Some Devices of Drama used in Aeneid 1—4 A paper read to the Virgil Society, February 1974, # by Jonathan Foster, M.A., B.Phil.' # That the episode of Dido (one might say the whole unit books 1 —4 of the Aeneid) is worked out very much in the spirit of Greek tragedy was remarked by Henry Nettleship ninety-nine years ago. * I cannot therefore lay claim to novelty in my choice of subject, nor yet do I intend simply to rearrange kaleidoscopically the many detailed discussions of this subject which can be found in various places, notably in what I like to think of as Pease’s Chrestomathy, that is to say his introduction to his massive commentary on book 4. 2 Austin’s and Williams’s commentaries on the individual books, Austin’s article on the Wooden Horse, 3 and Michael Wigodsky’s ‘Vergil and Early Latin Poetry,’4 (which has some helpful remarks on Virgil and Greek tragedy also) are all distinguished contributors in this field. At the same time, and with the greatest possible respect to one of our Vice- Presidents, Dr Michael Grant, I feel bound to protest in the strongest terms at the suggestion which he makes twice on one page of his recent book ‘Roman Myths’ 5, that there may have been some tragic play on the subject of Dido and Aeneas in existence when Virgil wrote: better to accept his reservation that such an hypothesis may well be an unfounded reflection on Virgil’s originality. True, we all recognize that the Aeneid is an inspired synthesis, and I shall presently make a suggestion of my own about Virgil’s relationship to contemporary Roman drama. My recent predecessor on this rostrum, Mr E.L. Harrison, 6 explored ‘with learn­ ing and ability’, as Sellar said of Conington, the reason why Venus in that part of book 1 (314-417) where she meets Aeneas in her disguise as a Tyrian huntress should have worn the cothurnus. His conclusion, following the admirable method of Viktor Poschl, is that Virgil chose a booted rather than a sandalled figure for the disguise so that by placing the line 337 purpureoque alte suras vincire cothurno where it is he might make of the word cothurno a symbol signalizing the immediately following ‘tragic prologue’. As Mr Harrison points out, this corresponds to the sort of divine prologue which is so common in Greek tragedy: he instances Aphrodite’s in Euripides’ Hippolytus. (Let us keep that example in mind for subsequent reference.) I agree with Mr Harrison that we should not be surprised that Venus disguises herself before trespassing on the Punica regna, the preserve of her arch-opponent Juno: yet, that she reveals herself to her son only when her mission is complete and it is too late for Juno to do anything about it, seems to me to represent only a part of the truth. There is an element of ambiguity and mystification about the whole scene, which may be not unrelated to the likelihood (which I have demonstrated elsewhere 7) that Virgil modelled his ghost-scene on that classic ghost-scene which gave its title to Plautus’s Mostellaria, the scene in which Tranio solemnly seeks to hoodwink old Theopropides. Mr. Harrison’s con­ clusions about the ‘divine prologue’ and my contention that the central passage is based on 28 the New Comedy sit well together: the scene in Plautus, though not a prologue, is in the expository style in which prologues are written. My first contention is that Virgil meant us to regard the family of the Tyrian king whom he called Belus, that is to say Dido, Anna and Pygmalion, as a tragic house like, say, that of Pelops, of Atreus or of Laomedon. Venus tells how the ghost of Sychaeus came to Dido in a dream, ‘caecumque domus scelus omne retexit’ (356). Later Venus sends Cupid as a substitute for little Ascanius (657ff.) Why? ‘Quippe domum timet ambiguam Tyriosque bilingues.’ In book 4 (318) Dido pleads with Aeneas, ‘miserere domus labentis’: this means more than just ‘the house is already falling now that Aeneas no longer upholds it’ (as Austin glosses it). We are dealing with the fall of the house of Belus. Now, in terms of tragedy, why does a 66/ua«; fall? In the words which Ismene addresses to the blinded Oedipus in the Oedipus Coloneus (369f.) because of ‘that old ancestral curse such as got hold of (Oedipus’s) house to its misery’. What is the usual cause of such a fall, and why does furor come between the members of a family as it did to the Belids? At Oedipus Tyrannus 883ff. the Chorus calls down an imprecation on arrogance in deed and word shown by a man with no fear of Dike and no respect for the habitations of the Gods, the man who will not win his advantage fairly and abstain from impious conduct, the man who violates the sanctity of holy things. That Pygmalion belongs in this ghastly company is evident enough, but how did it all begin? In Virgil’s words from another context, quo numine laeso? In the case of the Belids the answer is, I submit, Venus. If it is Venus, as I hope to show, then here is another reason for her disguise, other than Homeric motif or the desire to escape Juno’s notice: she gives a summary account of the family of Dido, with no mention of her father, only ‘summa....fastigia rerum’ (342). But ‘longa est iniuria, longae/ambages’. Venus I believe knows a lot more than she discloses to Aeneas at this stage: what she tells of Dido in the person of the sensuous Tyrian girl arouses Aeneas’s sympathy and compassion, perhaps even paves the way for his liaison with her. Venus, though there is no indication that she intended the two to meet, turns Juno’s stratagem of wrecking Aeneas at Carthage to the destruction of Dido. How then can we be sure that Venus is behind this family curse, just as Juno is Teucris addita? Dido’s celebrated speech to Aeneas, when he has emerged radiant from the mist-cloud, ends with the words non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco (630). This looks like a reminiscence of Orestes’ words in Aeschylus’ Eumenides (276ff.) ‘Schooled in misfortunes I understand many purifications, both when it is right to speak and when to be silent’. Dido acts in a way which is entirely true to life. The meeting with a celebrity generally elicits the declaration ‘I have heard so much about you’. Dido has heard Ajax’s half-brother Teucer, though himself a Greek, speak proudly of the Trojan blood he has from his mother Hesione, Priam’s sister, child of Laomedon. But poor Dido does not like Orestes in Aeschylus (though perhaps this is simply fancy on my part) know when to be silent: call it ebullience on her part, or is it that Venus is already simultaneously 29 at work; Dido, in a way that is redolent of tragic irony, lets out words that must have taken the original audience’s breath away: genitor turn Belus opimam vastabat Cyprum (62If.): her father was at that time making of rich Cyprus a waste land. I cannot believe that this is an idle detail: opimam vastabat, the antithesis is so pointed, the vandalism so flagrant. Not ‘was fighting a war in Cyprus’: is not this the primeval affront to the diva potens Cypri (Horace Odes 1.3.1) which we have been looking for? To emphasize the point Virgil shows Venus soaring off to Paphos at 415 after her disguised interview with Aeneas, and then spiriting Ascanius away to Idalium, her retreat in Cyprus, for the duration of the Carthaginian feast (691 ff.) This to my mind is the aition of the tragedy of the house of Belus. It is not surprising that there is no source other than Virgil for this connection between Teucer and Belus. Virgil, as Professor Williams states in his recent commentary, has most probably invented it, with the intention, I would submit, of lending dramatic verisimilitude to the disclosure which, in terms of the theology of tragedy, justifies the antagonism of Venus to the Belids. That Aeneas makes no reaction in palpable terms to this disclosure does not mean that the reader should ignore it. It may be instructive to note that in Justin’s version of the Dido story (18.5.4f.), which of course makes no reference to Aeneas, Dido kidnapped, as Romulus did the Sabine women, eighty girls from Cyprus, who were earning their dowries by sacred prostitution as Venus’s votaries.. Again an offence against Venus. If Justin and Timaeus had the same source, then Virgil has opted for a more dramatically tractable offence against Venus than the prose tradition could offer him. In this light the furor of Pygmalion resulting in the cruel loss of Dido’s beloved Sychaeus and her scrupulous, not to say obsessive, widowhood which paves the way for her tragic liaison with Aeneas was not without a previous cause. It is quite characteristic of the tragic manner - and contributes to achieving suspense — for the dark secrets of the house and its transmitted guilt to be initially only adumbrated: in Agamemnon for example, as Professor Lloyd-Jones has recently pointed out 8, the original secret of the house of Atreus is brought out into the open only two thirds of the way through, and then by Cassandra. Let me return to the Hippolythus prologue with the question ‘Can Dido be analogous to Phaedra and Hippolytus at once?’ Hippolytus, as Aphrodite tells us (13ff.), calls Aphrodite ‘the most pernicious of the heavenly powers, he abhors the bed of love, marriage he renounces, and honours Apollo’s sister Artemis, daughter of Zeus.’ He has also to suffer, through his father’s curse, as he tells us (137ff.) ‘the hellish heritage of bloodguiltiness won by forgotten ancestors.’ Dido tells Anna she could perhaps have brought herself to bow her head to infidelity to Sychaeus’ memory - si non pertaesum thalami taedaeque fuisset (4.18): it seems, one might object, an odd thing for a faithful univira to say that she is 30 ‘thoroughly sick’ of the whole idea of marriage and weddings.