sign in sign up
<<
Home , Contubernium, Imperator, Legatus, Lusus Troiae, Nisus and Euryalus

50

AENEAS ; ROMAN GENERALSHIP

IN AN EPIC CONTEXT

A lecture to the Society, January, 1980,

by

R.G.M. Nisbet

Aeneas is a man of many facets. He is a second Ulysses, iromersabilis if not versutus, with intermittent hints of Achilles, Hercules, and other heroes. He is a Stoic exemplar, willingly obedient to the fates, and painfully growing in authority on his pilgrimage. He is a proto-, carrying the destiny of his nation on his shoulders, and prefiguring the political ideology of Virgil's own patrons. In this paper I shall consider him as he undertakes one of the most important functions of Roman government, republican or imperial, the command of an army. The is like a great novel of war and politics, and the poet can help the historian not so much by describing institutions as by making attitudes come alive. As the relevant material is scattered, I shall proceed book by book in the chronological order of the events described, that is to say beginning with Book II.

At the fall of Virgil must establish three things about Aeneas. In the first place it must be made clear that the disaster was not his fault. In Homer he appears as a prudent soldier and a wise statesman’5', apparently second in esteem only to Hector himself, and after Hector's death his position in the hierarchy ought to have been improved. But in Virgil he is consulted neither on the horse nor the serpents, when the enemy attacks he does not know what is happening, and Panthus has to tell him that the war is lost (324ff.). There was a very literal lack of vigilantia, one of the suspicious Romans' most prized virtues, but though Aeneas uses first person plurals to describe what the Trojans did, he does not seem to admit any individual responsibility. There is an implicit moral on the dangers of oligarchy and plutocracy, where a leaderless nation listens to uninformed voices, and nobody is in overall-charge. Such a lesson would seem a natural one in Augustan , and it is worth remembering that in 's third Roman Ode, Troy has been thought to suggest the fallen Republic.

Secondly, Virgil must emphasise Aeneas's courage. It could be held against him that he had survived his city, and Turnus touched a sore point when he called him desertorem Asiae (12.15). That is why Virgil makes him organise resistance, though only at a local and subordinate level: he takes up arms without regard for consequences (314 'arma amens capio, nec sat rationis in armis'), if he had been fated to fall he deserved it by his actions (433f« 'si fata fuissent ut caderem meruisse manu'), he emphasises several times his own furor or loss of control 51 (316, 588, 595)* He even takes a leaf out of his enemies' book and stoops to disguise (390 'dolus an quis in hoste requirat?1), but it is made clear by what happens that such subterfuges did no good in the long run: like other successful imperialists the Romans were under the illusion that they themselves fought according to the rules (Liv. 1-53-4 ’minime arte Romana, fraude ac dolo'). The climax comes in the disputed passage where he considers killing Helen at the 2 altar, a scene that is Virgilian not only in style but in imaginative power and psychological appropriateness (extending beyond the immediate context to the epic as a whole). There is a conflict here between the passionate and the reasoning parts of the soul, and it suits the Augustan ideal that rationality prevails.

Thirdly Virgil must confirm the legitimacy of Aeneas's ; he cannot like de Gaulle appoint himself. In the Achilles had taunted Aeneas with wishing to succeed Priam, an ambition that seemed absurd as long as the king was in good health and had living sons (20.l80ff.). Now the changed situation must be formally recognised. Aeneas is entrusted with the Penates by Hector's ghost (293ff.), and they are brought by Panthus to the house of (320f.), who carries them from the fallen city (717). The party does not leave without explicit instructions from Venus Genetrix (6l9f.). Above all, when the flame plays round the head of lulus (682ff.), the spontaneous phenomenon provides an excellent instance of auspicia oblativa, and when Anchises with Roman prudence insists on a double-check, they are promptly converted by celestial phenomena into 3 auspicia impetrativa. All this corresponds to the taking of the omens when a Republican general sets out to war.

At this point we are faced by a constitutional puzzle: who has imperium maius? The taking of the omens by Anchises might suggest that the expedition was begun under his own ductu auspiciisque, but such a conclusion is belied by his words 'nec, nate, tibi comes ire recuso' (2.704), as well as by the traditional form of the legend. Aeneas reports prodigies to his father (3.58f., 179)1 as M. Caedicius did to the magistrates in (5.32.6, cf. 2.36.7)) but Anchises may be acting rather as a priest; by the Roman system religious authority was vested in suitable statesmen (cf. Lao coon and Panthus), who interpreted the divine will more sensibly than whole-time professionals like Calchas or Tolumnius (12.258ff.). Anchises is supported by delecti proceres (58) not a council of war on the Homeric model (it is only the who give scope to a politician like Drances), but an advisory consilium; as the institution was found in many spheres of Roman life, the old man may be represented as rather than imperator. Apart from his interpretation of religious phenomena, Anchises determines the successive 4 stages on the journey ; Aeneas is thus absolved from responsibility for the wanderings, and in particular for the abortive settlement in Crete (100f.). On the other hand it is Aeneas who organises the details of administration (137 'iura 52 domosque dabam1) and commands in the battle against the Harpies (234ff.), from which his father is excluded by age and infirmity. The allocation of provinciae between father and son corresponds to nothing in historical Roman practice; elderly rulers presented no problem under the Republic, when middle-aged consuls were annually replaced, and in the the issue first becomes important with the declining years of . Rather the situation reflects a vision of primitive society: Anchises occupies a position somewhere between Laertes'*, who seems to have abdicated, and Priam, who remains in nominal control even though Hector commands in battle. With the death of Anchises at the end of the third book (709ff.) the anomaly is removed, and Aeneas assumes the undivided authority that pietas had kept him from usurping.

When we first meet Aeneas off , he is shivering in the storm (1.92 ’extemplo Aeneae solvuntur frigore membra1). His sufferings are modelled on those of Odysseus (Horn. Od. 5.297? 5.472) but such weakness is much more conspic- uous 6 at the beginning of the epic. Conventional panegyrics of generals emphas- 7 ised their endurance as much as their courage , and particularly their indifference to the elements, but Virgil is more interested in the Aristotelian distinction between fortitude and insensibility (Eth. Nic. 1115b 24ff.). Augustus himself was surprisingly susceptible to cold, and wore four tunics in the winter (Suet. Aug. 8l-2), and though the poet is unlikely to have intended so specific a reference, he would at least have been aware that the great man's dominance was more psychological than physical.

The storm is stilled by Neptune with a calm but firm exercise of authority (1.132ff.), that symbolically suggests Roman imperium. The drill of the Trojans on landing is more systematic than anything in Homer: the lighting of fire and baking of bread (174ff.) follow the prosaic priorities of the (cf„ 6.8 for aguatio), even if the stag-hunt and roast venison belong to tradit­ ional epic. The allocution of Aeneas to his men, though formally modelled on Homeric rodomontade (199 *o passi graviora', cf. Od. 12.208ff.) shows a topical awareness of the anxieties of leadership (209 'spem vultu simulat, premit altum corde dolorea1). After a typically restless night (305),the cautious commander sends out speculatores (more professional than the 'looking in all directions' at Od. 10.146), and camouflages his fleet under a wooded cliff (310ff.). In spite of all the Odyssean disappearing-tricks, the meeting with is conducted with realistic circumspection, and Aeneas stays in the background like a Roman imperator till he sees how his legate gets on. There follows top-level diplomacy of the sort that a distinguished personality still could influence in the ancient world: the negotiation is supported by appeals to traditional ties (6l9ff.), military and political alliance is treated in terms of private amicitia (whose - moral component can too easily be underestimated ), and though mutual advantage 53 is implicit in the understanding (548ff., cf. 563f.), the emphasis is placed on magnanimity and obligation. The spontaneous gifts that conclude the conver­ sations have more binding force than the interchanges at modern State Visits; Q the Homeric pattern would still be valid with foreign potentates, as it surely was in the world of Lawrence of Arabia.

But amicitia ought not to have included emotional entanglements; the hint of Cleopatra is unavoidable in a poem written in the decade after her death. Antony might claim precedent in Alexander, who had to deal with the queens of the East, but a Roman imperator should have been less cosmopolitan. When the gods give Aeneas new sailing-directions, the foedus by which he bound others is superseded for himself; Virgil writes without cynicism, but he has the imaginative sympathy to see how Roman fides must have looked to the losers (4.376ff.), as to the Samnites after the Caudine Forks. A realistic general knew how to cut his losses (as is shown in Book III), even if it meant a voyage in winter (4.313), and the evacuation is planned with the two essentials of secrecy and speed. When Dido looks down from her acropolis she sees no longer productive bees (1.430ff.) but ants on the move (4.4o4ff.): it nigrum campis agmen praedamque per herbas convectant calle angusto; pars grandia trudunt obnixae frumenta umeris, pars agmina cogunt castigantque moras, opere omnis semita fervet. There could be no better description of the legalised destructiveness of the Roman army with its requisitioning of corn (frumentum imperatum), organised supply-columns and discipline on the march; when a said 'go', you went.

The celebrations in Book V suggest national Roman rather than regimental sports, but though Aeneas presides from a mount of turf (290) with the affability of a civilian , military lessons are implicit. The boat-race teaches that opportunities should be seized without running unreasonable risks; these were the methods of and Augustus (rather than of an aleator like Julius ), and it is significant that the reckless is the ancestor of the Sergii (121), that is to say of Catiline. The boyish loyalties of Nisus and foreshadow their tragic sortie in story-book manner (even if their notion of playing the game was different from Sir Henry Newbolt's); the moral education of the young in ideals appropriate to a military society must have seemed a natural function of the new epic. In the same way the boxing-match idealises the controlled courage of experience as opposed to the mindless brutality of the prize­ fighter: 'vis consili expers mole ruit sua1 (Hor. Carm. 3«4.65). The flame that ends the archery-contest teaches the validity of omens (as well as suggesting Caesar's Comet), while the lusus Troiae describes the equestrian exercises of Virgil's own day. 54

The military lessons of the games are brought out in practice at the burning of the boats. shows his initiative and discipline by quelling the riot and summoning assistance, where a less responsible officer would have attempted too little or too much; with an aristocratic belief in heredity the Roman governing class gave its favoured young men rapid promotion, and the first signs of leadership must have been eagerly welcomed, as in the case of Marcellus. Aeneas's actions in turn show pietas and consilium, both desirable qualities in a Roman commander. After a prayer to Jupiter, which is providentially heard (cf. 235ff. in the boat-race), he listens to the experienced Nautes (709ff.); a good imperator founded cities as well as destroying them, and those who did not wish to sail further were left behind without recriminations (contrast the Phocaeans at Herodotus 1.165.3). This readiness to cut knots and not batter heads against brick walls illustrates the sense of the possible that made the last longer than some others.

The fifth book must have suggested Roman campaigning in another way; anybody who had read about the first Punic War and experienced the campaigns against Sextus Pompeius would have been moved in Sicilian waters to patriotic 'home- thoughts from the sea'. When Aeneas in the storm accepts the advice of Palinurus (26ff.), we may recognise the respect for the expert that Octavian must have shown in his naval wars. It seems significant that both the serene regatta and the sinister burning of the boats (which was assigned to various places by the tradition) are set by Virgil at Drepanum (Trapani),the scene of a famous naval disaster in the First Punic War (Polyb. 1.49-51)j the Roman commander had thrown the sacred chickens into the sea ('if they will not eat, let them drink'), and his ill-fated impiety10 is implicitly contrasted with the faith and hope of Virgil's heroes. When Aeneas sacrifices a lamb to the Tempestates (772), we may compare Octavian's dedications from the same period (App. Civ. 5*98.406, ILS 3279 'Ara Ventorum'); for a topical parody of the rite cf. Hor. Epod. 10.23f., where a goat is promised to the Storm-Winds for the drowning of Mevius. When Palinurus is washed ashore on the Lucanian coast, Virgil is likely to have remembered the setback of 36 B.C., when many of Octavian's men, including perhaps Maecenas and Horace, met a similar experience in the same area11. And when a pyre is built for Misenus (6.179ff.), who gave his name to Rome's naval base, Aeneas's timber- felling (more mechanised than in Homer or ), suggests the deforestation (Strab. 5.4.5.), familiar to Virgil in Naples, at the construction of the Portus lulus.

The Aeneas of the sixth book must make his catabasis alone, but in the second half of the epic he resumes his position as an imperator. The invasion comes ashore not at the traditional landing-place 'in agrum Laurentinum' (Liv. 1.1.7), but farther north at the mouth of the Tiber; Virgil is not trying to protect 55 Aeneas's left flank, but rather to associate him with the Roman river. A settlement is fortified with agger and fossa on the formidable lines of a Roman 12 camp (159) ; an allusion to the Ostian castrum has been suspected but is difficult to prove. Legates are despatched to King Latinus with a blend of bluff and appeasement (as was wise in the Trojans' plight). Odysseus may boast 'I captured the city and killed the men' (Od. 9.40), but like a good Roman imperator Aeneas conserves his outnumbered forces and tries to use socii on the spot 13 . With an instinct for the workings of Roman conquest Virgil envisages an immediate foedus that would include the all-important right of conubium (as shown by the betrothal of Aeneas and ), and lead to an ultimate merging of political and religious institutions,,.

The Trojans showed a Roman assurance in the sanctity of their foedus, but not surprisingly it proved acceptable only to a section of the Latins. Historians know that wars originate from deep-seated causes and trivial occasions, and so it was with the shooting of Silvia's stag. Allecto plays on natural resentments 14 with the fiendish insight of a political manipulator, and the crisis escalates in clearly defined stages to a general mobilisation. Aeneas can do nothing for most of the book: though in all but a technical sense he is the aggressor, as the historical tradition recognised (Liv. 1.1.5.1 Dion. Hal. Rom. Ant. 1.57.1? 15 I.58.I), Roman legalism about the iustum bellum required that his posture should be defensive.

In Book VIII the two sides seek to extend their network of alliances (a side of warfare more emphasised in Livy than in Homer). The Latins send a mission to Diomede in Apulia (9ff.) with a realistic appeal to self-interest (note the historian's oratio obliqua at 15ff.); Aeneas, after agonising in the night, sees that he can do more by diplomacy than fighting (l8ff.), and resolves to negotiate with Evander in person. His voyage up the Tiber shows Virgil's imaginative awareness of how to penetrate a forested interior. The conversations at the site of Rome begin as usual with expressions of respect and claims to shared antecedents (134ff., 157ff•)j with a disdain for explicit bargaining characteristic of gentlemanly societies (think of Augustan poets and their patrons), Aeneas suggests the common danger, mentioning his own contribution only as an afterthought (150f. 'sunt nobis fortia bello pectora'). The next day Evander points out the advan­ tages of an alliance with the anti-Mezentian faction at Agylla (the Caere that was to be so important in the Wars); such interference in the stasis of neighbours was characteristic of Rome as of more recent imperialisms (cf. the Parthian rebellion of 26), but justification is naturally found in the misgovern- ment of Mezentius. Evander proves his fides by sending his son , and the party ride in splendour from the North Gate like a Roman commander and his comites setting out to war: 'stant pavidae in muris matres oculisque sequuntur pulveream 56 nubem et fulgentis aere catervas1 (592f.).

The removal of Aeneas from the battlefield produces a critical change in the balance of forces (9.6ff.) without impugning the or other virtues of the hero: Achilles had sulked in his tent out of personal pique, but for a respon­ sible and rational leader diplomacy was an indivisible element of war. Ascanius is left in charge, though Aletes plays the experienced (246); the arrangement (derided by Juno at 10.70) suggests in exaggerated form the aspirations of Marcellus, whose role may have been extended during Augustus's illnesses (he would have been preferred by Maecenas to Agrippa). When the attack comes, the Trojans retreat to their base (9.38ff.) as Aeneas had instructed, secure in the knowledge that his commands would be obeyed; the Roman army was to prosper by a combination of threatening attitudes and defensive tactics1^, which were resolutely maintained in spite of provocation (54ff.) till the moment for counter-attack. The lesson could be learned from a contemporary prose work, the Hannibalic books of Livy, as well as from Augustus's own policies.

In the middle of the crisis Nisus and Euryalus try to summon help from Aeneas (192ff.) by breaking out on the unexpected seaward side (238). Unauthorised combat in the Nelson manner played no part in Roman heroics, as the story of Torquatus shows (Liv. 8.7)» so they correctly ask permission from Ascanius. Nisus is mature enough to understand that inner promptings may be delusive (185 'an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?'), but he is diverted from his mission by a wish for the more obvious forms of military glory. Euryalus, who has been set to guard the rear, is brought down by his own battle-lust (354 1cupidine ferri') and greed for loot (384), and Nisus is also killed in a futile attempt to save him. In the circumstances anything but eulogy would be ungracious, but like a good novelist, Virgil does not always make.his moral explicit 17 ; older heads would have seen 18 that though magnificent, the escapade was not war . Aeneas is as far away as ever (10.25 'Aeneas ignarus abest'), and when the light flashes on Euryalus's captured helmet (373f•)j he is betrayed by the childish love of prizes that the pair has already shown in the foot-race (5-343ff.).

After the success of his diplomatic initiatives, Aeneas returns in the tenth book to the rescue of the Trojan encampment. The enchanted Odyssean atmosphere is piquantly combined with more realistic elements: the newly acquired socii provide the cavalry and the fleet (as was inevitable in Rome's foreign wars), the combined military and naval operations foreshadow the sort of thing that happened at Actium, the Etruscan order of battle (included against the tradition perhaps in deference to Maecenas) is a proper reminder of Etruria's part in the develop­ ment of Roman power. Turnus naturally tries to repel the invasion before it gets ashore (277 'litora praecipere et venientis pellere terra'); ships smash on sandbanks and soldiers slither down poles. But the dispositions of Aeneas's D-Day are far from obvious. If the Trojan settlement stretched to the Tiber, why was the disembarkation made on the open beaches against an opposing army? On the other hand if the Trojan landing-place was not included in the main fortifications, that goes against the principles both of Homeric and Roman warfare. There is also some obscurity about the movements of Evander's cavalry, which is fighting on foot near the Tiber's mouth (10.362ff.). and cut off between the settlement and the sea (378 'pelagus Troiamne petemus?'). But we should not read the Aeneid any more than the Iliad for precise topographical detail; Virgil would be less zealous in exploring the Campagna than some of his interpreters.

The interest of the book is not strategic but psychological, and centres round Aeneas's response to the death of Pallas. To understand his agony we must remember the sacred responsibilities of , by which a general took a young man under his wing‘d; 'haec mea magna fides?1 says Aeneas (11.55) and though his self-reproaches are less justified than those of Achilles over they make him lash out in the same way. When he promises human sacrifice to Pallas (10.517ff., 11.8lf.), there is an obvious parallel to the destructive deeds devised by Achilles (II. 21.27ff., 23.175ff.), and in a Roman context the idea is a particular abomination (RE 15-955)- 20 • Though it is true that the slaughter of 21 prisoners was permitted in ancient warfare , Aeneas kills suppliants with barbaric insults (10.560, 592ff.), that remind us again of Achilles in his rage. The same blind fury is directed against Lausus, though Virgil goes out of his way to emphasise that pietas operated on both sides (cf. 10.822 Anchisiades, 824,826). Some scholars invoke the conventions of heroic and Roman war to suggest that our distaste is a modern anachronism, but this view goes against the whole tenor of the poem, ignores philosophical disquisitions on ira and political panegyrics of clemency, and is more objectively refuted by the Homeric parallels. Virgil would read the Iliad in a moralising spirit, which in spite of its unhistorical formu­ lations has more essential truth than is sometimes supposed. Whatever the origina form of the saga, in the epic as we have it the wrath of Achilles extended from his feud with Agamemnon to his revenge on Hector, until he redeems himself by receiving Priam at the end of the poem.

In the eleventh book Aeneas shows a more Roman fortitude at the fate of Pallas (which seems to reflect the death of Marcellus in 23), and does not allow his emotions to interfere with his responsibilities. He gives commands to his army with the menacing understatement of a successful soldier (17 'nunc iter ad regem nobis murosque Latinos'); in the manner of the later Roman army, which avoided unconsidered offensives, he aims at careful material and psychological preparation (18 'arma parate, animis et spe praesumite bellum'). When the Latins ask for recovery of their dead, he receives them with brief but conciliatory words (113 'nec bellum cum gente gero') that are carefully designed to detach them from 58

Turnus (in which they have their effect) 5 unlike modern ideologists the more rational ancient imperialists knew that the aim of war is peace (Ar. Eth. Nic. 1177b 5f- ) 5 that is to say an advantageous political settlement. Having thus asserted his dominance, Aeneas marches while the enemy is still in disarray (446). While his cavalry fights in the plain, he makes a sudden swoop through the hills (what hills?); the manoeuvre is unconvincing, as the Romans captured cities sedendo rather than by surprise thrusts. Turnus lies in wait in a defile, the usual terrain in Livy for Roman disasters, but in his madness abandons the ambush even before he hears of Camilla's defeat. The strange manoeuvres on both sides are determined not by military necessity but by the strategy of the poems Virgil wishes to keep the protagonists apart as long as possible.

The framework of the last book is Homeric, but Roman attitudes sometimes intrude. When Turnus takes up the idea of a single combat the tactics are epic (or Livian), but the tone becomes more realistic when Aeneas promises an aequum foedus (l89ff.); and when he is wounded in trying to preserve the truce, the adaptation of the Homeric episode in the Iliad (II. 4.127ff.) gives him the moral excuse that meant so much to Roman empire-builders. He shows more fortitude over his injury than Menelaus; and when he is treated by Iapyx with his dictamnum, a contemporary might think not just of the Homeric leech but of Antonius Musa, who had saved Augustus from more than one illness (for his expertise in pharma­ cology cf. 13.463 K). As his resolution grows, Aneeas promises the destruction of the Latin capital in the bleak, authoritative tones of a real imperator, which show a Roman confidence in the righteousness of his cause: 'urbem hodie, causam belli, regna ipsa Latini ... eruam et aequa solo fumantia culmina ponam' (567ff.). Yet he is talking here not of Mezentius or even Turnus but of kind, bumbling Latinus: there is a disconcerting parallel with Priam and the fires of Troy. With his feeling for Rome's mission and his sense of loyalty to his patrons, Virgil is not making an outright rejection of imperialism. But in Greek tragedy the sack of Troy, however justified, is nothing to boast about (cf. Aesch. Ag. 472 'may I not be a sacker of cities'), and in the only comparable Latin work the loss of humanity cannot be unintended.

The plot required that Turnus should die, but he did not have to plead 'ulterius ne tende odiis' (938), and his killing is no more endorsed by the poet than the slaughter in the tenth book. It cannot be justified by appeals to the epic tradition and the Roman laws of war: Aeneas has been built up as a philosophic hero, and no philosopher could commend revenge on impulse. He is actuated not by a sense of honour, as he himself imagines (cf. 11.178f. for Evander's plea), nor even by a higher necessity (as in his corresponding destruction of Dido), but by a loss of control that reduces him to the level of his enemy 2 t2 t : nothing could be more explicit than Virgil's words 'furiis accensus'(12.946). The climax is disturbing because it denies us the expected moral ending (as if Virgil were as smug as Livy), not because it is false to human nature or the facts of Roman or more recent history. Though he had so little experience of the world, the poet intuitively understood what it costs to build a city, and at this stage of the epic he had to write what he felt, without regard for the only Man of Destiny on view. In spite of his solid exterior, Aeneas is an unfulfilled hero, clutching at phantoms, pursuing receding shores, issuing from the Gate of Illusions (6.898), fated to wander but not quite to arrive, not to found his city (dum conderet, not condidit), but to fall before his time on the barren sand (4.620) in Stoic terminology sometimes proficiens but never perfectus. The imperator wins his spolia opima from Turnus, but the supreme command has eluded him: 1imperare sibi maximum imperium est1 (Sen. Epist. 113.30). 60

NOTES

1 G.K. Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome, 19&9, 20ff., 36ff.; N. Horsfall, CQ 29 (1979) 372f.

2 R.G. Austin, CQ 11 (1961) l85ff.5 otherwise G.P. Goold, HSPh 74 (1970) lOlf., C.E. Murgia, CSCA 4 (1971) 203ff. Opponents of authenticity may stress too much the difficulties of the transmission; the lines are far too good to have been written later than the first century A.D., and though we cannot show how they survived, any view of their authorship presents some problems.

3 C. Bailey, Religion in Virgil, 1935> 19ff.

4 R.B. Lloyd, TAPhA 88 (1957) 44ff.

5 M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus, ed. 2, 1977> 86f.

6 Serv. auct. adloc. 'reprehenditur sane hoc loco Vergilius ...' Virgil is defended by A.J. Gossage, Phoenix 17 (1963) 131ff-

7 Xen. Hell. 5*1-15, Sail. Cat. 5.3j Liv. 21.4.6, K.J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality, 1974, 163-

8 P.A. Brunt, PCPhS 11 (1965) Iff.

9 Finley, op. cit. 120ff.

10 Pease on Cic. Nat. Deor. 2.7, T.P. Wiseman, Clio's Cosmetics, 1979, 90f., llOf. The battle is mentioned by F. Della Corte, La Mappa dell1 Bneide, 1972, 96f., but he sees a moral simply in the need for fast ships.

11 Veil. 2.79.3, App. Civ. 5.98,410, Dio 49.1.3, E. Wistrand, Horace's Ninth Epode, 1958, l6f. = Opera Selecta, 1972, 304f.

12 J. Carcopino, Virgile et les origines d'Ostie, ed. 2, 1968, 358ff.

13 E.N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, 1979, 30ff.

14 E. Fraenkel, JRS 35 (1945) 4ff. = Kleine Beitrage zur klassischen Philologie 2, 1964, 151ff.

15 W.v. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 19795 l66ff.

16 Luttwak, op. cit. Iff.

17 K. Quinn, Virgil's Aeneid, 1968, 339f*

18 G.E. Duckworth, AJP 88 (1967), 129ff. On the other hand P.G. Lennox defends Nisus, though not Euryalus (Hermes 105, 19771 331ff.). 19 Cic. Sull. 34, Plane. 27, Cael. 731 Brut. 105, Serv. Aen. 5*546 '(custodem) secundum Tullium qui dicit ad militiam euntibus dari solitos esse custodes, a quibus primo anno regantur; unde ait de Pallante £8.515]} sub te tolerare magistro militiam et grave Martis '.

20 There can hardly be a conscious reference to Octavian's massacre at Perusia (Sen. Clem. 1.11.1 'Perusinas aras', Suet. Aug. 15, Dio 48.14.4); mactare is a natural metaphor in Roman political invective, and though something very ugly happened, a solemn sacrifice of three hundred senators and is not to be believed (R. Syme, The Roman Revolution, 19391 212).

21 Harris, op.cit. 50ff.

22 C.M. Bowra, G & R 3 (1933) 17f.» K. Quinn, op.cit. 272f. Aeneas is criticised too much by M. Putnam, The Poetry of the Aeneid, 1965) 193ff*) too little by B. Otis, Virgil, A Study in Civilised Poetry, 1963) 381.