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Hopelessly Devoted to You Proceedings of the Virgil Society 21 (1993) 89-110 ©1993 Hopelessly Devoted to You Traces of the Decii in Virgil's Aeneid1 The construction of a self-consciously national epic implies the blending of two worlds and forms. Virgil, at once, both writes within the conven­ tions of Homeric epic form, producing characters spiritually recognis­ able as Homeric heroes, and introduces customs, situations and patterns of action which his audience can define as distinctively Roman. Our job is less to question the strictly Roman credentials of this or that custom or action than to observe the simple fact of someone trying to construct a national identity. However, the supreme status granted to Virgil by later Roman writers, and particularly epicists, cannot fail to strike us. What is endorsed is not just the Aeneid in itself but also the meditation on previous versions of national literature which it inevitably contains. In this paper, I wish to examine some examples of the blending of Homeric epic with Roman historiography and Roman cultural experi­ ence. There will also be considerable room given to the mass of Greek literature intervening between Homer and Virgil. I wish to focus on the traces of devotio and of the Decii visible in the Aeneid, and to consider their presence in the light of the military ideology of the Roman state. This will finally involve offering a substantially secular interpretation of devotio, placing the custom in a much broader context than has lately been the fashion. It is surely fair to say that the anxieties produced in Turnus by the figure of Drances combine those felt by Hector when faced with Polydamas, those of Agamemnon before Thersites and those of a Roman aristocrat assaulted by the optimates' worst caricature of a novus homo, popularis politician.2 When Turnus goes out to face Aeneas on his own, the primary model for his situation, inevitably, is that of Hector facing Achilles in Iliad 22. On the other hand, Virgil appears to have plundered the historiographical tradition for an alternative model of representation 89 MATTHEW LEIGH unus pro omnibus, when, at Aeneid 11.440-2, Turnus protests to his audience that: vobis animam hanc soceroque Latino Turnus ego, haud ulli veterum uirtute secundus, devovi. Many scholars have claimed here to discern a reference to the heroic self-sacrifice of two or three generations of Decii, alone charging the line of the enemy in order both to die and to ensure victory for the Roman army.3 This view is supported by the repeated reference to the single- combat of Turnus as expiation or sacrifice at Aeneid 12.16, 12.229 £, 12.234-7 and 12.694 f, a theme which Philip Hardie has lately exam­ ined in terms of the Girardian sacrificial crisis.4 Further, there is a clear sense in which the lone resistance of Turnus does conform to the spirit of devotio. However, the presumption of such a devotio has been vigorously challenged by C. Bennet Pascal.5 Pascal observes that the references to devotio and to blood sacrifices are only ever made by characters in dramatic situations, thus do not come with the seal of approval of the authoritative primary narrator; that the devotio of the Decii in Livy is to the gods, while Turnus claims to have devoted himself to his people; finally, that Turnus hopes to survive, frequently flees death, and gener­ ally acts in a manner unworthy of so exalted a figure as the devotus. Pascal's emphasis on the religious aspect of the devotio is almost demanded by the Livian account of the deaths of the first two genera­ tions of Decian devoti.6 The first narrative contains a long description of the ritual gone through prior to the charge against the lines, and in­ cludes the prayer formula uttered by the general. The ritual has, of course, been very closely analysed by Roman religionists, most notably by H.S. Versnel in a 1976 Mnemosyne article and in his 1981 contribu­ tion to the Fondation Hardt volume on Sacrifice in Antiquity.1 He com­ pares the Livian devotio ducis with the devotio hostium formula found at Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.9.9, and concludes that, while the latter con­ forms to the proper pattern for a votum, in that it offers payment to the gods in the form of the enemy's land and goods, should victory be granted, the devotio ducis is to be understood as a consecratio in that Decius transfers himself directly from the human to the sacral sphere without waiting for his prayers to be fulfilled. Pascal, however, points to 90 HOPELESSLY DEVOTED his own discovery of epigraphic evidence for the payment of a votum in anticipation of the success of the prayer,8 and therefore argues that the Decian self-devotion is "not a self-curse nor an unquestioning squander­ ing of life nor an assumption of collective guilt nor a victory-death wager with the gods or enemy, but a straight 'quid pro quo' bargain".9 He is also very concerned to deny the element of the scapegoat and the magical10 in the devotio ducis, an attitude for which there seems little justification when Livy can describe his hero as apiaculum. Pascal, it seems, is as much concerned to define the exact religious character of the Livian devotio as to elucidate the text of Virgil. As we have seen, his definition of the devotio ducis is, in itself, rather reductive, but even more so is a critical procedure which demands the simple transference of a strict analysis of explicit devotio ritual in Livy to the shadow of a devotio in Virgil. This attitude leads him, for instance, to contrast "the citizen-soldier's certainty of his proper relations with the gods" and "the reckless Rutulian's invocation of an uncertain fate", and to conclude that, since the devotio of Turnus is clearly not an authentic devotio of the sort performed by the Decii, it cannot properly be de­ scribed as such except in the self-serving rhetoric of Turnus himself.11 It is to this line of argument that I wish to respond. Further, I wish to respond in two different ways. First, I wish to examine the devotio ducis as ritual, and to suggest that, while the Aeneid never gives us a formal reproduction of the ritual outlined in the Livian narrative, elements of that ritual are activated in the Aeneid. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I wish to argue that the constant narrowing down of the terms of reference under which we can consider the meaning of devotio, only exacerbates the real problem. This, I shall assert, lies in our failure to broaden our field of reference sufficiently to locate the specifically religious devotio of the Decii within a range of other more secular ideological factors. Both my points can be illustrated with reference to the texts of Livy and of Virgil. It is a commonplace to assert that the repetition of whole or half-lines within the Aeneid cannot be explained in terms of the compositional techniques of the Homeric oral poet, nor even entirely as a simple imitation of the sound and style of Homeric epic. We expect a repetition in Virgil to suggest some relationship between the two passages, we expect the repetition to demand our interpretation. However, one re­ peated formula has hitherto received only the slightest attention, and by 91 MATTHEW LEIGH its neglect we have missed something very interesting. I refer to the repetition of the death-rush of Coroebus at 2.408 f.: non tulit hanc speciem furiata mente Coroebus et sese medium iniecit periturus in agmen, with that of Priam at 2.509-11: arma diu senior desueta trementibus aevo circumdat nequiquam umeris et inutile ferrum cingitur ac densos fertur moriturus in hostis,12 with the resolution of Aeneas at 2.353 f.: ... moriamur et in media arma ruamus. una salus victis nullam sperare salutem, with the dilemma of Nisus at 9.399 £f: quid faciat? Qua vi iuvenem, quibus audeat armis eripere? An sese medios moriturus in enses inferat et pulchram properet per vulnera mortem, and its resolution at 9.438, when: at Nisus ruit in medios, slays Volcens and embraces his partner in death. Further, this is the same solution as is taken by Helenor, who is compared to a lion leaping over the huntsmen's spears, and then, Aen. 9.554 f.: ...haut aliter iuvenis medios moriturus in hostis inruit et qua tela videt densissima tendit Again, we see something similar in the upbraiding of Lausus by Aeneas at 10.811 f.: quo moriture ruis maioraque viribus audes? 92 HOPELESSLY DEVOTED fallit te incautum pietas tua This is taken up in the death-rush of Mezentius at 10.867-70: dixit, et exceptus tergo consueta locavit membra manusque ambas iaculis oneravit acutis, aere caput fulgens cristaque hirsutus equina. sic cursum in medios rapidus dedit, and in the angry speech of the king at 10.878 f£: ...quid me erepto, saevissime, nato terres? Haec via sola fuit qua perdere posses: nee mortem horremus nee divum parcimus ulli. desine, nam venio moriturus et haec tibi porto dona prius. Finally, at 11.741 ff., Tarchon finishes his paraceleusis to the troops and leads the fightback against Camilla: haec effatus equum in medios, moriturus et ipse, concitat et Venulo adversum se turbidus infert, dereptumque ab equo dextra complectitur hostem et gremium ante suum multa vi concitus aufert. Various remarks should be made regarding the death-rush formula exemplified above. The first is that it has no place in the world of the Iliadic warrior, who is not accustomed to charge the line of the enemy with the deliberate intention of getting killed.
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