Metempsychosis in Aeneid Six Author(s): E. L. Harrison Reviewed work(s): Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Feb. - Mar., 1978), pp. 193-197 Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296685 . Accessed: 12/02/2013 21:07

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This content downloaded on Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:07:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions METEMPSYCHOSISIN AENEID SIX

The purposeof this note is to suggest that, in orderto understandmore clearly the lines in which Virgil preparesthe way for his paradeof heroes in Book Six (679-755), we need to appreciatethe difficulties presentedby the introduction of such an episode, and consider how he handled them.' Although we can only surmise, it seems highly probablethat, influencedby the practice at the funerals of prominentRomans of having relatives walk in processionwearing portrait-masks of the dead man's ancestors,2Virgil decided to stage a similar spectacle on a granderscale, including in its scope the great figures of Rome's past. There are several featuresthat suggest such an origin for his parade. Above all, even though futurelives ratherthan past deathsnow provide the figures, the funerallinks remainstrong. For not only does the first indication that such a parade is planned come from the dead Anchises as his own Funeral Games are concluded (5.737), but in addition the funeral of Misenus is a necessary preliminaryto Aeneas' descent into the Underworld (6.149ff.), and the parade itself ends with lines that anticipatethe funeral of Marcellus (6.872ff.).3 The use of the family unit, which is alien to Virgil's principalsource in Book Six, the Homeric katabasis, is also consistent with such an origin: for, in additionto individualRomans, Aeneas sees the Decii, Drusi, Gracchi, Scipiadaeand Fabii (824, 842-5). And as we listen to Aeneas seeking informationabout the young Marcellus from Anchises (863ff.) it is surelynot difficult to visualize a comparablecontemporary scene being enacted between an inquisitive son and his more knowledgeable father, as some great man's funeral procession passed on its way to the city-gates and beyond. But if Virgil did find inspirationin such a source.4the actual form involved

1Forgeneral accountsthat include the paradeof heroes in the discussion, see C. Murley, "The Classification of Souls in the Sixth Aeneid," Vergilius 5 (1940) 17-27; F. Norwood, "The TripartiteEschatology of Aeneid 6," CP49 (1954) 15-26; L. A. Mackay, "The Three Levels of Meaning in Aeneid 6," TAPA 86 (1955) 180-9; Brooks Otis, "Three Problems of Aeneid 6," TAPA90 (1959) 165-79;R. D. Williams, "The Sixth Book of the Aeneid," G&R 11 (1964) 48-63; W. A. Camps, "The Role of the Sixth Book of the Aeneid," PVS 7 (1967-8) 22-30; F. Solmsen, "The Worldof the Dead in Book 6 of the Aeneid," CP 67 (1972) 31-42. For separatestudies of the paradesee E. Skard, "Die Heldenschauin Vergils Aeneis," SO 40 (1965) 53-65; F. Loretto, "Die Gedankenfolgenin Vergils Heldenschau"in Hans Gerstinger:Festgabe zum 80 Geburtstag(Graz 1967) 41-51; R. D. Williams, "The Pageant of Roman Heroes," in J. R. C. Martyn, Studies in Honour of Harold Hunt (Amsterdam 1972) 207-17. 2Cf. Diodorus 31.25.2. His contemporaryaccount is surely more relevant than the earlier descriptionby Polybius (6.53.6ff.) cited by Skard(60f.), which involves a muchmore lavish affair, with the participants(not necessarily kinsmen of the dead man) all riding chariots. For the alternativecustom of carryingbusts of dead ancestors(which appearedin the second half of the first century B.C.) cf. J. M. C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (London 1971) 40. 3Skard confines his attention to the Marcellus passage (63f.), which he stresses as being especially significant, since the memoryof thatfuneral would still be fresh in Virgil's mindwhen he was composing these lines. 4Loretto rightly insists (42f.) that this view should not lead us to neglect the continuing importanceof literarysources for Virgil's actualdevelopment of the episode, a tendencyhe detects in Skard's article. 193

This content downloaded on Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:07:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 194 E. L. HARRISON was of course ruledout as far as he was concerned, not only because Augustus had to be given his usual prominencein the passage, but also because, in the perspectiveof the Aeneid, all Romanhistory still lay in the future. His solution, therefore, was to employ the Orphic-Pythagorean5 doctrine of metempsychosis. Enniushad alreadyintroduced it into Romanepic to serve his own poetic purpose(namely to establishhis claim to be a second Homer):6 and Virgil made it the basis of a paradein which souls waitingtheir turn to figure in the impendinghistory of Rome pass in review before Aeneas, with Anchises providing a commentaryas they do so.7 The situationnow recalls that in Plato's myth at the end of the Republic, in which Er describeshow, aftera 'death' from which he mysteriouslyrecovered, he saw various souls similarly involved in the process of reincarnation:"and thereseems little doubtthat Virgil is indebtedin some respectsto thataccount.9 But quite apartfrom the difference of form (Er simply describes what he saw, whereas Virgil's parade is part of the epic action) the poet's requirements presentedtwo difficulties which do not seem to have been fully appreciated. In the first place, unlike Plato, Virgil could not depict his transmigrating souls as leaving for the earthat midnight,10after drinking the waterof oblivion. Indeed, some of them, includingthat of Augustus, even though they have just completed a millenniumof purification, are now faced with a furthermillen- nium of waiting before they can make their contributionto Rome's history. Virgil therefore makes timely, if unexpected, use of that antithesis between soul and body which finds its most thoroughformulation in Plato's Phaedo, and figures significantlyin the SomniumScipionis." Accordingto this theory,

5Fora discussion of the interrelationshipof these two elements cf. E. R. Dodds, TheGreeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951) 149 and 171 note 95. 'Cf. O. Skutsch, Enniana (London 1968) 8. 7Cf. E. Norden, Vergilius Maro Aeneis Buch VI (Darmstadt 1957) 46; "Die Seelenwan- derungslehreist bei Vergil nur Mittel zum Zweck des letzten grossen Abschnittsder Nekyia, der Heldenschau." A. J. Boyle considers this view, as expressed by Camps (26), "ostentatiously simplistic," and insists that the real purpose of the episode is to provide a metaphorfor Aeneas' psychologicaldevelopment: "The Meaningof the Aeneid, A CriticalInquiry," Ramus(1972) 147 note 42, and 127. But the fact that transmigrationprovides the necessary basis for the paradeof heroes is patentlyclear: whereasBoyle's alternativeexplanation (that what reallycounts here is the Lethe draught,as a symbol of Aeneas' need to forget his past) seems dubious. Forgettingthe past does indeedloom large in the earlierpart of Book 6, wherefigures symbolizingthe differentphases of that past reappearbriefly and then vanish for ever. (Palinurus,337ff.; Dido 450ff.; Deiphobus 494ff. Cf. especially Deiphobus'solemn farewell, 546.) But in Elysiumthe emphasishas changed: now Aeneas sees figures that belong to the future, not the past, and he, and the Roman race he represents,are required,not to forget, but on the contraryto rememberthe lesson that lies behind the parade (851: "memento.") Indeed, one could relate the Lethe symbolism to Aeneas in an exactly opposite spiritto that suggested by Boyle: for, in contrastwith the souls who returnto the earth after drinking its water and forgetting, he will return without having drunk, and will remember. 8Rep. 614Bff. 9Amongthe featuresthey share one may note the turnto the right for the just, to the left for the unjust(Rep. 614C and6.540ff.); the millenniumbetween lives (Rep. 615A and6.748); the plain of Lethe with its care-dispelling river (Rep. 621A), recalled in the river Lethe and its waters of oblivion (6.713f.) 'oRep. 621B. "Cf. Phaedo 67Cf., 82Ef.: Somnium 15 and 29.

This content downloaded on Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:07:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions METEMPSYCHOSISIN AENEID SIX 195 the body is essentially a hostile environmentthat pollutes the soul, hindersits progress to true knowledge, and, to use the Orphic phrase,12 serves as its prison-house. On such a basis one can easily infer a naturalaversion on the part of the soul to its next reincarnation:and Virgil proceedsto exploit thatnotion to solve the first of his difficulties. The way is pointed by Aeneas, who, when Anchises explains why the souls are flocking to the banks of the river Lethe, exclaims: "o pater, anne aliquas ad caelum hinc ire putandumest sublimis animas iterumquead tardareverti corpora? quae lucis miseris tam dira cupido?" (VI. 719-721)

Commentators,not unreasonably,have seen in line 721 a reflection of the hero's own sufferings in the past, and of "the bitterness that still reigns in Aeneas' heart.'"13 But clearly somethingquite differentis involved in the first question: for here, even before he has hadthe benefit of Anchises' homily, with its complex mixture of Greek ideas, Aeneas already sounds more like the Socrates of the Phaedo than an epic hero." And his reference to "sluggish bodies," so typical of the antithesis mentioned above,15 involves a clear anticipationof Anchises' own reference to the body as a harmful agent that exerts a sluggish influence on the divine fire of the soul (730ff.). Indeed, this notion, coupled with the Orphicimage of the prisonhouse,plays a crucial role in Anchises' discourse, since it provides the basis for a transitionfrom the initial Stoicism to the central and concluding Orphic-Pythagoreanelements:

"igneus est ollis uigor et caelestis origo seminibus, quantumnon noxia corporatardant terreniquehebetant artus moribundaquemembra. hinc metuuntcupiuntque, dolent gaudentque, neque auras dispiciunt clausae tenebris et carcere caeco. quin et supremocum lumine uita reliquit. . . ." (VI. 730-735)

But our more immediate concern is with the fact that both Aeneas and Anchises have by now, throughtheir combined emphasis on the body's sinister influence on the soul, made an antipathytowards reincarnationon the soul's partseem entirelynatural. Anchises is thus able to conclude his reply to Aeneas in a way that disposes of that first difficulty. For souls do not drink Lethe's water, as we might have expected, and as Plato implies,1"simply to forget the past priorto their resumptionof bodily form, since that would leave no scope for delay. Nor do they even drinkit to forgetthe past and so wish to returnto the

12Onthe Orphic attributionof the phrase see Dodds, 169 note 87. 13H. E. Butler, The Sixth Book of the Aeneid (Oxford 1920) 225. "4Onemay also comparehis surprisethat souls should wish to returnto the earth with Scipio's query to his father (Somnium 15): "quid moror in terris?" 15Cf. Phaedo 81C. 16Rep. 621Af.

This content downloaded on Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:07:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 196 E. L. HARRISON earth, since again there would be no implicationthat any delay was involved. Instead, they drink it in order to forget the past and begin to wish to return (751): for now a process of indefiniteduration is implied, and one, moreover, that allows the kind of irregularitythat Virgil's dramaticsituation requires. In the case of Silvius, for example, the process will soon be complete, and before long he will duly take his place on earth(760ff.); in the case of Augustus, on the other hand, it will take a thousandyears for his soul to become reconciled to such an idea (788ff.). A solutionof sortsto the first problemis thus availablein the text, although Virgil does not make it explicit, and if we are sufficiently interestedwe have to dig it out. And here it is worthemphasizing, in passing, that what I have regarded as the key phrase in this connection is placed immediatelybefore the actual paradebegins. The second problem brought by Virgil's employment of metempsychosis was easier to solve, though once more it concerned a fundamentalclash between the usual form in which the theory is presented and Virgil's actual dramaticrequirements. In the process of reincarnationtwo lives or identities are naturallyinvolved-the old one that is being discarded, and the new one that is taking its place. And whenever the subject is discussed in the Platonic dialogues, there is a naturaltendency for such lives to be linked in pairs.17 Indeed, what concerns the philosopher above all else is the relationshipbet- ween the two: for when the time comes to choose a new life, the choice itself will for the most part be decided by the way in which the old life was lived. Thus in the myth of Er alreadycited above, Plato, identifyingsouls in terms of the old life that is being discarded, shows us (for example) Orpheusselecting the life of a swan, while Agamemnon selects that of an eagle.18 And to complete the accounthe portraysthe souls passing, afterthe selection, through the various processes supervisedby the Fates before proceedingto the plain of Lethe.19But for Virgil all this is irrelevant. Since he is concernedexclusively with futureRomans, he has of necessity to confine himself to the final stage of transmigration,and to the new lives that emerge from it, and discardthe rest. We are therefore suitably preparedfor acceptanceof his essentially curtailed view of transmigrationas soon as that subject is raised. For in the opening reference to Anchises in the narrativethe transmigratingsouls have already reached the final stage of the process, and, in a clear anticipation of the approachingparade, the poet sets the scene:

at pater Anchises penitus conualle uirenti inclusas animas superumquead lumen ituras lustrabatstudio recolens, omnemque suorum forte recensebat numerum ... VI. 679-682

After a suitably emotional staging of the reunion between father and son

17Cf. Phaedo 81Eff.; Rep. 629A; Phaedrus 249Aff. 18Rep.620Af. a"Rep.620Dff.

This content downloaded on Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:07:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions METEMPSYCHOSISIN AENEID SIX 197 (684-702)20Virgil returnsto the subject of transmigrationand sets the scene once more (703-706), but this time with certainmodifications: for now not only do we see the process throughthe eyes of Aeneas, but the scope is widened to take in, not merelyfuture Romans, but also innumeraegentespopulique (706). Nevertheless, as far as the process itself is concerned, our view is still blin- kered, and the focus is once more restrictedto the final stage of transmigration, as the reference to the river Lethe indicates (705). And finally, even in his detailed account of what takes place in the interval between lives (735ff.), Anchises makes no referenceto the selection of new lives to replacethe old, or to the role of the Fates. Instead he passes at once from a descriptionof the thousandyears of purgationafter death (735-748) to considerationof the souls now flocking to the river (748ff.) In this way, then, the groundhas by now been well preparedfor the parade that is aboutto begin: and the readerhas become so familiarwith the situation by the banks of the river Lethe that he is scarcely likely to be conscious of the fact that it is based on such a restrictedview of transmigration,and still less likely to be disturbedby it. E. L. HARRISON The Universityof Leeds

20Fora discussion of this scene in relationto its Homeric analoguecf. my note "The Subtletyof the Oral Poet," Eranos 69 (1971) 166-8 and Charles P. Segal, "Vanishing Shades: Virgil and Homeric Repetitions," Eranos 71 (1973) 34-52.

This content downloaded on Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:07:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions