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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Classical Association of the Middle West and South is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Classical Journal. http://www.jstor.org 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.).