts without speaking at 5.558–61. See Masterson (2005) on exemplarity in Flavian epic which is far from straightforwardly positive or negative: “TheThebaid functioned both as a treasure house of exemplars and a provocation” (290). 17 On the role of the visual in exemplarity, see Leigh (1997) 160–72, and for the Thebaidin particular Bernstein (2004) 78–83, who sees multiple relationships between exemplars and receiving audience, based on differing points of view or focalisations of the final duel. 18 ad Theb. 3.613; on this see Chaudhuri (2014) 261 n.12. 19 Capaneus’ elevation of his own virtus and sword to the level of the gods also resonates with prior models who are on the cusp of battle. See Fantham (2006) 159 n.34, who notes his make-up comprising Aeschylus’ Parthenopaeus and Tydeus, alongside Virgil’s Mezentius. 122 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

they have not even left Argos yet. Capaneus’ exhortation at one level seems misplaced, with battlefield readiness brought to a domestic situation. In this he evokes figures who promote civil discord, such as Sallust’s Catiline, who likewise gives a speech resonant with battle exhortation in a setting which does not call for it (Cat. 20).20 The alteration frominsania to ignavia brings Tarchon meaningfully into play – and with it the military immediacy which forms the backdrop of his position in that moment – but we can go further. Theanimis between tanta and ignavia in Tarchon’s speech is displaced by Capaneus, shifted to express thathis mob is ready for battle, and mentally in tune with him: animisque paratae (3.610). Tarchon used animis to reveal the mob’s opposition to his stance at 11.733, and his speech goes further in this direction – drawing on the Roman, and negative, conceptualisation of Etruscans to render their position oppositional and manifestly “other”: referring to their cowardice, love of luxury and association with the east in Bacchic revelry.21 The shift ofanimis then brings together Tarchon and Laocoon, with the latter the closer syntactical model. This effectively doubles Vergilian models who are isolated psychologically from the collective, in an escalation that throws into greater relief Capaneus’ position. Capaneus’ actual readiness for action during his conflict with Amphiaraus is expressed through words alone (Theb. 3.615–16), while both of his models couple deeds with their rhetorical stances. Capaneus’ character is not restricted by a lack of desire for excessive violence and action (and we have already been made aware by the narrator that he wants war for war’s sake at 3.597–601). Rather, he is manifestly unable to separate proper conflict from non-conflict situations, as evidenced by his behaviour in the games (6.807–25).22 Capaneus has also been observed as using a predominantly challenging mode of speech against both friends and enemies.23 The phrasequae tanta ignavia draws on the package of vices used in political invective. It expresses the power of words, but also undermines that power in favour of deeds, being regularly used to indicate a need for practical, military intervention.24 The relationship between rhetoric and action in epic itself is problematic, with epic heroism shaped from its earliest incarnations by a need to balance skill at verbal expression with physical prowess.25

20 As noted by Batstone (2010) 237. I would particularly point to 20.2, where Catiline praises his followers for their lack of ignavia. 21 On typical Etruscan qualities see Bittarello (2009) 212–19. Most of these negative aspects are captured in Tarchon’s address to his soldiers, as well as in the characterisation of Mezentius, Tarchon’s principal antagonist (Aen. 7.648: disrespect of the gods; 8.481–82: tyranny; 8.483–88: ill-treatment of the dead). Bittarello also notes that Virgil’s Etruscans draw on the monarchic and Early Republican period. On Tarchon see further Horsfall (2003) 146–47 ad 184. 22 On which see Lovatt (2005) 154–62. 23 Dominik (1994b) 147. 24 See Craig (2004) 190–01 on the pool of conventional qualities drawn on in speeches which employ invective. 25 See Hardie (2012) 129–30 on rhetoric and the epic narrative, particularly with reference to invective in Aen. 11. Frisby – Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Laocoon 123

Capaneus’ use of quae tanta ignavia, coupled with the intertextual link to two models who then take decisive action, both presents the hero as shackled by circumstance to a purely rhetorical usage, frustrated in any genuine pretension to physical activity, and offers a potential warning about the disastrous consequence for civil cohesion were he to act. For if he were to lead the charge at this point, it would be against Amphiaraus. Tarchon’s action is decisive, and itself filled with connotations of internal strife. His first kill is Venulus, whose diminutive name associates the figure with Aeneas’ mother.26 Tarchon creates of himself a double for Turnus, who also pursues an Aeneas manqué (10.636–65). Internal strife is represented, but in the safe space of a transfer of identity.27 Tarchon takes Venulus arma virumque (“arms and the man”, 11.747), a phrase encompassing the core identity of Aeneas, but also of the Aeneid itself.28 Capaneus, in alluding to Tarchon, taps into the intimations of internal strife present in the Aeneid, particularly Tarchon’s tendency to turn supposed allies into enemies, alongside his threat at the level of poetics – precisely what is happening with Amphiaraus. Even from within the Thebaiditself, and relatively recently at that, quae tanta ignavia has been coupled with exemplary action. No one in the Thebaidemblematises the epic tradition more ably than Iliadic exemplar par exellence Tydeus.29 Deployed on a mission of peace to Thebes, Tydeus is, however, bellicose to the point of disobeying orders from Athena herself, according to the Iliad (5.802–08). The picture of him as exemplary in his martial prowess emerges from his function in the Iliad as part of repeated epipoleseis30 for Diomedes, at 4.370–98, 5.802–08, and 10.285–90. The Iliadic Tydeus is drawn on for Statius’ version of his aristeia in book 2, as it presents what we hear of him from the Iliad: his battle against the fifty Thebans. His bellicosity is brought out further in theThebaid, as he, like Capaneus, is a

26 We are already invited to compare the two figures. Muse (2007) 587 notes the contrast to be made between Aeneas and Tarchon at the level of leadership (in their control over landing, for example). The way the two men are brought together reveals a need to alleviate anxiety about Tarchon’s status. 27 See Pogorzelski (2009) 261–62 for a useful survey of the divergent possibilities of reading the war in the second half of the Aeneid as a civil war. 28 Fratantuono (2007) 344 refers obliquely to Virgil “smiling” at this line, and Horsfall (2003) ad 747 similarly finds humour here. 29 Gervais (2015) 56, placing emphasis on the role of his virtus, points to Tydeus as a figure in whom the concept of the “epic hero” is exemplified (if only to crash). Graziosi & Haubold (2010) 38 note the exemplary function of Tydeus for his son Diomedes in the Iliad, but point to Diomedes’ selectivity in when to deploy him as a model: he is only appropriate in moments where battle savagery is needed. They also note that Tydeus is “remembered as a savage warrior” by the audience. The antagonism between Capaneus ascontemptor deorum and the priest Amphiaraus is a marked departure from the Aeschylean version of the Seven against Thebes myth, where it was Tydeus who played antagonist to Amphiaraus on a religious level. Hardie (1993) 69 couples Tydeus with Capaneus, among others, as a hero with “immortal yearnings”. He also, along with Gervais (2015) 59, 65–67 and Roche (2015) 396, points to Lucan’s Scaeva as a key model for Tydeus, another figure around whom issues of exemplarity cluster. See also Leigh (2006) 178–84 and McNelis (2007) 131–33. 30 That is, exhortations directed at specific individuals or groups within a fighting force, prior to battle, and which draw on personal experience. Cf. Keitel (1987) 161–62. 124 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

keen proponent of war.31 In book 2 he forms a window of allusion through which Capaneus accesses Virgil.32 The two instances connect the heroes as catalysts of the war, and as challengers to figures who champion delay or diffusion of tensions. The question Capaneus issues at the opening of his speech alludes internally to Tydeus at Theb.2.548 as much as it does to Tarchon. Tydeus’ use of quae tanta ignavia occupies the same metrical position as Capaneus’:

‘Quis timor audendi, quae tanta ignavia? Solus, solus in arma voco’.

(“‘What fear of bold action, what great cowardice is this? Alone, alone I call you to arms!’”) (Theb. 2.545–46)

This is said during Tydeus’aristeia , to encourage his would-be ambushers to take him on. Such usage corresponds to Capaneus’ employment of the phrase contextually, specifically to the heightening of military tension, for this is the beginning of open hostilities in the text. Tydeus is here inciting his enemy, rather than his compatriots and allies.33 When Capaneus repeats the phrase only one book later, the words cannot help but recall Tydeus’ aristeia. Moreover, it is precisely in response to the ambush plotted against Tydeus, and the injuries he suffers during the ambush, that the Argives are galvanised to go to war. It is, in fact, on Tydeus’ treatment at the hands of the Thebans that Capaneus plays in the very section where he takes on the guise of Laocoon, persuading the people to fight:

‘Sileamus inulti Tydeos egregii perfossum pectus et arma foederis abrupti?’

(“‘Ought we to allow that the pierced body of outstanding Tydeus and arms of a broken treaty go unavenged?’”) (Theb. 3.653–56) 31 As, for example, at Theb. 7.611–24. Capaneus is also the one who brings Melanippus’ head which Tydeus then cannibalises at 7.745–50, colouring Tydeus’ final act with resistance to the celestial gods, as Ganiban (2007) 124 observes. 32 Capaneus in book 3 of course replaces Tydeus, modifying the antagonistic pairing of Amphiaraus with the latter familiar from the Greek literary tradition, noted by Fantham (2006) 158 n.32. With Capaneus in the pairing, the dynamic shifts to one more straightforwardly concerned with the divine. 33 As Gervais (2015) 56 points out, Tydeus’ aristeia is the first martial action of the text. The way in which Capaneus’ words echo those of Tydeus may suggest that Capaneus’ bid to “start” a war is, in fact, belated – it has already begun. Frisby – Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Laocoon 125

In alluding to Tarchon, he brings war to Amphiaraus’ doorstep. The additional window through Tydeus then reveals Capaneus making enemies of his compatriots, blurring the identity of Tydeus’ Theban ambushers with the “home crowd”. Capaneus names Amphiaraus’ plebeia limina (3.609), which sensitises the reader to his physical position, and to the fact that he is not on a battlefield at all. The focus on Amphiaraus’ doorway, while emphasising the domestic locale, also makes prominent its role as a boundary. Any crossing of such a boundary constitutes a self-destructive act, an inward turn and thus an act of civil war. Boundary violation is not the only intimation of civil war at work here.34 Tarchon’s behaviour comes as a response to Camilla’s aristeia (11.664–724), a moment where Etruscans are on both sides of the battlefield, and an uncomfortable proximity to civil war occurs. Laocoon’s situation, in contrast, and the thin boundary between unknown enemy and Trojan host, seems markedly different. The space he occupies seems as caught between battlefield and home-front as Capaneus on Amphiaraus’ doorstep: it barely exists in the gap between the Horse standing outside of Troy and breaking through the walls. The concept of the boundary then (to which our attention is so drawn by Capaneus) and the unknown force which lies behind it, merit further examination.35

3. Beyond the boundary

In the Thebaid, the boundary is the threshold of Amphiaraus’ home (3.609). The threat within constitutes Amphiaraus’ knowledge, which he will not share (3.566–75) and the Apolline source of that knowledge. Amphiaraus’ home, blurred with the Pythia’s cave, becomes like the Horse in the Aeneid, hiding a threat which the speaker’s words attempt to penetrate. The external audience of the Thebaid is already well-aware of the dire omens which have been recognised by Amphiaraus prior to this event (3.516–65), just as the Aeneid’s audience is aware of the threatening contents of the Horse, thanks to Aeneas’ power of hindsight. A space is thus established between the knowledge the external and internal audiences have of the latent threat contained beyond the boundary. The internal spaces which Capaneus and Laocoon imagine during their speeches are presented in recognisably similar ways. Capaneus’ speech takes us to a place where prophetic utterance occurs in an enclosed space qualified bycavum , penitus, seclusus (3.611–13). These are all words which resonate with the inside of the Horse, to which the adjective cavae (Aen. 2.53),

34 Bartsch (1997) 10–47 comprehensively explores boundary violation as part of civil war narrative, specifically in Lucan’s Bellum Civile, as an expression of self-destruction, and in opposition to narratives of order which convey political and social stability. 35 As McNelis (2007) 129–30 notes, boundary transgression is a key theme of the Thebaid, and Amphiaraus and Capaneus encapsulate it, with their chthonic and (attempted) celestial transgressions (see further 124–25, 144–45). 126 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

the adverb penitus (2.19), and the related inclusi (2.45) are applied, as both external and internal narrators struggle to resist its ability to hide its contents. Capaneus describes Apollo as penitus seclusus in antro (3.613), just as Laocoon says that the Achaeans are inclusi ligno (Aen. 2.45). Statius’ seclusus (3.612) in part echoes Virgil’s inclusus (Aen. 2.45, 258), aligning the unknown threat of the soldiers locked in the Horse to the god. The penitus also picks up Aeneas’ words as he reveals to his audience the contents of the Horse prior to Laocoon’s appearance:

Huc delecta virum sortiti corpora furtim includunt caeco lateri penitusque cavernas ingentis uterumque armato milite complent.

(“There, in its dark sides, they shut in strong, chosen men in secret, and filled the depths of its huge hollow spaces and womb with an armed cohort”). (Aen. 2.18–20)

The allusion places Apollo on the level of the marauding Achaeans, rendering the god inimical. The depth with which the space behind the surface is furnished is integral to communicating the threat, but also points to the speaker penetrating to the very heart of the unknown. The importance of such words in denoting not simply revelation but penetration becomes clear from intratextual connections within the Aeneid itself. The adverbpenitus in conjunction with cavae is also used later at 2.487 of domestic interiors. This recalls the Horse, and helps define the relationship of city and machine as reciprocal in acts of attempted or successful penetration. The ransacked homes, where Aeneas sees tearful women, are in dialogue with the internal space of the Horse.36 Its threat is now brought to fruition with a bittersweet dualism that claims the status of inner space as safety now lost. For what emerges from the safety of the Horse’s womb enters and conquers Troy’s domestic, feminine, and hitherto safe centre.37 The homes then become, rather than places which offer comfort to the hero, a reminder of failed penetration: the Trojans did not break open the Horse, and so the contents of the Horse have broken Troy open.38

36 Rossi (2004) 23–24 offers a useful overview of the opinions on the nature of the correspondence Servius observed in this passage to the sack of Alba in Ennius’ Annales; see further 41–43, on the fall of Troy extending to embody Rome, as well as Alba, and working against the teleology of foundation. 37 Graziosi & Haubold (2010) 33 point particularly to the city being configured as a feminine space inIliad 6, itself powerfully drawn on throughout Aen. 2, as noted by Hughes (1997), through Aeneas’ actions replicating those of the Iliadic Hector. 38 Rimell (2015) 35–36 argues for reciprocal acts of penetrating enclosed, small spaces in the Aeneid, which redress the Trojan failure to heed Capys’ advice at Aen. 2.38 on probing the latebras (“hiding spaces”). She suggests spaces used for hiding carry a connotation of “homeliness or nostalgic smallness”, though if these spaces are uncontrollable, or unknown, they “arouse suspicion”. Frisby – Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Laocoon 127

In revealing the spaces of the Horse to the audience’s view retrospectively, Aeneas fulfils a wish to expose the Greeks, which challenges Laocoon’s failure at the time. Amphiaraus in the Thebaidhas retreated into his own domestic space for safety – from the imminent future – and the antagonism in Capaneus’ assault on his home, through its connection to the Horse, is more fully realised. The failed attempts of Laocoon and Aeneas to reveal the internal workings of the Horse, and in so doing redress or anticipate the Greek attack in some way, are taken further by Capaneus’ verbal exposure of Apollo and the Pythia. He is ultimately successful, for he obtains an opening up of the internal, domestic unknown, as Apollo’s representative Amphiaraus emerges to reveal what he knows of the future, and articulate the self-destructive path they will all take.

4. Between mortal and divine

There is more than simply human antagonism to be considered for both Laocoon and Capaneus: both also attempt to detract from the divine. In his treatment of the Horse, Laocoon effectively denies its divine aspect, and this denial is alluded to in Capaneus’ antagonistic stance towards Apollo. In using Laocoon’s suspicion around the Horse to frame his own stance, the hero re-draws Laocoon’s response to the Horse as one which debunks any claim it has to divine association or status, a response which heightens a sense of antagonism in Laocoon’s relationship to the divine.39 At the same time, in aligning the inner spaces of Amphiaraus’ home to the Horse’s inner spaces, Capaneus punctures Apollo’s gravitas and supernatural capacity to threaten, by placing him in the more mundane house of a single citizen (unius … civis, 3.609). i. Whatever it is …

Laocoon sees the potential for something hidden, something which is not open in the danger it poses, as fundamental to the Horse. Apollo, from Capaneus’ perspective, represents something similar. In an aside, Capaneus says of Apollo, ‘quisquis is est, timidis famaeque ita visus’ (3.612).40 The metrical positioning ofquisquis is est is identical to that of quidquid id est at the start of the climax of Laocoon’s speech (Aen. 2.49), where the priest expresses the unknown, yet patently frightening aspect of the Horse. The only variant between the two phrases is in the

39 Marinis (2015) 349 points to Capaneus’ martial valour being the motivation for his disdain for the divine, as with Mezentius in the Aeneid. In this too we may detect a link to Laocoon, who is similarly loaded with martial connotations. 40 Chaudhuri (2014) 263 discusses the line, noting that the question mark Capaneus raises over Apollo’s status is an embellishment on his typical boast about his weapons, and that his scepticism is a key part of his presentation here, beyond his criminality or hubristic nature. 128 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

gender assigned to Apollo by Capaneus, which undermines any sense of genuine uncertainty, and which affects the tone of the utterance. Not only is quidquid id est almost repeated here, but the Lucretian resonances which the original phrase tapped into are also evoked.41 The scepticism which characterises Capaneus’ approach, along with the stance he takes relative to augural practice, link to philosophical approaches which insist on divine lack of involvement; though his flagrant disrespect is not part of that connection.42 What prefigures Capaneus’ use of the evocative phrase does not correspond to the typically Lucretian options which Laocoon presents: “it might be x, it might be y, whatever it is”. Rather we have a marked contrast between the specific knowledge that it is Apollo himself who is in the cave, and the sarcastic uncertainty created by quisquis is est. Capaneus’ quisquis is est also echoes a trope that was well-established in ancient prayer formulae, as part of a pious effort to enable a prayer to take effect.43 In Capaneus’ mouth it becomes a rejection of Apollo’s identity. With timidis famaeque ita visus (3.611),44 he marks a clear difference between his own knowledge and the suspicions of the fearful. In using fama, he also reflects on the capacity of narrative itself to shape the divine, and particularly the epic tradition – answering with what is stridently his own narrative.45 Laocoon fears the Horse, and positions himself as someone afraid of the unknown. Capaneus, however, refers to the timidis in the abstract, and allows fear to be communicated as something experienced by those external to himself. This, coupled with the alterations to the presentation of the unknown in quisquis is est, emphasises a shift in his stance from that of Laocoon. Capaneus is not afraid, precisely because he does not buy into the dread of the unknown: he does not find it powerful. Laocoon, in spite of his determined distancing of the Horse from the divine (subsequently opposed by Sinon), cannot help but allow it to become

41 Lynch (1980) 170 cites this phrase as a particularly Lucretian example: it is used at DRN 3.135 of harmonia, which the poet is refuting, and at 5.577 of the moon. In both instances, the poet has given a few different options, before deploying the phrase and moving on to a specific assertion which nevertheless does not fully clarify the unknown quantity. See also Chaudhuri (2014) 257–59 for an overview of Capaneus’ status as engaged with philosophy, and particularly on the complexities of reading the contradictions inherent in the figure’s suspicion of divine existence and simultaneous challenge to it. Lovatt (2013) 62 points to Capaneus’ later alignment of Amphiaraus with a “Lucretian Epicurus figure (3.657–9)”, while “Lucretian language” in turn generates Capaneus’ own conceptualisation of the gods as being generated by fear (3.661). 42 Chaudhuri (2014) 262 points to the differences in Capaneus’ presentation and that of Mezentius, a figure who forms part of Capaneus’ intertextual makeup, but falls short of the thorough religious disregard and disrespect Capaneus shows, and to whom the label Epicurean has been applied, on which see Kronenberg (2005) 403–31. On Epicureanism in Virgil see Adler (2003). 43 We find it at Aeschylus,Agamemnon , 99–10, where Fraenkel (1950) ad 160–02 notes its traditional nature, but also the pointed use in Aeschylus, where it encompasses not the deity’s name but his character and inscrutable nature. 44 timidis is a word sharing its root with the verb used by Virgil in the same position, timeo (Aen. 2.49). 45 On fama as narrative see Hardie (2009) 555–72, and on fama as “tradition” see Hardie (2012) 81. Frisby – Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Laocoon 129 something which defies logical explanation.46 His rationalising, but nevertheless fearful, explanation reveals the Horse as something which has the capacity to bemuse and terrify as much as any natural phenomenon attributable to the gods, and which, crucially, has had precisely this effect on him. In casting Apollo as an understood object of a fear that is separate from the speaker’s own experience, Capaneus potentially realises a paradoxical sense in which Laocoon’s resistance to the divine function of the Horse allows for its supernatural capacity. Capaneus highlights the dualism present in the seer’s act of divine mediation, to which we are already sensitised through Amphiaraus’ description of it in rather less benign terms than the typically sanctioned act should merit (3.633–35). Through Laocoon, Capaneus reveals the extent to which he and Amphiaraus are aligned, enabling a full collapse of the binary between seer and theomach. ii. The cave

At Theb. 3.611–15, Capaneus highlights the cave from which Apollo’s prophecies are commonly experienced, and more specifically the Pythia who dwells within, as a key element in his argument and derision.47 Capaneus creates slippage between the mere plebeia limina (609) of the human Amphiaraus and the prophetic enclosure associated with Apollo. This complements the not unnatural blur between the Pythia and Apollo, when he tells us Delphi is where Apollo ipse speaks (611). Negotiating the human-divine dynamic forms a fundamental part of Capaneus’ attack on Amphiaraus’ prophecies and prophetic power. Such an attitude complements Laocoon’s attempts to lock the Horse, in spite of the supernatural agency he cannot help ascribe to it, into the mortal and thus manageable realm.48 The shift in focus, from Amphiaraus to the Pythia, might seem rather odd in the context. Amphiaraus is in no way like the Pythia: he is not the same type of prophet as the Pythia, and has not “accessed” Apollo in her customary manner at all.49 An inversion in his speech

46 On the pendant nature of Laocoon and Sinon see Lynch (1980) and Austin (1964) 94 ad 199–227, who also notes (101 ad 201) that Laocoon does not address the man who undermines his persuasive power. Note that Amphiaraus puts Capaneus high on the agenda of people who have not motivated his decision to come out (Theb. 3.620–24) and about whom he will not speak (3.627–28) – something of a recusatio in contrast to Laocoon’s simple lack of engagement. 47 The discourse surrounding the Pythia here taps into wider philosophical concerns about the nature of oracles themselves, expressed by Plutarch, for example. Writing in the same period, Plutarch focusses on the mechanics of the oracular process, and has his characters dwell on the nature of the Pythia’s utterances, in particular on the human element in the relaying of the god’s message. Plutarch too treats the Pythia with the Sybil (De pyth. 9), showing it was easy enough to make a connection between these prophetic figures and contexts. 48 The Horse’s ambiguity in status as dedicatory is also inherent, as noted by Horsfall (2008) 78ad 40–56, though later (177 ad 189) he points out that destruction of the Trojans is entirely what one would expect following destruction of a tutelary image. 49 Tuttle (2013) 72–73 places emphasis on Amphiaraus as augur, that is one who consults the flight of birds, and observes that Statius’ version “echoes the Roman rite of taking the auspices” (73). 130 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

draws our attention to this, as Capaneus takes for himself the ability to read the birds’ flight (3.617–18), having submerged the augur’s typical association with the skies in the Pythia’s cave. The clarity of Capaneus’ sword, emphasised through his verbal brandishing of it at 3.616, contrasts with the obscurity which surrounds the riddles of the prophetess, now connected to Amphiaraus himself. When combined with Capaneus’ attempt to claim augury for himself (617–18), the opposition sees the hero appropriating something of Amphiaraus’ role, both within the text and as a prophetic voice with wider significance at the poetic level. This is achieved not only through the intertextual link to Laocoon, but through a wider submersion in the Aeneid’s framework of prophecy, which takes control in a way that corresponds to Capaneus’ own pretensions to divine power. Capaneus’ turn to the chthonic, internal space of the Pythia’s cave in response to the augur brings his words into dialogue with the associations of the divinely possessed female located in such a space in Latin epic. Vergil’s Sibyl, as imagined by Helenus, is a prominent model, embedded as she is in the speech of another prophet, paralleling Capaneus’ imagining of the Pythia in Thebaid3. Seclusus, the word denoting Apollo’s containment at Theb. 3.613, is used by Helenus in the Aeneid of the Sybil’s prophecies, sealed by her in the cave, at 3.446: antro seclusa relinquit (“she leaves them closed up in her cave”). Helenus’ speech finds further echoes in that of Capaneus, as he refers to the Pythian priestess as a virgo (“girl”, Theb.3.614), as Helenus does the Sybil (Aen. 3.445),50 and the cave in both instances is also designated by antrum (Theb. 3.613 / Aen. 3.446). Of course Capaneus emphasises the prophetic voice itself (ipse … Apollo … mugiat, Theb. 3.610–12), which alludes to Aeneas’ desire that the Sybil speak the prophecy herself in Aeneid 6 (ipsa canas oro; “I beg you, sing [them] yourself ”, 76), and his drive towards the war evokes her predictions for Aeneas of the horrors of war to be faced in Italy.51 But I would suggest that structural links to Helenus and Laocoon, who both look toward internal spaces which will promise destruction, are as crucial as the Sybil herself. Capaneus, firmly positioned in theAeneid ’s nexus of prophetic voices, foreshadows, as Helenus does, a heroic descent which precipitates a prediction of war to follow. The link to militarily assertive figures like Tarchon and Tydeus foregrounds the bellicosity Capaneus combines with his prophetic role, as well as augmenting the resistance Laocoon already displayed to the divine aspects of the Horse. The combination offers a reading of Laocoon in turn, which renders his foresight accurate, but as antagonistic as it is insightful. 50 Roche (2015) 395 points to an alignment of Tydeus with Virgil’s Sibyl (Theb. 2.460–01 and Aen. 6.87–88), among other models. Another character takes intertextual ownership of the power to predict and shape the future, and it is significant that this occurs in theThebaid with excessively violent figures. 51 The allusion toAen. 6.98–101 itself in Capaneus’ conceptualisation of the Pythia, noted by Lactantius (ad Theb.3.613) is read by Chaudhuri (2014) 261–62 as deliberately dismissive of both the Greek (epic) and Roman (cultural) heritage of engagement with the divine through augury and oracles: Capaneus is seeking to supplant divine authority on this front with himself. He also (n.13) points to Capaneus’ capacity to offer a reading of the Aeneid which undermines prophetic authority on foundation. Frisby – Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Laocoon 131

Helenus’ promise of clarity for Aeneas in the Underworld, brought to fruition in the Sybil’s own voice, opposes the underworld space which Capaneus projects for the silent Amphiaraus – amplified by his use of it to break the force of divine communication through a refusal to listen. Capaneus challenges Amphiaraus’ primacy in dialogue with the literary model, usurping Amphiaraus’ role, while the latter hangs back and does not step into the Laocoon model of his own accord. Laocoon, of course, is an emergency priest, not an established augur or prophet like Helenus or Amphiaraus. That momentary role he steps into, in the absence of an actual priest of Neptune, signals Capaneus’ assuming of a role suitable to a specific moment. This opposes the multiple, universalising allusions which connect him to other prophetic figures in theAeneid , and so generates an instability in his role corresponding to the identity shifts taking place in theThebaid . In Helenus, Laocoon and the Sybil, Capaneus evokes repetition and re-narration of the Trojan war. Through Laocoon in particular, he does so as a liminal figure, contextualised by an insistence on a liminal Troy – at the tipping point into the final struggle leading to the city’s destruction. Like the Aeneid’s Helenus’, Capaneus’ intertextual layers of prophetic voices foreshadow a destructive downward spiral, undercutting the Aeneid’s transcendent underworld experience with a somewhat more terminal one, and undermining the balance of city falling to city rising (Troy to Rome). Capaneus does not simply foreshadow the violence of the rest of the Thebaid, but in the shared model of Laocoon, and the martiality of bellicose intermediaries, actively brings war to the domestic setting, and renders a potentially safe space into a threat. In the self-destructiveness which allusion to Laocoon generates, there is no escape for the descending hero or the emergency priest.

King’s College London DANIELLE FRISBY ([email protected]) 132 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

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S. Harrison (1992) ‘The Arms of Capaneus’,CQ 42, 247–52. R. Heinze (1993) Virgil’s Epic Technique, trans. H. Harve, D. Harve & F. Robertson, London. D. E. Hill (ed.) (1983) P. Papini Stati Thebaidos Libri XII, Leiden. N. Horsfall (ed.) (2003) Virgil, Aeneid 11: A Commentary, Leiden. N. Horsfall (2008) Virgil, Aeneid 2, Leiden. E. Keitel (1987) ‘Homeric Antecedents to the “Cohortatio” in the Ancient Historians’, CW 80, 153–72. L. Kronenberg (2005) ‘Mezentius the Epicurean’, TAPhA 135, 403–31. M. Leigh (1997) Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement, Oxford. M. Leigh (2006) ‘Statius and the Sublimity of Capaneus,’ in M. J. Clarke, B. G. F. Currie & R. O. A. M. Lyne (eds), Epic Interactions, Oxford, 217–41. H. Lovatt (2001) ‘Mad about Winning: Epic, War and Madness in the Games of Statius’ Thebaid’, MD 46, 103–20. H. Lovatt (2005), Statius and Epic Games: Sport, Politics and Poetics in the Thebaid, Cambridge. H. Lovatt (2013), ‘Competing Visions: Prophecy, Spectacle, and Theatricality in Flavian Epic,’ in Augoustakis (2013), 53–70. J. Lynch (1980) ‘Laocoön and Sinon: Virgil, Aeneid 2.40–198’, G&R 27, 170–79. E. Manolaraki (2013) ‘“Consider in the Image of Thebes”: Celestial and Poetic Auspicy in theThebaid ’, in Augoustakis (2013), 89–107. A. Marinis (2015) ‘Statius’ Thebaid and the legacy of Thebes,’ in Dominik, Newlands & Gervais (2015), 343–61. M. Masterson (2005) ‘Statius’ Thebaidand the Realization of Roman Manhood’, Phoenix 59, 288–315. M. McDonnell (2003) ‘Roman men and Greek virtue’, in R. M. Rosen & I. Sluiter (eds), Andreia: Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity, Leiden, 235–61 M. McDonnell (2006) Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic, Cambridge. C. McNelis (2007) Statius’ Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War, Cambridge. G. Most (2010) ‘Laocoons’, in J. Farrell & M. C. J. Putnam (eds), A Companion to Virgil’s Aeneid and its Tradition, London, 325–40. K. Muse (2007) ‘Sergestus and Tarchon in the Aeneid’, CQ 57, 586–605. R. Parkes (2009) ‘Hercules and the Centaurs: Reading Statius with Virgil and Ovid’, CPh 104, 476–94. R. Parkes (2012) Statius Thebaid 4, Oxford. K. Pollmann (2001) ‘Statius’ Thebaid and the Legacy of Virgil’s Aeneid’, Mnemosyne 54, 10–30. R. J. Pogorzelski (2009) ‘The “Reassurance of Fratricide” in theAeneid ’, TAPhA 130, 261–89. V. Rimell (2015) The Closure of Space in Roman Poetics: Empire’s Inward Turn, Cambridge. P. Roche (2015) ‘Lucan’s de Bello Civili in the Thebaid’, in Dominik, Newlands, & Gervais (2015), 393–407. M. Seo (2013) Exemplary Traits, Oxford. T. Stover (2009) ‘Apollonius, Valerius Flaccus and Statius: Argonautic elements in Thebaid3.499–647’, AJPh 130, 439–55. S. V. Tracy (1987) ‘Laocoon’s Guilt’, AJPh 108, 451–54. A. Tuttle (2013) ‘Argive Augury and Portents in the Thebaid’, in Augoustakis (2015), 71–88.

fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid

Revised from a paper given to the Virgil Society on 5December 2015*

Nash ‘Superat quoniam Fortuna, sequamur, quoque vocat vertamus iter’.

(“‘Since Fortuna has the upper-hand, let us follow her, and direct our journey where she calls’”). Palinurus addressing Aeneas, Aen. 5.22–23

‘Quo fata trahunt retrahuntque sequamur; quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.’

(“‘Let us follow where fata drag us back and forth: whatever happens, every fortuna must be overcome by endurance’”). Nautes addressing Aeneas, Aen. 5.709–10

Virgil’s use of fatum/a and F/fortuna in the Aeneid is confusing and complicated.1 As the above lines from the beginning and end of book 5 demonstrate, Virgil sometimes employs fatum/a and F/fortuna in similar contexts, and associates them with the same verbs and imagery.2 This encourages the reader to compare the two, and to consider whether their meanings should be aligned, or whether each word carries individual significance. In this paper, I argue the

* An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Vergilian Society in June 2015. I am very grateful to the Vergilian and Virgil audiences for their helpful questions, comments and suggestions, and to Daniel Hadas, the editor of PVS. This work is drawn from one of the chapters of my doctoral thesis (‘Philosophical Readings in Virgil’s Aeneid’, Oxford 2017): thanks also to my supervisors, Gail Trimble, Barney Taylor, and Karen Margrethe Nielsen. References to the Aeneid are marked simply by book and line number, and translations are my own unless otherwise noted. Where possible, I have leftfatum/a and F/fortuna in Latin to avoid using a restrictive English translation. 1 I use a capital ‘F’ in instances in which Fortuna is personified,e.g. as a goddess. The capitalization ofFortuna in passages from the Aeneid follows the text of Mynors (1969). 2 Other examples of passages in which Virgil uses fatum/a and F/fortuna together and / or in similar ways include: 1.239–41; 4.109–10, 651–54; 8.333–36 (discussed below); 10.111–13; 12.676–77 (discussed below). 136 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

latter: though F/fortuna is one of the words Virgil uses to talk about fate, it bears different meanings and associations from fatum/a. These are drawn from philosophy, in whichfortuna commonly translates τύχη, and from Roman religion and culture, in which Fortuna is an important goddess and “divine quality”.3 As there has been some confusion about the role of fortuna in Stoic philosophy, and how this relates to fate in the Aeneid, I begin by identifying the meaning of fortuna in philosophical texts from the 1st century BC, especially Cicero (i. fortuna in philosophy).4 When Cicero uses fortuna in contexts that discuss fate and Stoicism, it translates τύχη, “chance”, a force whose existence was incompatible with the Stoic theory of universal causal determinism. Cicero therefore follows Chrysippus, who attempted to reconcile popular belief in chance with the Stoic theory of fate, by arguing that events which seem random or unexpected are not in fact uncaused, but rather have causes which we do not understand or know about. This understanding offortuna helps to explain why Virgil very rarely utters the word in the omniscient authorial voice, and why he associates fortuna particularly closely with characters who are ignorant of fate, such as Turnus and Dido. When Cicero uses fortuna outside of contexts that discuss fate and Stoicism, it still means “chance”, and is cast as a negative and unreliable force, to which wise and virtuous men should be immune. This further explains why Aeneas is progressively distanced fromfortuna in the course of the poem, and why characters who leave things down to luck, such as Nisus and Euryalus, are fatally unsuccessful. I then explore Fortuna’s significance in Roman religion and culture (ii. Fortuna in religion). As she was an oracular goddess, she is linked with fate. But she also has a broad range of other associations: with farmers and farming; with sailors and sea-travel; with women; and with military victory, civil war and the generals of the end of the Republic. All of these associations are relevant in different ways to understandingF/fortuna in the Aeneid, but for the purposes of this paper, I explore only the two that relate most closely to my concluding analysis of iii. F/fortuna in book 5: femininity and sea-travel.5 This analysis constitutes one example of how sensitivity to the differing meanings offatum/a and F/fortuna can enrich and nuance our interpretation of the poem. F/fortuna is influential in book 5, and is cited as being responsible for two major setbacks for the Trojans: the storm and the burning of the

3 Following Clark (2007). 4 In particular, I offer an alternative argument to the suggestion of some scholars thatfatum/a and fortuna are essentially the same thing in Stoicism and therefore the Aeneid. Examples of this view include: Quint (1993, 93, ad. 5.709–10): “the language is of course Stoic … in Stoic vocabulary, Fate and Fortune are notoriously hard to tell apart”; Edwards (1960, 153 n.5), “on the whole … Virgil, like the Stoics, seems to make no important differentiation betweenfata and fortuna”. 5 I offer a fuller exploration of the other religious and cultural associations ofFortuna and their relevance to the Aeneid in my doctoral dissertation (see n.* above). Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 137 ships by the Trojan women. Aeneas subsequently decides to leave the Trojan women behind on Sicily, and loses his helmsman, Palinurus, along with the rudder of his ship. I argue that, given Fortuna’s especial importance to sailors and women, and her symbolic association with the rudder, these events can be understood as an important stage in the progress of the Trojan mission away from the uncertainty and instability of F/fortuna, and towards the security of their fated future.

i. fortuna in philosophy

As scholars have frequently noted, Stoicism is one important context for understanding fate in the Aeneid.6 There are several compelling reasons for this. For one, the sheer prominence of fate in the poem has Stoic connotations: both critics and adherents of Stoicism were united in portraying belief in fate as a defining characteristic of the school.7 Fatum/a, the most common word for fate in the poem, appears 125 times. If we exclude De Fato, this is considerably more than in the entirety of the Ciceronian corpus.8 Indeed, in the singular (fatum), which is how it appears in the programmatic opening lines (fato profugus, 1.2), this is a relatively rare word in Latin, used specifically in philosophical works to refer to the Stoic conception of fate as universal causal determinism.9 The close connection between Jupiter and fate in the Aeneid may also be suggestive of Stoicism:10 Stoics equated fate with the providence of a universal world-god whom they identified with the Zeus / Jupiter of popular religion.11 These two general points can be supported by more specific observations. Edwards (1960), for example, argues that the use of verbs of following and dragging to describe the

6 Scholars who read Stoicism into fate in the Aeneid include: Servius (ad Aen. 1.257; 2.689; 3.376; 8.334; 10.467); Heinze (1903) 293–304; Bailey (1935) 208; Edwards (1960); Rabel (1981); Lyne (1987) 73; Quint (1993) 93. 7 Accordingly, in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, both the Epicurean speaker Velleius and the Academic speaker Cotta make a point of criticizing and distancing themselves from the Stoic belief in fate (1.55; 3.14). 8 fatum/a appears 59 times in De Fato, and 95 times in all of Cicero’s other extant works. 9 TLL s.v. ‘fatum’. Cicero does not use the plural in the philosophical De Fato. Cf. especially Virg. Geo. 2.491, inexorabile fatum, where causal determinism must be the sense, because of the proximity of rerum … causas (490); 8.334, ineluctabile fatum, and Servius ad loc. (secundum Stoicos locutus est). I discuss the latter passage below. 10 Jupiter in the Aeneid demonstrates knowledge of fate, which is described as being in his power (‘sic fata deum rex / sortitur’, 3.375–76; ‘imperio Iovis fatisque’, 5.784), and is closely connected with his words (‘fabor … fatorum arcana’, 1.261–62) and his will (‘neque me sententia vertit’, 1.260). Note, however, that Jupiter is not the only god associated with fate in the poem. Apollo, for example, is also portrayed as the source of fata, “prophecies” (e.g. 3.94–98; 6.77–80), though the harpy Celaeno suggests that Apollo himself receives fata from Jupiter (3.251–25). 11 On the Stoic equation of fate with a universal god and the Zeus of popular religion see e.g. Diog. Laert. 7.135 = L&S 46B: ἔν τ᾿ εἶναι θεὸν καὶ νοῦν καὶ εἱμαρμένην καὶ Δία· πολλάς τ᾿ ἑτέρας ὀνομασίας προσονομάζεσθαι (“God, intelligence, fate and Zeus are all one, and many other names are applied to him” -trans. L&S); Cic. Nat. D. 1.39 = L&S 54B = SVF 2.1077; Plut. Mor. 1056c = L&S 55R = SVF 2.997. Occasional references to an abstract deus in the Aeneid may also be Stoic (e.g. 4.440, 651; 12.677). 138 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

relationship between characters and fate in the poem follows Stoic precedent.12 Rabel (1981) convincingly connects the spinning-top simile in book 7, describing Amata’s descent into frenzy, with the Stoic Chrysippus’ use of the characteristic movement of a spinning-top to explain the role of moral responsibility within universal causal determinism.13 F/fortuna is the second most popular word used to describe and reference fate (in the broadest sense) in the Aeneid.14 It / she is appealed to as having power over events,15 and characters claim that it / she has laid out a path for them to follow.16 F/fortuna, like fata, can also describe the destiny of particular people/s and cities.17 Despite the suggestions of some scholars,18 this use of F/fortuna is surprising, given the Stoic characterization of fate in the poem, because F/fortuna and fatum/a do not mean the same thing and are not used in the same way in Stoic sources contemporary to Virgil. Cicero is our main source for Latin philosophy in the 1st century BC. His philosophical works therefore provide useful evidence for the range of meanings fortuna carried in philosophical contexts during this period. When Cicero uses fortuna in discussions of fate, it is usually as a translation of τύχη. The following passage is a good example, as it contains other indications that Cicero is translating Greek sources (Cic. Acad. 1.29):19

… quam vim animum esse dicunt mundi, eandemque esse mentem sapientiamque perfectam, quem deum appellant … quam interdum eandem necessitatem appellant, quia nihil aliter possit atque ab ea constitutum sit, inter quasi fatalem et immutabilem continuationem ordinis sempiterni, non numquam quidem eandem fortunam, quod efficiat multa improvisa et necopinata nobis propter obscuritatem ignorationemque causarum.

12 Verbs of following and dragging are used with fate at 1.382; 5.709 (quoted above); 9.204 and 12.676–77 (discussed below). Evidence that this may be Stoic includes Seneca’s translation of Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus (ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt, ep. 107.11), and Hippolytus’ preservation of the Stoic comparison of man’s relationship to fate to that of a dog tied to a cart, who either willingly follows or is unwillingly dragged (Haer. 1.21 = L&S 62A = SVF 2.975). 13 7.378–84; for Chryssipus, Cic. Fat. 42–43. 14 F/ortuna and cognates appear 71 times in the Aeneid. There is only 1 instance of the plural (6.683), and 5 of the cognate adjective fortunatus (1.437; 6.639; 9.446; 11.252, 416). In addition to fatum/a and F/fortuna, sors/ sortes has a meaning related to fate 13 times (including one instance of the verb sortitur: 3.376), and Parcae appears 8 times. 15 Passim, e.g. 1.628–29; 2.79, 385; 3.53, 251–52; 4.109; 5.356, 604, 625; 8.15–16, 127–28, 333–35, 578; 9.214, 282; 10.284, 435–36; 11.43, 425–27; 12.147. 16 e.g. 2.387–88; 4.603; 5.22–23; 6.95–97; 10.49; 11.128; 12.405, 677. 17 Especially of Troy (3.16; 6.62; 7.243) and the Trojans (3.493), but also of e.g. Dido (4.434), Aeneas (6.95–97), the town Ardea (7.413) and each individual human (10.107–12). 18 See n.4 above. 19 See Reid (1874) ad loc. Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 139

(“… and this force [all-pervading reason] they say is the soul of the world, and is also perfect intelligence and wisdom, which they entitle God … and this force they also sometimes call Necessity, because nothing can happen otherwise than has been ordained by it under a fated and unchangeable concatenation of everlasting order; although they sometimes also term it fortuna, because many of its operations are unforeseen and unexpected by us on account of their obscurity and our ignorance of causes”. – trans. Rackham, 2014).

In this portion of book 1 of the Academica, Cicero’s speaker Varro gives an account of the philosophy of the Old Academy, and defends this, following Antiochus, against what he sees as the innovations of the New Academy.20 Despite not ostensibly being a Stoic text, this section draws on Stoic themes.21 Particularly recognisable is the Stoic conception of the universal deus, which was equated in identity statements with fate and reason.22 In this passage, we are told that the soul of the world may also be called “God”, “Wisdom” or “Necessity” etc, and it looks as though Cicero is suggesting that fortuna is yet another term that can be used to refer to this nexus of concepts integral to Stoic fate and cosmology. However, closer analysis reveals that things are more complicated. fortuna is defined as a force which brings about things that are unexpected or unforeseen because their causes are either unknown or hidden. This description is strongly reminiscent of the Stoic Chrysippus’ explanation of τύχη (“chance”) as an αἰτία ἄδηλος (cf. Cicero’s obscuritatem … causarum).23 The sources suggest that this explanation was in response to a specific criticism of the Stoic theory of universal causal determinism: how can it explain random or chance events, that do not seem to have a cause? This is a serious objection: belief in chance “and in an all-encompassing determinism of the Stoic variety are mutually exclusive”.24 Chrysippus responded by re-characterizing

20 Academics generally should be taken to be the subject of dicunt. 21 Reid (1874) ad loc, for example, comments that “the whole of this section is so undilutedly Stoic that one can only marvel how Antiochus tried to harmonize it with the teaching of the earlier Platonists and Aristotelians”. 22 See n.11 above. 23 Reid (1874) ad loc. also notes the connection between Cicero’s definition offortuna and Chrysippus’ explanation of τύχη. Dyck (1996) ad 1.115–21: “the Stoa explained fortune as a construct that covered human ignorance of causal relations”. The Stoics may have shared this definition with earlier philosophers, including Aristotlee.g. ( Ph. 196b5), which helps to explain its presence in the Academica. See especially SVF 2.965–67; 971; 973. For the Chrysippean origin of the explanation of τύχη as an αἰτία ἄδηλος, see especially SVF 2.973: ταυτα μὲν οὖν ἐν τοῖς γνωριμοτάτοις ἐστὶ τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ [= Chrysippus] πολλάκις εἰρημένων. However,SVF 2.965 (οὐχ ὑπὸ πρώτων νομισθῆναι τῶν Στωῒκῶν, ὥς τινες οἴονται) might suggest otherwise: though there is then a case to be made that Chrysippus would not be counted amongst the “first” founders of the School. 24 Dyck, 1996, ad 1.115–21. This explains why, elsewhere, Cicero uses the existence offortuna as an argument against universal causal determinism (Div. 2.19): Si enim nihil fieri potest, nihil accidere, nihil evenire, nisi quod ab omni aeternitate certum fuerit esse futurum rato tempore, quae potest esse fortuna? (“For if nothing can happen, nothing befall, nothing come to pass, except what has been determined from all eternity as bound to happen at a fixed time, how can there be such a thing asfortuna ?” – trans. Falconer, 2014). 140 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

τύχη as an αἰτία, and thus maintaining the central tenet that everything happens through antecedent causes.25 Though they may seem causeless, random events attributed to τύχη are in fact simply events whose causes humans do not and cannot understand. Crucially, this was not an admission that chance or causeless events existed, but rather an explanation for why people think they exist (Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Fate 179.6 = SVF 2.967):

τὸ δὲ λέγειν τὴν τύχην αἰτίαν ἄδηλον ἀνθωπίνῳ λογισμῷ οὐκ ἔστι φύσιν τινὰ τύχης τιθεμένων, ἀλλ’ ἐν τῇ τῶν ἀνθρώπων πρὸς τὰ αἴτια ποιᾷ σχέσει τὴν τύχην εἶναι λεγόντων.

(“To say that luck is ‘a cause obscure to human reasoning’ is not [the assertion] of those who are laying down some [real] nature that luck has, but of those who are saying that luck consists in men’s being in a certain state in relation to the causes”. – trans. Sharples, 1983, who here translates τύχη as “luck”).

Returning to the original passage from the Academica: it is now clear that, instead of claiming that fortuna is another word for fate, Cicero’s speaker is here explaining that the attribution of fortuna to an event is simply a symptom of human ignorance: fortuna is what we call fate when we fail to understand it. Accordingly, Cicero also uses fortuna as a translation for Chrysippean τύχη at Top. 63:26

Cum enim nihil sine causa fiat, hoc ipsum est fortunae eventus, obscura causa quae latenter efficitur.

(“For since nothing happens without cause, this is exactly what fortuna is, an event which is the result of an obscure and unseen cause”. – trans. Hubbell, 2014).

This might already help to explain a certain aspect of Virgil’s usage of the word in theAeneid . For it is overwhelmingly used in direct speech or “character text”:27 to represent the viewpoint

25 The view that everything happens by fate through antecedent causes is repeatedly attributed to Chrysippus in the De Fato. Chrysippus distinguished between different types of antecedent cause Fat.( 41): ‘Causarum enim’, [Chrysippus] inquit, ‘aliae sunt perfectae et principales, aliae adiuvantes et proximae; quam ob rem cum dicimus omnia fato fieri causis antecedentibus, non hoc intellegi volumus, causis perfectis et principalibus, sed causis adiuvantibus et proximis’. (“‘Some causes’, he says, ‘are perfect and principal, others auxiliary and proximate. Hence when we say that everything takes place by fate owing to antecedent causes, what we wish to be understood is not perfect and principal causes but auxiliary and proximate causes’” - trans. Rackham & Sutton, 1948). 26 The presence of this passage in Cicero’sTopica , closely modelled on Aristotle’s Topica, again suggests that the Stoics may have shared this explanation of fortuna / τύχη as an αἰτία ἄδηλος with Peripatetics. See n.23 above. 27 My use of “character text” follows de Jong (1987). The examples at 1.454, 517; 8.15; 9.41, 723 and 11.761, whilst not direct speech, seem clearly to represent the question or perspective of a character. Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 141 of a character rather than that of the (omniscient?) narrator.28 The authorial voice only utters fortuna 8 times;29 other characters do so 63 times. Indeed, in the instances in which the narrator uses fortuna, it is only appealed to as a force over the narrative and events in 3 cases within the entire epic: the burning of the ships (5.604),30 the deaths of Pallas and Lausus (10.435),31 and Amata’s suicide (12.593).32 Characters that appeal to or reference fortuna thereby signify their belief that things could or might turn out differently. This belief is tantamount to an ignorance offatum/a – of what must happen within the poem and Rome’s history. Dido, for example, makes frequent reference to fortuna (4.433–34, 603, 652):33

‘Tempus inane peto, requiem spatiumque furori dum mea me victam doceat fortuna dolere’.

(“‘I seek empty time, some respite and space for my passion, until my fortuna teaches me to grieve, defeated’”).

‘Verum anceps pugnae fuerat fortuna’.

(“‘But the fortuna of the fight could have gone either way’”).

‘vixi et quem dederat cursum Fortuna peregi’.

(“‘I have lived, and completed the course which fortuna gave me’”).

28 Contrast e.g. how the narrator’s voice emphasizes the role of fatum in the opening lines of the poem (1.2: fato). 29 F/fortuna at 5.604; 6.683; 7.413; 10.435; 12.593, 920; fortunatus at 6.639; 9.446. 30 I will discuss this episode in iii below. 31 In an interesting parallel, one of only 2 references to Fortuna in Augustus’ Res Gestae designates it as the force responsible for the deaths of his adoptive heirs Gaius and Lucius (14: filios meos, quos iuvenes mihi eripuit Fortuna, Gaium et Lucium Caesares). Fortuna particularly characterizes Pallas’ story: Evander hopes that Fortuna will not kill his son (8.572), and Aeneas begrudges Fortuna’s role in both Pallas’ short-lived military success and his death (11.42–44). Attributing sad or negative events to Fortuna may have been a technique by which to alienate them from the supposedly positive teleology of fate or providence: Fortuna appears fairly frequently in sepulchral inscriptions. Marcellus’ death is, on the other hand, attributed to fata (6.868–70, 882–83), though this may be because it is referenced within Anchises’ prophecy (6.759: ‘te tua fata docebo’), rather than by characters who only have an imperfect knowledge of fate. 32 It is particularly strange to assert that a suicide is a chance occurrence. Amata is, like Dido, called infelix (12.598) and moritura (12.602), which additionally undercuts the sense that her death is random, by foreshadowing it. Perhaps this use of Fortuna also constitutes “character text”, representing the viewpoint of the Latins when they receive news of her death. 33 In support of my suggestion in n.31 above about the sepulchral associations of Fortuna, 4.652 has been found quoted on epitaphs (e.g. CIL 15, 316.1–2). 142 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

The narrator, however, describes her asfati nescia (1.299). Likewise, Virgil underlines that Turnus, whose speech to the Latins in book 11 constitutes the densest usage of fortuna in the whole poem,34 and who utters the proverbial audentis Fortuna iuvat (10.284),35 is ignorant and deluded about fate (10.501–04):36

Nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurae et servare modum rebus sublata secundis! Turno tempus erit magno cum optaverit emptum intactum Pallanta.

(“The mind of men is ignorant of fate and of their future lot, and does not know how to preserve moderation when it is raised high by favourable events. There will come a time when Turnus will have wished that he hadn’t touched Pallas, and had ransomed him for a great price”).

This use offortuna , explicated by the Stoic (and Aristotelian) definition offortuna as a false label for unexplained occurrences, is therefore part of the poetic technique that brings out the poignant disjunction between human and cosmic or authorial perspectives in the poem: human characters think that things might turn out differently, whereas the narrator knows that they will not. More broadly, that is outside of contexts that particularly discuss fate and Stoicism, Cicero admits the existence of fortuna (i.e. “chance”) in his philosophical works.37 However, it (or she) is not cast in a positive light.38 Accordingly, for Cicero, the man who relies on fortuna is making a mistake and will fail to be happy (Para. Stoic. 2.17):39

34 11.378–444. Turnus references fortuna at 413, 416 and 425–27. 35 fortes Fortuna iuvat (no. 144 in Otto, 1890); fortibus est fortuna viris data (Enn. Ann. fr. 233 Skutsch). 36 See also 9.133–38. 37 e.g. Cic. Off.2.44, aliquo casu atque fortuna, or Fin. 2.89, where fortuna glosses casu earlier. See also Cic. Marc. 7, where fortuna is linked with temeritas and casus, all of which are set in opposition to sapientia and consilium. 38 e.g. Cic. Nat. D. 3.61 (on Stoic deified abstractions being ridiculous):Quo in genere vel maxime est Fortuna numeranda, quam nemo ab inconstantia et temeritate seiunget, quae digna certe non sunt deo (“Fortuna has a very strong claim to be counted in this list, and nobody will dissociate fortuna from inconstancy and haphazard action, which are certainly unworthy of a deity” - trans. Rackham, 2014); Cic. Div. 2.18: Nihil enim est tam contrarium rationi et constantiae quam fortuna (“Surely nothing is so at variance with reason and stability as fortuna” – trans. Falconer, 2014). 39 Publilius Syrus records the following proverb (Sententiae 711): Virtuti melius quam fortunae creditur. We find something similar in Lucretius, when he tries to eradicate the fear of death by arguing that being alive is more worrisome because we are subject to chance and fortune (3.1085–86): posteraque in dubiost fortunam quam vehat aetas, / quidve ferat nobis casus quive exitus instet (“and it is uncertain what fortuna the next years may bring, what chance has in store, what end awaits us”. - trans. Rouse, 2014). Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 143

Nemo potest non beatissimus esse qui est totus aptus ex sese, quique in se uno sua ponit omnia; cui spes omnis et ratio et cogitatio pendet ex fortuna, huic nihil potest esse certi, nihil quod exploratum habeat permansurum sibi unum diem.

(“No one can fail to be supremely happy who relies solely on himself and who places all his possessions within himself alone; whereas he whose hope and purpose and thought hang entirely on fortune can have nothing certain, nothing that he is assured will remain with him for a single day”. – trans. Rackham & Sutton, 1948).

As the opposition in this passage suggests, the wise man or philosopher should instead strive to be self-sufficient, without the need of chance or good luck, and immune to any catastrophes that fortuna may bring.40 Again, this helps to explain the association of fortuna with certain characters rather than others in the Aeneid. Nisus and Euryalus, for example, make the mistake of embarking on a mission that will only succeed if they are lucky (9.280–03):41

Contra quem talia fatur Euryalus: ‘Me nulla dies tam fortibus ausis dissimilem arguerit; tantum fortuna secunda haud adversa cadat’.

(“In response to him Euryalus said the following: ‘May no day prove me unequal to such daring undertakings: only let fortuna turn out favourable, not hostile’”).

Their subsequent death underscores that “chancing it” in life-threatening, military situations is ill-advised. These lines also make clear thatfortuna can be both good (secunda) and bad (adversa). I would suggest that both senses are inherent in Virgil’s use of the adjective fortu natus in his final apostrophe to the pair (9.446–49):42

Fortunati ambo! Si quid mea carmina possunt, nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo, dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.

40 See also Cic. Tusc. 5.17, 19; Fin. 4.17. 41 See also 9.214, 240. 42 Note that usually only the positive sense is stressed. See OLD s.v. 144 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

(“Fortunate pair! If my poems have any force, there will never be a day which removes you from the remembrance of the ages, as long as the household of Aeneas will dwell by the immovable rock of the Capitol, and a Roman father holds power”).

fortunati glosses Nisus and Euryalus’ reliance of F/fortuna in life, as well as their misfortune in death. It also, ironically, describes their good fortune to have secured through this death a place in poetry which may ensure that they are remembered for eternity.43 In contrast, whereas Aeneas invoked F/fortuna regularly during the fall of Troy,44 in the course of the epic he is increasingly distanced from it. By book 6, he can say to the Sibyl (6.103–05):

‘Non ulla laborum o virgo, nova mi facies inopinave surgit; omnia praecepi atque animo mecum ante peregi’.

(“‘No unknown or unexpected form of difficulty rises before me, o priestess: I have anticipated everything, and gone through it all in my mind in advance’”).

Instead of leaving anything up to chance, he has thought ahead. As Bowra (1933, 15) notes, he thus fulfils Cicero’s criterion for a “brave and resolute man”,fortis vero animi et constantis (Cic. Off. 1.81):

Quamquam hoc animi, illud etiam ingenii magni est, praecipere cogitatione futura et aliquanto ante constituere, quid accidere possit in utramque partem, et quid agendum sit, cum quid evenerit, nec committere ut aliquando dicendum sit: ‘non putaram’.

(“Now all this requires great personal courage; but it calls also for great intellectual ability by reflection to anticipate the future, to discover some time in advance what may

43 Leigh (1997) 67 makes a different but comparable comment about thefortuna of Julius Caesar in Lucan: “this episode (4.256) is marked by the bitter ironies of fortuna. Caesar when winning the civil war was never so lucky as when he won the judgement of posterity”. Cf. Virgil’s use of fortunatus in his description of Elysium (6.638–39): devenere locos laetos et amoena virecta / fortunatorum nemorum sedesque beatas. Like Nisus and Euryalus, the souls in Elysium experience misfortune in that they have died, but are also fortunate because of the honour they are given after death. 44 2.350, 385, 656. Note that at 6.62–64 he also relegates Troy’s fortuna to the past: hac Troiana tenus fuerit fortuna secuta; / vos quoque Pergameae iam fas et parcere genti, / dique deaeque omnes. (“‘Let Trojan fortuna have followed us this far; but now it is also right for you spare the people of Pergamum, all you gods and goddesses’”). Bowra (1933) also uses a philosophical perspective to argue that Aeneas develops and makes progress towards virtus throughout the poem. Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 145

happen whether for good or for ill, and what must be done in any possible event, and never to be reduced to having to say ‘I had not thought of that’”. – trans. Miller, 2014).

This kind of preparation and virtuous forward planning minimizes the threat posed by the unexpected and therefore the influence ofF/fortuna. Likewise, in book 12, the following are Aeneas’ parting words to his son Ascanius before he re-enters the fight (435–36):

‘Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem, fortunam ex aliis’.

(“‘Learn from me, son, virtue and true hardship, learn fortuna from others”’). fortuna, as explained above, can be good or bad. Aeneas’ words here are usually understood as a wish that his son learns good fortuna from others, implying that Aeneas himself has not experienced this.45 This reading is supported by comparison with the lines of Sophocles’ Ajax, one of Virgil’s models for this scene, in which Ajax addresses his son before committing suicide (550–01):

ὦ παῖ, γένοιο πατρὸς εὐτυχέστερος, τὰ δ᾿ ἄλλ᾿ ὁμοῖος.

(“Boy, may you be luckier than your father, but in all other ways resemble him!” – trans. Lloyd-Jones, 1994–96).

Virgil’s fortuna mirrors Sophocles’ εὐτυχέστερος, and therefore seems to reference good fortuna rather than bad. However, given the alienation of fortuna from the wise and virtuous man in Cicero’s philosophical texts, I would also suggest that Aeneas’ advice constitutes a more general distancing of fortuna from his lineage and the project of founding Rome. Turnus, on the other hand, fatally follows fortuna until the bitter end (12.676–77):

‘Iam iam fata, soror, superant, absiste morari; quo deus et quo dura vocat Fortuna sequamur’.

(“‘Now, sister, now the fates have the upper hand – stop your attempts at delay. Where the god and unyielding Fortuna call us, let us follow’”).

45 Tarrant (2012) ad loc. accordingly notes: “V. takes a considerable risk in having A. complain of bad luck immediately after being saved yet again by his mother”. 146 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

The negative attitude tofortuna in Cicero’s philosophical writing, coupled with the contrast drawn between the idealized self-sufficiency and stability of virtue and the uncertainty and risk of relying on chance, therefore provides a backdrop against which the reader can chart Aeneas’ progress vs the mistakes of other characters, and can learn which traits will contribute profitably to the Roman mission.

ii. Fortuna in religion

Fortuna, unlike fatum/a, was personified in traditional Roman religion, and was a popular goddess with several cult titles.46 Indeed, it may be partly due to the various and long- standing religious associations of Fortuna that the word seemed apt to describe the irrational, un-philosophical force of random chance discussed above: religion was increasingly set in opposition to ratio and philosophy in 1st century BC literature.47 Fortuna’s religious associations link her with fate in the sense of prophecy: she was an oracular goddess. However, they also suggest other equally strong associations. I will now explain two of these, Fortuna’s connection with women and with sailors / sea-travel, in order to lay the ground for my concluding analysis of F/fortuna vs fatum/a in book 5. Fortuna is linked in a number of ways to femininity. Her cult titles make clear that, beyond simply being a female goddess, she was particularly associated with women.48 Cicero describes Fortuna Primigenia as primarily a “companion in childbirth” (gignendo comes, Leg. 2.28), who was worshipped by mothers (castissime colitur a matribus, Div. 2.85) and makes reference to a cult statue before Fortuna’s shrine at Praeneste, featuring a young Jupiter who suckled, along with his sister, at the breast of Fortuna (ibid). An inscription found at the site additionally suggests that women would pray to the goddess in the hope of children.49 It seems that Fortuna Virilis (Ov. Fast. 4.133–64), Muliebris (Livy 2.40.1–12) and Virgo / Virginalis were also all the objects of female worship.50 Indeed, Livy writes that the temple of Fortuna Muliebris was built as a monument to the women who helped to avert Coriolanus’ siege of

46 Weinstock (1971) 112 n.8 even goes so far as to say that “no other deity, perhaps not even Jupiter, had as many dedications and shrines at Rome as she had”. Cic. Leg. 2.28 numbers several of her popular titles. Though fatum/a are not personified, theParcae are personified goddesses with control over fate. See n.14 above. 47 Especially in Epicurean texts: Lucr. 1.62–79, 107–09; Cic. Nat. D. 1.115, 118. The Stoics also, however, opposed the two by distancing “true religion” from irrational superstition: Cic. Nat. D. 2.71. Cf. Virg. Geo. 2.490–04; Hor. Carm. 1.34 – in each case fortuna is sided with religion against philosophy. See Brunt (1989) for further discussion. 48 See Warde-Fowler (1914) 64; Graf (2006). See also Ovid’s account of Fortuna in the Fasti (6.569–636). Ovid strongly associates her with women and positions his description of her next to his account of Mater Matuta (Fast. 6.473–568). 49 CIL 1, 60. 50 See also Graf (2006). Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 147

Rome in the 5th century BC. In addition, the ancient temple to Fortuna in the Forum Boarium was contiguous with that of Mater Matuta,51 and both shared the same day of dedication: the Matralia on 11 June.52 Both the shrine of Fortuna at Praeneste and that at Antium combine these female associations with prophecy. Cicero (Div. 2.85–87) tells us that at the ancient shrine in Praeneste a specially appointed puer would give prophecies by retrieving carved lots kept in a chest.53 Likewise, Martial references veridicae sorores (5.1.3) at the shrine in Antium.54 Moreover, repeated wordplay in literary sources suggests that there was at least a popular belief that F/fortuna was etymologically related to ferre.55 This may strengthen the link between femininity and prophecy: ferre can also be used of childbirth, so perhaps Fortuna’s predictions traditionally related in particular to the new-born child.56 It follows that, contrary to the suggestions of some scholars,57 when Virgil uses F/fortuna with reference to fate or prophecy, he is activating a religious rather than philosophical meaning. Consider the following passage, in which Evander explains to Aeneas how he ended up in Pallanteum (8.333–36):

‘Me pulsum patria pelagique extrema sequentem Fortuna omnipotens et ineluctabile fatum

51 See Livy 25.7; 33.27; Platner & Ashby (2002) 330–01; Littlewood (2006) 147–48: “the two Republican temples in the Forum Boarium, dedicated to Fortuna and Mater Matuta, formed a similar complex dedicated to the cycle of women’s cult. Fortuna presided over a woman’s passage from virginity to fecundity in the early weeks of marriage, while Mater Matuta, a kourotrophos goddess, was responsible for the care of children entrusted to women who were not their natural mothers”. 52 Ov. Fast. 6.569 (part of his discussion of the Mater Matuta and the Matralia): Lux eadem, Fortuna, tua est auctorque locusque. 53 Strabo (5.11) also calls the shrine χρηστηριάζον (“a seat of oracles”), and Tiberius was said to have been terrified maiestate Praenestinarum sortium (“by the majesty of the lots at Praeneste”, Suet. Tib. 63). 54 Suetonius records the Fortunae Antiatinae giving Caligula prophetic advice (Calig. 57). See also CIL 10, 6555, which is a dedication to the two goddesses. Note, however, that Horace addresses Fortuna at Antium as one goddess, and does not mention her prophetic role (Carm. 1.35). 55 The frequency of placements ofF/fortuna and cognates next to forms of ferre in Latin poetry suggests this was thought to be etymological as well as alliterative wordplay. Cf. Enn. fr. 186 Skutsch: quidve ferat Fors; Lucr. 3.983: casumque timent quem cuique ferat fors; 3.1085–86: posteraque in dubiost fortunam quam vehat aetas, / quidve ferat nobis casus quive exitus instet; 5.960–61: Quod cuique obtulerat praedae fortuna, ferebat / sponte sua sibi quisque; Catull. 64.222: nec te ferre sinam fortunae signa secundae; Virg. Ecl. 6.57–58: si qua forte ferant oculis sese obvia nostris / errabunda bovis vestigia; forsitan illum … ; and numerous examples from the Aeneid, e.g. 5.356: ‘ni me, quae Salium, fortuna inimica tulisset?’; 5.710: ‘quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est’; 10.111–12: ‘Sua cuique exorsa laborem / fortunamque ferent’; 11.345: ‘quid fortuna ferat populi’. An etymological link between ferre and fortuna is further suggested by Bailey (1935) 23; Canter (1922) 65 and n.1; Kajanto (1957) 13. Maltby (1991) references Lydus, Mens. 4.7: Φορτοῦναν … ἀπὸ τῆς φορᾶς ἐμφερῶς ὀνομάσαντες; ibid. 4.100: Φορτοῦναν λέγουσιν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι ἀπὸ τῆς φορᾶς. 56 This is also suggested by Bailey (1935) 235. 57 e.g. Edwards (1960) 153 n.5 and Quint (1993) 93, who claim that fatum and F/fortuna were equated by Stoics. See n.4 above. 148 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

his posuere locis, matrisque egere tremenda Carmentis nymphae monita et deus auctor Apollo’.

(“‘When I had been expelled from my fatherland, and was chasing the edges of the ocean, all-powerful Fortuna and unavoidable fatum set me in this place; the fearsome warnings of my mother, the nymph Carmentis, and the founder god Apollo forced me here’”).

Evander claims that Fortuna and fatum, along with Carmentis and Apollo, forced him to settle in this part of Latium. Servius argues that Evander’s use of Fortuna here is Stoic (ad Aen. 8.334):58

Secundum Stoicos locutus est, qui nasci et mori fatis dant, media omnia fortunae: nam vitae humanae incerta sunt omnia. Unde et miscuit, ut quasi plenum ostenderet dogma: nam nihil tam contrarium est fato quam casus; sed secundum Stoicos dixit.

(“He spoke following the Stoics, who attribute birth and death to the fates, and everything in between to fortuna: for all of human life is uncertain. That’s why [Virgil] has combined [fatum and fortuna], so that he could show, as it were, the whole doctrine: for nothing is so opposed to fatum as chance; but he spoke following the Stoics”).

We saw above that, when fortuna appears in discussions of fate and Stoicism, it is as a translation for τύχη in Stoic sources, and should be taken to mean “chance”, a force which does not exist according to Stoic philosophy. Attributing events to fortuna therefore demonstrates ignorance of causation and fate, rather than the existence of chance: Servius perhaps intends his comment nihil tam contrarium est fato quam casus to clarify that fortuna cannot mean “chance” here, as that would be incompatible with Stoicism. However, it is not clear how Servius’ Stoic reading works with the description of Fortuna here as omnipotens, or how it helps our understanding of Evander’s words. I would therefore suggest a different argument from Servius, which draws on Fortuna’s religious associations with women and maternity. Carmentis was an ancient Roman goddess who, like Fortuna, had prophetic powers and was associated with childbirth.59 This connection is strengthened by the fact that, in theFasti , Ovid weaves Carmentis into his account of the Matralia, which, as noted above, was the day dedicated

58 This is perhaps one of the comments responsible for scholarly confusion about the meanings offatum and fortuna in Stoicism: see n.57 above; n.4 above. 59 Ov. Fast. 1.461–586. See also Wissowa (1902) 200–01; Gransden (1976) ad 8.334. Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 149 both to Mater Matuta and to Fortuna (Fast. 6.525–36).60 Considering that the male Apollo is associated with fatum/a rather than F/fortuna throughout the Aeneid, perhaps 8.335–36 could be viewed as a repetition and expansion of the ideas in 8.334: Evander’s reference to the Carmentis nymphae monita could work as a fuller expression of his earlier mention of Fortuna. Fortuna’s power also extended in particular over the sea. She is commonly portrayed in the iconography of the triumviral period and empire with a rudder (see e.g. RIC 2, 699 = fig. 1; RRC 516/1 = fig. 2). Matthews suggests that the coin minted by P. Sepullius Macer in 44 BC (RRC 480/25) is amongst the first instances of such a portrayal, and postulates a link between the emergence of this iconography and one of the most famous examples of Julius Caesar’s relationship with F/fortuna.61 Caesar is said to have snuck into a small fishing boat to cross the Adriatic. When he reveals himself, according to Plutarch, he tells the fisherman not to worry about their crossing – Plutarch here uses Τύχη as a Greek translation of F/fortuna (De Fort. Rom. 319C-D):62

‘γενναῖε, τόλμα καὶ δέδιθι μηδέν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπιδίδου τῇ Τύχῃ τὰ ἱστία καὶ δέχου τὸ πνεῦμα, πιστεύων ὅτι Καίσαρα φέρεις καὶ τὴν Καίσαρος Τύχην’.

(“‘Go on, good sir, be brave and fear nothing! But entrust your sails to Fortune and receive her breeze, confident because you bear Caesar and Caesar’s Fortune’”. – trans. Babbitt, 2014).

Fig. 1: RIC 2, 699. Aureus of Vespasian, 74 AD. Laureate head of Vespasian on obverse; Fortuna standing on a pediment decorated with a ram’s head, and holding a rudder and cornucopia on reverse. © Trustees of the British Museum.

60 Littlewood (2006) ad 6.603 connects Carmentis, Fortuna and Mater Matuta: “the two Carmentis celebrations in Fasti 1 show Carmentis first as a prophetic goddess and second as a kourotrophos, while inFasti 6 the cult of Mater Matuta, the kourotrophos, precedes that of Fortuna, who is associated with prophecy”. 61 Matthews (2012) 84, 78 n.254. 62 See also Weinstock (1971) 121–27; Ahl (1976) 295 n.41: “Plutarch selects Caesar’s attempt to cross the Adriatic as an example of his fortuna”. 150 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Fig. 2: RRC 516/1. Aureus of Mark Antony, 41 BC. Head of M. Antonius on obverse; Fortuna standing holding a rudder and cornucopia with a stork at her feet on reverse. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Weinstock relates the alleged historical occurrence of this event to Horace’s description, probably following Pindar’s portrayal of Τύχη (Ol. 12), of Fortuna as a goddess for seafarers (Carm. 1.35.1–8):63

O diva, gratum quae regis Antium, praesens vel imo tollere de gradu mortale corpus vel superbos vertere funeribus triumphos, te pauper ambit sollicita prece ruris colonus, te dominam aequoris quicumque Bythyna lacessit Carpathium pelagus carina.

(“O goddess, you who reign over your favourite Antium, ready at hand to raise mortal flesh from the lowest level or to turn an arrogant triumph into a funeral cortege, your support is sought with anxious prayers by the poor tenant farmer, and, as you are mistress of the deep, by whoever provokes the Carpathian Sea in a Bithynian boat”. – trans. Rudd, 2004).

Indeed, this poem is particularly addressed to Fortuna at Antium, and Antium was a port.

63 Weinstock (1971) 126: “This is the first explicit evidence thatFortuna , even if only the Fortuna of Antium, was the goddess of seafarers. She comes from the Pindaric model, where Tyche as Σώτειρα sits at the ship’s helm”. This assertion of primacy may not be right if Matthews’s suggestion about the coin of 44 BC is valid. Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 151

iii. F/fortuna in book 5

F/fortuna plays a prominent role in book 5 of the Aeneid. To conclude this paper, I will offer an extended analysis of this book, to illustrate how awareness of the philosophical distinction between fortuna and fatum/a, and sensitivity to the especial importance of Fortuna to women and sailors in Roman religion and culture, can clarify the meaning and function of fortuna and fatum/a in the Aeneid. As the Trojan fleet leaves Carthage, the sky darkens with storm-clouds, and the worried helmsman Palinurus advises Aeneas that they should divert their course from Italy (17–25):

‘Magnanime Aeneas, non, si mihi Iuppiter auctor spondeat, hoc sperem Italiam contingere caelo. Mutati transversa fremunt et vespere ab atro consurgunt venti, atque in nubem cogitur aer. Nec nos obniti contra nec tendere tantum sufficimus. Superat quoniam Fortuna, sequamur, quoque vocat vertamus iter. Nec litora longe fida reor fraterna Erycis portusque Sicanos’.

(“‘Great-hearted Aeneas, not, even if father Jupiter were to promise it to me, would I hope to reach Italy under a sky like this. The winds are changed; they roar at cross purposes, rising up together from the darkening west, and the air is compressed into cloud. We have the strength neither to struggle against them, nor even to direct our course. Since Fortuna has the upper-hand, let us follow her, and direct our journey where she calls. Not far from here are the shores, I think, of Eryx, that are loyal to us and belong to your brother, and the Sicilian ports’”).

Palinurus stresses the adverse weather conditions, and claims that the Trojans do not have the strength to struggle against them. Like Dido less than a hundred lines earlier (4.653, see above), he advocates following the path that Fortuna has given by returning to Sicily. Aeneas agrees. The marine associations ofFortuna discussed above make it fitting that Palinurus, a seaman, should invoke Fortuna here as a power over the sea. Once they have landed on Sicily, Aeneas arranges funeral games for his father Anchises. It is during these that Fortuna reappears. Firstly, in association with Nisus and Euryalus during the footrace.64 This episode is an important forerunner to the role ofF/fortuna in these characters’

64 At 353–56, Nisus claims that he and Salius were tripped up by fortuna inimica. Though Nisus in fact tripped up Salius on purpose, the role of F/fortuna during the footrace is suggested by infelix, forte (both 529) and casus (350). 152 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

death in book 9: as in the case of Dido and Turnus, the “losers”65 of the epic are consistently associated with F/fortuna rather than fatum/a. Secondly, F/fortuna pervades the events surrounding the Trojan women’s deciding in desperation to burn the ships. Virgil introduces this episode with one of the rare authorial, rather than character, appeals to F/fortuna as a power over the narrative and events (604–08):

Hinc primum Fortuna fidem mutata novavit. Dum variis tumulo referunt sollemnia ludis, Irim de caelo misit Saturnia Iuno Iliacam ad classem ventosque aspirat eunti, multa movens necdum antiquum saturata dolorem.

(“It was from this point first that Fortuna changed,66 and shifted her loyalty. While the others were paying religious rites at the tomb through these various games, Juno, daughter of Saturn, sent Iris from the sky to the Trojan fleet, and blew winds behind her as she went, stirring up many things, her age-old grievance not yet satisfied”).

Fortuna’s distinctive and proverbial changeability is stressed (mutata).67 Moreover, not only is she a female goddess, but her agents here are all female: Juno, Iris and, as we will soon found out, the Trojan women themselves. Iris then, at Juno’s command, disguises herself as the elderly Beroe, and addresses the assembled Trojan women, inciting them to burn the fleet so that they will be forced to stay and settle on Sicily (623–25):

‘O miserae, quas non manus’ inquit ‘Achaica bello traxerit ad letum patriae sub moenibus! O gens infelix, cui te exitio Fortuna reservat?’

(“‘O wretched women,’ she said ‘whom during the war the Achaean army didn’t drag to death beneath the walls of your homeland! O unfortunate race, for what destruction is Fortuna reserving you?’”)

65 My phrasing follows Quint (1993) and Armstrong (2002). 66 Otis (1963) 275–76 argues that Virgil’s emphasis on Fortuna’s sudden and surprising change is misleading, because the burning of the ships is no surprise, but rather fated, and foreshadowed in the text by the strange omen of Acestes’ flaming arrow (5.522–24). 67 Cf. e.g. Publilius Syrus, Sententiae 431: Levis est fortuna: cito reposcit quod dedit; Hor. Carm. 1.35.2–4; Turnus at 11.425–27; Enn. fr. 258–60 Skutsch. Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 153

Iris / Beroe successfully appeals both to her female audience and to their particular fear of the sea by invoking Fortuna as a power over their destiny. The Trojan women seize torches and brands to set the ships alight.68 Any hesitations they have (primo ancipites, 654), including concerns about fata (fatis vocantia regna, 656) are dispelled when Iris sheds her mortal disguise and departs, creating a rainbow (657–60) which is taken as a confirmatory omen. When news of what the women have done reaches the men, Aeneas is distraught. His behaviour contrasts with Cicero’s explanation of the wise and happy man, who ought to be immune to the potential benefits as well as the vicissitudes offortuna (Para. Stoic. 2.17, quoted above). The following passage of theTusculanae Disputationes provides further context for Virgil’s portrayal of Aeneas here. Cicero is discussing grief, and whether or not it is an appropriate and / or natural response to misfortune. In doing so, he offers his own version of a passage of Sophocles (Tusc. 3.71):69

Nec vero tanta praeditus sapientia quisquam est, qui aliorum aerumnam dictis adlevans non idem, cum fortuna mutata impetum convertat, clade subita frangatur sua, ut illa ad alios dicta et praecepta excidant.

(“‘And there is none of wisdom so possessed, who with mild words has soothed another’s woes, but does not, when a turn of fortune comes, fall broken by his own calamity; so words, for others wise, his own needs fail’”. – trans. King, 1945).

Though a wise man may counsel others well in the face of misfortune, nevertheless, when his fortune changes (fortuna mutata – note the same wording as Aen. 5.604), he cannot take his own advice, and, the context suggests, is overcome by emotion. Is this true of Aeneas here? His dramatic behaviour and wish for death after the burning of the ships in book 5 is not that far removed from Dido’s exasperation and suicide, even though he tried to counsel her to calm down (‘desine meque tuis incendere teque querelis’, 4.360; quamquam lenire dolen tem / solando cupit et dictis avertere curas, 4.393–94 – note the similar wording to aliorum aerumann dictis adlevans in Cicero). This reading suggests that Aeneas, by still being liable

68 Both Servius and Cicero suggest that incendia as well as naufragiaare events characteristic of fortuna: Cic. Off. 2.19; Serv. ad Aen. 4.653 (following Cicero?) 69 The passage of Sophocles that Cicero is reworking here has been identified as fr. 576 Jebb, probably from the lost play Teucer. Pacuvius’ Latin Teucer was also popular, and quoted by Cicero (e.g. De Or. 2.193). These words are directed at Oileus. The likely context is that, though Oileus comforted Telamon when Teucer announced the death of Telamon’s son Ajax, he is nevertheless inconsolable when he hears of the death of his own son, Locrian Ajax. See Pearson (1917) 215. 154 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

to emotional turmoil and distress in the face of unexpected adversity, is yet to obtain virtus and sapientia. In his turmoil, Aeneas prays to Jupiter to either put out the flames or kill him on the spot with a thunderbolt. Thankfully, the king of the gods immediately answers his prayers by sending rain. But Aeneas is still shaken, and contemplates abandoning his plan to make for Italy, until Nautes steps in with some advice (700–10):

At pater Aeneas casu concussus acerbo nunc huc ingentis, nunc illuc pectore curas mutabat versans, Siculisne resideret arvis oblitus fatorum, Italasne capesseret oras. Tum senior Nautes, unum Tritonia Pallas quem docuit multaque insignem reddidit arte – haec responsa dabat, vel quae portenderet ira magna deum vel quae fatorum posceret ordo; isque his Aenean solatus vocibus infit: ‘Nate dea, quo fata trahunt retrahuntque sequamur; quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est’.

(“But father Aeneas, shaken by this bitter misfortune, shifted the great worries in his heart now this way, now that, thinking over whether he should settle in the fields of Sicily, having forgotten the fates, or whether he should make for the shores of Italy. Then the elder Nautes, the only man whom Tritonian Pallas had taught and rendered eminent for his many skills – she used to give him answers either as to what the great anger of the gods portended or what the order of the fates demanded – he, having comforted Aeneas, spoke these words: ‘Son of the goddess, let us follow where fata drag us back and forth: whatever happens, every fortuna must be overcome by endurance’”).

This passage shows that the intrusion ofF/fortuna , the burning of the ships, has worked against fatum/a: Aeneas is tempted to forget his divinely ordained mission and settle in Sicily (Siculisne resideret arvis / oblitus fatorum). Nautes, on the other hand, is associated with fatum/a rather than fortuna (responsa; fatorum … ordo), and introduces his practical suggestion that Aeneas should leave the women behind with a reminder that they should follow fata, and endure fortuna. This advice is subtly but crucially different from Palinurus’ at the opening of the book (17–25, above): where the helmsman advocated following fortuna, Nautes substitutes this with fata (‘superat quoniam Fortuna, sequamur’ vs ‘quo fata trahunt retrahuntque sequamur’). Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 155

The significance of this becomes clearer when Aeneas, after further encouragement from a dream-vision of Anchises, finally sets sail once more for Italy. Virgil describes his departure as follows (774–78):

Ipse caput tonsae foliis evinctus olivae stans procul in prora pateram tenet, extaque salsos proicit in fluctus ac vina liquentia fundit. Certatim socii feriunt mare et aequora verrunt; prosequitur surgens a puppi ventus euntis.

(“He, head encircled with leaves shorn from an olive tree, holds a libation bowl, standing far out on the prow, and casts entrails into the salty waves and pours flowing wine. His comrades, trying to outdo each other, strike at the sea and tear up the ocean’s planes; a wind, rising from the stern, follows them as they go”).

Rowing against the current was associated with struggling against fata in the Georgics (1.199–203). However, now the Trojans’ efforts are in the right direction, and they are rowing accompanied by a favourable wind. The image of Aeneas standing high on the prow foreshadows the depiction of Augustus at Actium on his future shield (8.678–81):

Hinc Augustus agens Italos in proelia Caesar cum patribus populoque, penatibus et magnis dis, stans celsa in puppi, geminas cui tempora flammas laeta comunt patriumque aperitur vertice sidus.

(“From this side comes Augustus Caesar, leading the Italians into battle with the senate and the people, the penates and the great gods, standing high on the stern. His glad temples are garlanded with two flames, and his father’s star appears at his head”).

Virgil therefore matches Aeneas’ imminent arrival in Italy with Augustus’ achievements at Actium, suggesting both have equal significance in securing Romanfatum/a. Crucially, Aeneas’ alignment with fate and divine purpose as he finally sails towards Italy comes with the exclusion of F/fortuna from the Trojan / Roman mission.70 For one, the feminine contingent, linked with F/fortuna and unpredictability, have now been left behind

70 As noted above, this motif of the increasing exclusion of F/fortuna from the future of Rome pervades the poem. All of the characters most associated with fortuna die (e.g. Dido, Turnus, Nisus and Euryalus). 156 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

on Sicily.71 In addition, Aeneas loses his helmsman, Palinurus, who at the beginning of the book (17–24, above) was closely associated with Fortuna (857–63):

Vix primos inopina quies laxaverat artus, et super incumbens cum puppis parte revulsa cumque gubernaculo liquidas proiecit in undas praecipitem ac socios nequiquam saepe vocantem; ipse volans tenuis se sustulit ales ad auras. Currit iter tutum non setius aequore classis.

(“Scarcely had the slumber that he didn’t want relaxed the tips of his limbs. And [Sleep], leaning over him, together with a part of the stern that had been wrenched off and together with the rudder cast him forth into the flowing waves headfirst and calling often to his companions in vain. He i.e.[ the god Sleep], a flying bird, lifted himself up into thin air. The fleet nevertheless continued to make a safe course on the ocean’s plane”).

Phrontis in the Odyssey and Tiphys in the Argonautica provide precedents for the death of a helmsman in epic poetry,72 but one of the ways that Virgil differentiates the case of Palinurus is by specifying that the rudder itself is lost along with its guide. The iconographic connection between the goddess Fortuna and the gubernaculum discussed above corroborates the symbolism suggested by Palinurus’ association with Fortuna earlier in the book. With rudder and helmsman gone, in place of the path proffered byFortuna , Aeneas’ fleet is now following the course (iter) of fatum/a and divine purpose.73 A passage of Cicero encourages a political reading of Palinurus’ death, and of the exclusion of F/fortuna from the Roman mission that it symbolizes. In a letter of 60 / 59 BC to his brother, Cicero informs Quintus that the latter’s proconsulship in the province of Asia has been extended for a third year. By way of encouragement, he describes how, unlike in other forms of public service such as generalship, for the proconsul, success can be guaranteed, because it depends on thought and application rather than F/fortuna (Q. Fr. 1.1.5–6):

71 With the notable exception of Euryalus’ mother. Mention of her in book 9 (283–86, 473–502) coincides with the destructive resurgence of F/fortuna in Nisus and Euryalus’ night mission. 72 Hom. Od. 3.276–83; Ap. Rhod. Argon. 2.851–63. 73 For a complementary analysis that sidesteps observations about the religious significance ofF/fortuna , and the symbolism of the rudder, see Nicoll (1988) 465: “It could be said, therefore, that one reason why Palinurus must die is that he is the embodiment of a way of life – following Fortuna – which may be adequate, perhaps inevitable, for the pilot at sea, but which will no longer be sufficient for Aeneas once he reaches Italy … Aeneas’ further progress must be made on the basis of a knowledge of fata to be given him by his father (6.759: te tua fata docebo) – a surer guide than Fortuna”. Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 157

Nunc vero ea pars tibi rei publicae commissa est in qua aut nullam aut perexiguam partem Fortuna tenet et quae mihi tota in tua virtute ac moderatione animi posita esse videatur. Nullas, ut opinor, insidias hostium, nullam proeli dimicationem … [etc.] pertimescimus; quae persaepe sapientissimis viris acciderunt, ut, quem ad modum guber- natores optimi vim tempestatis, sic illi impetum fortunae superare non possent. Tibi data est summa pax, summa tranquillitas, ita tamen ut ea dormientem gubernatorem vel obruere, vigilantem etiam delectare possit.

(“But as matters stand, Fortuna has no part, or only a very small part, in the public responsibility which has been entrusted to you. It seems to me to lie wholly in your own ability and discretion. We do not, I think, have to fear a hostile ambuscade or a pitched battle [etc.] … such things have happened time and time again to very wise men; they could not overcome Fortuna’s onset any more than the best of seamen can master a violent storm. Your portion is perfect peace and calm; and yet if the helmsman falls asleep he could go to the bottom in such weather, while if he keeps wide awake he may actually enjoy it”. – trans. Shackleton Bailey, 2014).

Cicero here draws on the well-worn analogy between ship and state: gubernator of course means “helmsman” before it comes to mean “ruler” or “governor”. The absence ofF/fortuna from a stable political situation creates such calm that a helmsman / governor might fall asleep and be knocked overboard – just like Palinurus. On the other hand, one who stays awake will enjoy the ride. This passage therefore suggests that both Palinurus’ death and Aeneas taking the (rudderless) helm at the end of book 5 have political significance ipse( ratem … rexit, 5.868). Virgil encourages the reader to understand that Aeneas taking command of the fleet is symbolic of his strengthening leadership and resolve more generally, and to associate his assumption of control with a rejection of F/fortuna: the women, Palinurus and even the rudder were all identified closely with the uncertainty and danger ofF/fortuna , and have all been left behind. The resultant sense of confident progress and accordance withfatum/a and divine purpose forms a fitting transition to book 6, when Aeneas’ fleet will finally reach Italy, and he will gain confirmation from Anchises of Romanfata (‘te tua fata docebo’, 6.759).

Balliol College, Oxford CALYPSO NASH ([email protected]) 158 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Bibliography

F. Ahl (1976) Lucan: An introduction, Ithaca NY. R. Armstrong (2002) ‘Crete in the Aeneid: Recurring Trauma and Alternative fate’, CQ 52, 321–40. F. C. Babbitt (ed. and trans.) (20142) Plutarch: Moralia, Cambridge MA. C. Bailey (1935) Religion in Virgil, Oxford. C. M. Bowra (1933) ‘Aeneas and the Stoic Ideal’, G&R 3, 8–21. P. Brunt (1989) ‘Philosophy and religion in the late Republic’, in M. Griffin & J. Barnes (eds),Philosophia Togata: Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society, Oxford, 174–98. H. V. Canter (1922) ‘Fortuna in Latin poetry’, SPh 19, 64–82. J. Champeaux (1982) Fortuna. Recherches sur le culte de la Fortune à Rome et dans le monde romain des origines à la mort de César, Rome. A. Clark (2007) Divine Qualities: Cult and Community in Republican Rome, Oxford. I. J. F. de Jong (1987) Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad, Amsterdam. B. F. Dick (1967) ‘fatum and fortuna in Lucan’s Bellum Civile’, CPh 62, 235–42. A. R. Dyck (1996) A commentary on Cicero, De Officiis, Ann Arbor MI. M. W. Edwards (1960) ‘The Expression of Stoic Ideas in theAeneid ’, Phoenix 14, 151–65. W. A. Falconer (ed. and trans.) (20142) Cicero: De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione, Cambridge MA. C. J. Fordyce (1977) P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos libri VII-VIII, Oxford. P. Gagliardi (2011), ‘Fortuna in Vergilio’, QUCC 126, 61–87. F. Graf (2006) ‘Fortuna’, in Brill’s New Pauly. K. W. Gransden (1976) Virgil, Aeneid VIII, Cambridge. R. Heinze (1903) Virgils Epische Technik, Leipzig. H. M. Hubbell (ed. and trans.) (20143) Cicero: On Invention; The Best Kind of Orator; Topics, Cambridge MA. B. Inwood (2005) Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome, Oxford. I. Kajanto (1957) God and Fate in Livy, Turku. J. E. King (ed. and trans.) (1945, repr. 2014) Cicero: Tusculan Disputations, Cambridge MA. M. Leigh (1997) Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement, Oxford. R. J. Littlewood (2006) A Commentary on Ovid’s Fasti, Book 6, Oxford. H. Lloyd-Jones (ed. and trans.) (1994–96, repr. 2014) Sophocles: Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus, Cambridge MA. R. O. A. M. Lyne (1987) Further Voices in Vergil’s Aeneid, Oxford. R. Maltby (1991) A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies, Leeds. L. Matthews (2011) Roman Constructions of Fortuna, DPhil, University of Oxford. W. Miller (ed. and trans.) (20142) Cicero: On Duties, Cambridge MA. R. A. B. Mynors (ed.) (1969) P. Vergili Maronis Opera, Oxford. Nash – fatum/a and F/fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid 159

W. S. M. Nicoll (1988) ‘The Sacrifice of Palinurus’,CQ 38, 459–72. B. Otis (1963) Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry, Oxford. A. Otto (1890) Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer, Leipzig. S. B. Platner & T. Ashby (1929, repr. 2002) A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, Oxford. D. Quint (1993) Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton, Princeton NJ. R. J. Rabel (1981) ‘Vergil, Tops and the Stoic View of Fate’, CJ 77, 27–31. H. Rackham (ed. and trans.) (20142) Cicero: De Natura Deorum; Academica, Cambridge MA. H. Rackham & E. W. Sutton (ed. and trans.) (1948, repr. 2014) Cicero: On the Orator, book 3; On Fate; Stoic Paradoxes; Divisions of Oratory, Cambridge MA. J. S. Reid (1874) TheAcademica of Cicero, London. W. H. D. Rouse (ed. and trans.) & M. F. Smith (rev.) (20142) Lucretius: On the Nature of Things, Cambridge MA. N. Rudd (ed. and trans.) (2004, repr. 2014) Horace: Odes and Epodes, Cambridge MA. D. R. Shackleton Bailey (ed. and trans.) (20142) Cicero: Letters to Quintus and Brutus; Letter Fragments; Letter to Octavian; Invectives; Handbook of Electioneering, Cambridge MA. R. W. Sharples (1983), Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Fate. Text, Translation and Commentary, London. O. Skutsch (ed.) (1985) The Annals of Quintus Ennius, Oxford. R. Tarrant (2010) Virgil: Aeneid Book XII, Cambridge. W. Warde-Fowler (1914) Roman Ideas of Deity in the Last Century Before the Christian Era, London. E. H. Warmington (ed. and trans.) (20142) Remains of Old Latin, Cambridge MA. S. Weinstock (1971) Divus Julius, Oxford. G. Wissowa (1902) Religion und Kultus der Römer, Munich.

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Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time

Revised from a paper given to the Virgil Society on 14 May 2016

Kahane

Iuxta eos, qui opus Virgilii altius volunt animadvertere. Hic ordo: Virgilium iuxta ordinem vitae mortalium carmina composuisse.

Vita Philargyrii 2

1. Introduction

Virgil’s Lives comprise one of the most prolific and influential biographic traditions of antiquity.1 Part of their success lies in the way they match the account of a life to the formal order of Virgil’s literary canon,2 though the canonicity of this poetic œuvre was no doubt itself enhanced by the impact of the Lives.3 In what follows, I want to consider the foundations of this achievement by looking at the temporal structure of narrative, at the order of events as they are recounted, in the Vita Suetonii Vulgo Donatiana (VSD) and in the poet’s epitaph, the emblem of Virgilian biography at the centre of VSD. As I will try to show, these texts weave together different strands of temporality. Understanding each of these strands, their different character and functions, and the manner in which they are combined can, I suggest, provide us with insight about Virgil’s life in discourse after the end of his biological life – his “afterlife” –and about the unique success of his life as a model of progress and excellence in the literary history of the West, and as a catalyst in the conception of literary lives and literary history.

1 Discussions: Suerbaum (1981); Stok & Giorgio (1993); Brown (1998); Brugnoli & Stok (2006); also Brugnoli & Naumann (1990) with bibliography to 1990; Stok (2014). 2 Already in the ancient tradition; cf. Ziolkowski & Putnam (2008) 179; Putnam (2010) 17. 3 “Representations of the social world themselves are the constituents of social reality”, Chartier (1982) 41. 162 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

2. Time and Biography

Before we approach our text, let us set out in brief some critical assumptions about narrative time, literary genre and biography.4 Nothing occurs out of time, yet time is “the element of invisibility itself ”. It is not directly accessible to the senses. We are only aware of time indirectly through the mind or, as Aristotle puts it in book 4 of the Physics, through the perception of change (κίνησις), most often as movement from one point to the other, as if on a linear, directional axis. In Aristotle’s formulation, “time is the number of change”.5 This perception finds its way into the many narratives we tell ourselves, into “the representation of a real or fictitious event or series of events by language”, wherein the element of “narration” (in contrast with the element of “description”) “links itself to actions or events considered as pure processes, and by this puts the emphasis on the temporal and dramatic aspects of narrative”.6 Temporal structure is thus the backbone of telling a story. It defines the basic morphology of different accounts of the world, and can tell us a great deal about the nature, function and generic identity of particular kinds of narrative. Amongst the most significant manifestations of change through which we perceive time and tell stories is the temporal progress of a person’s life, framed by birth, before which, from the perspective of the subject, there is “nothing”, and death, after which, from the same perspective, there is, again, “nothing”. Narrative, however, is man-made. There is no “natural” way to tell the tale. Each form of narrative has its own objectives and temporal structures. Tragedy, for example, tells stories of the lives of its protagonists, but does not record all life-events or arrange them in linear order.7 Dramatic tension, περιπέτεια, ἀναγνώρισις and other key elements

4 See Kahane (forthcoming) section 3 for related comments. 5 Aristotle, Physics 4.219b. “Invisibility”: Derrida (1992) 165. The perception and nature of time are fundamental philosophical cruces which I can only acknowledge peripherally here. See e.g. Le Poidevin (1997); also James (1890); McTaggart (1908); Russell (1915); Poppel (1978); Newton-Smith (1980); Orenstein (1997); Hoerl & McCormack (2001); Le Poidevin (2007); Phillips (2008). For spatial representations of time, see Zerubavel (2003). 6 Genette & Levonas (1976) 1, 5, an influential early formulation. Narratological discussions of temporal structure and formal relationships, e.g. between story (or fabula, events in natural time) and plot (or sjužet, events in represented time) are an important part of the background to this essay, but sometimes do not take sufficient account of contingent generic, thematic, philosophical and historical factors, that affect our perceptions of represented time, and require separate discussion. Other approaches, for example by Bakhtin (see e.g. discussion of the chronotope, and comments on biography and autobiography, 1981, 130–46) and Ricœur (1980, with a useful overview at 170; cf. Ricœur, 1985–89) pay closer attention to more diverse factors that affect our perception of represented time, but raise separate problems, e.g. about Bakhtin’s relation to Hegelian materialism, notions of progress and historical consciousness, about Ricœur’s phenomenology and its relation to foundational argument. Useful discussions e.g. in Moretti (1996); Brandist (1997); Dowling (2011). For an important overview of time and narrative in antiquity, see Kennedy (2013). 7 Aristotle, Poetics 1451a, 16–20: “A plot is not unified, as some think, if built round an individual. Any entity has innumerable features, not all of which cohere into a single unity; likewise, an individual performs many actions which yield no unitary action” (trans. Halliwell, 1986). Kahane – Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 163 of the genre depend precisely on selective narrative presentation of events that occur in the natural order of time.8 History-writing follows linear narrative timelines and part of its claim to represent “what was” depends on the replication of a real-life movement in time. But, as a genre, history “is more often concerned with humanity in the plural rather than the singular”.9 The lives of its individual agents, however important (Pericles, Augustus), are only part of a larger whole.10 This is one of the reasons why history almost always indexes events by means of “objective” external dates (Olympiads, consulships, festivals).11 The genre epic is concerned with the life of a hero. Yet “divine Achilles”, “many-minded Odysseus”, “pious Aeneas” and “faithful Achates” are heroes of a mythological time. The structure of epic narratives often resists closed temporal frames:12 TheIliad begins in medias res; the Odyssey’s flashback narrative is the model of discursive rearrangement of natural time in the literary history of the West.13 Of the Aeneid’s temporal analepses and prophetic prolepses we need say little here, except that we cannot reduce them to “natural” timelines.14 The poem’simperium sine fine (Aen. 1.279) bursts through the boundaries of both Virgil’s narrative and individual mortal life. Epic aspires to “imperishable” and thus timeless existence. Such aspirations give the hero a transcendental aura, although, for this very reason, they also take epic a step beyond plain truth. As Philip Hardie has shown, eternal “fame” (κλέος, fama) is inseparable from the voice of “rumour”.15 Of all literary forms, it is biography, of course, that most distinctly tells the story of an individual. Biography is “an account of the life of a man from birth to death”.16 The relation of such accounts to truth is as contrived as that in any other literary genre,17 but biography

8 For time in tragedy, see Easterling (2014); Cairns & Scodel (2014). Note also that some tragic elements, e.g. choral lyric, are in essence ethical, reflective and in this sense non-narrative and atemporal 9 Cohn (1999) 18. See her extended analysis (18–37), separating third-person and first-person narrative regimes, referential genres (history) and non-referential narrative (fiction). 10 For history and time, see Möller & Luraghi (1995); for history & biography, Krauss (2005). 11 See further below on “historical time”. Philosophical aspects of historical indexing are an important contemporary critical concern. See e.g. Lampert (2006) 71–96, ‘Dates and Destiny: The Problem of Historical Chronology’. 12 See e.g. Schlegel (1979) 124: “In its essence the purely poetic narrative [Homeric poetry] has neither beginning nor end”. 13 See Purves (2010); plotlines and discussion in Kahane (2012). 14 See recently Kennedy (2013) 43–82. 15 Hardie (2012). For time in Virgilian epic see Schwindt (2005); also Kennedy (2013). 16 Momigliano (1993) 11. Hägg (2012) 4: “Biography is typically a narrative form: it relates the history of a person from birth to death”, citing Eagleton (1993) on “the remorseless linearity of biographical time”; Swain (1997) 1–2: “Biographical texts are texts which furnish detailed accounts of individuals’ lives. They may be complete, from birth to death, or sectional, and partial. True biography [my emphasis] tends to the former”. Overview of biography in antiquity in Stadter (2007), who rightly separates biography from biographical interests and materials (528); for an attempt to characterize ancient literary biographies, see Leo (1901); for biography as a genre, Lee (2009); Renders and de Haan (2014), with bibliographies. 17 Momigliano (1993) 56: “The borderline between fiction and reality was thinner in biography than in ordinary historiography”. Also Hägg (2012) 1–9. For literary biographies, see Fairweather (1974), (1984) and, from a more abstract perspective, Cohn (1999) 18–37, 79–95; generally, Lee (2009); Holroyd (2003). See also the beginning of section 3, below. 164 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

cannot afford the charge of rumour and hearsay. As a literary form, it claims the authority of plain report. Biography’s common medium is prose, the representation of “ordinary” speech and often of rational, factual discourse.18 More important from our perspective, biography’s authority relies on its essential guise as artless μίμησις of the temporal order of events in a person’s life. It adopts the pretence that it is an account of events as they occurred in nature, unaffected by the intervention of μῆτις and ulterior motive. The most immediate reflection of this claim is ancient biography’s appropriation of the words for “life”, vita and βίος, for its own generic use to mean “biography”, as if real life and the words describing life-events are one.19 The formal parity between the structure of biographic time and the structure of an individual’s real-life time is one of the devices by which biography asserts its generic identity – in essence a claim to objective verisimilitude, authority and truth – even as its objectives, especially in antiquity, often lie elsewhere: in praise, in moral education, or in the formation of values and patterns of thought. Beyond biography and other narrative genres, there is a whole range of discourses which are in essence atemporal, even if they deal with the subject of time and even when they contain embedded narrative elements. Lyric poetry, for example, tells many stories but is focussed on an inner present tense.20 Scientific discourses such as Aristotle’sPhysics or the formula E=mc2 are in essence not temporal narratives. Also, many forms of scholarship are atemporal. Lexical and grammatical handbooks of the Latin language, for example, are non-narrative, as are commentary traditions like those of Donatus and Servius. Commentaries usually follow the sequence of a given text, but not otherwise any linear temporal order. Such atemporal discourses will play an important part in our discussion. Finally, let us stress that generic boundaries are fluid and permeable.21 Almost every text is to some degree a generic melange. But this is precisely the basis of the critical readings below. The manner by which a biographic narrative structures its time in relation to other temporal narratives and to natural time is also the shape of its perspectives and agendas.

18 See Goldhill (2002) 113. The medium of verse is more closely associated with transcendent knowledge e.g.( in magical, prophetic and heroic hexameters), with “more philosophical” literary form (e.g. iambic trimeter, dactylo- epitrites in tragedy) or with inner reflection (hendecasyllabic stanzas in lyric, etc). 19 The term “biography” uncouples the synonymy of life and aLife , but is unattested in antiquity (except in Damascius, Vita Isidori 8.6 = Photius, Bibl. 242, referring to the practice of writing philosophical biography). See Momigliano (1993) 12; Cox (1983) 6 n.11. Hägg (2012) 379 regards the emergence of this term as “incidental”, but others see it a key moment in the development of historical consciousness and modernity. See Giddens (1991); Cohn (1999); Tillyard (2008). 20 See Miller (1994)); Hummel (2003); generally, Culler (2015), esp. ch. 2. Lyric represents a particularly complex case outside the purview of this essay. 21 See recently Frow (2007). Kahane – Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 165

3. A Very Short Biography of Everything

The Vita Suetonii Vulgo Donatiana stands at the centre of the tradition of Virgilian biography. At the centre of VSD is the poet’s epitaph (36).22

Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope. Cecini Pascua, Rura, Duces.

As already noted, this short text matches Virgil’s life to his art. It does so in seemingly plain fashion. Yet very little about this text is plain, especially its construction of biography and time. Note first that the epitaph’s own character and precise place in (Virgilian) time are uncertain. We assume that it is the “earliest extant vita of the poet”.23 Yet it is not attested as an independent text, and is instead embedded in the 4th century CE text of VSD. Even among epitaphs embedded in larger texts it is almost unique. The couplet is a verse mise en abyme, a generic emblem of biography and biographic time within the frame of a more ordinary life in prose.24 It may have already been recorded in Suetonius’ Life, and in any case probably pre- dates Donatus.25 Yet direct extant historical record does not tell us about the epitaph before Suetonius nor when exactly it was composed.26 Significantly, like many other first-person funerary texts, the verse epitaph invokes near-transcendental claims as a record from the time of death. Its autobiographical format27 and presentation in VSD (“on the tomb he composed a distich as follows”) link it directly to Virgil and to the time of his death. Critics have long pointed out the difficulty: “without knowledge of death at Brundisium and burial at Naples, Virgil could not have written this couplet, which was possibly transmitted with the so called Epigrammata”. 28 Let me suggest, however, that the epitaph’s un-natural temporal position is

22 For VSD, see Horsfall (1995); bibliography (Holzberg and Lorenz) in Bayer (2002) 339–61. Text in Brugnoli & Stok (1997) (for the epitaph, 334); cf. Brugnoli & Naumann (1990); Naumann (1981); translation (used here) in Ziolkowski & Putnam (2008) (the epitaph, 193); studies of the epitaph: Pease (1940); Fringes (1998). For the Virgilian lives generally, see n.1 above. 23 Ziolkowski & Putnam (2008) 179. 24 See Appendix for a comparative discussion. 25 See the 2nd century CE graffitoMANTUAMEGEN in the Basilica Argentaria: Della Corte (1933) 115; Van Buren (1934) 478–80, fig. 4. For Suetonius and his sources, see Stok (2010); Power & Gibson (2014). 26 There is no direct evidence of its inscription on Virgil’s tomb. For the tomb, see Capasso (1983); Trapp (1984). For later readers, see Stat. Silv. 4.4.51–55; Mart. 11.48, 50; Pliny Ep. 3.7.8 (quoted n.31 below); cf. the anonymous epitaph for Lucan (Anth. Lat. 485c / 668: Corduba me genuit, rapuit Nero, praelia dixi) and other late imitations. See Pease (1940); Hoogma (1959) 221; Fringes (1998). 27 Cf. Momigliano (1993) 14: “we cannot separate biography from autobiography”; Baslez, Hoffmann & Pernot (1993); also Bakhtin (1981) on parity of biography and autobiography in antiquity. But such views do not fully acknowledge the complexity of literary self-representation: see Cohn (1999) 18–37; Beaujour (1992). 28 Horsfall (1995) 21; see also Laird (2009) 7. Cohn (1999) 22 notes: “No instant of life … can highlight more dramatically than death and dying the difference in kind between biography and fiction”. 166 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

likely to have also been a critical asset, confirming the verses’ near-magical force. This position is all the more interesting given that the text otherwise assumes the guise of plain biography and seems to describe a “natural” linear movement of time.29 The epitaph’s first three asyndetic sentences trace a rapid temporal sequence: a beginning, a middle and an end. They also match birth, life and death to three toponymic / localized proper-names, Mantua … Calabri (the people of Calabria) … Parthenope, recreating the temporal sequence of Virgil’s life as a journey in the landscape.30 Unlike time, space and landscape can be seen, both in sensible reality and also in the mind’s eye. Furthermore, we often conceive of the essence of landscape as unchanging and in this sense as timeless. The epitaph thus embeds the life of Rome’s poetic legend within an eternal but sensible material world, and, at the same time, turns ordinary Roman landscape into a mythical domain for Virgil’s many devotees.31 It recreates biographic time as a movement in topographic eternity. The choice of verbs in these three sentences gives the epitaph’s time and space continuum an important third dimension. Mantua32 in combination with genuit creates the intimate, poetic image of a mother and child. The land of Italy itself has thus given birth to the poet. Calabria, the site of Virgil’s last days (Brundisium … ubi … obit, VSD 35), is a place the poet knew well throughout his life.33 Calabri rapuere again casts this life in the language of a person-to-person contact with a place.34 Parthenope, the epitaph’s poetic name for Naples (cf. Geo. 4.564), completes the narrative of personal intimacy. Virgil is cradled (perhaps with a hint of Epicurean pleasure – Virgil was among friends in the Epicurean circles at Naples) in the arms of a virginal Siren whose song is proverbially associated with death and whose name

29 Kahane (forthcoming) describes the epitaph as a “site of memory”. See Nora (1996) xvii: “A lieu de mémoire is any significant entity,whether material or non-material in nature [my emphasis], which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community”. Sites of memory (war memorials, public buildings, etc.) often use deceptively simple language to play their roles in cultural memory. 30 The use of toponyms is important. Hartog (1988) 248, citing de Certeau (1977) ix, notes that place-names are the “mainspring” of writing travellers’ tales and historical narratives. 31 See e.g. Pliny the Younger’s letter to Caninius Rufus, describing Silius Italicus’ veneration of Virgil: Vergili ante omnes, cuius natalem religiosius quam suum celebrabat, Neapoli maxime, ubi monimentum eius adire ut templum solebat (3.7.8); comments in Boyle (1993) 233; Henderson (2002) 116–17. On space as a metaphor for time (used by Aristotle and others), see Dannenberg (2008) 252: “Nonspatial concepts are often mapped using spatial metaphors. The more abstract phenomenon of time is often conceptualized in spatial terms; time is conceived of as a path”. 32 Virgil was born in the village of Andes (VSD 2); see Calzolari (1999); Della Corte (1988); Albertini (1983); also further discussion below. The name Andes is otherwise unattested in extant classical sources (except as the name of a tribe in Caesar). It conveys historical accuracy but seems to have had no external poetic or historical resonance. Mantua and Andes are metrically interchangeable (*Andes me genuit … ). The choice here thus seems meaningful. 33 See McKay (1970) 281. 34 Calabria otherwise appears only in Geo. 3.425 in Virgil’s poetry, as the habitat of the poisonous Chresydrus (malus Calabris in saltibus anguis). Wordplay (Calaber / coluber) may enhance the dramatic transition from birth to illness and death: see Mynors (1990) 244–45; O’Hara (1996) 280–81; Davis (2012). Kahane – Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 167 is echoed in his own nickname.35 The combination of toponymic proper-names and verbs denoting key actions thus re-imagines the temporal sequence of the life of Rome’s canonical poet and the spatial journey of that life, as a relationship in intimate personal time between poet and land.36 The staccato of the epitaph’s first three sentences is repeated byCecini Pascua, Rura, Duces. This sequence adds several more layers to the narrative, each of which lays claim to yet another distinct domain of time. First and most obvious is the layer of literary- historical time and the ascending sequence of Virgil’s canonical works. This crescendo also embodies an order of qualitative time and poetic gravitas that progresses from youthful achievement and growing ambition to mature magnum opus. This ascending value-structure of the works is embedded in the material order of the words, and validated both by later statements within VSD (31: Propertius’ “something greater than the Iliad”)37 and by the readers’ independent knowledge. As often recognized, these parallel temporal sequences are reflected in the idea of an ascent of genres, from pastoral to didactic to epic.38 We should, however, stress that this is yet another kind of temporal structure, which we could describe as generic time. The epitaph defines an order of thegenera dicendi (cf. e.g. Ad Herennium 4.11–16) as a linear temporal movement of literary form.39 This qualitative / temporal / generic movement seems so natural as to be hardly worth further consideration. Yet it is often the semblance of nature in art that masks the politics of artistichabitus .40 The epitaph constructs a generic sequence that begins with pastoral and culminates in epic (“something greater than Homer”). Yet, elsewhere in ancient literary history, epic is the beginning of the sequence, not its end. Furthermore, the fundamental qualitative hierarchy of ancient literary history, and of antiquity itself as a framework of historical consciousness, assumes that the beginning of the sequence, “first” and not “last”, is always best. The qualitative /

35 Virgil was associated with the Epicureans, with Siro and Philodemus (see further in section 5.IV, below). Enjambed verse-initial Parthenope is emphatic and echoed elsewhere, not merely in Georgics (4.464 // Parthenope) or in Ovid (Met. 15.712 // Parthenopen) but also in the incipits of two poems by Philodemus (P.Oxy. 3752 col. iv 13–14 // Παρθενόπης): see Sider (1997) 18–19, 212–23 and (1995) 43–44, noting suggestions by Obbink. Could Epicurean resonance have also had a lighter undertone? Virgil enjoys fear-free rest in the arms of death. For Virgil’s nickname Parthenias see VSD 11; Korenjak (1995). It is not impossible that this pietà scene could have had further resonance in the Christian era. The tradition associating Parthenope and virginity is broad, but the trope has yet to receive full scholarly attention: Johannsen (2000) is of little help, but see Hägg & Utas (2003) 46–52, with comments on the novel Metiochos and Parthenope and its medieval Persian descendant. 36 A common feature of “sites of memory”. See n.29 above. 37 But Propertius’ relationship to the canonical sequence is probably more complex. See 2.34.59–80 (also 2.10) and Barchiesi (2001) 94. 38 See Putnam (2010). 39 On the order of the genera dicendi, see Quadlbauer (1962). 40 For the argument and habitus in general (a system of inculcated social dispositions, values and practices, and its political substance), see e.g. Bourdieu & Passeron (1990). 168 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

generic / temporal sequence Pascua, Rura, Duces – later visualized in the structure of the Rota – thus contains the kernel of a radical reversal of temporal-historical perspectives and an ancient foreshadowing of modernity.41 As Putnam and others have long pointed out, the metonymic sequence Pascua, Rura, Duces also creates within the epitaph a narrative summary of the whole history of human time, from its beginning in the “pastures” of nomadic herdsmen, through the “plough-lands” of permanent settlements and finally to human warfare and “heroes”.42 It would seem, then, that the epitaph’s temporal structure embodies the essential force of the biography of an individual, but replicates and extends it many times over. “Biography”, as Simon Goldhill says, “makes the classical past ‘classical’ – a world populated by great men and great deeds which project the examples by which the present can be judged”.43 Virgil’s short and seemingly plain epitaph weaves together multiple overlapping temporal dimensions to create a mythographic emblem of the whole Roman world, of birth and death, of eternal landscape, intimate human relations, literature, literary genre and universal history, compressed into the life-narrative of just one person. There are, we should note, no calendar dates in this narrative emblem of time. This sharply contrasts with the historical element in the prose of VSD (see next section). We do not expect historical dates within verse epitaphs,44 but the absence of chronological indices in the poem means that what is otherwise claimed to be an inscription on the tomb of a famous historical figure is not bound by the constraints of any one point in time. Virgil’s epitaph is a truly universal emblem. Very few other short narratives in the history of Western literature have managed to produce such powerful effect. None possess the compact intensity of Virgil’s epitaph. Almost like some vox magica, the epitaph’s short, relentless repetition and overlaying of different temporal narratives of the world help create a revelatory unity.45

41 See e.g. Murray (2001) 19: “For the ancients (as is well known), time past lay in spatial terms before us (ante), visible to the human intellect and capable of providing models of behaviour; time future lay behind us (post), obscure, invisible, unknowable, but not likely to be different from that past which we could see in front of us … Darwinian homo sapiens looks the other way, forward into a future in which biological selection underpins the notion of advances in all areas of human endeavour. The way may lie uphill, but somehow at the top we shall find the promised land spread out before us. We face the future resolutely, and the past is behind us. It is noticeable that most modern travellers prefer to sit in a railway carriage facing the engine, to see where they are going; the ancients sat with their backs to the engine, looking at the landscape they had passed through”. For the Rota and its order (humilis, mediocris, gravis) see Quadlbauer (1962); Curtius (1953) 231–32; Hardie (2010). 42 Putnam (2010) 17, who does not pursue the wider historical implication of this order. See also further below, on the deleted opening of the Aeneid. 43 Goldhill (2002) 113. 44 Dates are sometimes inscribed alongside but outside verse elements in monuments. 45 Repetition is often attested in magical discourse e.g.( abracadabra; see Brashear 1995, 3394, no. 22). Kahane – Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 169

4. VSD and Historical Time46

Virgil’s verse epitaph canonizes the life of Rome’s classical poet in a biographically appropriate form – a poem for a poet. The transcendental element in verse is well-suited to the production of a numinous effect, but for this very reason also carries the risk of suspect veracity.47 To act effectively in the world beyond myth, Virgil’s (after-)life needs the medium of prose and what we might call the temporalities of prose. As in the case of the epitaph, we should first bear in mind the complex status of theVita Suetonii Vulgo Donatiana as context and in context. Donatus was above all a grammarian and commentator, not a biographer. VSD was not a separate work but part of Donatus’ larger Virgilian commentary, whose main purpose was epexegetic, not biographic. As the work’s standard title suggests, this biography rightly belongs to Suetonius. Donatus is relegated to the status of a biographic go-between.48 Furthermore, although Donatus is the great Virgilian critic, tradition has not preserved his commentary as an independent text, and has allowed it to be absorbed, altered and augmented within the variorum traditions, in Servius, Servius auctus (DServ), Macrobius, Isidore and other exponents of Virgil’s critical afterlife.49 Thus, at play in our discussion, both in general and with specific reference to temporality, are several imbricated yet distinct types of material: the epitaph, a separate but not independent text of VSD, and Donatus’ larger critical project (once separate but already in antiquity dissolved within the larger context of Virgilian commentary traditions). We are dealing with epitaphic, biographic and epexegetic discourse, and with verse, narrative prose and non-narrative prose, all of whose different temporalities we shall now try to unpack. VSD’s biographic timeline begins one tick of the clock before the beginning of Virgil’s life, with a brief comment on parentage and on the poet’s father (1):

P. Vergilius Maro Mantuanus parentibus modicis fuit ac praecipue patre, quem quidam opificem figulum, plures Magi cuiusdam viatoris initio mercennarium, mox ob industriam generum tradiderunt egregieque substantiae silvis coemendis et apibus curandis auxisse reulam.

46 Horsfall (1995) is the most compact discussion of historical references. 47 See comments on epic in section 2, above. 48 Cf. also the prefatory Epistula ad Munatium (Brugnoli & Stok, 1997, 15, who note “epistula in uno P exstat, alia manu ac quae vitam scripsit”); also the omission of Donatus’ name from the inscription in most MSS (ibid. 17). 49 The relations between Donatus’ work and the later tradition are highly complex and the bibliography extensive, but see e.g. Marinone (1946); Comparetti (1908); Stok (1994). As the much-reduced and formalized biographic section in the Expositio Donati demonstrates, VSD itself, despite tradition’s insistence on the title Vita, was more than just a “life”. For the text of the Expositio, see Brugnoli & Stok (1997), also Bayer (1970) 713–15. 170 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Reference to ancestry is a biographic commonplace. Yet the character of VSD’s rhetoric, weighing up possible second-hand evidence (quidam … plures), also hints at a learned recognition of the limits of our knowledge and the slippage between endless cycles of emergence and decay in nature and the finite narrative constructs of biography.50 Such slippage sharply contrasts with the absolute mythographic temporalities of Virgil’s epitaph.51 Immediately after the opening section,VSD nevertheless establishes its historical cre- dentials. It acknowledges the formal temporal structure (its narrative “backbone”, see above, section 2) of biography with special emphasis on chronology. VSD 2 marks Virgil’s birth: Natus est Cn. Pompeio Magno M. Licinio Crasso primum cons. Iduum Octobrium die (“[Virgil] was born on the Ides of October, during the first consulships of Gnaeus Pompeius the Great and Marcus Licinius Crassus”: Oct. 15, 70 BCE), with reference to external, homogenous (i.e. the same at every point – moving at an equal pace from one year to another, marked by the Consulships) time that aligns the course of Virgil’s life with the history and chronology of Rome.52 The precise and external nature of this key biographic date is matched by reference to an exact geographic location. VSD’s prose says that Virgil was born “in a village called Andes” (in pago qui Andes dicitur).53 The place-nameAndes is not attested in any other context in classical sources. It has no cultural resonance, but precisely for this reason carries with it the enhanced impression of objective historical fact. Contrast the epitaph, where the event of Virgil’s birth, undated, is linked to the common place-name Mantua. Both the epitaph and the Life are biographic texts. Yet in our context Mantua and Andes separate different strategic approaches to the genre. One is linked to mythographic space-time, the other to the everyday facticity of chronological time and historical prose. Not surprisingly, VSD marks two more points in Virgil’s biographic narrative in exact chronological terms. Following the beginning of birth, the text describes a middle point, the poet’s movement in youth and his pivotal progress from childhood to becoming an adult (6):

Initia aetatis Cremonae egit usque ad virilem togam, quam XVII anno natali suo accepit isdem illis consulibus iterum duobus, quibus erat natus, evenitque ut eodem ipso die Lucretius poeta decederet.

50 “All literatures … have always designated themselves as existing in the mode of fiction … The self-reflecting mirror-effect by means of which a work of fiction asserts, by its very existence, its separation from empirical reality … characterizes the work of literature in its essence”, De Man (1971) 17. 51 Epitaphic texts also make frequent reference to ancestry; in the context of Virgil’s epitaph, see Kahane (forthcoming). But autobiographic epitaphs do not normally express doubt about parentage (“My name is … some say my father was …”). 52 For chronology in general, see Bickerman (1980). The term “homogenous time” is derived from scientific language, but is also central to contemporary discussions of historical time; see Benjamin (1968) 261. 53 Note again what may be VSD’s scientific caution: “a villagecalled Andes”, rather than simply “in the village of Andes”. Kahane – Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 171

This important moment in life is linked to an external date and, in addition, to the end of the life of a prominent poet, creating a historical sequence of literary-biographic dates.54 The third and final indexed biographic event inVSD is, of course, Virgil’s death in 19 BCE (35):

Anno aetatis quinquegesimo secondo impositurus Aeneidi summam manum statuit in Graeciam et in Asiam secedere triennioque continuo nihil amplius quam emendare, ut reliqua vita tantum philosophiae vacaret. Set cum ingressus iter Athenis occurrisset Augusto ab oriente Romam revertenti, destinaretque non absistere atque etiam una redire, dum Megara vicinum oppidum ferventissimo sole cognoscit, languorem nactus est, eumque non intermissa navigatione auxit ita ut gravior aliquanto Brundisium appelleret, ubi diebus paucis obit XI Kal. Octobr. Cn. Sentio Q. Lucretio cons. Ossa eius Neapolim translata sunt tumuloque condita, qui est via Puteoloeana intra lapidem secundum, in quo distichon fecit tale …

Underlying this account is a poetic metaphor: the journey of a life cut short. This use of the metaphor is however very different from its un-indexed mythographic use in the epitaph. By marking a numeric personal index of Virgilian time, “in his fiftieth-second year”, and linking it to a precise external date, Sept. 21, 19 BCE, VSD places Virgil’s personal time in objective historical time. The narrative is otherwise characterised by prosaic and thus historically credible detail (even as it speculates on Virgil’s inner intention): Virgil “meant to do nothing but revise for three straight years”.55 Note that the scene is set in the context of wider historical events: Virgil meets Augustus as the Emperor “was returning to Rome from the East”. Similarly, the text also offers a rationalistic cause-and-effect diagnostic of Virgil’s medical condition: “under a strongly blazing sun, he became ill. Because he did not suspend the sea travel, his sickness grew so much worse that it was considerably more serious when he put ashore at Brindisi”. The scene concludes with a terse and detached report on death – otherwise the most dramatic event in any life: “he passed away there, after a few days”. An equally practical comment follows, noting the poet’s burial place not at poetic Parthenope, but in the everyday city of Naples, adding the location, “on the road to Puzzuoli, less than two miles out from the city”, with dry cartographic precision. These, then, are the three key dates marking an explicit beginning (= birth), middle (= entry into adult life), and end (= death) – points that comprise VSD’s necessary frame of formal biography. These, let me stress, are the only events inVSD to be indexed by external

54 See Horsfall (1995) 5–6; Fairweather (1974). For the reading xvii see Brugnoli & Stok (1997) 20–01. Harris (undated) sees this as an implicit reference to Epicureanism, for which see further below, section 5.IV. 55 See O’Hara (2010) 98–99. 172 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

chronology. They structureVSD ’s historical time and link Virgil’s life to the homogenous, public temporality of Rome. But it is immediately after this historical account of Virgil’s death, when we the readers have been assured of the facticity of VSD’s time, that – still using the same terse factual prose – the text pulls out its mythographic trump card: “on the tomb he composed a distich as follows”. The contrastive effect of the epitaph’s universal, unindexed, ahistorical verse time could not be greater.

5. The Scholar’s Time and the Poet’s Time

Into the frame of historical time and chronological dates VSD weaves many observations that are unattached to external points in time. Some of these are general by nature. They add bodily materiality, a social existence and other attributes to the figure of the poet. Virgil “was large in person and stature, with a swarthy complexion” (8); “he owned a house in Rome on the Esquiline” (12). However, many other details, often describing significant biographic moments, also have no date. This aspect ofVSD is not unusual. No biography can index all of its events or arrange them in perfect order Nevertheless, in many of its details, VSD develops yet another strand of biographic time which is distinct from the arc of history and external chronology on the one hand, and from a poetic mythography on the other. As we shall see, we are dealing with time which reflects the cumulative andad hoc traditions of commentary and scholarship within which VSD was transmitted and preserved, and which, perhaps a little surprisingly, is also a form of time which is well attuned to the deep back-and-forth swerve of Virgil’s practice as a poet. I discuss this temporal layer in four parts, reading VSD more or less in order and thus following its narrative structure. In part I, I note some preliminary qualities of such poetic time marked by the absence of temporal indexing. In part II, I consider the temporal anomalies in the description of Virgil’s juvenile and minor literary works. In part III, I consider VSD’s discussion of Virgil’s canonical works. Finally, in part IV, I look at VSD’s discussion of Virgilian composition and what we shall eventually describe as discreet Virgilian time.

I – Life Events

Having assumed the toga virilis (6, see above), Virgil leaves the region of his place of birth and makes his way to Rome (7):

Sed Vergilius a Cremona Mediolanum et inde paulo post transit in urbem. Kahane – Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 173

These words describe an important movement in Virgil’s life. However, despite the tripartite reference to geographic points familiar to us from the epitaph, this sequence is of a different kind. As in the epitaph, no dates are given. Yet this brief account does not describe the arc of a whole life, only a practical, unceremonious transitional movement. Indeed, in a geographic sense, the narrative does not describe an arc at all. The poet first heads up north, from Cremona to Milan, then back south, to Rome.56 This sequences describes a topographic movement which is neither precisely chronological nor a mythographic construct. In section 9, embedded in comments on Virgil’s sexual habits, we find mention of the gift of a particular favourite:

Cibi vinique minimi [fuit], libidinis in pueros pronioris, quorum maxime dilexit Cebetem et Alexandrum, quem secunda Bucolicorum ecloga Alexim appellat, donatum sibi ab Asinio Pollione, utrumque non ineruditum, Cebetem vero et poetam.

Alexander / Alexis is a notable personal and poetic figure, yet he is described in plain, factual terms.57 He was the gift of a patron who is a known historical personage at an unspecified date. This, again, is neither history nor myth. In section 14 we are told of the loss of Virgil’s family “when he was full grown” (parentes iam grandis amisit). This significant biographic event, easily dramatised, is described in terse, un-poetic terms and its date is left unmarked. Likewise, Virgil’s academic and professional activities, and his single appearance in the courts, are undated (inter cetera studia medicinae quoque ac maxime mathematicae operam dedit. Egit et causam apud iudices unam omnino nec amplius quam semel, 15). In these details, then, we find an approach to biographic time that properly belongs neither to the historian nor to the chronologist or the mythographer, but to a literary biographer and commentator of a type which in itself is not uncommon in antiquity.

II – Juvenile and Minor Works

As we already stressed, VSD is part of Donatus’ larger critical opus and of the broader tradition of Virgilian scholarship, whose main interest is Virgil’s literary activity. From section 17 to section 39, the narrative strings together a range of comments focussing largely on literary events, starting with epitaphic verses Virgil composed while still a boy, for the gladiator-master and robber Ballista (17):58

56 Virgil and Cremona: Tozzi (1984); Milan: cf. Jerome, Chron. Ol. 181, 4: Vergilius sumpta toga Mediolanium transgreditur. 57 See Ecl. 2, also 5 and 7. 58 See Rincón González (1994); Zarker (1971). 174 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Poeticam puer adhuc auspicatus in Ballistam … distichon fecit: Monte sub hoc lapidum …

As before, the text marks time not by an external date, but in a vague manner.59 It relies on the anaphoric adhuc, whose formal point of reference is the preceding narration.60 Yet only a few sentences earlier (14), we were told that Virgil lost his parents iam grandis, “when he was full grown”. Narratives are always at liberty to rearrange story time, but that precisely is our point. Speaking of Virgil’s first poem, VSD seems to have broken with a strictly linear order of biographic time and slightly backtracked, so as to focus on its main interest, an account of Virgil’s literary output. We may add that the poet’s first juvenile effort is of little independent poetic merit. It is above all a literary scholar’s detail, an anecdote that marks the starting point of Virgil’s literary career, but which is too unimportant to be included in a mythographic account or in the formal dated sequence of a public, historical account of Virgil’s life. Immediately following this boyish effort,VSD considers some more significant juvenile poems. The text, again, does not specify precise external dates for theCatalepton , the Priapea, the epigrams, the Dirae, Ciris and Culex, noting only that they were composed when Virgil was “twenty six” (cum esset annorum X[X]VI).61 Such relative personal dating provides the needed order for a literary account. From the relative date we can, of course, calculate a general historical date, but the text’s main interest here is clearly a literary sequence whose temporal index is the figure of Virgil himself, not external historical time or a precise chronological date for each work. VSD sums up the plot of the Culex (18) and cites the famous Parve culex … distichon (Culex 413–14). Whatever their literary merit, these funerary verses, like Ballista’s epigram, underscore the prominence of Virgil’s epitaph and of verse emblems of death in VSD’s prose.62 The text also mentions “a poem about Aetna”, but says nothing of the chronology of this work of doubtful authorship (scripsit etiam, de qua ambagitur, Aetnam, 19). Where the poet’s life – rather than external events – is the measure of time, the date of spurious works matters little. These accounts, then, are preliminary indications, on their own not unusual, of a literary scholar’s time. Their swerve is more anecdotal and contingent, relative to both the epitaph’s mythographic time and to the external homogenous time of historical biography. As we

59 General discussion and further references in Horsfall (1995). 60 The function ofadhuc is either limitative or durative; see Pinkster (2015) 865: 10.41. 61 For the textual problem, see Brugnoli & Stok (1997) 25. The difficulty does not affect our basic argument, which relies simply on the presence of a number. 62 Death often defines the narratives of a life. Considere.g. the Gospels, the life of Julius Caesar, John F. Kennedy, etc. See discussion in Kahane (2003). Kahane – Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 175 approach VSD’s account of Virgil’s canonical works, the most important elements in his life, this perspective becomes more explicit.

III. The Canonical Poems

The public and therefore external status of the canonical trilogy clearly requires more attention to history and to historical time, though by their very nature as canonical works the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid also invoke a stronger interest in literary commentary. VSD offers us a series of observations set in history, yet, significantly, no precise chronological references. The text preserves the basic sequence Eclogues-Georgics-Aeneid, but also incorporates a different, contingent and, let me suggest, explicitly Virgilian form of biographic temporality which requires close consideration. Composition of the Eclogues is discussed in relation to prominent historical figures (Asinius Polio, Alphenus Varus and Cornelius Gallus) and the historical “distribution of lands after the victory at Philippi” (19; cf. also 62–63). While this gives us a time frame, VSD provides no specific chronological date.63 TheGeorgics are, again, mentioned with reference to history and to Maecenas’ help, but with no date and only loose reference to a dispute with “a certain veteran” (20).64 “Lastly”, we are told (21), Virgil “commenced work on the Aeneid, a varied and complex theme” (argumentum varium, ac multiplex). If there was ever a need of precise chronological dating (attested or assumed) for a literary work, it would surely be for the Aeneid, the keystone in Virgil’s life and the most important public poem in Latin literature and in the tradition of the West. Needless to say, VSD gives no such date. At the time of Virgil’s death, the poem was “unfinished”.65 VSD discusses the poem’s composition at length (21–35), yet in sharp contrast to the biographical frame, and despite references to places and events and to Augustus, even the poem’s date of publication after 19 BCE remains unspecified. However, asVSD ’s narrative makes clear, such vagueness is not merely the result of the biographer’s historical uncertainty. It is affected by distinct Virgilian practice.

IV. Virgilian Time

In section 22, VSD describes Virgil’s general composition technique. He would compose a large number of verses in the morning but reduce them to only a few by the end of the day,

63 See Horsfall (1995) 11–13, with further references. 64 See ibid. 13–14. 65 See ibid. 14–15. What matters for our argument is only the biographic presentation of the Aeneid as incomplete, which is beyond doubt, not the hermeneutic status of inconsistencies in the poem (see e.g. O’Hara, 2010; O’Hara, 2007). 176 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

famously saying that he licked his verses into shape like a she-bear licking her cubs (more ursae parere dicens et lambendo demum effingere).66 Whatever the exact meaning and prove- nance of this aphoristic expression, it describes animal-like, intimate and “slurpy” creation, not a reasoned, cerebral process. Immediately afterwards (23),VSD explains that, having constructed a prose crib, Virgil worked on parts of the poem, “each part as it seized his fancy, taking up nothing in order” (prout liberet quidque, nihil in ordinem arripiens), adding that “lest anything should impede his momentum, he would let certain things pass unfinished” (ne quid impetum moraretur, quaedam imperfecta transmisit, 24). Whether these statements are historically accurate, biographic constructs, or something in between,67 they are explicit descriptions of non-linear composition. They emphasise the organic character of the most important aspect of the creative activity of Rome’s most important poet. In philosophical terms, we are dealing with a stochastic phenomenology of time that fundamentally opposes Aristotle’s linear time as the “number of change” and the linear time of biography as a genre. As VSD has it, Virgil headed off to Greece and Asia Minor so that, after revising and completing the Aeneid, “the remainder of his life would be free for philosophy only” (ut reliqua vita tantum philosophiae vacaret, 35). Virgil was not a “card-carrying” member of any philosophical sect, but he was close to the Stoics and especially to the Epicureans. And it is in Epicurus that we can find some helpful context for Virgilian practice as it is described by VSD.68 In contrast to Aristotle’s conception of time, in Epicurean philosophy time was precisely non-linear. It was not defined by arithmetic progression (the “number of change”) but by the accidental clinamen of atoms.69 We must be careful not to apply reductive notions of nuanced and complex philosophical ideas instrumentally to poetic practice or indeed to secondary reports of such practice. But Epicureanism can provide us with the backdrop of a wider, Roman framework of thought against which we can view Virgilian personal poetic time and its self-determined progress. Furthermore, no matter what the precise philosophical element in this personal poetic time, it is clearly far removed both from the mythographic temporal arc of his epitaph and from the time of historical biography. It is, however, closer to the time of literary biography and to the temporality of all non-narrative literature, amongst which we may count, of course, both traditions of writing on grammar and commentary traditions like those of VSD.

66 Cf. Gellius, NA 17.10.2–4 and discussion in O’Sullivan (1989); Ziolkowski (1995) 349. Effingo above all denotes artistic production and depiction; see OLD s.v. 67 Horsfall (1995) 16–17: “Fragile, weakly-based and open to attack on all fronts as the account in VSD is, it is not incompatible with the evidence of text and scholia and is accepted fully (and without question!) by Geymonat [EV 2, 286–96]”. 68 For Virgil and Epicureanism, see Ferguson (1988); Armstrong, Fish et al. (2004); and the well-balanced views in Braund (1997), with bibliography. 69 For Epicurean time, see Simplicius On Aristotle Physics 6, 934.23–30 Diels; Warren (2006); Gœury (2012). For Epicurean time in Lucretius, in the context of Latin literature, see recently Kennedy (2013) 160–07. Kahane – Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 177

6. The End of (Narrative) Time

Whatever the personal or philosophical merit of Epicurean time, the scholar’s time and Virgil’s private poet-time, it is hard to reconcile their stochastic nature with the practical demands of cultural hierarchy and with social and political order. A Virgilian biography organized exclusively around the principles of “Virgilian” time or other non-linear time would have been too private and too unpredictable to have met with much success in the public sphere. Yet, as we have seen, VSD weaves an intricate web of many different strands of time and temporality, each of which caters to different needs and performs a different kind of task. In section 25, even in the midst of its discussion of stochastic composition and performance technique, VSD offers an internal, historically un-tethered yet linear chronological order, whose numerical crescendo matches the conventional ascending literary-biographical order of qualitative hierarchy:

Bucolica triennio, Georgica VII, Aeneida XI perfecit annis.

This arrangement echoes the linear crescendo of the epitaph’sCecini Pascua, Rura, Duces and presages the totemic sequence of the Rota Vergilii and later tradition.70 The full intricacy ofVSD ’s web of temporalities is, however, best attested immediately after the narrative of the end of the poet’s life (35), as the text moves to a discussion of the scholarly aftermath of his death – the birth of Virgilian reception. Here, temporal sequence evolves into a literary-critical discussion that leaps backwards and forwards in time. Varius and Tucca’s editorial work is described in section 38. Section 39 then jumps back to Virgil’s plans before his death: “Before leaving Italy, Virgil had arranged with Varius to burn the Aeneid if anything befell him”. In scholarly terms, such leaps are entirely commonplace. But the non-linear, non-chronological temporality of these passages, which in practice refer to VSD’s narrative in preceding sections, highlights the contrast to the linear time of biographic and historical discourse. Finally, in section 42, citing Nisus the grammarian (reaching back to older sources), VSD notes that Varius changed the order of two books, moved the second book into third place, and, of course, subtracted the original opening lines of the Aeneid:

70 The numbers 3, 7 and 11 are probably not historical and are all particularly significant prime numbers, separated by equal intervals. We might note the interest of later interpretive traditions in numerology. See e.g. Yarbro Collins (1972) 221: “Numerical symbolism is part of the activity of discovering order in environment and experience … First, [numerical symbolism] is used to order the experience of time … Numerical symbolism also expresses order in the experience of space. The perception of such order is expressed in the Greek idea of the cosmos”. Cf. also Bovon (2001). 178 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena carmen, et egressus silvis vicina coegi ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono, gratum opus agricolis, at nunc horrentia Martis arma virumque cano

The link between these verses and Virgil’s epitaph has been widely discussed.71 They repli- cate, in verse, as in the epitaph, not merely the superimposition of biography and literary history, but also the narrative of historical human progress in general from nomadic to agrarian and finally to martial culture. Yet, of course, these lines are precisely the ones which were excised from the official corpus of Virgil’s poetry. Varius’ interventions change Virgil’s original order and work against a rigid conception and arrangement of time. Order becomes a more-flexible matter of individual (in this case Varius’) choice. We need to stress VSD’s description of Varius’ editorial actions in relation to Virgil’s own process of composition. Varius’ intervention, which determines the canonical text, breaks linear order by the transposition of the second and third books of the Aeneid. If “time is the number of change”, then here, through the perception of non-linear numeric change, we seem to experience a different modality of time, time which is determined by subjective human intervention and which we can thus, with full justification, call a “human time”, yet which is no less the time of canonical history. A hint of such a time, open to detours and interruption, can perhaps also be detected in the next section (43), where VSD says obtrectatores Vergilio numquam defuerunt (“Virgil never wanted for detractors”).72 Perhaps the most obvious mark of the open prospect of such interventions can be found already in the first and most famous episode inVSD ’s narrative of Virgil’s afterlife, in the account of Virgil’s response to his work and his plan to burn the Aeneid in the event of his death. The failure of this plan, blocked by Augustus, the most authoritative personal subject in Roman history, like the ultimate failure of Virgil’s detractors and the subsequent publication of the poem by Varius with Augustus’ approval, demonstrates to us how history is ultimately made, not as a series of formal repetitions and predictable, one might say linear, grand designs, but through individual, sometimes contradictory interventions.73 And, at the heart of VSD’s prose narrative of Virgil’s history, we find his epitaph, a compact poetic

71 See, recently, Putnam (2010) 17. 72 For Virgil’s detractors, see Farrell (2010). 73 In other words: fixed, linear repetition assumes a mechanical natural order in which “past” and “future” are, in principle, predetermined and are thus known and predictable. It is only when evolution (in history, as in genetics) breaks free of mechanical replication, through unpredictable or even accidental acts, that we can speak of a truly historical process. For discussions, see references above, n.5, 6. Kahane – Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 179 emblem whose mythical force, we might say, binds together many different types of temporality and lies, almost, beyond time.

Appendix: Virgil and Homer

It is important to grasp the uniqueness of the epitaph’s embedded, multi-layered temporality. Epitaphs commonly list the achievements of the deceased.74 Likewise, the link between a poet’s life and his art in funerary epigrams is not without antecedents, and indeed is attested already in the tradition of Homeric Lives.75 It is hard to imagine a more suitable model for the Virgilian tradition. Homer’s ancient biographies, mostly in prose (with the notable exceptions in the Certamen), contain accounts of the poet’s birth and death but also record – almost exactly as in the case of VSD and the tradition of Virgil’s Lives – a verse epitaph which Homer composed for himself.76 Like Virgil’s epitaph, Homer’s funerary verse is not attested independently or in epigraphy. Yet Homer’s epitaph is clearly not a biography and not a biographic emblem or mise en abyme. Its text immediately attests to the uniqueness of Virgil’s biographic couplet and its temporal structures. Thus we findVit. ( Herod. 515–16 and in other Lives):

ἐνθάδε τὴν ἱερὴν κεφαλὴν κατὰ γαῖα καλύψε ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων κοσμήτορα θεῖον Ὅμηρον.

Like Virgil’s epitaph, Homer’s text binds the poet’s biological life and death to his poetic oeuvre, the latter compressed into the expression ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων κοσμήτορα, “the one who arranged and adorned heroes” (which clearly refers to the Homeric poems and the ordered κόσμος of their verse). Yet, unlike Virgil’s epitaph, these lines are exclusively a “description”, not a “narration”.77 They are not an account of a sequence of life events or of a movement in time or, indeed, of a series of poetic works. There is no “I sang ofwrath (i.e. the Iliad) and of the man (i.e. the Odyssey)”. Note similarly that, unlike the spatial sequence in Virgil’s epitaph, the Homeric verses mark space and the poet’s place of burial as a single point, and

74 See, in the context of Virgil’s epitaph, Kahane (forthcoming). 75 For the lives, see Graziosi (2002); Kahane (2005), also Lefkowitz (2012); Kivilo (2010). Models: Graziosi (2009). 76 In the Certamen, the Vit. Herod, Alcidamas On Homer (Mich. Pap. 2754), etc, but not e.g. in the Vit. Plut. and Aristotle (Fr. 1.76 Rose = Ps. Plut. Vita 1. 3), in which the Ians composed the verses on Homer’s behalf. 77 See Genette & Levonas (1976), n.6 above. The present tense would have been more suitable (cf.Il. 14.114), but the aorist in verse-terminal position is more common, especially in the context of death (cf. Il. 4.461, 503; 5.310, etc). We should perhaps treat καλύψε in the specific funerary sense as denoting a “state or condition” (Goodwin, 1897, 16: sect. 55; Klug, 2009). Translation here: Muir (2001) 39. Note that the only other verbal element in the epitaph is expressed by a common noun, κοσμήτορα. 180 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

do so by means of the conventional epitaphic deictic “here”.78 Homer’s biographic tradition contains many references to places and events in the poet’s life and to its chronology. Yet there is no toponym in the epitaph itself. Indeed, since deixis indexes reference to the discursive act, Homer’s “here” refers to an abstract anywhere and anytime, wherever and whenever the epitaph is read. The Homeric reference is thus both more precise and less precise than Virgil’s.79 Like Virgil’s, Homer’s place in the cultural history of antiquity and ancient pedagogy is central. In many ways, Homer’s verse epitaph is parallel to Virgil’s. Yet in sharp contrast to Mantua me genuit, and despite its placement in a larger, prose biographic frame, Homer’s epitaph cannot function as a biographic emblem or as a model for literary, ethical or temporal progression.

Royal Holloway, University of London AHUVIA KAHANE ([email protected])

78 For epitaphic deixis, see Tsagalis (2008) 21–26. 79 For deixis, see Lyons (1995) 293–311. Generally, Fillmore (1999); Levinson (1983). The plurality of space generated by epitaphic deixis echoes other aspects of plurality in Homeric biography, for which see e.g. Most (2005). Kahane – Virgil’s Epitaph, Donatus’ Life, Biography and the Structure of Time 181

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Supplementum to Pentekontaetia

The Virgil Society from 1993 to the present* by D. W. Blandford

Blandford

PART ONE – HISTORY

Preface

In a previous incarnation (or so it seems), when I was luxuriating in the self-appointed sinecure of Archivist to the Virgil Society, I cobbled together a brief History of the Society, which was published in 1993. It covered our first 50 years (1943–1993) and so received the somewhat pretentious title of PENTEKONTAETIA. Members usually refer to it as “Pente” or “the History”. As we approach our “three score years and ten” (our Platinum Anniversary) we are catering for a new generation of Virgilians (iam nova progenies) and need to update our records. The present volume, therefore, is not a revised edition ofPente , but a supplement to it. Since the English word “Supplement” suggests an ephemeral extra to a weekend newspaper, I use the Latin form SUPPLEMENTUM – the technical term found in ancient writers to designate the reinforcements which bring an original body up to strength.

Introduction

This volume was designed to commemorate our 70th Anniversary (12 January 2013). Unlike Pentekontaetia, which commemorated our 50th Anniversary (12 January 1993), it does not present a whistle-stop tour of our history from first to last. As the preface makes clear, it is not a revised edition of Pente, and does not replace it. In fact, Pente does not need revising, only updating, and this is the update – a continuation of our records from 1993 onwards. It follows more or less the same pattern as Pente, including the (somewhat artificial) division

* Dennis Blandford (1930–2015) was a member of the Virgil Society from 1951 to his death, a member of the Society’s Council from 1964 onwards, and the Society’s archivist from 1990 to 2003. Above all, he was the Virgil Society’s historian. Sadly, Dennis died before a final text of what follows was ready. We publish here a lightly edited version of his fair draft. Additions have been made to update certain sections: these are placed . Special thanks to Carlotta Dionisotti and Jill Kilsby for assistance with proof-reading, and to the latter for typing the text [ed]. 188 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

into Presidential periods. (Nowadays the President has little control – or indeed influence – over events which take place). In archaeological terms, this volume is merely another slab in the Monumentum Ancyranum recording our Res Gestae or Achievements. So, what have we achieved since 1993?1

1. We have been honoured with a further 9 Presidents, each distinguished in his or her own field. 2. We have published 9 more volumes of Proceedings (PVS) totalling over 1,700 pages of Virgilian scholarship. 3. We have initiated a semestrial Newsletter, now in its 14th year, containing items relating to the past, present and future. 4. We have held approximately 120 Meetings. Added to the 250 or so (with some overlap) in Pente, this gives about 370 titles, with numerous references to published versions, providing a valuable addition to Virgilian bibliographies.

As a small Society, with limited publicity outlets, we do not always receive the recognition we deserve. This slim volume may help our missionary work.

HERBERT HUXLEY 1992–1993 (continued from Pente, p.54)

The Book of Leviticus declares that “the fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee” (Lev. 25.22), and so it was. Our festivities were purely academic, but the season opened with a celebratory drink to accompany the Anniversary Lecture (12 January 1993), exactly 50 years after the initial Dinner. For the VS this was a Red Letter Day. For the Archivist it was a Red Nose Day (at least for part of his lecture), making him the only speaker (so far) to address the VS while sporting a red plastic proboscis. An expanded version of the lecture (running to 150 pages, with 4 illustrations) was published in August, under the title Pentekontaetia, and distributed gratis to members. Officially, Pente was a supplement to PVS 21. Published in September 1993, this was the largest volume so far (172 pages) and included a celebratory poem by F. J. Lelièvre, as well as the controversial Presidential Address by E. V. Rieu (10 March 51). Our celebrations were rounded off by a very successful Schools Conference (27 September 1993). This was not our first – we had held one 24 years earlier. But that was for Teachers; this was for Students. 1 The numbers below have been updated to cover the VS’s activities up to summer 2017 [ed]. Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 189

There were 3 lectures, aimed at Sixth-Formers, and not intended forPVS :

Vicki Zarb: Sex and violence in Aeneid 8. Jonathan Foster: An Approach to Aeneid 4. Stephen Medcalf: Poetry and Character in the Aeneid.

There were no charges. Malcolm Willcock was in the chair, and Joe Meltzer Fidus( Achates) the efficient organiser. Applications came from far and wide, and, in the end, with 360 applicants for 286 seats, some rationing was necessary. In spite of the wet and miserable weather (the coldest September day on record), about 270 senior pupils attended, at the cost to the VS of a mere £360. After several abortive attempts in previous years, a group visit to Cumae was organised by James Morwood (24–31 October 1993), and a report circulated to VS members the following March, but strictly speaking this was not a VS venture. Predictably, all these activities wiped out our surplus funds (Vide s.v. ‘Finances’), but we soon recovered.

PETER LEVI (1993–1995)

Our 20th President was the distinguished scholar and prolific writer Peter Levi. At the time, he was preparing material for his books on Horace (1997) and Virgil (1998). His Presidency included a memorable “first”: a talk on Virgil and Berlioz by Ian Martin (21 January 1995). There was a large and enthusiastic audience, including a sizeable contingent from the Berlioz Society. As well as listening to the voice of Dido (Linda Hirst) on cassette, we were pleased to welcome her in the audience – the only personal appearance of Dido at a VS meeting!

The Council

In the early nineties there was growing unease about the Constitution in general, and the Council in particular, where there had been no change for 8 years (1983–1991). Following a suggestion by DWB, strongly recommended by Malcolm Willcock, we introduced (in 1994) a system of “Triennial Councillors”: one non-executive member of Council to be elected each year and to stand down after 3 years. This was intended to introduce new blood gradually, without sacrificing continuity. On the whole, the system has worked, although triennial members often take on specific jobs, and so become permanent (or semi-permanent) members. 190 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

HARRY CURRIE (1995–1998)

Harry Currie was a pivotal figure in the history of the VS, making a vast and varied contribution:

·· 5 lectures, dating back to 1959. ·· Member of Council from 1961. ·· Editor of 14 issues of PVS (1962–1980). ·· Secretary (1965–1969) and Architect of the 2nd constitution (1967–1968). ·· Organiser of our first Teachers’ conference (1969).

When he returned as President, he invariably took the chair at meetings. His first year (1995–96) got off to a good start. Thanks to Carlotta Dionisotti, we had 5 lectures, and (for the first time ever) more women than men; and after the third lecture (24 February 1996), PVS 22 was launched at a tea party with a magnificent cake. There was only one blip (not due to the President): our penultimate lecture in Gordon Square was scheduled for 15 March 1997, the Ides of March. We should have known. The speaker failed to appear, and at very short notice Carlotta gallantly filled the gap.

Relocation

After 37 years in Gordon Square, the relocation to Senate House took place during the Summer of 1997. The move looked promising; a plaque on the 3rd floor recorded the official opening by the Princess Royal on 15 October 1997 – Virgil’s birthday; and by coincidence our first lecture was “Aeneas asHospes ” (25 October 1997). I felt that this was an auspicat issimum initium, and that we should greet the genius loci (Aen. 7.135) with the customary “salted meal” (salso farre), i.e. salted peanuts and crisps. Unfortunately, the genius loci was a wandering spirit, vacillating between the South Block, the North Block and the adjacent Stewart House, with a year in exile at King’s College London, in the Strand. At one stage we were expecting to find a permanent base in a King’s College building in Drury Lane, not a javelin’s throw from our first home in Stukeley Street, where T. S. Eliot gave his address, ‘What is a Classic?’, on Monday 16 October 1944 (announced in The Times on that date), and which was used regularly for meetings from 1945 to 1960 (Pente, p.115). But plans for this Virgilian Nostos came to nothing. Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 191

TED HUGHES (1998–1999)

When the Pope Elect Stephen II died (in 752) before he was consecrated, he was subsequently (in 1961) removed from the list of Popes. When our President Elect, Ted Hughes, died a few days before the first meeting of his Presidency, we had no such thoughts. Ted Hughes remains firmly in our minds, as well as in our records, as our 22nd President, and our only Poet Laureate. His untimely death couples him with J. W. Mackail, the only other VS President who did not deliver a Presidential Address. But he has happier connections with our first president, T. S. Eliot. It was TSE (then at Faber) who encouraged his early efforts, prompting him (in due course) to publish his ‘Tribute to T. S. Eliot’ (1992). There is a well-known photograph of our 1st President and our 22nd President together, along with Auden, Pound, and Spender. Both Eliot and Hughes received the prestigious Order of Merit (exactly 50 years apart) and both a niche in Westminster Abbey. Even beyond the grave they remain joined: Ted Hughes was posthumously awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, and now both give their names to annual memorial events. In the celestial sphere, this was the time of the total eclipse of the sun. The death of our President seems to have caused a partial eclipse of our own activities. With no Presidential Address, and a last-minute cancellation (27 February 1999), only 2 meetings were held, and only one of these led to an article in PVS.

TONY HARRISON (1999–2000)

As a general rule, VS Presidents alternate between Classical Scholars and Men or Women of Letters. In Tony Harrison we were fortunate to secure both for the price of one. Not over-fond of honours, he had already spurned the post of Poet Laureate (as successor to Ted Hughes), so we were grateful for his acceptance as President (ironically as successor to Ted Hughes) and for his stimulating address.

The Millennium

Tony Harrison’s Presidency encompassed the first half of the Millennium year. To commemorate this, the Museum of London organised an Exhibition entitled ‘Collecting 2000’, described as “a celebration of London’s groups, clubs and societies” (29 September 2000–29 January 2001, extended to 29 April 2001). Asked to contribute, I donated, 192 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

on behalf of the VS, a copy of Pentekontaetia, and a spare copy of our first Presidential Address, T. S. Eliot’s ‘What is a Classic?’ Duly featured in the Catalogue (p.49), this gave us wider publicity than usual. We were also asked for a group photograph, but I declined that request.

SUSANNA BRAUND (2000–2003)

Older readers will remember the appointment of Margaret Thatcher as the first woman leader of the Conservative Party (11 February 1975), and, in the same year, the Sex Discrimination Act (27 December 1975). These two landmark events struck a chord with the VS – but not till a quarter of a century later. In Millennium Year the Cardinals who form the VS council withdrew to their Sistine Chapel to prepare for a Presidential election. After due deliberation we were able to issue a puff of white smoke, and to declare “Habemus Feminam”. Democratically, this recommen- dation of the Boule was put before the Ecclesia, where it was received with a thunderclap from Olympus (3 June 2000). When Clare Furse became the first woman Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange (25 January 2001), the Share Index (the FTSE 100) shot up 50 points. Professor Braund’s appointment did not have the same dramatic effect, but it was widely welcomed. Shortly after her appointment, Professor Braund fled the red tape of British universities in search of a “New Haven” at Yale, but she returned to the VS on several occasions, including, of course, for her Presidential Address (17 May 2003).

Sexagesis (Our Sixtieth Anniversary) (2003)

Attitudes towards the age of 60 vary. Modern Britain is full of positive approaches, from the Monarchy (2012) to the radio programme ‘The Archers’ (2011). A marriage of 60 years is celebrated as a Diamond Anniversary, and we often hear the phrase “Life begins at Sixty”. But to the Romans 60 was (theoretically) the end of the road, a millstone rather than a milestone. There is a Latin proverbsexagenarios de ponte (“sixties down from the bridge”). Some interpret this as a measure to remove the burden of old age, from the individual and from the state, by hurling sexagenarians into the Tiber, anticipating Enoch Powell’s vision in his “Rivers of Blood” speech (20 April 1968) of “the river Tiber foaming with much blood” (Aen. 6.87). More sober scholars say the “bridge” refers to the approach to the voting booths, and to the disenfranchisement of those over sixty. Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 193

However that may be, the VS kept a low profile, as it had done with other conventional milestones;

·· its coming of age at 21 (1964). ·· its silver jubilee at 25 (1968). ·· its 30th birthday (1973). ·· its 40th birthday (1983).

The only celebration was to honour Malcolm Willcock with the Vice-Presidency (17 May 2003). But I felt it was a turning point for the Society and for myself. Having previously circulated a memo designed to reinvigorate the Council, I decided to hang up my stylus and jump before I was pushed. I was in my seventies, and triskaidekaphobia was lurking in the background. I calculated that I had been Archivist for 13 years, a Member of Council for 3 times 13 Years, and a member of the Society for 13 years before that. Time for the gerontoc- racy to loosen its grip: I tendered my resignation as Archivist. As a Parthian shot, I offered to deliver a Valedictory Address. I was intrigued by one of the Menippean satires of the Roman polymath M. Terentius Varro, entitled Sexagesis. This is ahapax legomenon not found in standard Latin dictionaries. Michael Coffey (Roman Satire, note 56) thinks it is equivalent to sexagenarius, “the man aged sixty”. I suggest that it is a bilingual pun (as described in Horace, Sat. 1.10) combining the Latin sexagies (60 times) and the Greek exegesis (explanation). It is a Roman version of the Rip van Winkle story: a boy falls into a deep sleep, and wakes up at the age of 60 (or 60 years later) to a world completely changed. It would have been interesting to compare the Virgil Society of 1943 with that of 2003, including (for example) changing attitudes to Catholicism, to elitism, to T. S. Eliot, to W. F. J. Jackson Knight, and so on. But my offer to write (or deliver) such an address fell on deaf ears. Ten years later, the challenge is open to someone else.

MARINA WARNER (2003–2004)

We have not yet succumbed to Harriet Harman’s demand for all-women shortlists, but, as if to emphasise our commitment to the Sex Equality Act, our first woman President was followed immediately by our second. Marina Warner was invited as an international literary figure, filling several packed inches inWho’s Who. She attracted a very large audience, needing a special venue for her Presidential Address, ‘Ghosts and Demons’ (23 October 2004). Because her address fell outside her technical tenure of office, it was not delivered at the AGM as laid down by the existing Constitution, but no one was bothered. 194 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

EGIL KRAGGERUD (2004–2008)

Egil Kraggerud, Emeritus Professor of Classical Philology in the University of Oslo, Norway, was our first overseas President, and the first for many years to hold the post for four years. (This again was unconstitutional, but by now the constitution was creaking). A distinguished Virgilian, he had been a Life Member of the VS for many years, a previous lecturer, and a contributor to PVS. His Presidency in the “mid-noughties” heralded an upsurge in the activities of the VS, a “mini-Renaissance” as it were, marking a period of expansion and innovation in several directions. Under the tutelage of Treasurer / Membership Secretary Jill Kilsby, our finances were healthy, and we were able to issue 2 full volumes of Proceedings edited by Jonathan Foster:

PVS 25 (27 November 2004), 168 pages PVS 26 (10 May 2008), 126 pages

A welcome innovation (particularly for those unable to attend meetings) was a twice-yearly Newsletter. Proposed by Jill Kilsby, it was launched in September 2004, and edited by the Archivist Peter Agrell until his illness at the end of the decade. As well as news, it contained notes on meetings and speakers (past and forthcoming), original articles and reprints, original verses, and book reviews or short notices. Until 2005, the combination of AGM followed by the Presidential Address (and sometimes preceded by a Council Meeting) completed the programme for the day. In May 2006, for the first time a second address was delivered (in the morning) and a buffet Lunch provided (if ordered). This was the brainchild of our Treasurer / Membership Secretary and was developed by Carlotta Dionisotti and Stephen Moorby. Subsequent AGMs have been further extended to embrace other activities, including poetry readings, a play reading, and an Open Forum. This has transformed the atmosphere of the day from that of a Business Meeting to a Cultural Symposium. One direct result of the extended AGM was an increase in the number of lectures. Thanks to our Meetings Secretaries (Carlotta Dionisotti and Jonathan Foster), in the year 2005–06 there were 7 lectures, including a record attendance for Richard Thomas (20 February 2006, held jointly with King’s College London). In addition, on the initiative of Luke Houghton, two Virgil meetings were held in Glasgow:

(a) talk by Anne Rogerson, on Ascanius (8 March 2008). (b) talk by David Wishart, author of I, Virgil (7 March 2009). Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 195

Technically speaking, these were not VS meetings, but they were organised by a member of Council with VS support. In the early years of the VS, encouraged by Robert Speaight and friends, and later by F. R. Dale and boys from the City of London School, Virgil Recitations in Latin and / or English were a regular feature. The Kraggerud quadriennium saw a modest revival, organised by Stephen Moorby, initially with extracts from Aeneid 12, read by a group of students (23 February 2008). Simultaneously with these activities the council was working on the Revised Constitution (q.v.).

HARRY EYRES (2008–2009)

Writing a weekly column in the Financial Times is not an obvious qualification for the VS Presidency, but, inspired by “The Slow Lane”, one Member of Council proposed the author Harry Eyres, who was duly elected President for 2008–09. The choice proved felicitous as well as fortuitous, and we were regaled with an entertaining talk on ‘Virgil and Horace’ (22 May 2010) In the spirit of previous “cultural days”, the Presidential Address was preceded by:

a. a tribute to Herbert Huxley (ob. 5 May 2010). b. a reading of a play by Oliver Chadwick (ob. 11 February 2009). c. a recitation from Virgil organised by Stephen Moorby.

Strictly speaking, this Presidential Address fell outside the limits of the President’s tenure, but (as with Marina Warner) no one complained.

JASPER GRIFFIN (2009–2013)

Our most recent President is Professor Jasper Griffin, a distinguished classicist and former Public Orator. His term of office saw two innovations:

a. Our lectures have (nearly) always been followed by questions and discussion. For the first time a whole session was devoted entirely to discussion, chaired by Carlotta Dionisotti (23 January 2010). 196 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Similar discussions followed, including an Open Forum on ‘The Virgil Society: Past, Present and Future’ (21 May 2011).

b. After 68 years of lectures starting at 3 p.m., the 2011–12 season adopted a 2.30 start.

Professor Griffin has already given 2 lectures to the VS, as well as making a valuable contribution to the above “Open Forum”. At the time of writing, we await his Presidential Address (26 May 2012).2

CONSTITUTION

The original Constitution was completed in about nine weeks Pente( , pp.61–63). The first revision (in two stages) took rather longer, but was a solo effort by the Secretary at the time (Pente, p.47). The present constitution was decidedly more prodigal in time and paper. 2005 was the year of constitutions – the European Union, Iraq – and the Virgil Society. Council Minutes (26 February 2005) record the need to update the Constitution, and action “to prepare a draft … for AGM in 2007”. In the event, deliberations dragged on for several years, with long soporific sessions, enlivened only by acrimonious Punch-and-Judy perfor- mances between the leading protagonists (who cannot be named for legal reasons) providing an exuberant end-of-the-pier entertainment. In the end a ceasefire was declared –concordia discors, as Horace calls it (Ep.1.12.19). A text was approved by Council (9 October 2010) and presented to and approved by the AGM (21 May 2011). It was a Marathon effort, but I think we can say, in the words of Ovid Her.( 2.85) exitus acta probat – the end justifies the means.

FINANCES

In 1993 our Jubilee activities (Pentekontaetia £2,000 + PVS £1,700 + conference £360) virtually wiped out our £3,500 balance, leaving us with a technical deficit of £1,160. However, this was offset partly by donations and partly by an increase in subscriptions. Since then, under Malcolm Willcock and Jill Kilsby, our finances have remained healthy, with a gradual increase in our assets, and only moderate increases in subscriptions. The subscription increases have been as follows:

2 Now published as ‘Aeneas, Pietas and the Gods’, PVS 28 (2014), 123–40 [ed]. Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 197

1984 £4 (PVS alone £7) 1995 £8 (PVS alone £12) 2003 £10 (PVS alone £15) 2012 £12 (PVS alone £15)

PROSPECT

In the present economic and political climate (I write this on New Year’s Day 2012) one cannot ignore the doom and gloom which the pundits predict. However, while admitting that the Virgilian “outlook is uncertain” (spes incerta futuri, Aen. 8.580), this brief survey indicates that the VS is not only thriving but positively vibrant. We are not complacent – those who rest on their laurels can expect funeral wreaths – but we are optimistic and aware of potential developments. I forego the temptation to enlarge upon my 1993 scenarios (Pente, pp.56–59), but take, just one example, viz. future topics. After 70 years there is still scope to investigate the ancient manuscripts, modern translations, film versions, astronomy and astrology, plants and animals, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Anthologia Latina, the Sortes Vergilianae, the Carmina Burana, the Parodies and Travesties, and a host of individual authors, e.g. Euripides, Philodemus, Ennius, Columella, Martial, Silius Italicus, Aulus Gelius, Macrobius, Fulgentius, Hyginus, Petrarch, Chaucer, Spenser, Montaigne, Corneille, Sainte-Beuve, William Barnes, C.S. Lewis … The list seems endless. Our 1943 ‘Manifesto’ expressed the belief that the VS would “play an important part in the intellectual life of the country, in reversing the present descent to vulgarization of taste and debasement of standards” (Pente, p.78). I leave the final exhortation to Virgil himself, in the mouth of Apollo, patron of culture:

MACTE VIRTUTE (aen. 9.641) BEST OF LUCK! FLOREAT SOCIETAS 198 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

PART TWO – ANNALS

PERSONALITIES PRESIDENTS

For reference I publish a complete list of VS Presidents. It contains 2 members of the House of Lords and 2 knighthoods. Other distinctions (before or after their term of office) include the Order of Merit, the Nobel Prize for Literature, Poet Laureate, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and a niche in Poets’ Corner, plus many presidencies of similar organisations (e.g. Roman Society, Classical Association). In addition, at least 3 have been commemorated by annual lectures or lectureships, or literary prizes.

Presidents (1943–72) Presidents (1976–2013) 1. T. S. Eliot (1943–44) 16. W. A. Camps (1976–89) 2. J. W. Mackail (1945) 17. Lord Dacre (1989–90) 3. G. M. Young (1946) 18. David West (1990–92) 4. Cyril Bailey (1947) 19. H. H. Huxley (1992–93) 5. Lord Wavell (1948) 20. Peter Levi (1993–95) 6. W. F. Jackson Knight (1949–50) 21. Harry Currie (1995–98) 7. E. V. Rieu (1951) 22. Ted Hughes (1998–99) 8. F. R. Dale (1952–54) 23. Tony Harrison (1999–2000) 9. W. S. Maguinness (1955–57) 24. Susanna Braund (2000–03) 10. Robert Speaight (1957–60) 25. Marina Warner (2003–04) 11. Sir John Lockwood (1960–63) 26. Egil Kraggerud (2004–08) 12. Michael Grant (1963–66) 27. Harry Eyres (2008–09) 13. Sir James Mountford (1966–69) 28. Jasper Griffin (2009–13) 14. F. H. Sandbach (1969–72) 29. Richard Jenkyns (2013–<17>) 15. R. D. Williams (1972–76) Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 199

VICE-PRESIDENTS

On vacating office many Presidents joined the list of Vice-Presidents. In addition, the following have been elected Honorary Vice-Presidents:

T. J. Haarhoff (16 February 1963) A. C. Dionisotti (23 May 2009) A. J. Gossage (23 February 1974) E. Kraggerud (18 May 2013) M. M. Willcock (17 May 2003) J. C. B. Foster (10 May 2008)

OFFICERS membership Malcolm Willcock (1982–2003) secretary/treasurer Jill Kilsby (2003 – meetings secretary Carlotta Dionisotti (1987<–2017)> odd years David Vessey (1988–1998) even years Jonathan Foster (2000–2007) even years Bruce Gibson (2008- even years editor of pvs David Vessey - vol. 21 (1993) Jonathan Foster - vol. 22 (1996) vol. 23 (1998) vol. 24 (2002) vol. 25 (2004) vol. 26 (2008, with Stephen Moorby) Daniel Hadas - vol. 27 (2011) archivist Dennis Blandford (1990–2003) Peter Agrell (2003–2013) Martin Hughes (2013- 200 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

COUNCIL In addition to the officers listed above, the following have served on the Council since 1993:

James Morwood (1994–1996) Rosemary Hackney (2004–2009) Michael Gunningham (1996–1999) Stephen Moorby (2006–2011) Carol Magner (1997–2000) Luke Houghton (2007–2010) Peter Pickering (1998–2001) Judith Garner (2009– Roland Mayer (1999–2002) Philip Harris (2010– Oliver Dickson (2000–2003) Naoko Yamagata (2013– Mike Belbin (2002–2006)

SPEAKERS

Our speakers are not confined to University Classics Departments: they come from several academic fields, with a wide variety of experience, providing a rich smorgasbord of subjects, and reflecting to some extent the changing face of Virgilian scholarship. They choose their own topics, ranging from core issues to peripheral preferences. (I have included a complete list). I recall one recent lecture (31 March 2007) which did not even mention Virgil – until well into the discussion period. It was ever thus: an early lecture (13 April 1946) had the non-Virgilian title ‘Latin in Post-war Europe’. Since 1952, most lectures have been published in PVS. Some have never been published, and, more recently, several have been published elsewhere, either in other journals or in larger works. Naturally, a few problems with speakers have arisen, notably: last-minute confirmations, last-minute cancellations, late announcement of titles, late alteration of titles, unforeseen length of lecture, etc, etc. No doubt our Meetings Secretaries could enlarge upon the list of problems – they are faced with the task of solving them. But, on the whole, we have been very well served by our speakers, and we are grateful to them and to those who invited them.

MEMBERS

We are a small Society: our annual “Gathering of the Clans” does not reach epic proportions. In 1993 (at the start of this survey) we had 115 subscribing members, 39 Life members, and 85 subscribing Institutions (i.e. purchasing PVS without membership). The present figures are comparable. But statistics are not everything. In many large Societies members are mere ciphers, regarded purely as sources of revenue (to put it crudely, cash cows), a silent majority with few Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 201 opportunities to express their opinions. In the VS, the “Discussion Meetings” introduced in 2010 and the “Open Forum” (21 May 2011) have given them a more vocal role, and they have always participated freely in our post-lecture question sessions and teatime gatherings, often leading to lively exchanges best described as a “Whetstone of Wit” (to borrow an archaic title). Our members come from a wide spectrum, ranging from professional classicists with First Class Honours Degrees to others with no Latin at all. Do not be put off by the rumour that we conduct our conversations in Virgilian hexameters. We are a friendly Society: each year our “fixture card” declares “All Welcome”. In Virgilian terms we reject the imperious bidding of the Sibyl: “Go away, outsiders” – procul, o procul este, profani (Aen. 6.258) – in favour of the more affable approach of Pallas: “Be a guest at our abode” –nostris succede penatibus hospes (Aen. 8.123).

PUBLICATIONS THE ARCHIVES

The Archives fall into two distinct categories:3

1. Unpublished material relating to the early history of the VS, mostly correspondence and minutes of meetings. The items in this “Pandora’s Box” Pente( , pp.4–5) are unique and irreplaceable, and are jealously guarded by the Archivist. 2. Published material relating to the early history of the VS, prior to the launch of PVS in 1962, viz: (A) Printed pamphlets, numbered 1–24, listed below. (B) Duplicated summaries, numbered 1–53, listed below.

My private collection was deposited in the Joint Library of the Institute of Classical Studies (8 May 1993) and is available for consultation and / or photocopying.

In addition: The Joint Library holds many duplicates available on loan e.g: Shelf 99L - T. S. Eliot Presidential Address. Tract Box 48 - 11 Pamphlets (8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24). - 4 Summaries (24, 30, 32, 34). Tract Box 69 - Pamphlet 17. Tract Box 70 - Pamphlet 18. Tract Box 115 - Pamphlet 23.

3 Only the items in category 1 are the property of the Virgil Society. Items in category 2 remain in the Joint Library [ed]. 202 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

The Warburg Institute holds 16 of the pamphlets, and 45 of the summaries, as well as a complete run of PVS.

The British Library holds 9 pamphlets and 31 Summaries (Pente, p.103).

A. PAMPHLETS

There is no public collection of these pamphlets, and no published list. The following is based on my private collection. The numbering is for reference purposes only. With a few exceptions, these pamphlets were specially printed for members. Many of them are Presidential Addresses. In 1962 Pamphlets and Summaries ceased to be published separately and were incorporated in the new Proceedings.

Date of Delivery Speaker and Title Pages

1 16 Oct. 1944 T. S. Eliot: What is a Classic? 32 2 J. W. Mackail: An Introduction to Virgil’s Aeneid 39 (issued in lieu of a Presidential Address) 3 ? T. S. Gregory: Vergil the Countryman 11 4 19 Jan. 1946 N. H. Watts: Virgil and Wordsworth 14 5 ? R. Speaight: Pietas Telluris 10 6 12 Oct. 1946 G. M. Young: Hesperia 20 7 18 Oct. 1947 C. Bailey: Virgil and Lucretius 23 * 17 Jan. 1948 L. A. S. Jermyn: Virgil’s Agricultural Lore 21 8 13 Oct. 1948 Earl Wavell: Arms and the Man 22 9 21 Jan. 1950 W. F. J. Knight: Vergil and Homer 19 10 6 Jan. 1951 W. S. Maguinness: Some Reflections of theAeneid 14 11 24 Feb. 1951 R. G. Austin: The Fourth Book of theAeneid 24 12 19 Jan. 1952 L. A. S. Jermyn: The Ostrakon 15 13 5 Feb. 1952 D. M. Low: Virgil and the English Augustans 15 14 8 Mar. 1952 F. R. Dale: The Stateliest Measure 16 15 17 Jan. 1953 G. E. L. Carter: The Parentalia in theAeneid 13 (duplicated, not printed, at author’s expense) 16 14 Mar. 1953 F. R. Dale: Character and Incident in the Aeneid 16 17 16 Jan. 1954 J. O. Thomson:Geographica Vergiliana 8 Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 203

18 19 Feb. 1955 W. S. Maguinness: The Tragic Spirit of theAeneid 12 19 28 Apr. 1956 T. J. Haarhoff: Vergil, Prophet of Peace 16 20 17 Nov. 1956 W. S. Maguinness: The Thirteenth Book of theAeneid 15 21 18 Jan. 1958 R. Speaight: The VirgilianRes 16 22 15 Nov. 1958 R. Speaight: A Modern Virgilian 16 23 7 Nov. 1959 P. Grimal: Pius Aeneas 12 24 18 Feb. 1961 J. F. Lockwood: Virgil Now 8

B. SUMMARIES

Date of Delivery Speaker and title Pages

1 26 Feb. 1944 J. L. May: Virgil and the Ordinary Citizen 2 2 18 Mar. 1944 E. H. Warmington: Virgil, Poet and Prophet 3 15 Apr. 1944 W. F. J. Knight: Patriis Virtutibus 3 4 20 May 1944 W. F. J. Knight: Virgil and Europe (at Cambridge) 3 5 20 Jan. 1945 R. J. Getty: James Henry 2 6 17 Feb. 1945 J. M. C. Toynbee: Art in the Virgilian Age 3 7 24 Nov. 1944 Sir W. Munday: Virgil’s Dido (at Exeter) 4 8 17 Mar. 1945 Francesca Marton: Virgil and Peace Aims 3 9 14 Apr. 1945 W. F. J. Knight: Callida Iunctura 3 10 17 Nov. 1945 B. Scott James: How to Read Virgil 4 11 16 Feb. 1946 H. Mattingly: Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue 2 12 25 Oct. 1945 W. F. Knight: Our Aeneid (at Exeter) 4 13 18 May. 1946 J. T. Sheppart: The Initiation of Aeneas 3 14 6 June 1946 L. A. Harvey: Some Virgilian Animals (at Exeter) 4 15 16 Mar. 1946 J. E. Lowe: The Problem of Dido and Aeneas 18 16 15 June 1946 J. Murray: Facilis Descensus Averno 5 17 15 Mar 1947 A. H. Armstrong: The Latin Christian Classics 3 18 17 May 1947 B. Tilly: Some Virgilian Places 2 19 15 Nov. 1947 C. A. Ralegh Radford: The Mosaic at Low Ham 4 20 17 Jan. 1948 L. A. S. Jermyn: Virgil’s Agricultural Lore 3 21 15 May 1948 A. H. Armstrong: Virgil and the Philosophers 4 22 14 Feb. 1948 J. F. Lockwood: Virgil and the World about him 4 23 13 Nov. 1948 Dorothy L. Sayers: Dante’s Virgil 21 204 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

24 12 Mar. 1949 J. M. C. Toynbee: Virgil and Ruler-Worship 7 25 15 Oct. 1949 N. H. Watts: Virgil the Seer 5 26 11 Mar. 1950 J. T. Christie: TheAeneidea of James Henry 2 27 21 Oct. 1950 L. P. Wilkinson: The Art of theGeorgics 3 28 17 Nov. 1951 A. J. Gossage: Virgil in the Roman Epic Tradition 6 29 20 Oct. 1951 J. F. Lockwood: Aeneas’ Task in Italy 12 30 15 Nov. 1952 A. H. Armstrong: Virgil and Greek Pastoral Poetry 3 31 14 Feb. 1953 R. D. Williams: Virgil’s Aeneas 1 32 14 Nov. 1953 J. Ashurst: TheAeneid as a Tragedy 4 33 6 Mar. 1954 O. Skutsch: Sound and Sense in Virgil 6 34 16 Oct. 1954 C. G. Hardie: The Pseudo-VirgilianCiris 3 35 15 Jan. 1955 J. Murray: Virgil, Dante and the Res Romana 5 36 22 Oct. 1955 B. Tilly: More Excursions into Virgil’s Country 3 37 18 Feb. 1956 E. Laughton: Virgilian Mediaevalism 10 38 19 Jan. 1957 E. T. Dubois: Some Imitations of Virgil in France 7 39 16 Feb. 1957 M. L. Clarke: Virgil in English Education 7 40 10 Jan. 1957 R. V. Schoder: Vergil’s Use of the Cumae Area 6 41 16 Mar. 1957 K. Wellesley: Virgil’s Home 7 42 19 Oct. 1957 C. G. Hardie: The FourthEclogue 8 43 15 Feb. 1958 D. R. Dudley: A Plea for Aeneas 6 44 16 Nov. 1957 E. C. Woodcock: Virgil’s Philosophy of Religion 11 45 18 Oct. 1958 W. F. J. Knight: Some Divine Monitions 46 21 Mar. 1959 T. A. Dorey: Virgil’s Attitude to Youth and Age 5 47 21 Feb. 1959 A. J. Gossage: Statius and Virgil 8 48 17 Oct. 1959 H. MacL. Currie: Virgil and Valerius Flaccus 6 49 16 Jan. 1960 M. Coffey: Virgil and the Epic Simile 2 50 22 Oct. 1960 C. G. Hardie: Eclogue VI 10 51 19 Nov. 1960 W. S. Maguinness: Virgil and Milton 2 52 20 Feb. 1960 H. H. Huxley: Virgo Bellatrix 4 53 18 Mar. 1961 R. D. Williams: Virgil and the Odyssey 2

No. 53 was the last of the ‘summaries’, which were now superseded by the Proceedings. Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 205

NEWSLETTERS

The following Newsletters have been published:-

1. September 2004 13. September 2011 2. February 2005 14. April 2012 3. August 2005 15. September 2012 4. April 2006 <16. May 2013 5. September 2006 17. September 2013 6. April 2007 18. May 2014 7. September 2007 19. September 2014 8. April 2008 20. May 2015 9. September 2008 21. October 2015 10. April 2009 22. May 2016 11. September 2010 23. October 2016 12. May 2011 24. May 2017> The hiatus between nos. 10 and 11 was plugged by 2 news-sheets:

No. 1 September 2009 No. 2 May 2010

Early editions (nos 1–10) were edited by Peter Agrell.

Subsequent numbers <(14–19)> have been produced by Jill Kilsby and Carlotta Dionisotti, with contributions from Peter Pickering and other members of Council. .

PROCEEDINGS

The author’s original text contained tables of the contents of PVS 21–27. Printing these tables here did not seem necessary, as these issues of PVS are now online at digitalvirgil.co.uk [ed]. 206 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

PROGRAMMES OF MEETINGS

1991–92

23 November – R. G. Mayer: The Ivory Gate Revisited (PVS 21, 53–63). 15 February – A. C. de la Mare: Humanistic Manuscripts of Virgil. 14 March (joint meeting with the Classical Association; school parties welcome) – M. Winterbottom: Aeneas and the Idea of Troy (PVS 21, 17–34). 9 May – D. A. West: Presidential Address, How not to translate the Aeneid or anything, by an expert (PVS 21, 1–16). The Presidential Address was extended to include ‘The Julian Star’.

1992–93

5 December – Charles Martindale: Reading ambiguity: Virgil and the critics (PVS 21, 111–50). 12 January – Dennis Blandford: Anniversary Lecture, Pentekontaetia: The Virgil Society 1943–1993 (PVS 21 Supplement). The Society was founded on this very day in 1943. Visitors were cordially invited to join in a celebratory drink after the lecture. 23 January – Matthew Leigh: Trees and trophies in Virgil and Lucan (PVS 21, 89–110). 20 March – Adrian Hollis: Virgil, friend of Varius Rufus (PVS 22, 19–33). 8 May – H. H. Huxley: Presidential Address, Wielder of the stateliest measure (PVS 22, 1–18). 27 September – Conference (See Pente s.v. ‘Herbert Huxley’).

1993–94

30 October – Don Fowler: “Pater noster”: God the father in Virgil and others (PVS 22, 35–52). 22 January – Niall Rudd: Virgil’s Contribution to Pastoral (PVS 22, 53–77). 26 February – Sandra Clark: Virgil, Shakespeare and Romance (PVS 22, 79–100). 7 May – Gerard O’Daly: Orpheus after Virgil.

1994–95

21 October – Priscilla Martin: Chaucer and Virgil (PVS 23, 1–21). 21 January – Ian Martin: Hector Berlioz and Les Troyens: A lifelong passion for Virgil (PVS 23, 22–24). 18 March – Howard Erskine-Hill: Lauderdale, Dryden, and a Jacobite Virgil. 20 May – Peter Levi: Presidential Address, The Whole Note (PVS 23, 25–49). Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 207

1995–96

21 October – Stephen Willink: Virgil’s Silenus. 9 December – Jane Fisher: Wayward sisters: From Purcell to Berlioz (PVS 23, 51–71). 24 February – Carol Magner: Imperium sine fine: Virgil, Augustus and Frederick Barbarossa (PVS 23, 73–100). 16 March – Duncan Kennedy: The anxieties of empire: Virgil in the twentieth century. 27 April – Monica Gale: War and Peace in Lucretius and the Georgics (PVS 23, 101–28).

1996–97

26 October (joint meeting with Classical Association) – Suzanna Morton Braund: Personalities and conflicts: the case of Aeneas and Dido (PVS 23, 129–147). 25 January – John Henderson: Valediction: Virgil, Eclogue 9 (PVS 23, 149–76). 15 March – Should have been Professor Barrie Hall: Virgil in Africa. The substitute lecture was: A. C. Dionisotti: Aeneas the Cad. 24 May – H. MacL. Currie: Presidential Address, Virgil and the Military Tradition (PVS 23, 177–91).

1997–98

25 October – Roy Gibson: Aeneas as hospes in Aeneid 1 and 4. 31 January – F. M. A. Jones: Virgil’s Inheritors (PVS 24, 1–9). 7 March – Philip Hardie: Virgilian Fama in the Visual Arts. 9 May – Neil Wright: Semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt: Virgil in the Middle Ages? (PVS 24, 11–29).

1998–99

31 October – Damien Nelis: Virgil’s Aeneid and Cameron’s Callimachus. 27 February – Lecture cancelled. Should have been Robert R. Dyer: Cicero and Plato in Virgil’s Aeneid. 27 March – Alessandro Schiesaro: Virgil in Bloomsbury (PVS 24, 31–47).

1999–2000

20 November – Norman Vance: Aeneas and Caratacus as Victorian Heroes. 12 February – Andrew Laird: The Poetics and Afterlife of Virgil’s Katabasis (PVS 24, 49–80). 25 March – Rosemary Barrow: Painting Virgil: Victorian Choices (PVS 24, 81–101). 3 June – Tony Harrison: Presidential Address (PVS 24, 103–120). 208 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

2000–01

28 October – Emma Gee: Anchises and the Somium Scipionis. 25 November – Jonathan Bate: The Elizabethan Virgil. 20 January – Egil Kraggerud: What kind of epic is the Aeneid? 24 February – Francis Cairns: Pollio and the Eclogues. 19 May – Bruce Gibson: Calpurnius Siculus and Virgil (PVS 25, 1–14).

2001–02

27 October – Mike Belbin: Virgil: modern classic (PVS 25, 15–26). 24 November – Ingo Gildenhard: Viewing Gigantomachy: from Virgil to Cornelisz van Haarlem (PVS 25, 27–48). 19 January – Llewelyn Morgan: Vergilii opera? Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and the Glorious Revolution (PVS 25, 49–62). 23 February – Elena Theodorakopoulos:Myth and History in Aeneid 5 (PVS 25, 63–72). 18 May – Fiona Cox: Virgilian Landscapes of the Twentieth Century (PVS 25, 73–82).

2002–03

26 October – Gillian Clark: City of God(s): Virgil and Augustine (PVS 25, 83–94). 23 November – Peter Agrell: Aeneid 4: The night in the cave again (PVS 25, 95–110). 18 January – Christopher Gill: Character and Passion in Virgil’s Aeneid (PVS 25, 111–24). 22 February – Mark Grant: Plants and Food in Virgil (PVS 25, 125–34). 17 May – Susanna Morton Braund: Presidential Address, Evergreen Virgil (PVS 25, 135–146).

2003–04

25 October – Robin Seager: The Eminent Bard and the Soldierly Greek: Refractions between Virgil and Ammianus Marcellinus (PVS 25, 147–160). 22 November – Anton Powell: Aeneas, Sex and the Importance of Misery. 17 January – Colin Burrow: The Appendix Virgiliana and its Renaissance Readers (PVS 26, 1–16). 21 February – Peter Pickering: Careless writing? Verbal repetition in Vergil and later epic. 15 May – John Henderson: The Song of Roland: Austin’s Aeneid. Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 209

2004–05

23 October – Marina Warner: Presidential Address, Ghosts and Daemons: The Revival of Myth and Magic (PVS 26, 17–31). 27 November – John Mair: Some glimpses of Virgil in Late Antiquity (PVS 26, 32–40). 22 January – Angus Bowie: Aeneas narrator (PVS 26, 41–51). 26 February – Alison Sharrock: Servius and Virgil: The Critic as Intertext. 21 May – Donald Hill: Statius’ Debt to Virgil (PVS 26, 52–65).

2005–06

22 October – Stephen Moorby: Fidus Achates: Faithful Friend or Poetic Fraud? (PVS 26, 66–75). 3 December – Ruth Morello: Segregem eam fecit: Camilla and the scholiasts. 21 January – Richard Jenkyns: Dryden’s Virgil in a comparative light (PVS 26, 76–88). 20 February (joint meeting with King’s College London) – Richard Thomas: What IS a classic? T. S. Eliot Revisited. 18 March – Anne Rogerson: Ascanius and the End of the Aeneid. 20 May – [1] Luke Houghton: Virgil the “Renaissance Man” and his Medieval Antecedents (PVS 26, 89–104); [2] Egil Kraggerud: Presidential Address (PVS 26, 105–110).

2006–07

21 October – Keith McLennan: Humour in Virgil (PVS 27, 1–13). 2 December – Should have been Samantha Smith: The Dark Night of the Soul: Virgil’s Influence on Epic Night Raids. This was replaced by Oliver Chadwick:Virgil’s Georgics. 30 January – Caroline Butler: Virgil in the Classroom (PVS 27, 14–25). 31 March – Susan Walker: The Fall of Alexandria in Roman Art. 19 May – [1] Jasper Griffin: The Aeneid: The Grand Design; [2] Emily Gowers: Trees and Family Trees in the Aeneid.

2007–08

20 October – Martin Dinter: Epitaphic Gestures in Virgil. 15 December – Rosemary Hackney: Reflections of Virgil’s Aeneid and Other Classics in Jean Racine’s Andromaque. 19 January – John Davie: Virgil and Milton (PVS 27, 26–37). 23 February – John Eidinow: Dumas Père (PVS 27, 38–55). 10 May – [1] Bob Cowan: Hopefully Surviving: Despair, Futility, and the Limits of devotio in Virgil and Others (PVS 27, 56–98); [2] William Fitzgerald: Virgil and Music. 210 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

2008–09

18 October – Dunstan Lowe: Rustic Fantasies and “Primitive” Italy in the Aeneid (PVS 27, 99–128). 22 November – Helen Lovatt: Aeneid 1 and the Epic Gaze in the Carlias of Ugolino Verino (PVS 27, 129–54). 17 January – Jean-Michel Hulls: Re-casting the Master: Further Faces of Virgil in Imperial Rome (PVS 27, 155–83). 21 February – Stephen Harrison: Laudes Italiae (Georgics 2.136–76): Virgil as a Caesarian Hesiod. 23 May – [1] Jonathan Powell: Aeneas the Spin-Doctor: Rhetorical Self-Presentation in Aeneid 2 (PVS 27, 184–202); [2] Andrew Laird: The Aeneid from the Aztecs to the Dark Virgin: Virgil, Native Tradition and Latin Poetry in Colonial Mexico.

2009–10

24 October – Peter Heslin: Aeneas in Pompeii. 12 December – Daniel Hadas: Eclogue 4 and the Latin Fathers. 23 January – Discussion Meeting: Virgil and Textual Criticism. 20 March – Discussion Meeting: Virgil and the Next Generation. 24 April – Robin Sowerby: Night attacks: Iliad 10 and Aeneid 9 through Dryden, Pope and Byron <(PVS 28, 1–18)>. 22 May – [1] Reading of Virgil and his Muse, a play by Oliver Chadwick (ob. 2009); [2] Harry Eyres: Presidential Address, Virgil and Horace – Friendship with Differences.

2010–11

9 October – Gesine Manuwald: Dido: Concepts of a Literary Figure from Virgil to Purcell <(PVS 28, 19–40)>. 18 December – Discussion Meeting: Virgil and Textual Criticism (continued). 29 January – Katharine Earnshaw: Lucan’s Georgic Pharsalia. 5 March – Roger Rees: Ausonius and Virgil’s Nether Regions <(PVS 28, 41–53)>. 21 May – [1] Open Forum: The Virgil Society, Past, Present, and Future; [2] Philip Hardie: Dido and Lucretia <(PVS 28, 55–80)>. Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 211

2011–12

29 October – Discussion Meeting: Ordering the Words in Virgil. 3 December – Anthony Holbourn: Virgil and Humanity. 28 January – Naoko Yamagata: Female Warriors in the Aeneid and the Japanese Tale of the Heike: Camilla, Amazons and Tomoe <(PVS 28, 81–98)>. 10 March – Steven Green: Roman Responses to the End of the Aeneid <(PVS 28, 99–122, on different topic)>. 26 May – [1] Reading the poet: pastoral songs (John Hazel and Carlotta Dionisotti); [2] Jasper Griffin: Presidential Address,Aeneas, Pietas, and the Gods <(PVS 28, 123–40)>.

2012–13

27 October – Discussion Meeting: Lacrimae volvuntur inanes; Slippery subjects (or who does what?) in Aeneid 4. 8 December – Diederik Burgersdijk: Virgil in French Romanticism: Parallel Novels of Benjamin Constant and Germaine de Stael <(PVS 28, 141–72)>. 26 January – Claire Stocks: The Colours of Carthage – Viewing Tyrian Purple in Virgil’s Aeneid <(PVS 28, 173–96)>. 9 March – Catherine Ware: Virgil as Panegyrist in Late Antiquity <(PVS 29)>. 18 May – [1] Reading the poet: Virgil’s Underworld (VS members led by John Hazel); [2] Ceri Davies: The prophecies of Fferyll: Virgilian Reception in Wales <(PVS 29)>.

<2013–14

26 October – Dominic Berry: Dido and Aeneas through Roman Eyes (PVS 28, 197–217). 7 December – Discussion Meeting: Careless or crafty? Verbal repetitions in Virgil (led by Peter Pickering). 25 January – Richard Danson Brown: “And sweetest love-”: Virgilian Half-Lines in Spenser’s Faerie Queene (PVS 29). 8 March – Anita Frizzarin: ‘Si mens non laeva fuisset … ’: Counterfactuals in the Aeneid (PVS 29). 17 May – [1] Reading the poet: selections from the Georgics (VS members led by John Hazel); [2] Richard Jenkyns: Presidential Address, Virgil and the Unspoken (PVS 29). 212 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

2014–15

25 October – Discussion Meeting: Virgil’s elisions: their nature and purpose (led by John Hazel). 7 December – Nora Goldschmidt: Authoring Virgil. 24 January – Danielle Frisby: Statius’ Capaneus and Virgil’s Lacöon (PVS 29). 7 March – Laura Jansen: Rereading the Classics: Borges’ Virgil. 17 May – [1] Reading the poet: Aeneid 4 (VS members led by John Hazel); [2] John Roberts: The Virgil Commentary of Juan Luis de la Cerda.

2015–16

24 October – Discussion Meeting: How Virgil’s poetry sounded (led by John Hazel). 5 December – Calypso Nash: Fatum and fortuna: religion and philosophy in Virgil’s Aeneid (PVS 29). 23 January – Sheldon Brammall: The Shaping of the Virgilian Canon: Joseph Scaliger and the Appendix Vergiliana. 5 March – Anton Powell: Virgil and Neptune: Defying Homer? 17 May – [1] Reading the poet: Aeneid 2 (VS members led by John Hazel); [2] Ahuvia Kahane: ‘Vitae’ and ‘Mortes’: Virgil’s Biography and the Parity of Life and Words (PVS 29).

2016–17

29 October – Discussion Meeting: The evidence for our knowledge of the way Latin was spoken in Virgil’s time (led by John Hazel). 3 December – Beverley Back: “Seven Hells” and “Using the Force”: On-screen Fantasy and Teaching the Aeneid. 21 January – Stephen Heyworth: Aeneas the Villain. 4 March – Fiachra Mac Góráin: Virgil in Friel’s Translations. 13 May – [1] Reading the Poet: Aeneid 12 (VS members led by John Hazel); [2] Niklas Holzberg: From deus absconditus to Soter: Octavian in Virgil and Early Augustan Poetry.> Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 213

INDEX OF SPEAKERS (1991–2013)

Agrell, P. 23 Nov. 02 Barrow, R. 25 Mar. 00 Bate, J. 25 Nov. 00 Belbin, M. 27 Oct. 01 Blandford, D. 12 Jan. 93 Bowie, A. 22 Jan. 05 Braund, S. 26 Oct. 96, 17 May 03 Burgersdijk, D. 27 Oct. 12 Burrow, C. 17 Jan. 04 Butler, C. 20 Jan. 07 Cairns, F. 24 Feb. 01 Chadwick, O. 2 Dec. 06 Clark, G. 26 Oct. 02 Clark, S. 26 Feb. 94 Cowan, R. 10 May 08 Cox, F. 18 May 02 Currie, H. 24 May 97 Davie, J. 19 Jan. 08 Davies, C. 18 May 13 de la Mare, A. 15 Feb. 92 Dinter, M. 20 Oct. 07 Dionisotti, A. C. 15 Mar. 97, 26 May 12 Dyer, R. 27 Feb. 99 Earnshaw, K. 29 Jan. 11 Eidinow, J. 23 Feb. 08 Erskine-Hill, H. 18 Mar. 95 Eyres, H. 22 May 10 Fisher, J. 9 Dec. 95 Fitzgerald, W. 10 May 08 Fowler, D. 30 Oct. 93 214 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Gale, M. 27 Apr. 96 Gee, E. 28 Oct. 00 Gibson, B. 19 May 01 Gibson, R. 25 Oct. 97 Gildenhard, I. 24 Nov. 01 Gill, C. 18 Jan. 03 Gowers, E. 19 May 07 Grant, M. 22 Feb. 03 Green, S. 10 Mar. 12 Griffin, J. 19 May 07, 26 May 12 Hackney, R. 15 Dec. 07 Hadas, D. 12 Dec. 09 Hall, B. 15 Mar. 97 Hardie, P. 7 Mar. 98, 21 May 11 Harrison, S. 21 Feb. 09 Harrison, T. 3 June 00 Hazel, J. 26 May 12 Henderson, J. 25 Jan. 97, 15 May 04 Heslin, P. 24 Oct. 09 Hill, D. 21 May 05 Holbourn, A. 3 Dec. 11 Hollis, A. 20 Mar. 93 Houghton, L. 20 May 06 Hulls, J.-M. 17 Jan. 09 Huxley, H. 8 May 93 Jenkyns, R. 21 Jan. 06, 17 May 14 Jones, F. 31 Jan. 98 Kennedy, D. 16 Mar. 96 Kraggerud, E. 20 Jan. 01, 20 May 06 Leigh, M. 23 Jan. 93, Levi, P. 20 May 95 Lovatt, H. 22 Nov. 08 Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 215

Lowe, D. 18 Oct. 08 Magner, C. 24 Feb. 96 Mair, J. 27 Nov. 04 McLennan, K. 21 Oct. 06 Manuwald, G. 9 Oct. 10 Martin, I. 21 Jan. 95 Martindale, C. 5 Dec. 92 Mayer, R. 23 Nov. 91 Moorby, S. 22 Oct. 05 Morello, R. 3 Dec. 05 Morgan, L. 19 Jan. 02 Nelis, D. 31 Oct. 98 O’Daly, G. 7 May 94 Pickering, P. 21 Feb. 04 Powell, A. 22 Nov. 03, 05 Mar. 16 Powell, J. 23 May 09 Rees, R. 5 Mar. 11 Rogerson, A. 18 Mar. 06 Rudd, N. 22 Jan. 94 Schiesaro, A. 27 Mar. 99 Seager, R. 25 Oct. 03 Sharrock, A. 26 Feb. 05 Smith, S. 2 Dec. 06 Sowerby, R. 24 Apr. 10 Stocks, C. 26 Jan. 13 Theodorakopoulos, C. 23 Feb. 02 Thomas, R. 20 Feb. 06 Walker, S. 31 Mar. 07 Ware, C. 9 Mar. 13 Warner, M. 23 Oct. 04 West, D. 9 May 92 Willink, S. 21 Oct. 95 Winterbottom, M. 14 Mar. 92 Wright, N. 9 May 98 Yamagata, N. 28 Jan. 12 216 Proceedings of the Virgil Society 29 (2017)

Pentekontaetia: Addenda and Corrigenda

p.v For 9 Jan 42 read 9 Jan 43. p.15 Delete the (meaningless) words and slightly to shift his historical allusion. p.17 For Underword read Underworld. p. 17 For Stalingrad (Now Volgograd) read Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). p.33 The President was George Malcolm Young (1882–1959). p.34 The President was Cyril Bailey (1871–1957) p.39 The Presidential Address by E. V. Rieu was published inPVS 21 (1993), 35–51. p.45 PVS volume 1 was edited (in so far as any editing was necessary) by A. J. Gossage (AJG to DWB, 18 Sept. 1993). This should be added to theres gestae of AJG on p.48, and corrected in references to PVS 1 on pp.99, 107, 108. p.46 For (Minutes 16 Feb 65) read (Minutes 16 Feb 63). p.48 PVS 21 (1993) now holds the record at 171 pages. p.57 A set of VS publications has been deposited in the Joint Library (8 May 93) p.57 A group visit to Cumae was held (24–31 October 1993) and a report circulated to members. This should be added to p.68. p.68 For (G&R 1959, 85–86) read (G&R 1959, 86–89 + 2 plates). p.68 For £25 read £5.25. p.69 s.v. ‘finances’. The list of headings has been scrambled, and should follow the order on pp.69–73. p.69 For increase was applied for read increase was implemented. p.88 The mis-spelling of Maguinness is due to the original.

Publications Other related publications include:

Meminisse iuvabit (Pente, pp.113–114) on shelf 95.19Y O RVA (vide infra) on shelf 95.19Q GWK Biography (Pente, p.93) on shelf 204B p.104 I have copies of Pamphlet 3 (T. S. Gregory) and Pamphlet 5 (R. Speaight) but no dates of delivery – if ever delivered. p.105 Conversely, Summary 2 (E. H. Warmington) remains a mystery: this was delivered, but I wonder if it was ever published. p.114 Meminesse Iuvabit is now a Duckworth title (£11.95). Another publication with some resemblance to Meminisse iuvabit is S. J. Harrison (ed), Oxford Readings Blandford – Supplementum to Pentekontaetia 217

in Vergil’s Aeneid (O RVA ), 1990, Oxford. This contains 26 essays on theAeneid (including 4 reprints from PVS, 3 of them also reprinted in Meminisse) plus the VS lecture of 15 January 1972, which was not published by the VS.

Meetings p.116 For R.D. William read R.D. Williams. p.119 s.v. 15 Mar 47 delete Revd. p.120 s.v. 15 May 48 delete Revd p.121 s.v. 10 Mar 51 add PVS 21, 35–51. p.129 s.v. 19 Mar 66 add O RVA 25, 449–465. p.131 s.v. 14 Nov 70 cf. O RVA 9, 191–207. p.132 s.v. 15 Jan 72 add O RVA 7, 145–166. p.133 s.v. 10 Nov 73 add O RVA 6, 127–144. p.134 s.v. 22 Nov 75 add O RVA 15, 295–304. p.135 s.v. 13 Jan 79 cf. G&R April 79, 61–80. p.135 s.v. 10 Feb 79 cf. G&R Oct 82, 143–168. p.136 s.v. 19 Jan 80 add O RVA 20, 378–389. p.138 s.v. 15 May 84 cf. O RVA 9, 191–201. p.141 s.v. 2 Mar 91 add PVS 21, 65–79. p.142 s.v. 23 Nov 91 add PVS 21, 53–63. p.142 s.v. 14 Mar 92 add PVS 21, 17–34. p.142 s.v. 9 May 92 add PVS 21, 1–16. p.142 s.v. 5 Dec 92 add PVS 21, 111–150 (‘Descent into Hell’). p.142 s.v. 23 Jan 93 add PVS 21, 89–110 (‘Hopelessly Devoted’). p.143 Add to Index: Austin, R.G. 24 Feb 51. p.145 s.v. Williams. For 14 Nov 71 read 14 Nov 70, and for 24 Feb 79 read 24 Nov 79.