ROME’S BUCOLIC LANDSCAPES: PLACE, PROPHECY, AND POWER IN AENEID VIII by Ricardo Andres Apostol A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Classical Studies) in The University of Michigan 2009 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Joseph D. Reed, Chair Professor Ruth S. Scodel Associate Professor Benjamin Acosta-Hughes Associate Professor Frederick R. Amrine copyright Ricardo Andres Apostol 2009 Table of Contents Chapter I. Introduction 1 II. Echoes from the cave: Bucolic allusion and the Cacus episode 15 III. Lucumque diemque: Time, place, and the shield 53 IV. Saturn and the Golden Age 101 V. The Bucolic Metropolis 143 VI. Conclusion 175 Bibliography 180 ii Chapter I Introduction This dissertation was born of an observation and an intuition; the former, that Aeneid book VIII is filled with bucolic imagery; and the latter, that this was such a patent and recurring feature of the text, that it could be no accident. After all, book VIII is where Aeneas comes face to face with Greek Arcadians, who were associated with the bucolic tradition from its inception. This line of research is important because it would explore how Vergil goes back to his earlier work and builds upon it. From these observational roots springs the basic organization of this work. Each of the next three chapters deals with an instance of sustained bucolic allusion in the text (the story of Hercules and Cacus, the grove in which Aeneas receives the Shield, Evander’s story of Italian prehistory and the Golden Age), analyzing it in terms of its intertexts and formal characteristics in order to develop a reading of the passage that takes the bucolic material properly into account. It is only in the fifth chapter that I attempt to place this material into a broader theoretical context based on observations made in the previous chapters. What emerges is a construction of Roman power in which Vergil as vates appeals to history and imperial destiny as a necessary background to evaluating Augustan rule. Perhaps most unique is the way that this appeal is addressed to the contemporary Roman reader through the medium of generic variation, and the way in which, in Vergil, rereading becomes a means to engage in a discourse about Roman power. 1 From the beginning, I have striven to be as undogmatic as possible, by which I mean that I have wished to let the formal features of the text emerge naturally in the course of examination, and only then to find the theoretical model which best seems to accommodate those features. As it turns out, this was a model heavily indebted to some work of Gregory Nagy on Homer.1 In the work in question, Nagy draws on Bakhtin’s essay “Epic and Novel”,2 as well as Prague-school linguistics,3 to show how genres can interact in dialogical fashion to present two alternative temporal perspectives.4 The advantage of this scheme is that one need not espouse any of the essentializing descriptions of genre that Bakhtin presents at various times; one only needs two markedly different genres that seem to align with markedly different attributes in the narrative in question, not, once again, in other contexts, or in some essentially defined way. In other words, it is the confrontation of epic and bucolic in Aeneid VIII that provides the clue that the reader is being presented with two mutually exclusive time frames: the radically distant epic past on the one hand, and contemporary Rome on the other. I. Some Formal Features: Place, Prophecy, Power It was heartening to find some strong structural and thematic similarities in the bucolic passages that I examined; I took these as evidence that there was indeed something meaningful going on in the text. The first, and most striking, was the text’s insistence on introducing each passage by means of an artistic description of landscape, a 1 Nagy (2002). 2 Bakhtin (1981). 3 Especially Kurylowicz (1966); for more on relevant aspects of Prague-school linguistics, see Waugh (1982). Nagy (1990) represents earlier work within this theoretical framework. 4 Nagy (2002) 79. 2 type of ekphrasis known as topothesia. The Hercules narrative begins with a description of the site of Cacus’s cave and the valley below; Aeneas’s reception of the shield is preceded by a description of the sacred grove and surrounding countryside; and Evander’s Golden Age story begins with a reference to the woods, which in turn serves as a bridge for a description of its ancient inhabitants. These bucolic loci act also as loci for bucolic allusions, which, I maintain, are instrumental in helping to highlight and interpret the latent issues of Roman power and its teleological justification. Vergil returns again and again to material from the same Eclogues in these allusions: Eclogue IV, with its prophecies of the Golden Age and its optimistic reading of history; Eclogue VI, which presents yet another historical reading and locates that reading in relation to philosophy as well as to a meditation on divine song; and Eclogue X and its preoccupation with the possibility for human happiness. Along with these I have also chosen to focus on the end of Georgics II as a relevant allusion of bucolic character, particularly where it praises rustic life and traces virtue to its roots in the ancient Italian landscape. Of course, the allusive content of the relevant passages of Aeneid VIII includes much more than these poems, and those other allusions are discussed in their appropriate chapters. But the poems mentioned above are central to the dialogue which Vergil, as writer of the Aeneid and poet of the march of Roman history from its inception to Augustus, seems to have with himself as writer of the Eclogues and Georgics, a kind of consideration of the progress of his own history and ideas ab origine.5 This meditation is resolved (and the poems above represent aspects of this movement) through the adoption of the mantle of vates, a role both prophetic and 5 Or perhaps a construction of that progress in a manner very similar to that christened “Do-it-yourself literary tradition” in Hinds (1998) 123-9. 3 political, and with deep ties (real or imagined) to traditional Roman culture and belief. All of these ideas are eminently à propos in Aeneid VIII. Structurally, these scenes exist alongside other, non-bucolic scenes, thus vividly enacting the dialectic between epic and bucolic genres that forms the basis of my theoretical formulation in chapter V. The Hercules scene follows on a conventional heroic-epic exchange of greetings and feast; Aeneas’s encounter with Venus in the sacred grove leads to the ekphrasis of the Shield, with its links to epic tradition in the Iliad as well as the Homeric Scutum; the story of the Golden Age and tour through the future site of Rome is followed by the Homeric seduction of Vulcan by Venus and the subsequent description of the crafting of the Shield itself. What is important in this alternation is primarily the way in which literary filiations are so strongly emphasized, in order to make the distinctions in genre a marked feature of the text. II. The Tiber River: A Case Study I shall provide a brief example of my method by pointing out some features of Aeneas’s dream encounter with the river Tiber at the opening of Aeneid VIII.6 This river is first described in lines 30-35, after a troubled Aeneas has fallen asleep: huic [Aeneas] deus ipse loci fluvio Tiberinus amoeno populeas inter senior se attollere frondes visus (eum tenuis glauco velabat amictu carbasus, et crinis umbrosa tegebat harundo), tum sic adfari et curas his demere dictis: 6 For a good overview of research on the Tiber in Vergil, see Horsfall (1990a). Cf. also Benario (1978). On this particular passage, see Boas (1938); Buchheit (1963) 176-80; and Eden (1975) ad loc. On the different names for the Tiber in the Aeneid, see now Cairns (2006). 4 The god of the place, the old man of the Tiber himself, seemed to him [Aeneas] to rise Among poplar leaves, up from the beautiful river – He was dressed in a garment of linen, shimmering and sheer, And the shady reed capped his locks – Then he seemed to speak, and redeem his cares with these words: The brilliant description encompasses both setting and character, applying equally well, as it does, to both river and god. The reader knows that Aeneas lies close to the future site of Rome, and the linen garment evokes the sails of future riverine traffic.7 In case any of his readers were too literal-minded in taking the description to refer strictly to the river’s personification, Vergil has placed his description scant lines after his famous simile for Aeneas, who sends his mind racing in partisque rapit varias perque omnia versat, sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen aenis sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine lunae omnia pervolitat late loca… And hastens it to various places, wheels it over everything, Just like when trembling light is struck from a bronze basin Filled with water, by sunlight or moon’s radiant image, And flits over everything around it… Vergil, Aeneid VIII.21-24. This passage associates gleaming and water, thus preparing the reader to take the description of the shimmering god Tiber as simultaneously describing the river. Already we see the first formal feature, the description of the landscape, at play in order to evoke the future grandeur of Rome. The river then speaks to Aeneas in his dream, telling him not to fear, because he is at the site of his people’s permanent settlement: hic tibi certa domus, “here is a safe home 7 Ennius (Ann.