Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: Intertextual Keys to Aeneid 6 Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: Intertextual Keys to Aeneid 6 and without question. The man of pietas can do no other; as soon as he lands at Cumae JOHN PENWILL (1944–2018) he seeks out the sibyl and, after dutifully following Helenus’ instruction to consult her This is an expanded version of a paper given to about the future (see 3.441–60), he delivers a the Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar at speech whose purpose is to persuade her to the University of Sydney in July 1994 and to the enable him to descend into the underworld Teachers’ Wing of the Classical Association of (6.106–23). The cardinal virtue which drives Victoria in March 1995. It was published together him forward is recognised by Anchises when with a companion essay on Georgics 4 (‘The Fable of they finally meet in the closing section of the Bees’) in Penwill (1995), and was reproduced the book: uicit iter durum pietas (‘pietas has in the 1995 issue of Iris by permission of the overcome the difficult journey’, 6.689). Department of Humanities, La Trobe University, In this, the climax of the Odyssean half Bendigo, where John was a senior lecturer. of the Aeneid, Virgil follows his normal technique of setting up a complex of intertextual relationships, the most And be these juggling fiends no more believed immediately obvious being with the Nekuia That palter to us in a double sense; of Homer’s Odyssey; as Boyle points out in That keep the word of promise to our ear his essay on the Aeneid in the Routledge But never to our hope. Roman Epic, the allusion is constant.17And the particular set of circumstances outlined (Shakespeare, Macbeth 5.8.19–22) above represents a good initial example of Virgil’s use of intertextuality. In both the Odyssey and the Aeneid, the instruction to hen Odysseus is told by Circe in visit the realm of the dead comes when the Book 10 of the Odyssey that he hero seems to have lost his way: Odysseus has Wmust journey to the realm of the spent a year enjoying the pleasant company dead, he is devastated: of Circe and has to be reminded by his crew that they ought to be thinking of getting ὣς ἔφατ᾽, αὐτὰρ ἐμοί γε κατεκλάσθη φίλον ἦτορ· home (Od. 10.472–4), while Aeneas has been κλαῖον δ᾽ ἐν λεχέεσσι καθήμενος, οὐδέ νύ μοι κῆρ in an agony of indecision about what to do ἤθελ᾽ ἔτι ζώειν καὶ ὁρᾶν φάος ἠελίοιο. in the face of the obvious disinclination of a significant number of his followers to So she spoke, and the inward heart within continue travelling in search of a home (see me was broken, esp. Aen. 5.700–04 and 719–20). In both cases and I sat down on the bed and cried, nor did the indecision has already been resolved the heart in me (Odysseus has accepted the advice of his men wish to go on living any longer, nor to look and determined to resume his voyage, and on the sunlight. Aeneas has been told by the dream–image of Anchises to accept Nautes’ advice); in both Odyssey 10.496–98, tr. Lattimore (1968). cases the instruction to make the journey to Hades’ comes right out of the blue; in both When Aeneas is given the same instruction cases the purpose of this journey is to consult by the dream–image of his father Anchises the shade of a particular individual about towards the end of Aeneid 5, however, we find the future; and in both cases the instruction a very different response. The only anguish is given towards the end of the book prior to he displays is at the fact that his father’s that in which the actual journey is narrated. image recedes from his consciousness; the instruction he proceeds to follow eagerly 1 Boyle (1993), 94–98. 64 Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: Intertextual Keys to Aeneid 6 And prior to embarking on this journey a 11.55–58), Aeneas already thinks he knows death occurs which will find a resonance about the fate of Palinurus and is therefore in the journey itself: that of Elpenor in the not surprised in the same way as Odysseus Odyssey and that of Palinurus in the Aeneid. is when he meets him on the banks of the Styx. The issue for Aeneas is the fulfilment Setting up these structural, narrative of prophecy and the trustworthiness of and thematic parallels of course serves to Apollo’s oracle (6.341–46); Palinurus’ reply throw the differences into sharp relief and to Aeneas’ question en haec promissa fides thus engage the reader’s attention. I have est? (‘is this how he [i.e. Apollo] fulfils his already mentioned how Aeneas’ pietas is promise?’) shows that both Aeneas and we emphasised by the different way in which are mistaken in thinking that Palinurus was he and Odysseus respond to the necessity of drowned when he fell overboard at the end their journey; but there is another revealing of Book 5, and thus in a technical sense the character distinction highlighted here. oracle that he would make it to Ausonia was Odysseus has himself made the decision to fulfilled. That oracles can be fulfilled in this resume his voyage home as Od. 10.475 makes cruel and deceptive way (as Macbeth also clear; it is he who requests Circe to allow him discovered) should of course be a lesson to and his crew to depart, and it is in response Aeneas (as to the reader) that oracles do not to this that Circe announces that he must always mean what we expect them to mean– first make his voyage to the land of the dead. but that is another story. Here we should note The anguish he displays is that of a man who the parallelism in the pleas made by Elpenor sees this (understandably) as an appallingly and Palinurus to their respective leaders frustrating interruption to the course of to perform the appropriate funerary rites action he has decided upon. In the case of and the diametrically opposite response. Aeneas, however, the instruction comes as Odysseus unhesitatingly promises to grant the second of a pair delivered by Anchises his dead comrade’s request in a simple one– with the endorsement of Jupiter (5.726f.); it line reply (Od. 11.80), and the funeral of relieves him of the task which he had been Elpenor is the first task to occupy him on finding too much for him, that of having his return to Aiaia (12.8–15). In the case of to think and make decisions for himself. It Palinurus on the other hand it is the sibyl is as if he has opened another of the sealed who steps in to reply. Ignoring his plea for envelopes that form his mission statement; burial and concentrating only on his second he has no lack of courage in carrying out the request that Aeneas should take him with him instructions therein contained and proceeds over the Styx, the sibyl roundly attacks him unhesitatingly and single–mindedly so to for his presumption, concluding this part of do.28So we have on the one hand Odysseus her reply with the chilling words desine fata πολύτροπος deviser and implementer of deum flecti sperare precando (‘cease hoping that stratagems; and on the other, Aeneas pius, the the fates decreed by the gods are swerved by man who does what others tell him is his duty. prayer’, 6.376). To Palinurus as to Misenus is offered the spurious compensation of the This crucial difference between Aeneas aeternum nomen in a local placename (381), a and Odysseus is highlighted also in the grotesque parody of the τύμβος and στήλη Elpenor /Palinurus parallel. It is of course that mark the site of Elpenor’s funeral, and significant that whereas Odysseus is unaware one which gives joy not to the dead but to of Elpenor’s death until he encounters his the land (gaudet cognomine terra, ‘the land shade in the land of the dead (see esp. Od. rejoices in its name’, 383).39Palinurus was an 2 Cf. Bishop (1988), 104: ‘Gone are the anxieties, doubts and tensions: Aeneas is now the leader again 3 The MSS read gaudet cognomine terrae; the reading and his behaviour is brisk and businesslike.’ See also given is that of Servius, as adopted by Austin (1977). In Heinze (1914), 275. his note on the passage, Austin insists on taking terra as 65 Iris | Journal of the Classical Association of Victoria | New Series | Volume 31 | 2018 Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: Intertextual Keys to Aeneid 6 expendable pawn, as the conclusion of Book those who lived in previous generations and 5 makes clear; to grant his request for burial taking the opportunity to converse with his now would impose an unacceptable delay on former comrades at Troy; the break in the the mission. No room here for the obligation middle of Odyssey 11 (330–84) which returns due to a dead comrade, and the sibyl steps in to us to the palace of Alkinoos has something ensure that any such feelings on Aeneas’ part of the air of a returned traveller asking if his will be suppressed. It is Misenus who gets the audience really wants to see any more of his Elpenor treatment of mound, arms, oar and holiday snapshots. Virgil’s inversion of this trumpet, because the sibyl perceives in him narrative order turns Aeneas’ encounters a pollution that affects the whole enterprise with Palinurus, Dido and Deiphobus and (totamque incestat funere classem, ‘and is polluting his general vision of the afterlife into a the entire fleet by his death’, 150).