Virgil's Plague: a New View of the Relationship Between
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
VIRGIL’S PLAGUE: A NEW VIEW OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GEORGICS AND THE AENEID A lecture to the Virgil Society, January 1977 by E.L. Harrison The lecture dealt with three problems: (1 ) Is Virgil’s plague-description at the end o f Georgies Three concerned with a historical event? (2 ) According to his account was it cured in the end or not? And (3 ) What does Virgil say about the cause o f the outbreak? Consideration o f the second and third questions led to the suggestion that the end o f Georgies Three may perhaps have anticipated the religious elements o f the Aeneid rather more specifically than has hitherto been acknowledged.1 With regard to question (1), the obvious similarities between Virgil’s account and Lucretius’ description o f the plague at Athens (which itself follows Thucydides closely) led Servius to conclude that the Noric plague did really occur, and was simply a local manifestation o f that widespread fifth century scourge. In modern times however the tendency among commentators (beginning with Heyne) has been to accept that the account is historical, but to refer the plague it describes to the more recent past. And W. Richter in his commentary on the Georgies (1957) in endorsing this view emphasizes the uniqueness o f Virgil’s concen tration on animals in such a context (p.318), and concludes that, quite apart from its merits as poetry, his account represents a remarkable contribution to the records o f veterinary medicine (p.320). It is difficult however to accept either his views or those o f his predecessors. For as Richter himself concedes (p.318) Virgil’s concentration on animals is only to be expected, since animals not humans are his theme in the Georgies. Moreover, as he also concedes (p.319) a disease o f such complexity as Virgil describes is unknown to modern medical science. And the reason for this is not far to seek: for VirgO’s plague-description is the creation o f a poet composing with his eye not on some mysteriously preserved record o f a distant animal- plague, but on his own work elsewhere in the Georgies, and on Lucretius. Hence the result is what Wilkinson has called ‘a plague that never was on land or sea’.2 This emerges clearly enough if one examines the two central passages in which Virgil deals with the effects o f the plague on the two principal animals in Georgies Three, the horse and the bull (498-514 and 515-530). Initially it is a question o f the poet’s echoing his own earlier treatment, victor equus (499) taking us back at a stroke to the young horse at the start o f the book and to the various chariot-races it was hoped he would one day help his owner to win (49f., 103ff., 180f., 202ff.). And the pathetic contrast Virgil then proceeds to create is achieved by his use of a characteristic device, as he deliberately inverts motifs taken from those earlier lines. The very first thing we were told there about the thoroughbred was: Altius ingreditur (76). Now the first thing the once triumphant horse does is to sink to the ground, and the effect is enhanced by the emphatic positioning o f labitur at the start o f one line, with its subject held over till the start of the next (498f.). Again, in that same line 76 Virgil’s young horse landed on its feet as lightly as a bird ( mollia crura reponit according to Servius ad loc. echoes Ennius’ description o f cranes): but now this dying horse can only beat the ground ponderously with its hoof (499f.). There, in the following line (77) the young horse at once displayed its mettle by braving a threatening river: now the dying horse recoils even from a stream (499). And finally, whereas at line 84 the young horse pricked up its ears at the sound o f battle, now the ears are down-demissae aures (500). So far, then, we have had a retractatio by Virgil o f his own earlier lines based on the principle o f inversion. But at this point his method changes: now he uses Lucretius as his model. And although his predecessor’s account was concerned with human symptoms, Virgil does not hesitate to transfer a long series o f these to his own dying horse. The cold sweat (501 cf. Lucr. 6 . 1187) the hard skin (502 cf. 1194/), the blazing eyes (505 cf. 1146), the deep breathing (505/ cf. 1186), the groaning (506 cf. 1159), the retching (507 cf. 1160), the dark blood from the nose (507/ cf. 1203), and the roughened, swollen tongue (508 cf. 1150) - all these clearly echo the Lucretian description. There is however one omission that is o f particular interest: Lucretius (1262ff.) follows Thucydides closely in his emphasis o f the thirst that drove the plague-victims to throw themselves into the public fountains. Virgil could scarcely employ such an idea now, however, since his earlier modus operandi had produced aversion to water as one o f this sick horse’s symptoms. And finally we have the actual death o f the horse (509ff.), which again echoes Lucretius in the way it is introduced, as the language shows. Following Thucydides, he had observed that there was no general remedy for the Athenian plague; what cured one person proved fatal for another (1229). Virgil however expresses this idea o f ambivalence differently. Instead o f generalising, as his predecessors did, he concentrates on a single remedy: and he lets the ambivalence take the form o f apparent success in the early stages that soon turns to failure as the medicinal wine induces madness and self-laceration in the dying horse. Thus Lucretius’ hoc aliis erat exitio (1229) now finds an echo in Virgil’s mox erat hoc ipsum exitio (511). The second passage, on the death o f the bull (515 ff), is clearly designed to accompany the preceding one. Each consists o f sixteen lines if one disregards the parenthesis at line 513: and formally the arrangement is chiastic, with the Lucretian imitation now preceding Virgil’s echoing o f his own work. A remarkable feature here is Virgil’s abandonment o f Lucretius’ plague-description. For there is comparatively little cataloguing o f symptoms in the account o f the bull’s death, and when Virgil does echo Lucretius in this context he in fact goes to two earlier passages. His main inspiration comes from 2.352/jf., where Lucretius describes the sacrifice o f a calf and the grief of the surviving mother as she searches in vain for her missing offspring. Like the calf (2.353), Virgil’s bull collapses (3.516: concidit), and both bleed profusely, the sacrificial victim from the wound in its chest (2.354), the diseased bull from the mouth (3.516). And the negative pattern that is developed by Virgil in order to portray the inconsolable grief o f the surviving bull (520ff.), along with the general tone o f what follows, are both clearly based on Lucretius’ subsequent description o f the surviving but equally disconsolate cow (2.361/f.). The other Lucretian passage (3.487f f ) is closer in character to Virgil’s immediate theme, describing as it does the symptoms o f an epileptic seizure. And he fuses elements o f the earlier passage (2.352f f concidit... sanguinis exspirans calidum de pectore flumen) with elements o f the later one (3.489 concidit et spumas agit, ingemit et tremit artus) to produce: ecce autem duro fumans sub vomere taurus/concidit et mixtum spumis vomit ore cruorem/extremosque cietgemitus (515ff.) The echoes o f Virgil’s own earlier work in the last six lines (525-30) are now general rather than specific, and are devoid o f inversion. The indignant rhetorical questions (525/. quid labor aut benefacta iuvant? quid vomere terras/invertisse gravis?) look back briefly at the many places in Books One and Three that refer to the hard work o f the bull at the plough: and then the simple innocence o f the beast is evoked in terms reminiscent o f earlier passages, especially in Book Two, in which a similar innocence is attributed to the Italian farmer. 2.458ff., for example, is very like these lines, as the poet skilfully mingles positive and negative forms to indicate, on the one hand the extravagant luxuries that have no part in the life o f the simple farmer, and on the other his carefree enjoyment o f such natural blessings as we find here — fresh spring water to drink, and quiet, undisturbed sleep. In short, then, consideration o f these two key passages indicates that Virgil’s plague description is not a basically historical account given a suitably poetical wrapping, but rather a poetic creation throughout. We can thus leave to one side the problem o f his mysterious source for any such account in an age when the few records there were gave details, not o f a plague’s symptoms, but o f the religious measures taken to end it.3 Nor need we concern ourselves with the supposed location o f the outbreak, except to observe that although some scholars find Virgil’s explanation o f this point incomprehensible, while others Have no aitliculty m locating the relevant area, here too the essentially poetic quality o f the description is unmistakable, as the poet passes in two picturesque lines (474-5) from Alpine heights to Noric foothills and the Timavus valley.