Contexts of War: Manipulation of Genre in Virgilian Battle Narrative

Contexts ofWar

Contexts ofWar Manipulation of Genre in Virgilian Battle Narrative

Andreola Rossi

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS

Ann Arbor

To Priscilla­ sit tibi terra leuis

Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2004 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America @ Printed on acid-free paper 2007

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rossi, Andreola Contexts of war : manipulation of genre in Virgilian battle narrative I Andreola Rossi. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-472-11359-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Virgil. Aeneis. 2. Epic poetry, Latin-History and criticism. 3. Aeneas (Legendary character) in literature. 4. Trojan War-Literature and the war. 5. Literary form-History-To 500. 6. Battles in literature. 7· Narration (Rhetoric) 8. Rhetoric, Ancient. 9. War in literature. I. Title. PA6825.R67 883' .01-dc22

2003 2003061643

Translations of the Aeneid are from the Aeneid of Virgil by Allen Mandelbaum, copyright © 1971 by Allen Mandelbaum. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Acknowled gments

This project started as a Ph.D. dissertation and since then has undergone numerous metamorphoses and changes of title. Its completion brings me the pleasure of thanking all the friends and scholars who have helped me along the way. First, I want to thank Richard Thomas, my thesis advisor, who convinced me to go back to Virgil, whom I had deserted years earlier, when smitten by a sudden passion for Greek epigraphy. I am also extremely grateful to the other members of my dissertation committee, Alessandro Barchiesi and Wendell Clausen, for their support and constant encouragement. I would also like to thank Elaine Fantham, Andrew Feldherr, Bob Kaster, Joshua Katz, Deborah Steiner, Katharina Volk, Froma Zeitlin, and all the members and students of the Department of Classics at Princeton Univer­ sity, where I was lucky enough to spend my first year after graduation. I am also most grateful to my friends and colleagues at Amherst College­ Cynthia Damon, Rick Griffiths, the late Peter Marshall, Becky Sinos, and Sara Upton-whose wisdom and friendship I treasure, and to all of the members and friends of the Department of Classics at Harvard who have welcomed me back with great warmth. In particular, in connection with this study, I would like to mention my Latin colleagues, Kathy Coleman, Zeph Stewart, Richard Tarrant, Richard Thomas, and, especially, Charlie Segal, whose truly inspirational last seminar on Ovid I audited. Last but not least, I

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want to express my gratitude to all the undergraduate and graduate students I have met in these last few years. Their ideas and their good humor have been a source of strength and support. The editor and the two anonymous readers of the University of Michi­ gan Press offered decisive recommendations for the improvement of the manuscript. David Elmer, Leah Kronenberg, and Tim O'Sullivan have read multiple drafts of the entire manuscript and have rescued me from numer­ ous errors. I will not even try to thank my husband, Piero; my father, my mother, and my brother; and all my extended family. I could not tell what I owe them, "not if I had ten tongues and ten mouths, not if I had a voice never to be broken and a heart of bronze within me." Earlier and shorter versions of chapters 1 and 2 were published respectively as "Reversal of Fortune and Change in Genre in Aeneid 10," Vergilius 43 (1997): 31-44, and "The Fall of Troy: Between Tradition and Genre, " in D. S. Levene and D. P. Nelis, eds., Clio and The Poets: Augustan Poetry and the Traditions of Ancient Historiography (Brill, 2002) , 231-51. I am grateful for permission to reuse that material here. Text and Abbreviations

Translations of the Iliad of Homer are from Richmond Lattimore's 1951 translation (copyright 1951 by The University of Chicago). I am grateful for permission to reuse that material here. Translations of Lucan's Bellum Civile are from S.H. Braund (Oxford 1992) . For other Roman and Greek authors I have often consulted the translations of the Loeb Classical Library and have, in some instances, adapted portions of these translations. Abbre�ations for Greek and Latin authors generally follow the conventions established by Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon and The Oxford Latin Dictionary.

C ontents

Introduction

1

PART ONE

1 The Fall of Troy Between Tradition and Genre

17

2 Aeneid 9-12 Reading the Fabula and the Story

54

PART TWO

3 Epic Landscapes of War

73

4 Epic Contest and the Ideology of War 5 Times of War

105

6 Witnessing the Past

125

7 Spectators and Spectacle The Duel between Turnus and Aeneas PART THREE

8 City Identity in the Aeneid Bibliography Index Locorum General Index

84

197 209 217

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150

Introduction

In his 1995 book A Companion to the Study of Virgil, Nicholas Horsfall voiced his disappointment about the lack of attention devoted to Virgilian battle scenes and invited Virgilian scholars to further the research on this topic. Given that battle is the principal subject-matter of Aen. 9-12, it is most remarkable that so little attention has been paid to Virgil's techniques of structure and arrangement. . . . the subject as a whole is entirely serious, however unfashionable, and its neglect imposes fundamental limitations on our understanding of how Virgil has re­ worked his Homeric material.' The present book is the response to a similar sense of surprise I experienced when I first became interested in the Aeneid's landscapes of war and noticed an evident bibliographical void on the subject, with the exclusion of a few, admittedly very important exceptions.2 In this work, I obviously do not pretend or desire to cover every aspect of this topic that has been labeled "unfashionable" (but is it really?). Rather, I am concerned with the specific issue of generic manipulation in Virgilian 1. Horsfall 1995, 179. 2. See nn. 17 and 23-26 in the present chapter.

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CONTEXTS OF WAR

battle scenes. I study how the Aeneid constantly redefines the epic imagery of war by assimilating narrative systems that are distinctive of other literary genres: above all, historiography, and to a lesser extent, tragedy. My aim is to show how the presence of narrative registers that belong to different literary genres creates multiple systems of signification and, accordingly, multiple visions of reality that effectively call into question the epic nature and quality of Virgilian battle narrative. In this brief introduction, I outline the state of the question on the topic, the methodology I use, and the wider scope of my research. Almost every study of the Aeneid since the time of its first publication has been concerned with its "imitative" and "emulative" nature. As we learn from Donatus's Life of Virgil, a certain Perellius Faustus collected the furta Vergilii [thefts of Virgil ]; Q. Octavius Avitus was the author of another lengthy study entitled, tellingly, 'Of!oiD·np:Et; (Parallel passages), in which, presumably, he traced down the models for many Virgilian verses (octo uolumina quos et unde uersus transtulerit continent).3 Following a similar erudite approach and work­ ing with similar parameters and standards, the great Virgilian commentaries of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth carefully col­ lected, at times in an exclusively comparative way, Virgilian borrowings, so as to better judge Virgil's success or failure in imitating (imitatio) and surpassing (aemulatio) his sources.4 Only in the second half of the twentieth century, however, beginning with Pasquali's seminal essay "Arte allusiva, " which clearly distanced allusion from "imitation," did Latin scholarship begin to recognize the active role played by literary models-that is, their poetic signification-both in the Virgilian text and in Latin poetry more generally.S Of course, the debate about the relation between model and text is far 3. See Don. Vita Vergilii 45. Notoriously, in the same life, Virgil is portrayed as defending himself against these criticisms by declaring that it is easier to steal the club of Hercules than a verse from Homer (Don. Vita Vergilii 46) . 4 . Barchiesi (1984, 9 ) rightly notices that Knauer's 1964 monumental work Die Aeneis und Homer may be viewed in many ways as the culminating moment of this erudite approach, which extends from the furta Vergilii to many of the Virgilian commentaries of the nineteenth and twentieth century. For a history of Virgilian scholarship, see Conte 1986, 23; Farrell 1991, 4-7; N elis 2001, 1-21; Thomas 2001. 5. Pasquali 1951, especially n: "Io non cerco, io non ho mai cercato le fonti di una poesia . . . . In poesia culta, dotta io ricerco quello che da qualche anno in qua non chiamo pili reminiscenze rna allusioni, e volentieri direi evocazioni e in certi casi, citazioni." See also Pasquali 1920. On the importance of Pasquali's short essay, see Conte 1986, 24-26; Thomas 1986, 171; Farrell 1991, 11-17. For important precursors of Pasquali's theory in England and in the United States, see Conte 1986, 25.

Introduction

3

from over.6 The very terms allusion and intertext are not wholly neutral; ? constantly revisited and reinterpreted in light of new theoretical approaches, the names themselves have become a point of controversy in Latin literary studies. In the preface to his 1998 book, Allusion and Intertext, Hinds aptly summarizes the state of the question. Some critical metaphors for the intertextual relation privilege the agency of the author, some that of the reader, some that of the text itself; 8 some describe a later text as acting upon an earlier one, some an earlier text as acting upon a later one, some an action which is reciprocal ("Y alludes to X, " "X influences Y," "X and Y are in dialogue"); certain terms embrace intentionality, others deny or oc­ clude it (e.g., "intertextuality" itself).9 Yet we may still find a common ground amid these sometimes antitheti­ cal theoretical approaches. Most critics would agree that an important first step in reading Virgilian poetry and much other Latin poetry is to recognize a text's literary models; however, these models should no longer be under­ stood and interpreted as inert and static "sources" separate from the text. On the contrary, they become part of the text itself and function as a subtext. The network of dynamic relationships, the intertextuality (I here use this term in an enlarged meaning that takes into account both authorial subjectivity and text-reader oriented intertextuality) 10 established between 6. Among the extensive literature, see Giangrande 19 67; West and Woodman 1979; Barchiesi 1984; Conte 1986; Thomas 1986; Farrell 1991; Barchiesi 1993; Wills 1996; Hinds 1998; Edmunds 2001, with an up-to-date bibliography. 7· Kennedy (1995, 86) eloquently remarks: "A Cold War exists between those who study 'allusion' and those who study 'intertextuality,' and each term is a shorthand for a complex web of affiliation to, or distaste for, particular critical and methodological assumptions and those who hold them." 8. As advocates of the first type of approach, privileging a tight authorial control, Hinds cites, among others, West and Woodman 1979 and Thomas 1986. For Thomas's reply to Hinds, see Thomas 1999, 6n. 10. As promoter of the second type of approach, Hinds cites Conte 1986, who de-emphasizes the irretrievable moment of authorial production in favor of a more demo­ cratic stress on plural moments of readerly consumption. 9· Hinds 1998, xii. 10. As Hinds notes (1998, 49 n. 63, so n. 64), attempts to use the term intertextuality in this inclusive way are already present in the work of Eco and Conte. On this topic, Hinds also remarks (50-51) : "A series of case-studies in allusive inexactitude, then, has yielded a poetic of correspond­ ing inexactitude, which draws on but also distances itself from the rigidities of philological and intertextualist fundamentalisms alike . . . . practical criticism has to make its compromises with

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CONTEXTS OF WAR

these two narrative systems (the text and the subtext), becomes central to the interpretability of a literary work; it broadens its meaning and moves it beyond its immediate signification. From this perspective, the text is not purely an imitative or emulative product that exists separate from its mod­ els. The text becomes a multilayered narrative system, which assimilates its models in a composite formal construct that in turn organizes its meaning. Since intertextuality becomes key to the interpretation of a literary text, it seems only appropriate to begin this study of the battle scenes of the Aeneid, Virgil's horrida bella,11 by addressing the issue of their literary mod­ els. In his seminal work on Virgil, Heinze pronounced the following authori­ tative judgment on the topic. Four books of the Aeneid, a third of the whole work, are devoted to descriptions of fighting. The economy of the work required that they should be allotted a considerable amount of space. . . . The Iliad provided the prototype for heroic battles; Virgil could not even consider making changes to this model, let alone rejecting it in favour of one of a quite different type. . . . That is why Virgil keeps closer to Homer in these descriptions than in any other part of his poem with the exception of the Funeral Games.12 Ancient authors seem to share Heinze's opinion. Macrobius, although not referring specifically to this section of the poem, long ago recognized that Virgil composed de Homeri specula. Propertius (2.34.65-66) builds an even stronger connection between the Iliad and the second half of the Aeneid: cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Grail I nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade [Ro­ man poets, poets of Greece, make way! Something greater than the Iliad is being born ]. With this laudatory distich, Propertius summarizes Virgil's new poetic achievement, the Aeneid. It is customary to recognize in Propertius's nescio quid maius a direct allusion to Virgil's proem of Aeneid 7 (lines 44-45): maior rerum mihi nascitur ordo, I maius opus moueo. Propertius's reference practicable criticism . . . . As philologists, we need not cease to offer tidy and controlled descrip­ tions of allusions which poets themselves will often have tried to make tidy and controlled, provided that we do not confuse this aspiration to tidiness with the absoluteness of philological rigour. We need not cease to reify topoi, provided that we understand the provisionality of any such reification, for author and reader alike. " 11. The use of the expression horrida bella a s a programmatic description for the poem's second half is drawn from Aen. 7.41-44: tu uatem, tu, diua, mane. dicam horrida bella, I dicam acies actosque animis in funera reges, I Tyrrhenamque manum totamque sub arma coactam I Hesperiam. On this passage, see Horsfall 2000, ad loc. 12. Heinze 1993, 155.

Introduction

5

to the Iliad makes this allusion all the more significant. The reference to the Iliad in language that echoes Virgil's second proem of the Aeneid indicates antiquity's own acknowledgment that the latter half of the Aeneid constitutes Rome's Iliad.'3 But what do we mean when we state that the Iliad is the speculum, to use Macrobius's words, for Virgilian battle scenes? In an important and influen­ tial study, Conte has drawn attention to the two distinct and complementary ways in which Homer functions as model. On the one hand, Homer is the "exemplary" (or source) model; that is, Homer represents the storehouse of epic exemplary content on which Virgil draws extensively. Virgil reproduces Homeric diction and vocabulary, recasts Homeric episodes, and continu­ ously assimilates the characters of the Aeneid to the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey.'4 At the same time, however, Homer functions also as a "code" model. Defined by a highly codified system that relies heavily on ever reus­ able and repeatable narrative registers that range from formulaic verses to type-scenes, Homeric epic establishes the narrative grammar of the genre, for it clearly links thematic content with specific expressive structures. In this capacity, Homeric epic (and, hence, the store of Homeric battle scenes) becomes the immutable narrative paradigm, that is, the "code" model, end­ lessly imitated and virtually duplicated by Homer's epic successors. It be­ comes the organizing narrative system that qualifies (and therefore limits) epic (or at least classical epic) as a genre.' s Hence, in Conte's words, "Homer 13. Propertius' s recognition of the Iliad in the Aeneid comes as no surprise. The incipit of the Aeneid, arma uirumque cano [I sing of arms and of a man ] , adumbrates Virgil's twofold division of the Aeneid into wanderings and battles. More to the point, key passages in the narration build up the expectation that the second part of the poem will be a martial epic of a specific kind. In Aeneid 6, which marks the end of the Odyssean wanderings of Aeneas, the Sibyl anticipates and defines the horrida bella that Aeneas will face in Latium as a repetition of the war at Troy narrated in the Iliad. A new Xanthus, a new Simo!s, and a new Achilles await Aeneas's arrival in Latium (Aen. 6.88-9 0 ) . The expectation o f the new Iliad anticipated a t key junctures of the poem (Aen. 1 . 1 : arma; 7.44-45: maior . . . ordo, I maius opus, 6.88-90) seems to be finally fulfilled in the last four books of the Aeneid, which present themselves as a Virgilian revisitation of the main episodes of the Iliad. On this topic, see, among others, Anderson 1957; Knauer 1964, 266-322; Rabel 1978; Barchiesi 1984; Gransden 1984; Nethercut 1987; Gransden 1991, 1-25; Harrison 1991, xxi-xxx:i; Quint 1993, 65-83; Hardie 1994, 6-1o. 14. Homer functions as "exemplary" model on another level as well. Some of the characters of the Aeneid are fully aware that they are "reenacting" the role of the Homeric heroes; however, their understanding of the role in which they have been cast is often partially wrong or at odds with the understanding of the readers. On this topic and its implications, see, among others, Lyne 1987, 108-44; Quint 1993, 65-82. 15. For the codified narrative system of Homeric battle scenes, see Strasburger 1954; Beye 1964; Fenik 1968; Krischer 1971; Latacz 1977; Kirk 1978.

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CONTEXTS OF WAR

is often, indeed nearly always, Virgil's 'exemplary model' (together with Apollonius of Rhodes, Naevius, Ennius, the Greek and Roman tragedians, and several other authors), but he is also constantly the 'code model."' ' 6 This crucial twofold role played by the Homeric model perhaps explains in itself why the relatively few studies devoted to Virgil's horrida bella have dealt with them in terms of their relationship with Homer. Paying attention to the ways in which Virgil, in a constant and ongoing dialogue with his main "exemplary" and "code" model, either follows in the continuum of the Homeric tradition or else calls attention to his divergences from it has become key to the reading and interpretation of his text.'? For example, Barchiesi perceptively applies this methodology to his analysis of Virgilian duels (the duel between Turnus and Pallas is the focus of his investigation). But first of all-let us go back to our specific problem-the citation of stereotypes like the Homeric ones presents the clear advantage of creating a system of coordinates that highlights every change, even the smallest one, made in respect to that tradition. It is therefore a system of signification with a high narrative potential, ever more efficacious if the "quoted" text is codified, repetitive, and therefore well imprinted in the cultural memory of the audience.' 8 This approach has indeed proved productive and has yielded brilliant results. Barchiesi's La traccia del modello, from which the preceding quote is taken, is a clear example. Yet the approach has also revealed its own limits. By using Homer as the sole possible code model, as Heinze had previously suggested and Conte has more recently advocated, scholars have analyzed the narrative system that informs Virgilian battle scenes along a diachronic line that connects it to Homer and therefore interprets it almost exclusively in its relation to Homer. As a result, they label it "Homeric" when it follows and conforms to the model and "un-Homeric" (which, in this case, is a synonym of "Virgilian") when it visibly differs from it. 16. Conte 1986, 31. 17. Among the most important works, see Krischer 1979; Willcock 1983; Barchiesi 1984; Bonfanti 1985, especially 31-84; Conte 1986, 185-95; Horsfall 1987; Horsfall 1995, 180-81. See also Hardie's 1994 commentary on Aeneid 9 and Harrison's 1991 commentary on Aeneid 10, for excellent observations. For interesting parallels between Virgilian battle scenes and those in later Latin epics, see Raabe 1974· 18. Barchiesi 1984, 33. Cf. Krischer 1979, 143: "In the passages which will be examined all or nearly all of the narrative elements are clearly Homeric; nevertheless Virgil manages to use them in such a way as to form a deliberate contrast to the Homeric conventions or outlook."

Introduction

7

Can we characterize Virgilian battle narrative otherwise than by its con­ nection to the Homeric code? Can we move beyond the pairs Homer and Virgil, Iliad and Aeneid, and define the nature (and quality) of this narrative system in terms other than the ones I have already mentioned? Doubtless, the fragmentary survival of Naevius's Bellum Punicum and Ennius's Annales has impaired an approach of this sort. Virgil's lexical debt to his Roman epic predecessors, especially Ennius, emerges quite clearly from the surviving fragments, but their brevity makes it virtually impossible to establish with any degree of confidence the influence exercised by the Annales on a wider structural and narrative level.' 9 On the Greek side, the almost entire loss of Hellenistic epic poetry and the disappearance of the entire bulk of what Ziegler, in a rather controver­ sial essay, labeled "historical epic" 2 0 obviously hinder our understanding of the development of the genre. In its actual state of preservation, Greek epic allows just a few confused glimpses of its own history; and to trace its evolution, we are still heavily dependent on Apollonius's Argonautica2' and the few fragments of Rhianus's Messeniaca.22 In light of these noticeable voids in the Greco-Roman epic tradition, a different genre may become relevant to the study of the martial landscape of the Aeneid: Roman and Hellenistic historiography. Virgilian scholars have not completely neglected this field of inquiry, but their studies reveal a specific objective. Roman (and Hellenistic) historiogra­ phy has been used mainly as a useful storehouse of data that allows one to connect features and elements that do not belong to Homeric warfare to Roman (or Hellenistic) military praxis and ideology. This has been the ap­ proach of Lersch (cf. also Servius), Kroll, and Wicker1.23 Similarly, in a very 19. For Virgil's debt to Ennius and otber earlier Latin epic poets, see Norden 1915; Wigodsky 1972; Skutsch 1985. On early Roman epic, see Feeney 1991, especially 99-108; Hainsworth 1991, 7687; Dominik 1993; Goldberg 1993. 20. Ziegler 1934. Ziegler gives an extensive list of titles of historical epics written during tbe Hellenistic period and emphasizes tbe influence of tbis tradition on tbe Annales of Ennius. See also Fantuzzi 1988, introductions to the Italian translation of Ziegler. In a somewhat too radical fashion, Cameron (1995, 263-301) casts doubts about the very existence of a "historical epic" in the Hellenistic age. 21. On tbe Argonautica as an important exemplary model for tbe Aeneid, see Clausen 1987 and Nelis's in-depth study (2001). 22. Althoug[I we possess only a few fragments of Rhianus's Messeniaca, we may still have a fairly good idea of tbe structure of his work, because it was apparently tbe main source for Pausanias's book on Messenia (book 4), especially for 4-17.10-4.24.3· On tbis topic, see Couat 1931, 350-72; Cameron 1995, 346-47. On Rhianus and Hellenistic poetry, see, further, Misgeld 1968; Castelli 1994; Fantuzzi and Hunter 2002, 335. 23. Lersch 1843; Kroll 1924, 178-84; Wickert 1930.

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CONTEXTS OF WAR

influential article titled "Anti-antiquarianism in the Aeneid," Sandbach col­ lects all the "military anachronisms" in the Aeneid and explains Virgil's mod­ ernization as an attempt to "Italianize" the all too "Greek" Homeric martial landscape: "Now although Homer was, as Heinze says, the authority on the warfare of the heroic age, he was no authority on the weapons and tactics of ancient Italy. . . . Must we expect modernity on the battle-field as on the sea? The answer is that there is a mixture of old and new that is not without interest." 2 4 Alternatively, some Virgilian scholars have turned to Roman histo­ riography and to Livy's Ab urbe condita in particular to interpret episodes of the Aeneid in light of historical events 2s or have conjoined Virgil and Livy on ideological grounds, interpreting their works broadly as a reflection of the so­ called Augustan experience.26 But it is possible to study the relations between the Aeneid and historiography from a different perspective. It has long been noted that battles, even though historically different from one another, tend to be recorded by Hellenistic and Roman historians according to precise narrative conventions. In other words, the various aspects and episodes of war are represented in a codified manner and become, in turn, type-scenes. In his seminal work on Livy, Walsh has called attention to the presence of this narrative phenomenon: "Especially notable is his [i.e., Livy's ] tendency towards uniformity of treatment of sieges, battle accounts, . . . and 'human' situations of a dramatic and pathetic kind." 27 Yet 24. Sandbach 1965-66, 30. For valuable observations on this topic, see also Nisbet 1978-80; Harrison 1991; Hardie 1994; Horsfall 2000. For an exhaustive list of all the "anachronistic" (i.e., un-Homeric) features in Virgilian battle scenes, see E. V. s.v. "combattimento." Somewhat differ­ ently, Heinze (1993, 372-73) conjoins the Aeneid and Hellenistic historiography on the basis of shared aesthetic principles that can be traced back to Aristotle: "Both Virgilian epic and the historiography of Duris and Phylarchus are really based on one and the same theory: the Aristotelian theory of tragedy." 25. For an attempt to construct typological parallels between the events of Aeneid 9 and early Roman history, see Sordi's 1964 analysis, which connects the siege of the Trojan camp in Aeneid 9 and the Gauls' siege of Rome, when the urbs, according to part of the historiographical tradition, was eventually saved by the sudden arrival of Camillus. On Aeneid 9 and 10 as foreshadowing events of the Second Punic War, see especially Horsfall 1974; Simpson 1975; Hardie 1994, 30. Weinstock (1971, 398 ) , following Heinze's lead (1993, 188 n. 44) , interprets Aeneas's sacrifice of the eight young warriors in Aeneid 10 as a reflection of Octavian's sacrifice of three hundred knights and senators at the altar of Divus Julius after the surrender of Perusia. 26. Walsh ( 1961, 10) saw a remarkable correspondence between the spirit animating the first decade of the A UC and that of Virgil's Aeneid. For a similar opinion, see Syme 1952, 318, 463. For an analysis of the verbal correspondences between Virgil's Aeneid and Livy's A UC, see Norden 1915, especially 155-59; Rostagni 1942; Woodman 1989, with bibliography. 27. Walsh 1961, 191. The stock elements employed by Livy are analyzed in Witte 1910; Kroll 1924, 351-69; Burck 1934, 178-233; Plathner 1934; Mendell 1935 (Mendell's focus, however, is

Introduction

9

these stock elements are not specifically a "Livian" feature, nor should they be viewed as Nissen viewed them-as evidence of Livy's military incompe­ tence, which supposedly prompted the armchair historian to use topoi in an attempt to either simplify or fill in the gaps of his historical sources.28 Indeed, Tacitus-to remain for the present moment on the Latin side­ follows an identical technique. In a recent article, Woodman calls attention to Tacitus's practice of self-imitation in his description of battle accounts in the Annals and in the Histories. 2 9 Even a cursory glimpse a t rhetorical treatises confirms the widespread use of fixed conventions to narrate battle scenes.3° Hermogenes, a rhetorical theorist of the second century c.E., lists the various elements that should be part of a descriptio pugnae. For example, if we are describing a war, we shall first of all mention the preliminaries, the generals' speeches, the outlay on both sides, and their fears; next, the attacks, the slaughter, and the dead; finally, the victory trophy, the triumphal songs of the victors, the tears and enslavement of the victims.3' mainly Tacitus); Walsh 1954; McDonald 1957; Walsh 1961, 191-218; Pauw 1991. According to these scholars, Livy follows primarily the conventions established by what has been variously labeled as "peripatetic," "tragic," or, more simply, "Hellenistic" historiography. For Hellenistic historiogra­ phy, its origins and features, see Schwartz 1897; Scheller 1911; Burck 1934, 176; Ullman 1942. Cf. Walbank 1955; Walbank 19 60; Strasburger 19 66; Kebric 1977; Sacks 1981, 144-70; Gray 1987; Wiseman 1993; Feldherr 1998, 7-9; Manieri 1998, 157-78. Although from different perspectives and in various degrees, this last group of scholars rightly reject the notion of a "tragic" historiogra­ phy completely distinct from the so-called pragmatic historiography of Polybius (and Thucydi­ des) and convincingly argue that some of the narrative devices adopted by these Hellenistic historians (the so-called tragic historians) inform the nature and scope of the genre itself and can be traced back to earlier traditions. 28. Cf. Nissen 1863, 94: "in Livy all the battle accounts are frighteningly dull variations on an identical theme." 29. Woodman 1979 . The battle accounts in the two passages examined by Woodman (Ann. 1.61-65 and Hist. 2.70, 5.14-15) are unusual. In both cases, the visit to the place where a battle had taken place (the Teutoburg Forest in the Annals and the site of the battle of Cremona in the Histories) inspires the soldiers who had been present to describe and relive the events. 30. On the relations between historiography and rhetoric (and rhetorical models) , see Woodman 1988. 31. OLOV d JtOAE!WU AEYOLflEV EXLYJVEXEW£, as Aeneas aims at Callimachean brevitas. In Homer's i'>LY)V£­ XEW£, Virgil would not miss the opportunity of exploiting the famous Callimachean rejection of £v aeLOfW i'>LYJVEXE£, "one continuous song, " in the prologue of the Aitia. 111 Virgil's replacement of the Homeric term i'>LYJVEXEW£ with breviter acquires its full significance only in the context of the allusion to Callimachus.112 Yet another important element of difference between the two accounts seems to distance Aeneas from Odysseus, as is noted by Heinze. The events of Odysseus' homeward journey nearly all involved Odys­ seus himself, and putting them into the first person instead of the third entailed few changes in the presentation. But for Virgil it was a matter of presenting the ebb and flow of the nocturnal battle through all the streets, palaces and shrines of Troy, and the deeds and sufferings of a whole series of people, as the experiences of one single man.113 110. D'Ippolito (1976, 26-28) views the opposition between the Virgilian breviter and the Homeric Oti']VEXEw,; as evidence of two juxtaposed narrative modes. Further, he notices that the opening lines of Tryphiodorus seem to recall the Virgilian passage (II. exc. 5: mxcln l.iloov a ou'lfl) . Before D'Ippolito, Cartault (1926, 1:211) had already commented on the importance of this poetic statement: "llt!']Vcx!\w,; est caracteristique de l'ampleur developpee de Ia narration homerique et s'oppose a breviter . . . caracteristique de celle bien plus concentree de Virgile." For an ancient comparison between the Homeric and the Virgilian passage, see Macrobius Sat. 5.5.2. Macrobius already viewed the Virgilian passage as an important programmatic statement. 111. On the Callimachean expression ilv a£LO!J.a Oti']VEXE,;, see Cameron 1995, 338-61. Cam­ eron believes that the Callimachean rejection of "one continuous song" is to be interpreted as a criticism not of epic but of a certain kind of elegy, exemplified especially by the Lyde of Antimachus. Fantuzzi and Hunter (2002, 90-91) convincingly argue that such a rejection should be interpreted as a criticism of a type of style and arrangement of material, rather than as an open attack against a specific literary genre. 112. The term Oti']VEXEW,; appears also three times in the Argonautica of Apollonius. Both the poet himself (1.648-49= hll.a ,;l !J.U-&ou,; I AtfuAil\cw XQELW !!£ OLI']VcXEW,; ayOQ£U£tV;) and his characters (2.390-91: ai.Ai:J. l:LI'] !!£ JtUALV XQELW UALl:EOfut I !J.UVWoUV[] ,;a l!xaom OLI']VcXE,; E�cVEJtovm; 3-401: ti XcV ta EXUOta OLI']VcXEW,; ayOQcUot,;;) criticize the telling of stories Otl']vex!\w,;. On this topic, see Hunter 1993, 195, with bibliography. 113. Heinze 1993, 3·

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Aeneas undertakes a kind of narration very different from that of Odysseus, which links him to another model informing his role as narrator and inspir­ ing his narrative choices: the messenger of tragedy. Many of the narrative affinities between Aeneas's speech and the (?fjmt; of an ayyEAOt; have been judiciously pointed out by scholars, particularly by Ussani and Austin.U 4 I will therefore confine myself here to a brief analysis of the exordium of Aeneas's speech and its points of connection with the messenger speeches of Aeschylus's Persians. Just as it is painful for Aeneas to remember his tale (quamquam animus meminisse horret luctuque refugit), so it is painful for the messenger of the Persians to recall the memory of the Athenians: "0 name of Salamis most odious to my ears! Alas, how I groan when I recall the memory of Athens" [ cb JtAELOLOV £x1tot; OVO[tU LUAU[tLVOt; XAVELV I cpEil , 'tWV 'AfuJv&v we OLEV(l) bLEbLYU[lEVoc] .ns Likewise, Aeneas's emphasis on his role as eyewitness (Aen. 2 . 5 : quaeque ipse miserrima uidi) owes much to the common opening state­ ment of messenger speeches.116 The messenger of the Persians declares in his opening remarks that he is not reporting mere hearsay but himself bears witness to the disaster: "and in truth, Persians, since I was present and did not hear the tale from report of others, I can clearly tell which crimes have been committed" [xat wnv JtUQWV YE XoU A6yout; aAAWV XAUWV, I II£gam, cp gaom[i av ol' EJtOQoVVihl xaxa] .117 Finally, the adverb breviter, which so clearly marks the contrast between the narratives of Aeneas and Odysseus, finds close correspondence in the Persian messenger's claim to brevity: "many being the misfortunes, I announce only a few" [:rtoU&v nag6VLwv of.. iy' anayy£Uw xaxa ] . ns Further evidence that Aeneas is modeling the exordium of his Iliupersis on that of a messenger of tragedy might come from Aeneid 1. As Aeneas lands on the shores of Carthage and meets his mother, Venus, disguised as a huntress, Venus begins her speech in a similar fashion. Dressed in red boots (purpureoque . . . coturno) 119 rather than the sandals proper to her disguise, 114. Ussani (1950) recognizes in the messenger of Aeschylus's Persians an important model for Aeneas. Like Aeneas, the messenger is a defeated soldier who brings news (here, to Queen Atossa) of a defeat in which he actively participated (here, that of the Persians) . For a similar view, see Austin 1964, at 2.5, 499, 506. 115. Pers. 284-85. 116. Cf. Soph. OT 1237-40; Aj. 748. 117. Pers. 266-67. 118. Pers. 330. 119. Aen. 1.337. Harrison (1972-73) compares Venus's speech to the prologue delivered by a god in a Euripidean tragedy. Note also the application of the theatrical term scaena (stage) to the

The Fall of Troy

53

she qualifies herself as a tragic actor; accordingly, the exordium of her account of the queen Aeneas is about to meet will recall that of the tragic messenger and, hence, of Aeneas. Although long is the tale of wrong and long its winding course, she will follow only the main paths of the story (sed summa sequar fastigia rerum).120 Not only does Virgil have Aeneas reject Homeric OLYJVEXEW£ in favor of a narrative that aims at brevitas; he has him simultaneously effecting a genre shift by creating an affinity with tragedy. Precisely the recognition of Ae­ neas's role as a messenger, as an ayyeAO£ of tragedy, best explains Aeneas's narrative choices. As a messenger of tragedy, as a narrator and focalizer who wishes to inspire in his narratee, Dido, pity and fear, he will exploit the most dramatic and universal components of the tragic theme of the fall of the city (as he has inherited them from tragedy and historiography), thereby creat­ ing a novel revision and rewriting of the Iliupersis, whose striking brevity is eclipsed only by its sophisticated manipulation of genre.12 1

Libyan landscape (Aen. 1.164-65: tum siluis scaena coruscis I desuper, horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra). 120. Aen. 1.342. 121. For an in -depth discussion on focalization, see chap. 4.

Two

Aeneid 9 - 1 2 Reading the Fabula and the Story The Epic Plot

In a famous passage of the Poetics, Aristotle recognizes plot structure ( 6 [tiHtol;), defined as the organization of events, as the most important element of tragedy: drama is mimesis not of people as such but of actions and life; both happiness and unhappiness rest on action.' Since, in life, men have certain qualities by virtue of their character but achieve or fail to achieve happiness only by their actions, so, too, in drama, it is not the function of the agents' actions to allow the portrayal of their characters; rather, it is for the sake of their actions that characterization is included.2 Hence, for Aristotle, plot structure is not a vehicle or framework for something else; rather, it con­ stitutes the primary significance of poetic drama: "the events and the plot are the goal/end of tragedy, and the goal/end is what matters most of all" [·tc'x :n:gay[tma xat 6 [tiHlo\; 'tEAO\; 1:f]\; •gaycpbla\;, 1:0 b£ 'tEAO\; [tEytm:ov cmaVLmv] .3 The same concept surfaces later on in Poetics 23; there, however, Aristotle talks explicitly about epic. In this genre, plot structure is also seen as essential, and, 1. Po. 6.5-7: A.l;yw yaQ !!iHrov toihov ,;�v o1Jv&mv ,;wv JtQawcnwv . . . !J.EyLmov 6E t oinwv ilmlv � ,;&v JtQawcnwv a1Jmaov;. � yaQ 'tQay 0 and the dashing of weapons.2 1 The only feature that is conspicuously absent from such scenes and that, for 14. Scenes representing the advance of an army are not limited to the opening of a new day of war. They are also employed to introduce a new phase of the battle. In such cases, the narrative structure of the scene may vary depending on its function. It can follow the "mirror structure" just described in text. Cf., for example, 4.422-45 (advance of the two armies after Pandarus breaks the truce) ; 14.378-91 (the battle resumes with the intervention of Poseidon) . But in a few cases, because of the intrinsically different nature of the narrative development, these type-scenes have a different narrative structure. For example, in the Trojan advance against the Greek camp in Iliad 12, the scene focuses entirely on the Trojans, with only brief mention of the defending Greeks (the Trojan advance is described at lines 80-107 and 195-254; the Greeks are finally mentioned at 254-55) . Cf. also Iliad 16: corresponding to the detailed description ofPatroclus and the Myrmidons entering into battle (16.210-20, 257-77) is a brief mention of the Trojans (278-83) before the fight proper begins. 15. See Fenik 1968, 10; Willcock 1983, 88. 16. See II. 4.446-56, 470-72; 5.84, 627; 6.1-4; 8.60-65; 11.214-16, 336-37; 12.154-61, 277-89, 337-41, 417-35; 13.169, 330-44> 540, 673; 14.24-26, 389-401; 15-312-19, 405-14, 696-715; 16.563-68, 763-76; 17.360-76, 384-401, 424-25. See also Fenik 1968, 178-79. 17. See II. 17.385. See also 11.810-11, 17.745. 18. See II. 4.449, 16.566. 19- See II. 11.151-52, 16.775. 20. See II. 8.65, 15.715, 17.360-61. 21. See II. 4.447-49, 8.61. Two other motifs are worth mentioning for their recurrence: the motif of the imaginary spectator (13.343-44, 15.697-98, 17.366-69) and the description of the thought of the army (15.699 -703 ) .

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its very absence, marks them even further as species of a type is the total absence of representation of deaths. Lastly, the description is frequently rounded off by a simile, in which the warriors and the harshness of their struggle are usually compared with an element of nature, such as wind, fire, or a river.2 2 Rout In the Iliad, the treatment of rout scenes mirrors that of the collective fight. Corresponding to the melee is the <popo\; (flight), comprising a catalog of continuous killings as each of the leaders of the victorious side in turn kills a named opponent.23 The Iliad develops another narrative convention to com­ plement the <popo\;. In this type-scene, no one from the retreating army is ever mentioned by name; instead, a set of characteristic topoi qualifies the scene and conveys the impression of a more generalized rout.2 4 For example: the pursuer successfully kills the hindmost men of the fleeing enemy; 2s the attacker always strikes where the ranks of the retreating army are thickest; 2 6 the horses long for their now dead masters and pull empty chariots back­ ward; 27 the slaughtered men are now dearer to the vultures than to their wives; 2 8 dust and cries are raised in the flighP 9 As in the "collective fight, " a simile may round off the description of the rout by comparing the violence of the attacking party to a natural catastrophe.3° At times, the simile may instead refer to the fleeing party, emphasizing their panic and terror.3' These two type-scenes, "collective fight" and "rout, " help the audience gain a clearer sense of the development of the action. The former describes the even match. By contrast, the latter shows the victorious army moving for22. See the simile of wind at II. 13.334-36 and 16.765-69; the simile of fire at 17.366; the simile of snow at 12.278-86; the simile of a river at 4.452-55. 23. See Fenik 1968, 10; Willcock 1983, 88. 24. For "rout scenes," see II. 5.84-94; 8.335-42; 11.148-62, 171-80; 16.367-93, 588-92, 656-62; 17.319-21, 755-61; 18.148-54; 21.540-43, 606-11. See also Fenik 1968, 198. 25. See II. 8.342, 11.178. 26. See II. 11.148, 16.377-78. 27. See II. 11.159-61, 16.370-71. See also 11.179-80. 28. See II. 11.162. See also 11.395, 452-55. 29. See II. 11.151-52, 16.373, 21.540-41. 30. See II. 5.87-92 (Diomedes compared to a river), 11.155-57 (Agamemnon compared to fire) , 18.154 (Hector compared to fire ) . 31. See, for example, II. 11.171-76 (the Trojan army compared t o a herd o f cows pursued b y a lion), 17.755-57 (the Achaeans compared to a cloud of jackdaws) .

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ward to its point of conquest, represented either by the Achaean ships (for the Trojans) or by the city of Troy (for the Greeks). Virgilian Conventions

Given the prominence and complexity of Virgilian "primary characters, " it is not surprising that studies of the battle scenes of the Aeneid have focused primarily on their military feats-that is, aristeiae and duels-and have paid only marginal attention to what I have labeled "group scenes." Heinze's remarks are revealing. In his chapter dedicated to Virgilian battle scenes, he dismisses the topic rapidly with a few, important remarks. If we classify the types of battle scenes under various headings, we see at once that the agtmda, the account of an extended sequence of heroic deeds performed by one man, is by far the largest category. . . . all that is left is a few not very extensive passages which serve to give an impression of the general fighting by naming the victors and the vanquished: and we may observe that Virgil inflicts such a "butcher's list" on his readers only once in each bookY Willcock follows Heinze and gives a similar, rather negative assessment of the representation of war in the Aeneid. In general, then, we do not find the Homeric battle conventions in Virgil's battles. Indeed one rarely gets the impression in his descrip­ tion of organised fighting at all, of two lines of battle facing each other. The general action of the armies, the ebb and flow of the battle, are disregarded much more than in the Iliad. What we are normally given is the fighting of individuals, without any clear at­ tempt at localisation. . . . However, Virgil does follow Homer's ex­ ample in having aristeiae.33 32. Heinze 1993, 156-57. 33. Willcock 1983, 90. Going even further than Heinze, Willcock not only argues that Virgilian battle scenes completely ignore the Homeric devices of melee and <po�o� but suggests (98 n. 10) that their conspicuous absence from the narrative may be attributed to the author's ignorance of these Homeric conventions. Both assertions need closer scrutiny. At Aeneid 10, the rather long description of the aristeia of Mezentius reaches a close at line 746 with the death of Orodes. Hereafter, the companions of Mezentius, stirred up by the feats of their leader (1 0 . 738: conclamant socii) , successfully assail the enemy. What follows is a catalog of killings (10.747-52):

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Many other scholars subscribe to these conclusions, including Raabe, whose monograph Plurima Mortis Imago is devoted partly to this topic.34 S.J. Harrison, in the introductory pages of his 1991 commentary on Aeneid 10, draws a similar picture of the Aeneid's scenario of war: "Vergil's basic tactic in his battle-scenes, taking up the Homeric technique of the agLm£ia, was to follow the fortunes of a particular major warrior. . . . Allied to this presenta­ tion of major heroes is the continuous sense of the poet's interest in the minor figures who usually constitute their victims."3s Thus, Virgilian scholars virtually unanimously describe the battle scenes of the Aeneid as a continuum of major aristeiae and duels that lack the clarity and complexity that Napoleon had admired in the Homeric counter­ part: "Quand on lit 1' Iliade, on sent a chaque instant qu' Homere a fait la guerre. . . . Le journal d'Agamemnon ne serait pas plus exact pour les dis­ tances et les temps, et pour la vraisemblance des operations militaires, que Caedicus kills Alchatoiis; Sacrator, Hydaspes; Rapo, Parthenius and Orses; Messapus, Clonius and Lycaon's son Ericetes; Valerus, the Lycian Agis. Admittedly, Willcock recognizes the winning faction as Italian and the defeated and killed as Trojan: "And if we bear in mind that this passage comes immediately after Mezentius' aristeia, it is not surprising that the Italians are winning, and Aeneas' men losing" (96 -97) . Yet he remains somewhat puzzled by what follows, for now a certain Thronius is slain by Salius, who is in turn slaughtered by Nealces (10.753: at Thronium Salius Saliumque Nealces). So Willcock is ready to draw his final conclusions and to see this scene as a sort of imperfect <po�o,;: "it may turn out that 10.747-54 . . . is another example of continuous killing by one side . . . . It cannot be wholly true, however, because of line 753, where Salius the victor is immediately the victim" (96, and 98 n. 8 ) . The presence of the adversative at at line 753, though, seems to point in a different direction. By using the emphatic adversative at in initial position to introduce the alternate killing-Salius's killing of Thronius and Nealces's of Salius­ the narrator alerts the reader to the sudden juxtaposition of two different situations, or, put in terms of narrative structure, to a sudden change of type-scene. The <po�o,;, the continuous kill­ ing by one side, is interrupted and has turned into a different type- scene, a melee. Precisely by the abrupt juxtaposition of these two Homeric battle conventions, the narrator is able to convey the idea of a development in the battle scenario from an uneven struggle to an even one. Now, as the narrator points out in the following lines, the two sides have become a fair match for each other: "And now the heavy hand of Mars gave grief and death to both alike; the armies were, both conquerors and conquered, each in turn killing and being killed" [Iam grauis aequabat luctus et mutua Mauors Ifunera; caedebant pariter pariterque ruebant I uictores uictique] (10.755-57). Vir­ gil could not have shown more clearly his perfect awareness of the structures and narrative functions of melee and <po�o,;. On this passage, see also Harrison 1991, at 10.753. Virgil uses these Homeric narrative conventions elsewhere, although admittedly in a limited way. For another melee, see Aen. 9. 569-73, when the Latins are attacking the Trojan camp in the absence of Aeneas, before Pandarus and Bitias decide to open the gate. Cf. Aen. 12.289-310. For <po�o,; apart from Aen. 10.747-52, cf. 12.458- 61, where Aeneas, having been miraculously cured with the help of his mother Venus, gathers up his own troops and leads a charge against the Rutulians. For the catalogs of the slain, see, further, Mazzocchini 2000. 34- Raabe 1974, 192. 35. Harrison 1991, xx:x:ii .

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ne l'est son poeme."36 But is this analysis really accurate? Or has the scholars' judgment been biased by the virtually exclusive attention devoted to Virgil­ ian duels and aristeiae? In the next four chapters, I demonstrate that what I have called "group scenes" are not simply "narrative fillers" inserted between major episodes (duels and aristeiae) to "give an impression of the general fighting, " as Heinze has it. On the contrary, these group scenes are key to a definition of the imagery and ideology of war represented in the Aeneid as opposed to the Iliad. More specifically, I analyze how the introduction of topoi that belong to historiography disrupts the epic code of signification and thereby calls into question the store of collective values that the code represents (chap. 4) . Further, I study how these topoi create a significant temporal dissonance within the primary narrative and function as vectors that bridge the gap between different temporal dimensions, namely, the Bakhtinian absolute past and the readers' emerging present (chap. s). I conclude part 2 by discussing how the presence of these multiple temporal and cultural systems of reality in the primary narrative affects the Aeneid in its capacity as an epic poem and, eventually, redefines the role of the audience (chaps. 6-7 ).

3 6 . Quoted i n Willcock 1983, 98 n. 11.

Four

Epic C ontest and the Ideology of War A declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena, the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing­ drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out among themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting. -Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

The Meeting of the Armies

And now Rutulian armies make their way across the open plain, with many horses, embroidered robes, and gold. Messapus marshals the vanguard; Tyrrhus' sons take up the rear; and at the center of the line is Turnus, their captain-even as the silent Ganges that rises high with seven tranquil streams, or Nile when his rich flood ebbs from the fields and he at last sinks back into his channel. (Virg. Aen. 9.25-32)

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Spreading like the silent (taciturn) Ganges, with its calm and inexorable flow, or like the Nile when its rich floods ebb from the field, the Rutulian army marches in full array against the Trojan camp decked in embroidered fabrics and golden trappings. With this grand description of Turnus's army at the opening of Aeneid 9 begin the full-scale operations and the horrida bella of the Aeneid, foretold by the Sibyl in her prophecy in book 6 and in the proem of book 7·' Through Virgil's narrative, however, the reader is immediately offered an alternative and more disquieting revisualization of the same event. From the Trojans' perspective, the majestic advance of the Rutulians becomes a sudden cloudbank that gathers with black dust and darkness that rises from the plains (hie subitam nigro glomerari puluere nubem I prospiciunt Teucri ac tenebras insurgere campis).2 This image, a recurrent topos in Homeric imagery, is widely employed in the Iliad to describe the movements of an army, and Knauer appropriately cites a series of Homeric "parallels."3 In Iliad 3, as the Greeks and Trojans are about to face each other on the first day of combat (exactly the situation in the Aeneid) , a similar scenario is described: "As on the peaks of a mountain the south wind scatters the thick mist, no friend to the shepherd, but better than night for the robber, and a man can see before him only so far as a stone cast, so beneath their feet the dust drove up in a stormcloud of men marching, who made their way through the plain in great speed." 4 Yet the passage in the Aeneid establishes a profound tension between the sense of the original and the sense its evocation carries into the new text. In the Aeneid, the Homeric theme is no longer part of the descriptive frame presented by the external primary narrator-focalizer.s Here, the exter­ nal narrator temporarily hands over the narration to the characters of the story, who comprise the internal secondary focalizer.6 The simple narrator-text 1. On the river simile, see Hardie 1994, ad loc.; Saylor 1990, 93· 2. Aen. 9-33-34· 3· Knauer 1964, ad loc. For the use of the topos in the Iliad, see 13.334-38, 23.364-67. 4· II. 3.10-14. 5. The term focalization was first coined by Genette (1980, 161-211). Criticizing traditional accounts of point of view that conflated the aspect of "who speaks" and that of "who sees," Genette applied to the first phenomenon the term voice, to the second, the term mood. The mood, in turn, can be regulated by different kinds of focalization: nonfocalization, internal focalization, and external focalization. On this topic, see Bal 1985, 144-60; Genette 1988, 65-77. For a good bibliography-of special interest for the classicist-on this issue, see Fowler 1990. Fowler coins the term deviant focalization for all the instances of implicit embedded focalization in a text where focalizer and narrator do not coincide. See also Bonfanti 1985; Conte 1986, 141-84; de Jong 1987. 6. In my terminology, I follow de J ong' s scheme, which is in turn closely modeled on Bal' s. De Jong (1987, 101) defines a narrative situation of complex narrator-text or embedded focalization as

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gives way to a complex narrator-text in which the external narrator-focalizer embeds in his/her narrator-text the focalization of one of the characters. In this instance, the shift to an embedded focalization is triggered by the verb "to see" (prospiciunt), which here connotes both the Trojans' geometric and their semantic perspectives.? The topos reused within this explicit embedded focal­ ization thereby creates a stark contrast of narrative perspectives. The massive and ordered movement of the Latin army in their shining armor, described by the external narrator-focalizer, is revisualized by the Trojans (prospiciunt) as "a sudden cloudbank" of black dust and darkness (nigro puluere, tenebras). 8 I n the eyes o f the Trojans, the bright colors that mark the advance of the Rutulians (9.26: diues equum, diues pictai uestis et auri) become darkness and a premonition of a sudden death.9 one where the primary narrator-focalizer (NF1) temporarily hands over focalization (but not narration) to one of his or her characters, who thereby takes a share in the presentation of the story. De Jong (102) also draws an important distinction between explicit embedded focalization and implicit embedded focalization. In the former, the transition from simple narrator-text to complex narrator-text is explicitly marked; in the latter, it is not. Explicit embedded focalization can be roughly divided into three kinds of passages: (1) those describing the content of perceptions; (2) those describing the content of thoughts, emotions, and feelings; (3) indirect speech. In tum, these three kinds of passages are introduced by verbs of (1) seeing or hearing (see, look at, look with wonder, appear, hear, etc. ) ; (2) thinking or remembering (know, recognize, think, deem, ponder, consider, feel sorrow, want, aspire, be eager, etc. ) ; (3) speaking (ask, bid, refuse, assent, pray, order, exhort, etc. ) . By contrast, implicit embedded focalization includes final clauses, some causal clauses, and deliberative questions. The reason for qualifying such constructions as embedded focalization is based on their semantic value: final clauses express the intention of characters, while indirect questions and some causal clauses express their questions and motives. Embedded focalization may be futher expressed by (4) similes and (5) affective and "emotionally colored" words. On these last two categories, see de Jong 1987, 123-46. 7· On verbs of seeing as important triggers for embedded focalization, see Bonfanti 1985, 26. In regard to verbs of seeing, Bonfanti (32) draws a distinction between what she calls "geometric perspective," which is triggered by verbs of seeing and limits the external focus of the scene as it is viewed by the character, and "semantic perspective," which is an internal visualization of the scene by the character. A similar distinction was anticipated by Rosati (1979, 559-60 ) . 8. Aen. 9-33-34· Cf. the speech o f Caicus that follows this description (Aen. 9.36 ) : quis globus, o ciues, caligine uoluitur atra? For a similar expression, see Aen. 11.876-78: uoluitur ad muros caligine turbidus atra I puluis, et e speculis percussae pectora matres I femineum clamorem ad caeli sidera tollunt. 9. On darkness and its close connections with the imagery of death, see Amberg 1961, especially 466-69. For the funereal/mortuary associations of tenebrae in Latin poetry, cf., among others, Cat. 3.13; Ov. Met. 15.154; Prop. 2.20.17; Virg. Aen. 6.545. See especially Aen. 11.824 (death of Camilla) : et tenebris nigrescunt omnia circum. For the use of puluis to mean ashes, see Hor. Carm. 4.7.16; Prop. 2.13.35. For the relation of the adjective niger to the imagery of death, see Tib. 1.3.4, 3.5.5; Prop. 2.24.34. For a different opinion, see Hardie 1994, at 9 .36; reporting Warde Fowler's opinion (1919, 93 n. 2), Hardie sees nigra . . . puluere (Aen. 9-33) as "Virgil's description" and caligine . . . atra at line 36 as the excited expansion of Caicus, who is trying to make an impression on his hearers.

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In the Virgilian passage, the reaction/response of the Trojans captures the moment in which the attacked party first forms a picture of its surround­ ings and gains consciousness of the events that are taking place. Pouillon (although not discussing this passage) has described this focalization tech­ nique well. [The character is seen ] not in his innerness, for then we would have to emerge from the innerness whereas instead we are absorbed into it, but in the image he develops of others and, to some extent, through that image. In sum, we apprehend him as we apprehend ourselves in our immediate awareness of things, our attitudes with respect to what surrounds us-what surrounds us and is not within us.10 This technique of focalization works in concert with a distinctive narra­ tive structure. Rejecting the "mirror structure" that characterizes the Ho­ meric "advance of the army" (discussed in chap. 3 ), Virgil adopts for this type-scene a narrative structure built on antithesis of action. The Virgilian type-scene of the "advance of the army, " which also marks the beginning of every new day of battle in the Aeneid, never presents the action of party B as simultaneous or identical to the action of party A, as was Homeric praxis." Rather, as in the present case-the Rutulians' march against the Trojan camp-party B's action is always a reaction triggered by the prior action (usually an unexpected assault) of party A, as shown by the following outline: First Day of Battle

(Aen. 9.25-158)

Turnus and the Rutulians' march against the Trojan camp Reaction of the Trojans Second Day of Battle

9-459-67

(Aen. 9.459-818) 12

Turnus and the Rutulians' march against the Trojan camp Reaction of the Trojans

10. Pouillon 1946, 79· 11. For Homeric praxis, see chap. 3· 12. It is difficult to determine whether the events at Aen. 10.118-45 still describe the second day of battle prolonged well into the night, as lines 146-47 seem to suggest (Illi inter sese duri

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Third Day of Battle

(Aen. 10.260-908 )

10.257-62

Arrival of Aeneas at the Trojan camp

10.262-66

Reaction of the Trojans

10.267-69

Reaction of the Latins

Fourtll Day of Battle

(Aen. 11.445-915 )

11.446

Aeneas's march against the city of Latinus

11.447-85

Reaction of the Latins

Fifth Day of Battle

(Aen. 12.266-952)'3

12.574-82

Aeneas's march against the city of Latinus

12.583-92

Reaction of the Latins

This composite structure, built on the antithesis of action and reaction, aptly underscores the antithesis in focalization, the other feature that conspicu­ ously distances the Virgilian type-scene from its Homeric model. Simple narrator-text, widely employed to portray the actions of group A, is immedi­ ately followed by an explicit (or implicit) embedded focalization (complex narrator-text), which describes group B's reaction in terms of "internal" revisualization of the actions of party A. The reader is thus allowed to see the same event simultaneously from two different perspectives. A brief survey of the remaining days of war and their opening scenes will drive home the point. After the dramatic and unsuccessful sortie of Nisus and Euryalus the previous night, the second day of battle finds the Latins marching yet again against the Trojan camp: "Turnus, himself in arms, calls up his men to war; each Latin captain spurs his bronze-dad company to battle, each one stirs certamina belli I contulerant: media Aeneas freta nocte secabat) , or refer to a different day. The problem is intrinsically connected to the chronology of the council of the gods at the beginning of the book, since the events at lines 118-45 are expressly said to be taking place contemporaneously (n8: Interea) . For a detailed analysis of the problem, see Harrison 1991, xxx:iii; Harrison reason­ ably suggests that the events at lines 118-45 are still part of the second day of battle. See also Heinze 1993, 266, 305-6. 13. On the fifth day, no "formal" advance is described at the beginning of the day, since the battle breaks out as the result of the violated truce. Nevertheless, as Aeneas recovers from his wound, he moves with his army against the city of Latinus and stresses the vital importance of this attack: hoc caput, o ciues, haec belli summa nefandi (Aen. 12.572).

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their anger with a different tale of horror." ' 4 With ringing shouts, they parade the heads of Nisus and Euryalus before the Trojans (quin ipsa arrectis (uisu miserabile) in hastis I praefigunt capita et multo clamore sequuntur I Euryali et Nisi) .'s In what follows, their march is revisualized from the Trojan perspective. This time, verbs of perception (verba sentiendi) and affective vocabulary trigger embedded focalization. The Trojans, staring sadly at the spectacle (9.471: maesti; 9-472: miseris) , are moved as they ob­ serve the heads of Euryalus and Nisus (9.471: ora . . . movebant) . From their perspective, the impersonal capita become the ora (faces) of men known much too well (9.471-72: simul ora uirum praefixa mouebant I nota nimis miseris atroque fluentia tabo ) .' 6 Maestitia appears here in relation to death. Indeed, this term seems to link together in a string of sorrow all the major deaths in the Aeneid: the deaths of Hector (2.270: ante oculos maestissimus Hector) , Polydorus (3.63-64: arae I caeruleis maestae uittis atraque cupresso ), Anchises (5.48: maestasque sacrauimus aras), Palinurus (6.340: hunc ubi uix multa maestum cognovit in umbra), Lausus (10.840: maestique . . . mandata parentis), and Pallas (11.26: maestamque Euandri . . . ad urbem; 11.147: mae­ stam incendunt clamoribus urbem) .'7 In book 11, after the twelve-day truce, Aeneas's attack renews hostilities between the two armies and triggers a similar reaction by the Latins (11.44758 ) . 18 The matter-of-fact statement of Aeneas's arrival by the narrator's voice-"Aeneas marched his troops from camp into the field" ' 9-is magni­ fied by the messenger's report. In his words (reported via oratio obliqua) , the troops of Troy and Tuscany are descending from the Tiber's bank and cover the plains of LatiUlll in their entirety (11.449-50: instructos acie Tiberino a flumine Teucros I Tyrrhenamque manum totis descendere campis) . Expressions 14. Turn us in arma uiros armis circumdatus ipse I suscitat: aeratasque acies in proelia cogunt I quisque suos, uariisque acuunt rumoribus iras (Aen. 9.462-64). 15. Aen. 9.465-67. 16. Hardie (1994, ad loc. ) observes that the parading of the heads of Nisus and Euryalus and the grief of Euryalus's mother are based, in general and in many details, on the dragging of Hector's body before the walls of Troy and the reactions of Hector's father, mother, and wife (II. 22.405-515 ) . Yet in the Homeric epic, there is no parallel term for maestitia to indicate a com­ posed "internalized" state of sorrow. 17. See E. V: s.v. maereo: "cio che connota nell'uso virgiliano maestus rispetto a tristis e a miser e proprio il suo essere disponibile pressoche esclusivamente per situazioni pili o meno stret­ tamente connesse alia sfera del lutto." 18. On the arrival of Aeneas in Aeneid 10, see my discussion in chap. 2. In this case as well, the effect of his arrival on both Trojans and Latins is described through verbs of perception (10.260-67) . 19. castra Aeneas aciemque mouebat (Aen. 11.446) .

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of terror (magnisque terroribus) and the presence of affective vocabulary (trepidi, maesti)20 internalize the response of the besieged and their sudden reaction of panic at the unexpected news (extemplo turbati) .2' Comparison with the Homeric "source" model for these lines best shows the Virgilian innovations.2 2 At Iliad 2.786-810, as the Trojans are sitting in assembly, Iris, disguised as Priam's son Polites, is sent by Zeus to the Tro­ jans, and in her capacity as a:yye"Aor;, (the nuntius of the Virgilian scene), she breaks the news of the massive advance of the Achaean army against the city. Here, too, the emphasis of the narration lingers on the vastness of the Greek army, and Iris begins her report with the bold announcement that she has never seen an army so numerous (bXJ.: oil nw wt.Ovbe 'too6vbe 't£ "Aaov onwna).23 In hyperbolic fashion, she even goes so far as to compare the Greeks to countless grains of sand or leaves. Yet contrary to the passage in the Aeneid, her report seems to tie in perfectly with the lengthy catalog of ships in the earlier part of the same book and, more importantly, with the narrator's famous introduction to the catalog: "I could not tell over the multitude of them nor name them, not if I had ten tongues and ten mouths, not if I had a voice never to be broken and a heart of bronze within me, not unless the Muses of Olympia, daughters of Zeus of the aegis, remembered all those who came beneath Ilion." 2 4 Moreover, contrary to Virgil's narrative, the reaction of the city assembly is well organized and is narrated through simple narrator-text. At Hector's command, the assembly is adjourned, and the Trojan army eagerly exits the gates to meet the enemy in a pitched battle: "She spoke, nor did Hector fail to mark the word of the goddess. Instantly he broke up the assembly; they ran to their weapons. All the gates were 20. Aen. 11.447-54: nuntius . . . ecce ruit magnisque urbem terroribus implet: . . . extemplo turbati animi concussaque uulgi I pectora et arrectae stimulis haud mollibus irae. I arma manu tre­ pidi poscunt, fremit arm a iuventus, I flent maesti mussantque patres. The construction implere terroribus is probably an allusion to complere . . . torroribus at Ennius Ann. 558 Skutsch, where the word torroribus occupies the same position in the hexameter. On the various uses of terror in Virgil, see E. V: s.v. terreo. A good definition of the meaning of the term is given by Servius (at Aen. 11.357): terror est proprie qui aliis infertur . . . metus autem est quem habent timentes. For a more general discussion on the "vocabulary of fear" in the Aeneid and in Latin epic, see MacKay 1961; MacKay rightly notices that Aeneid 2 and 9, the books devoted most extensively to the description of sieges, contain the poem's highest concentration of words denoting fear. 21. For emphasis on the suddenness of events, cf. Aen. 2.465-67: ea lapsa repente ruinam I cum sonitu trahit et Danaum super agmina late I incidit; 12.576: scalae improuiso subitusque apparuit ignis. 22. On this passage and its Homeric source, see Knauer 1964, ad loc.; Gransden 1991, ad loc. Knauer does not give any parallel passage for Aen. 11.448. 23. II. 2.799. 24. II. 2.488-92.

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opened and the people swept through them on foot, and with horses, and a clamour of shouting rose up."2s At the end of the Italian campaign, in Aeneid 12, Aeneas, fully recovered from his wound, once again marches unexpectedly against the Latin camp: "In no time, ladders, sudden fires appear" {scalae improuiso subitusque apparuit ignis}.26 In this instance, too, a reaction of panic arises in the city of Latinus, and a state of trepidatio, in both frame and simile, characterizes the confused and disorganized defense.27 exoritur trepidos inter discordia ciuis: urbem alii reserare iubent et pandere portas Dardanidis ipsumque trahunt in moenia regem; arma ferunt alii et pergunt defendere muros, inclusas ut cum latebroso in pumice pastor uestigauit apes fumoque impleuit amaro; illae intus trepidae rerum per cerea castra discurrunt magnisque acuunt stridoribus iras; uoluitur ater odor tectis, tum murmure caeco intus saxa sonant, uacuas it fumus ad auras. (Virg. Aen. 12.583-92) [Dissension takes the panicked citizens: some say the city is to be unlocked, the gates thrown open to the Dardans; they would drag the king himself up to the ramparts; while others carry arms, rush to defend: as when some shepherd tracks a swarm of bees that shelter in a porous cliff, and fills their hive with bitter smoke; they rush about their waxen camp in panic; buzzing loud, they whet their wrath; across their cells the black 25. II. 2.807-10. 26. Aen. 12.576. 27. The bee simile at the end of Aeneid 12 is the last one in a long series. On this topic, see Briggs 1980, 68-81. For this passage, Briggs notices important models in Virg. G. 4.228-38 and Apollonius 2.130-36, where the Argonauts routing the Bebrycians are compared to beekeepers smoking out a huge swarm of bees. To Briggs's analysis, we may add a passage from Livy. In A UC 4, during the campaign against Fidenae, Aemilius addresses his own soldiers with the following words: Fumone uicti, inquit, uelut examen apum, loco uestro exacti inermi cedetis hosti? (4-33-4) . On the relation between similes and embedded focalization, see de Jong 1987, 123-36. On Virgilian similes specifically see West 1969; Perutelli 1972.

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stench rolls; rocks echo with the stifled murmurs; smoke trickles up into the empty air.] Scholars as far back as Servius have acknowledged the type of focaliza­ tion we see in use in these passages of the Aeneid. 28 Heinze refers to it as Empfindung and views it as the most visible feature of Virgil's narrative technique. The most characteristic thing about Virgil's narrative is that it is soaked through and through with feeling. . . .Homer's narrative gen­ erally leaves it to the reader to guess what emotions accompanied the narrated events, with the sole aid of conversations and mono­ logues; . . . (Virgil) has put himself into the heart of his characters and speaks from inside them.29 Otis, refining Heinze's concept, uses the more familiar term empathy and also views the technique as an essential feature of Virgil's epic style: "Virgil's essential narrative is psychological and empathetic."3o Recently, spurred by new theoretical approaches, scholars have focused again on the empathetic nature of Virgil's narrative style. Virgil's empathy stands at the core of Conte's interpretative essay on the Aeneid and is the subject of Marzia Bonfanti's large-scale study of 1985.3' The conclusions at 28. Rosati (1979 ) has shown that Virgil's ancient commentators (Servius and Servius Auctus) were already aware of Virgil's technique of internal focalization. 29. Heinze 1993, 290. Heinze was reworking some of the conclusions reached by Sellar (1877, especially 408-18) . 3 0 . Otis 1964, 9 5 . With empathy, whereby the narrator thinks through and for his charac­ ters, Otis juxtaposes sympathy, whereby the poet, with a sort of editorial intrusion, intervenes in the narrative in his own person to comment on the events. These two narrative features, peculiar to Virgil's style, which Otis labels "subjective style," create a sharp contrast with the objective, Homeric epic style. The employment of such an innovative narrative technique results, according to Otis's controversial theory, in a style that, although more pathetic, loses dramatic effect: Otis (50-51) maintains that Virgilian characters, as opposed to Homeric ones, lack dramatic or objective characterization. These conclusions have been sharply criticized by La Penna (1967) , according to whom it is precisely the empathetic technique used by Virgil that allows Virgilian characters to become fully developed dramatic characters. In La Penna's opinion, the subjective style of Virgil is confined to the sympathetic aspect of his poetry, which La Penna calls "com­ mento lirico." A similar view is shared by Rosati (1979 ) , who stresses that the intervention of Virgil into the interior of his characters is not authorial violence on the psychology of his poetic creation but, rather, the best way to register the character's own state of mind. 31. Conte 1986, 141-84; Bonfanti 1985. See also Lyne 1987, 227-38; Fowler 1990; Fowler 1997, 266-67.

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which these two scholars arrive are similar. For Conte (as for Bonfanti) the works of Homer and Ennius embodied a single point of view (I here use the term point of view to remain more faithful to Conte's wording). Virgil, by contrast, introduces a multiplicity of points of view; hence, the text becomes polycentric and shatters the pretense of the epic norm to natural authority and truth. In Homer there is basically a single point of view. . . . The text un­ folds on a single plane, which goes unnoticed just because it is invariable, leaving no room for contrasts born of comparisons. Its one and only point of view is a relation of objective truth toward the world it displays. The unambiguousness of the textual relationships in Homer, and the fact that they spread out radially from a single center, yields an image of the truth as something absolute and immu­ table. The secret of epic objectivity lies hidden hereY Thus, for Conte, empatheia is not simply a stylistic factor that underscores Virgil's dramatic narrative technique (Heinze and La Penna) and/or Virgil's sense of constant empathy with human suffering (humanitas), as proposed by Otis.33 On the contrary, this narrative technique affects the text's signify­ ing system. Empatheia undermines the objective foundation of epic narra­ tion and relativizes the epic norm. Though perhaps overstating his conclu­ sions in light of de Jong's recent study on Homer's narrative technique,34 Conte believes that empatheia allows Virgil to "invent a recognizably new kind of epic"35-one that sets itself conspicuously apart from the epic of Homer (and Ennius). While scholarly conclusions regarding the function of empatheia appear 32. Conte 1986, 152. For similar conclusions, see Bonfanti 1985, 18. However, Conte (177) seems to set a limit to the multiplicity of points of view in the Aeneid and sees Virgil's usage of "sympathy" as a way of welding the fragments back together and thus saving the epic genre. 33· See Heinze 1993, 370-71; La Penna 1967, 228-29; Otis 1964, 392-94. 34. De Jong (1987, 122) shows that Homer uses embedded focalization already but in a more limited way. According to de J ong' s conclusions, though, the secondarily focalized passages of the Iliad are short and far less frequent than direct speech: character-text (i.e., speeches) is clearly the preferred mode of presentation of words and thereby of the thoughts/ emotions of characters. 35. Conte 1986, 141. Conte has been accused of making Homer and Ennius too monologic, but as Fowler notes (1990, 56), the issue is one of reception. What matters here is how the epic tradition was received at Rome and the ways in which the neoterics and the elegists used opposition to Ennius and Homer in their politicization of Callimacheanism. Feeney (1989) has pointed out the practice whereby poets retrospectively make their predecessors more monolithic to enable their own rebellion.

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at times antithetic to one another, they share a common methodological approach: as discussed in my introduction, Homeric epic (and rarely Apollo­ nius or Ennius) is used as the sole point of comparison with the Virgilian text. Hence, apart from the scholarly disagreements I have already outlined, empatheia has been generally recognized as the conspicuously "Virgilian" narrative feature that best accounts for the notable differences (stylistic, ge­ neric, and ideological) between the Iliad and the Odyssey, on the one hand, and the Aeneid, on the other. Viewed as quintessentially Virgilian, this narra­ tive phenomenon has been studied and discussed as an all-encompassing quality of Virgilian epic, virtually without any attempt at distinguishing the narrative instances in which it appears and, therefore, without any attempt at differentiating the effects/results it produces. Analyses of the leading charac­ ters (especially Dido, Turnus, and Mezentius), their different points of view, and their different visions of the world and of the reality that surrounds them have dominated critical discussion.36 I take a different approach. I do not deal with empatheia tout court-the topic, as I have shown, has been sufficiently analyzed and with important results. Rather, I study the phenomenon as it applies to the specific type-scene analyzed in this chapter, and I show how, with the introduction of a narrative system that belongs to a different genre, the narrator modifies the Homeric narrative code with important implica­ tions for the imagery of war in the Aeneid. In his seminal 1957 article on the style of Livy, A. H. McDonald viewed the alternation of action and the parallel syntactic placement of rival sub­ jects as a landmark feature of Livy's periodic composition)? Walsh's 1961 book-length study on Livy's historical aims and methods further confirms and develops McDonald's analysis. Livy's narrative plays up the role of visual perspectives and unfolds as a careful articulation of opposite points of view. Summing up Livy's narrative of how the sacred geese saved the Capitol (5.47.1-6), Walsh concludes, "Conspicuous here is the balance achieved by describing the action successively from the viewpoint of attackers and de­ fenders."38 More to the point for the present discussion are Walsh's condu36. Cf. Conte 1986, 157: "A painful gap keeps them apart, preventing substantial contact and excluding mutual penetration. . . . The coexistence of the worlds of Aeneas, Dido, Turnus, Mezentius, and Juturna springs from the fact that Virgil allows each of them an autonomous, personal raison d'Hre which the historico-epic norm had always denied." 37· McDonald 1957, 165. Cf. Burck 1934, 209. 38. Walsh 1961, 251. As Walsh notes, Livy' s narrative focuses first on the side of the attackers and their attempt to seize the Capitol. Livy reports how they found a path, sent forward a man to reconnoiter, avoided the clashing of arms, helped each other up, and arrived unnoticed. The focus then switches from attackers to defenders, as the reaction of the latter appropriately

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sions in a 1954 article in which he analyzes Livy's descriptions of sieges in their capacity as type-scenes: "By adopting the standpoint of the besieged, he exploited his facility for psychological observation, especially in the descrip­ tion of the fall of a town. The attacking party is usually mentioned briefly, followed by an extended account of the defenders, and especially their state of mind."39 More recently, Feldherr, with his usual insight, has again framed this Livian narrative feature within a broader ideological context. He connects the device to Livy's grand design to represent his Ab urbe condita as a monumentum in which the readers may come to share (in a sort of mise en abyme) the perspectives of the internal audience who experiences the events of the narrative directly. The readers are correspondingly subjected to "the kinds of political influences that could be conveyed by the medium of vision." 4o I will return to this important aspect of focalization (and its relevance for reading the Aeneid) in a later chapter. For now, I will analyze Livy's use of focalization within the specific type-scene analyzed in this chapter. In the Ab urbe condita, numerous military engagements initiated by one party taking the offensive are represented via alternation of action and focalization. One or two examples may suffice. In book 2, the matter-of-fact report of Porsenna's march against Rome-"(Porsenna) moved against Rome with an army in military array" [Romam infesto exercitu uenit] is immediately revisualized by the Romans as the most dire threat to the city of Rome: "Never had such a great terror invaded the Roman Senate-so powerful was the city of Clusium and so great the fame of Porsenna" [Non unquam alias ante tantus terror senatum inuasit; adeo ualida res tum Clusina erat magnumque Porsennae nomen]."' counterbalances the long sentence describing the Gallic activity. Moreover, as in the Virgilian passages I have just examined, the emotional and internal reaction of the defenders, who, except for Manlius, are overwhelmed by fear (trepidant), is juxtaposed with the factual representation of the attack. 39. Walsh 1954, 97-98. On this topic, cf. Kraus 1994a, especially at 6.22.8, 6.32.3 ff. 40. Feldherr 1998, 223; see also 132-45, 160-63. See also Jaeger 1997, 24-27. For a similar narrative device in Polybius, see Davidson 1991. Davidson notes (13 ) : "Polybius, then, can be seen writing through the eyes of others. He gives us sometimes several different viewpoints of the same event. . . . They can be seen as little narratives, fragmentary versions of what was going on, overlaying one another and competing with each other." 41. Livy 2.9 .4-5. Cf. 33.15.3-7, where Nicostratus moves against the camp of Androsthenes. The organization of his march is narrated with exactitude of detail. He positions the cavalry before the standards, and he and his army follow, split into two columns, the light infantry marching in one and the shield wearers in the other. As the attackers close around the camp, the narrative focus suddenly shifts to the attacked party, to describe the consternation that suddenly struck the enemy camp (cum repens terror castris infertur. Trepidare dux).

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Thanks only to the intervention of one man, Codes, Rome was able to save the day. In Ab urbe condita 3, Livy describes a similar scene and uses an analogous narrative technique. As the Aequi invade Roman territory with a rapid and violent incursion (tanto cum tumultu inuasere fines Romanos),42 Rome's reaction is one of terror, fear, and trepidatio.43 But even more significant is what follows. As the Aequi approach, the farmers rush to the city gates in search of safety; struck by fear (pavidi), these improvised messengers transform-Livy makes that explicit-the aggression of a maniple of men into an army of legions that is already pressing at the very gates of Rome, an exaggeration not unlike the overblown report of the messenger in Aeneid n : "the panic-stricken country people, pouring in at the gates and exaggerating everything in their wild alarm, exclaimed that they were not mere raids or small bodies of plunderers but that entire armies of the enemy were near, preparing to swoop down on the City in force. Those who were nearest carried what they heard to others, and the vague rumors became therefore still more unreliable." 44 The city was in a state of confusion almost as if it had already been captured-so Livy rounds out his account.45 Not surprisingly, Burck, in his seminal study on Livy, had labeled this Livian feature Empfindung, echoing the term that Heinze had famously applied to Virgil.46 The lexicon used by Livy in these scenes is of some relevance. As Virgil did in the passages in the Aeneid, so, in these type-scenes, Livy overuses 42. Livy 3.3.1. 43. Livy may even innovate in respect to his original source in an attempt to emphasize the "fear complex," as Walsh calls it (1954, 114). In Livy 31.34.5, we read of Philip's panic after a skirmish with the Romans. The account of Diodorus (28.8), whose source is Polybius, shows, on the contrary, that Philip reassured his troops with complete indifference to danger. In Livy, a state of fear (trepidatio) and indecision characterizes Philip before the final battle of Cynoscepha­ lae (trepidauit), a detail that finds no counterpart in Polybius (Livy 33.7.9; Polyb. 18.22.1) . On the two Livian passages, see Briscoe 1973, ad loc. For similar "additions" in Livy, see Briscoe 1973, at 31.34·5· 44· agrestesque pauidi incidentes portis non populationem nee praedonum paruas manus, sed omnia uano augentes timore exercitus et legiones adesse hostium et infesto agmine ruere ad urbem clamabant. Ab his proximi audita incerta eoque uaniora ferre ad alios (Livy 3·3·3-4) . 45. Livy 3.3.4: Cursus clamorque uocantium ad arma haud multum a pauore captae urbis abesse. For a similar structure, cf. 29.3.8-9: "and excited messengers [nuntiique trepidi] filled Carthage with great alarm [Carthaginem terrore ingenti conpleuere], reporting that the Roman fleet with Scipio as commander in chief had arrived. In fact, it had been previously rumored that he [i.e., Scipio] had already crossed over to Sicily. Also, lacking exact information about how many ships the messengers had seen and how large a force was laying waste the country, they exaggerated every report under the stimulus of fear [omnia in maius metu augente accipiebant]." 46. Burck 1934, 202. Cf. McDonald 1957, 163; Pauw 1991.

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"emotionally coloured" vocabulary, with such words as maestitia, spes, ter­ ror, and trepidatio. In addition, Livy is keen, as was Virgil in the Aeneid (cf. 9 .33: subitam . . . nubem; 11.451: extemplo turbati; 12.576: scalae improuiso subitusque apparuit ignis), to emphasize the element of surprise in the attack and, as a result, the sudden onset of madness and desperation among the defenders.47 This composite structure with parallel placing of antithetic focal­ izations and affective vocabulary is not limited to Livy; it is common among other historians as well. Of particular interest is Sallust, who makes extensive use of the so-called vocabulary of fear in similar narratives. He is especially fond of the verb trepido and its corresponding adjective trepidus, rare in Latin poetry before Virgil. This adjective is found twice in Lucretius (DRN 3.834, 5-40) and once in Tibullus (2.3.21 ) , but never to define a psychological state, as it does in Sallust and Virgil.48 When we take all this into consideration, the terms un-Homeric or Virgil­ ian (especially when the latter is used as a synonym of the former) begin to show their intrinsic limits. They can convey only an abridged version of the compositional program of the Aeneid, as they lead us back and forth along a diachronic line that connects exclusively Homer and Virgil, the Iliad (and the Odyssey) and the Aeneid. The term Virgilian, as it stands, needs further qualification. Virgilian narrative, at least in this instance, qualifies itself as un­ Homeric for its conspicuous assimilation of other preexisting literary genres within an epic context. The narrative structure based on alternation of action and reaction, the constant shifting in focalization (usually simple narrator­ text to describe the attackers and complex narrator-text to describe the defenders), and the presence of "vocabulary of fear" to describe the internal response of the defenders not only call attention to the un-Homeric quality of the Virgilian type-scene of the "advance of the army" but also attest to its 47· On Livy's use of the vocabulary of fear, see Walsh 1954, 114; 1961, 178. On Livy's use of spes, see my discussion in chap. 2 in the present study. On Livy's emphasis on the element of surprise, at times even departing from his original sources, see Walsh 1961, 193. 48. Prior to Virgil, the verb trepido seems to have been particularly prevalent in historiogra­ phy; it occurs especially in Sallust but is already attested in Ennius. Cf. Ennius Ann. 560-61 Skutsch: At Romanus homo, tamenetsi res bene gesta est, I Corde suo trepidat. Like Virgil, Sallust uses the verb mainly to describe the fear of a besieged camp . Cf. Jug. 38.4-5: quae postquam ex sententia instruit, intempesta nocte de inprouiso multitudine Numidarum Auli castra circumuenit. Milites Romani, perculsi tumultu insolito, arma capere alii, alii se abdere, pars territos confirmare, trepidare omnibus locis; 67.1: Romani milites, improuiso metu incerti ignarique quid potissumum facerent, trepidare. For the adjective trepidus, cf. Jug. 40.4: trepida etiam tum ciuitate . . . ; 55.2: Itaque senatus ob ea feliciter acta dis immortalibus supplicia decernere, ciuitas, trepida antea et sollicita de belli euentu, laeta agere, de Metello fama praeclara esse; 97.5: qui omnes trepidi inprouiso metu . . . On this topic, see E. V. s.v. trepido.

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close connections with the one found in Roman historiography. But now how do we read such a disruption of the Homeric code? The "intentions" of the poet are difficult to assess, and modern literary criticism has warned us about the risks entailed by such an assessment. It is far more productive to analyze the implications that a narrative choice of this sort bears on the text itself. If we imagine the code to be "a system of conscious, deliberate rules that the author identifies as indicators of ways in which the text must be interpreted, " 49 the alteration of the Homeric code (which is fixed by the bias of the norm) introduces problems of interpretabil­ ity for the new text.so Assimilation to other codes of signification disrupts the narrative grammar proper to the genre and hence calls into question the store of collective cultural experiences and values that the epic code commu­ nicates and represents. By disrupting the code, by conspicuously swerving away from that system of signification within which he has set out to work (in this case, epic), the narrator not only subverts the ideological and cul­ tural values represented by these specific expressive structures; he once again establishes a dynamic tension between two generic systems of signification, epic and historiography. Let us see how this tension affects the specific type­ scene under discussion. Battle games

dolus an uirtus, quis in hoste requirat? -Virg. Aeneid If that be guile or valor-who would ask in war?

In Iliad 22, Achilles and Hector finally confront each other on the field of battle; a simile establishes an important connection between the ongoing duel and another sphere of activity, the agonic contest. As Achilles is chasing after the fleeing Hector around the walls of Troy, he is compared to a team of horses who are competing for a prize: "As when about the turnposts racing single-foot horses run at full speed, when a great prize [(i£-3-A.ov] is laid up for their winning, a tripod or a woman, in games for a man's funeral, so these two swept whirling about the city of Priam in the speed of their feet, while all the gods were looking upon them." s ' Via this important simile, the 49. purpose so. 51.

Conte 1986, 31; cf. 143: "the epic code is the preliminary level of that elaboration whose is the literary organization, in narrative form, of collective cultural values." On the relation between code and norm, see Conte 1986, 146-51. II. 22.162-6.

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final duel between Hector and Achilles becomes simultaneously an alterna­ tive form of contest. It is equated to an athletic contest, aE{}A.ot; (fought for a prize, aE{}Aov) , precisely like the one that will take place shortly after at the funeral games for Patrodus in Iliad 23.s 2 But in the Iliad, the duel is not the only form of combat assimilated to an aE{}A.ot;. War, too, is conceived in athletic terms and shares in the ideology of the contest system. In book 3 of the Iliad, Iris, disguised as Laodice, the wife of Helicaon, appears to Helen to announce the impending duel between Helen's former husband, Menelaus, and Paris. Iris finds Helen at home weaving a great web, a red folding robe representing the many "combats" of the horse-taming Trojans and the bronze-dad Achaeans, which they suffered for her at the hands of the war god.s3 The term used here to describe the conflict between the two armies is significant. The overall struggle between Greeks and Tro­ jans is labeled aE{}A.ot;.S4 Again, the language of war is metaphorically con­ nected to the language of competition. But in this case, the relation between a contest (for a prize) and war is even more striking.Here, the term aE{}A.ot; connotes not just a contest in war but, significantly, the contest of war per se. This is not the only instance. In three passages of the Odyssey, the same word qualifies the labors of Odysseus and his comrades in the war at Troy.s s As Scanlon has aptly noted, the interchangeable use of the term to indicate both games and war in Homer exploits the common aspects shared by the two and highlights the agonic and ritual character of war envisioned primar­ ily as a contest.s 6 52. The usual term employed in the funeral games to indicate the prize for the victor of the athletic contest is aE-&Aov. The term aE-&Ao>; is used to indicate the contest itself (see II. 23.646 ) . On the etymology of the term, s e e Scanlon 1983, especially 158; Scanlon aptly notices that the term aE-&Ao>; signifies action and is therefore complementary to &.ywv, a term that originally indicated the place where a contest took place. On the employment of the term in the Iliad, see Pritchett 1985, 29. On the relation between funeral games and the imagery of war, see Griffin 1980, 193. Cf. Scanlon 1988, especially 237; Scanlon points out that the funeral games for Patroclus are, in turn, a metaphor for the proper conduct of war. 53. II. 3.125-28. 54. Here, as Kirk has pointed out (1985, ad loc. ), the word cannot mean "formal combats" of pairs of warriors disposed along the edges of the cloth; the addition of lines 127-28 shows that something more elaborate was meant. 55. Od. 3.262; 4.170, 241. On these passages, see Scanlon 1983, 157. For a similar use of the term, see Hdt. 8.142.2, where the term &.ydJv refers to the entire conflict between Persia and Greece. 56. Scanlon 1983, 158-59. See also Scanlon 1988, for other aspects that associate war and athletics in the Iliad. Apart from Homer, connections between war and athletic contests are exploited in the elegies of Tyrtaeus; see Scanlon 1988, 241. For Pin dar and his use of Homeric and elegiac war vocabulary to praise successful athletes, see Cairns 1989, 222; Perysinakis 1990.

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Terminology is not the only indicator of the dynamic connection be­ tween such diverse (at least for us) spheres of human action. Far from being simply inert, codified rules, Homeric narrative conventions likewise become a manifest reflection of this underlying ideology of war. I showed earlier that each new day of battle in the Iliad opens with a recurrent type-scene repre­ senting a mass march of Greek and Trojan troops-each army a mirror image of the other-eager to clash with each other in the open field. I cite, once again, the simile that describes the meeting of the two armies in Iliad n: "And the men, like two lines of reapers who, facing each other, drive their course all down the field of wheat or of barley for a man blessed in sub­ stance, and the cut swathes drop showering, so Trojans and Achaeans driving in against one another cut men down, nor did either side think of disastrous panic."5 7 Precisely this type-scene allows the reader to envision Homeric warfare almost exclusively as a pitched battle. There is nothing new here. In a monograph dedicated to the subject, Latacz concluded that the Homeric picture of war is one of two armies, drawn up in a series of ranks, which approach within throwing range of each other and start a series of missile bombardments; eventually, closing ranks, the two sides thrust forward and fight in a mass until one of the fronts breaks.5 8 Pritchett and, more recently, van Wees picture a similar scenario.5 9 But we may move beyond their conclusions-their studies, after all, aimed at reconstructing from the text of Homer the practice of warfare in the Dark Ages. From an ideological perspective, the pitched battle and the intro­ ductory type-scene in which party A's actions are reflected as a mirror image by those of party B is, above all, the tangible expression of a cultural attitude that views war as inherently analogous to the agonic contest-combat like contest, war like game. Like the agonic contest, the pitched battle has its limiting rules, its ritual to which each participant willingly subscribes. The idea still lingers in the English expression "pitched battle, " meaning a battle that is conducted and controlled by formalized rules.60 The term pitch still defines in English a "playing field, " as, for example, a cricket pitch. In an influential essay, Huizinga singled out the surprise attack and the ambush as 57· II. 11. 67-71. 58. Latacz 1977. See also Lang 1910, 51-59; Kirk 1968, especially 110 . 59. Pritchett (1985, 33) : "The fundamental fact remains that the pitched battle was the decisive element, and this interpretation of the Homeric battle is confirmed throughout the entire literature, down to Eustathios. The general impression created by the poem is one of hoplites fighting in mass-formation"; van Wees 1997. 60. See Huizinga 1949, 99·

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nonagomstiC forms of combat.6 ' Not surprisingly, these forms find no or little place in the Iliad. When they do, they are viewed as acts of cowardice. Note Edwards's telling remarks in relation to ambushes in the Iliad. However, it is possible to extract from the Iliad a specific interpreta­ tion of the ambush. It is viewed as a stratagem of cowardice and treachery. . . . This view is rooted in the preoccupations and ideology of the Iliad as a poem about the :ltQOflOt; avf]g, infantry combat, the hero's death, and Achilles. Yet the Iliad's perspective on the A.Oxot; is not idiosyncratic or exceptional. It reproduces a view of this strata­ gem well attested in Greek myth, and which no doubt represents one facet of a historical ideology of warfare.6 2 War in the Iliad lacks such features not because of its primitive nature, as is often claimed, but because of its agonic character. Like the duel, the pitched battle is controlled by formal rules; both will be played out more or less in conformity with the agonic ideal. As the Homeric scholia at 7. 241 has it, in the Iliad, "war is the dance and the sport of brave men" [ OQXYJOLt; yag xal, :n:mi'>La yevvaiwv 6 :n:6A.Ef!Ot;] . 63 In a famous passage in which he discusses the treacherous policy of Philip, father of Perseus, Polybius highlights the distance between ancient Greek warfare and the military praxis of his own days, aptly (and some­ what nostalgically) noticing how the ancient contest system has given way 61. See Huizinga 1949, 90. See also Alexander 1945. 62. Edwards 1985, 26-27. 63. For a comparison between war and dance in the Iliad, see Griffin 1980, 194. A similar practice, betraying a similar ideology of war, has a rather long tradition in Greek culture. Our locus classicus is Hdt. 7.9, where the Persian Mardonius marvels at Greek military behavior: "And yet, I am told that it is customary among the Greeks to wage wars against one another in the most foolish way, through sheer perversity and doltishness. For no sooner is war proclaimed than they search out the smoothest and fairest plain that is to be found in all the land, and there they assemble and fight, whence it comes to pass that even the conquerors depart with great loss." As Vernant notes (1980, 19-44), in classical Greece, war was still an &.ywv. It took the form of an organized competition and was related to the great Panhellenic games in which rivalries were played out peacefully in a framework of rules that were in many ways similar to those of war. Until the Hellenistic age, when war took place in a world that was quite transformed, games and warfare were the two opposite sides of one and the same phenomenon. For the agonic nature of archaic warfare in ancient Greece, see Brelich 1961. Pritchett (1974, 156-89) notes that hoplite battles from the late eighth century to the mid- fifth century B . c .E . were usually conducted on an open space and by public challenge. Pritchett notes (187) , "In sum we may conclude that, as we have seen in the chapter on the challenge to battle, warfare seems sometimes a game in which all that is involved is a fair fight with equal weapons on a plain."

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to a conceptualization of war that is no longer limited by specific rules of engagement. The ancients were far removed from such malpractices, for so far were they from plotting mischief against their friends with the pur­ pose of aggrandizing their own power that they would not even consent to get the better of their enemies by fraud, regarding no success as brilliant or secure unless they crushed the spirits of their adversaries in open battle. For this reason, they entered into a conven­ tion among themselves to use against each other neither secret mis­ siles nor those discharged from a distance, and they considered that only a hand-to-hand battle at dose quarters was truly decisive. Hence, they preceded war by a declaration, and when they intended to do battle, they gave notice of the fact and of the spot to which they would proceed and array their army. But at the present, they say it is a sign of poor generalship to do anything openly in war. (Polyb. 13·3·2-6) 6 4 By adopting historiographical narrative topoi (Hellenistic and Roman), the Aeneid not only markedly alters the imagery of war as it operates in the Iliad; it also subverts the epic ideology of war insofar as it conspicuously reflects the experience of more recent days, when, as somberly noted by Polybius, war has been deprived of its contestlike quality. In the Aeneid, war is no longer exclusively envisioned as the deadly but fair challenge between two armies with codified rules by which all partici­ pants abide. Contrary to Homeric practice, the Virgilian type-scene dearly underscores that every new day of conflict in the Aeneid is the result of the decision of one of the two armies to surprise the enemy and take advantage of its own initial "superiority." 65 The first two days of battle comprise Tur­ nus's turn; Turnus and his army march in full confidence against the demor64. On this passage, see Walbank 1957-79, ad loc.; Pritchett 1974, 179. Cf. Livy 42.47.5· As Q. Marcius tricks Perseus into a truce until the next campaigning season, Livy has the old senators complain that this behavior was against the ancient Roman customs of war: "Their ancestors had not conducted war by lurking in ambush [per insidias] and making attacks at night or by feigning flight and then turning back upon the enemy when he was off his guard. They did not pride themselves on cunning [astu] more than on true courage [uirtute}; it was their custom to declare war before commencing it, sometimes even to give the enemy notice of the time and place where they would fight." 65. On the element of surprise, see Heinze 1993, 256. Heinze discusses at some length Aeneas's march against the city of King Latinus.

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alized Trojan camp, momentarily bereft of its leader. Aeneas attempts a similar enterprise on the fourth and fifth days of battle, once the Latins have suffered severe setbacks.6 6 By turns, the Latin and the Trojan leaders, as expert generals, take full advantage of their temporary superiority and lead their troops against the enemy and its city, the reluctant and unevenly equipped opponent in the struggle. Characteristically, in the Aeneid (as often in history and historiography), the outset of each day of battle wit­ nesses the sudden and unexpected attack of the opponent, while women and children, quintessentially unepic contenders, become participants in the struggle, as I will show in chapter s . This new ideological framework best explains the Virgilian use of empatheia in this type-scene. The complex intersection between different and opposed types of focalization, a feature that this Virgilian type-scene shares with historiography, is perfectly suited to call attention to the nature of a war engagement that resists and subverts the rules of the "fair and even match" and is thus deprived of its contestlike quality. So represented, the meeting of the two armies not only increases the dramatic tension of the narrative; it becomes a key indicator of an altogether new conceptualization of war. As Alexander puts it, war in the Aeneid becomes the story of a great campaign, complex in military character as well as in political demarches. Here, war is no longer equated with the pitched battle; the pitched battle becomes only one of the possible types of engagement.6 7 No longer per­ ceived solely as a contest of prowess, ennobled by its limiting regulations, war is eventually deprived of its agonic quality and hence of one of its most explicitly epic qualities.6 8 66. O n the third day, the battle is taking place around the Trojan camp. Only Aeneas's unexpected arrival puts an end to the siege of the Latins. On this topic, see my discussion in chap . 2. 67. See Alexander 1945. More specifically, Alexander points out the conspicuous presence of surprise attacks (Aen. 9.33, 12.576; cf. 10.267-69, 11.451) and the employment of such military tactics as (1) the attempt to prevent the junction of two enemy forces (10.238-40 ), (2) a flanking movement coupled with surprise (11.511-19 ) , and (3) ambush (11.522-31; cf. 2.390, where Coroe­ bus seems to endorse the idea that everything is fair in war: dolus an uirtus, quis in haste requirat? On this passage, see Austin 1964, ad loc.; Austin somberly notes that "the Virgilian problem is still with us and still unresolved" ) . 6 8 . I have shown that i n the Iliad, the language o f war i s metaphorically connected t o the language of competition by the term aE-&Ao,. In the Aeneid, the term certamen comes very close to performing a similar function. It seems to be used interchangeably to indicate an agonic contest proper-notably, the ones that take place in Aeneid 5 (lines 66, 144, 197, 286, 493, etc. )-and a contest of war. By contrast with the Iliad, however, in the Aeneid, the term is applied to specific contests of war: duels (Aen. 11.155, 221, 434; 12.39, 61, 73, 116, 467, 790 ), pitched battles (7.523; 9.726; 11.780 [cavalry battle] ; 12.553, 598), and close range fights (9.662, 10.146) . The term is also em­ ployed to describe the battle of Actium (8.700 ) . See my discussion of Aen. 11.891 in chap . 5.

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In a famous article with the telling title "Aeneas Imperator: Roman Gener­ alship in an Epic Context, " Nisbet points out how Aeneas constantly adopts Roman military praxis. The aim of the article is clear. Nisbet wants to present Aeneas as a proto-Augustus, "carrying the destiny of his nation on his shoulders." 6 9 Within an epic martial environment, a new kind of leader emerges in the character of Aeneas, who becomes the prototype of Roman or Augustan leadership. In the Aeneid, however, Aeneas is not the only one who takes up simultaneously the different cultural roles of epic hero and Augustan prototype. The epic martial landscape of the Aeneid undergoes a comparable process of redefinition, for it, too, partakes of different systems of cultural values and, in its own way, begins to bridge the distance between epic past and the narrator's own present.

69. Nisbet 1978-So, so ( = 1999, 254).

Five

Times of War

Near these ridiculous "poseuses" stood the real thing-a British offi­ cer in mufti. He had lost his left arm and right leg . . . . If these women had a spark of shame left they should have blushed to be seen wearing a parody of the uniform which this officer and thousands like him have made a symbol of honour and glory by their deeds. I do not know the corps to which these ladies belong, but if they cannot become nurses or ward maids in hospital, let them put on sunbonnets and print frocks and go and make hay or pick fruit or make jam. -Letter to the editor from "A Woman," Morning Post, July 16, 1915

Temporal Deviations

In his influential study on narratology, Genette pointed out that the Western literary tradition was inaugurated by a characteristic effect of anachrony brought about by the discordance between the two temporal orders of story and narrative. The opening of the Iliad offers him an appropriate example. After having stated that the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon is the starting point of the narrative ( £s o� b� 1:a ngona),' the narrator immediately swirls back in time (about ten days) to reveal the causes of the famous quarrel: 1. II. 1.6. 105

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the affront to Chryses, Apollo's anger, and the ensuing plague. This beginning in medias res, followed by an expository return to an earlier period, becomes one of the formal topoi of epic; novelistic narration follows, in this respect, the style of "its remote ancestor, " according to Genette.2 Yet despite these com­ plex temporal manipulations to which the narrative is subjected, Genette considers the reconstitution of a temporal narrative order in light of the primary narrative not only possible but almost necessary; that is, each tempo­ ral deviation becomes an identifiable narrative segment subordinate to the primary narrative, by which it is defined in terms of flashback or anticipation and to which it is ultimately going to be reconciled.3 For Genette, in classical narrative, temporal reference is never deliberately sabotaged, and the reader is always put in the position of deciphering each anachrony with respect to the primary narrative into which it is inserted. It is just as obvious that in the classical narrative, on the other hand, reconstitution is most often not only possible, because in those texts narrative discourse never inverts the order of events without saying so, but also necessary, and precisely for the same reason: when a narrative segment begins with an indication like "Three months ear­ lier, . . ." we must take into account both that this scene comes after in the narrative, and that it is supposed to have come before in the story: each of these, or rather the relationship between them (of contrast or of dissonance), is basic to the narrative text, and suppress­ ing this relationship by eliminating one of its members is not only not sticking to the text, but is quite simply killing it.4 Applications of Genette's study to the Aeneid have driven home his point. Fowler has shown that the Aeneid displays notable ruptures of narrative order, in terms of both analepses and prolepses-actually, a comparison with 2. Genette 1980, 36. Genette (1988, 30) revisits the topic and changes somewhat his position, for he sees the topos of metadiegetic analepsis as characteristic of both the Odyssey and, by imitation, the Aeneid but not of the Iliad, which on the whole is highly chronological. On anachronies, see, further, Bal 1985, 84-97; however, Bal calls analepsis "retroversion." 3. With the expression "primary narrative," I mean the temporal level of narrative with respect to which anachrony is defined. On the term, see Genette 1988, 28-29. The two main types of anachrony are analepses (flashbacks) and prolepses (anticipations) . On this topic, see Genette 1980, 48-85. Genette ( 1980, 67) further argues that anticipation, or temporal prolepsis, is clearly much less frequent in the Western narrative tradition than is the inverse figure, for the western concern with narrative suspense does not easily come to terms with such a practice. The Homeric poems and the Aeneid are the exceptions rather than the norm. 4· Genette 1980, 35.

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the Iliad and the Odyssey reveals that in the Aeneid, such temporal manipula­ tions are carried to an unprecedented extreme.S Just as Genette has suggested, all these major analepses and prolepses are easily identifiable, for their tempo­ ral relation with the primary narrative is visibly marked. The major analepsis, Aeneas's account of his previous misfortunes, is framed by an evident first­ person speech-boundary that separates it from the rest of the narrative. The major prolepses are confined to prophetic utterances or, as in the case of the ecphrasis of the shield of Aeneas, are kept isolated from the narrative by the obvious "frame" of an artistic object. They are not allowed to spill into the narrative and disrupt the temporal setting of the primary narrative. Such prolepses have an important function. They conspicuously bridge the gap between the legendary past of the primary narrative (the story of Aeneas) and the present (Roman history and Augustan time). By virtue of this narrative structure, the temporal architectonics of the poem become complex and its temporal outreach enormous, extending from a mythological or legendary past represented by the primary temporal frame to Virgil's own day and even somewhat beyond. So argue Fowler and Kennedy.6 But these conclusions rest on a basic assumption already implicit in Genette's study: that the primary narrative is representative of only one temporal dimension. What happens if this basic assumption is put to the test and the primary narrative, far from representing just one single temporal system, is shown to encompass simulta­ neously a multiplicity of such systems? In the preceding chapter, I showed how the simultaneous presence of two different generic codes, epic and historiography, refashioned the martial land­ scape of the poem to encode the simultaneous presence of multiple cultural strata. Virgil's reworking of another Homeric type-scene, the rout scene, furthers the process of epic destabilization and begins to affect manifestly the temporal system of the poem. In other words, the superimposition of differ­ ent generic models (and I will be concerned again with historiography) not 5· Fowler 1997, 263- 66. 6. Fowler 1997, 259; Kennedy 1997, 149 : "The supernatural machinery of the poem offers a prospective account of Rome's history to the 'time in which the singer lives,' so that the impression left by the poem is that 'history' repeats the narrative of the Aeneid, thus giving 'history' the sense of being the fulfillment of what has been pre-ordained and destined. " Cf. Mack 1978, 56: "There are two futures at issue in the poem and two sorts of prophecy to express them. First, and most commonly predicted, is the immediate future . . . . The other future in the poem is the distant future centering on Rome from its founding to Augustan times. This is revealed by three major prophecies . . . . These deal little or not at all with Aeneas' personal future and so the present they represent for the most part comes to pass outside the framework of the poem." Cf. also Feeney 1986, 4-6 ( = 1999, 225-27).

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only opens conspicuous cracks in the epic cultural system in which the poem is operating; it also threatens the stability of the temporal frame in which the primary narrative takes place and, hence, problematizes the relation between the primary narrative and the temporal deviations embedded in it. Miserrima caedes

In book n , Camilla, after a series of military exploits-a long aristeia included-meets her doom at the hands of a certain Arruns (who will shortly pay with his own life for this bold action). In the best Homeric tradition, the death of the leader creates a state of sudden consternation and panic among the troops, who, pursued by the Trojan army, rush back in disorder to the city of King Latinus.? Prima fugit domina amissa leuis ala Camillae, turbati fugiunt Rutuli, fugit acer Atinas, disiectique duces desolatique manipli tuta petunt et equis auersi ad moenia tendunt. nee quisquam instantis Teucros letumque ferentis sustentare ualet telis aut sistere contra, sed laxos referunt umeris languentibus arcus, quadripedumque putrem cursu quatit ungula campum. uoluitur ad muros caligine turbidus atra puluis, et e speculis percussae pectora matres femineum clamorem ad caeli sidera tollunt. qui cursu portas primi inrupere patentis, hos inimica super mixto premit agmine turba, nee miseram effugiunt mortem, sed limine in ipso, moenibus in patriis atque inter tuta domorum confixi exspirant animas. pars claudere portas, nee sociis aperire uiam nee moenibus audent accipere orantis, oriturque miserrima caedes defendentum armis aditus inque arma ruentum. exclusi ante oculos lacrimantumque ora parentum pars in praecipitis fossas urgente ruina uoluitur, immissis pars caeca et concita frenis arietat in portas et duros obice postis. 7. For Homeric parallels, see II. 11.743-45, 16.290-93, 17.316-19.

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ipsae de muris summo certamine matres (monstrat amor uerus patriae, ut uidere Camillam) tela manu trepidae iaciunt ac robore duro stipitibus ferrum sudibusque imitantur obustis praecipites, primaeque mori pro moenibus ardent. (Virg. Aen. 11.868-95) [The first to fly-their mistress lost-Camilla's own light-armed horse; the Latins, routed, run; daring Atinas flees. Their captains scattered, forsaken companies seek safety; turning, they gallop to the walls. No one is able to stay with spears or stand against the press of Trojans bringing death. And now the Latins haul off slack bows on their exhausted shoulders; four-footed hoofbeats shake the crumbling plain. The dust that whirls in cloud and darkness rolls back to the city; as they beat their breasts, the mothers on the watchtowers raise laments, the cries of women, high as heaven's stars. The first to gallop through the open gates full speed still find the enemy entangled within their ranks; the fugitives cannot escape sad death; the Trojan shafts still thrust; within their native walls, upon their threshold, within the very shelter of their houses the Latins gasp their last. Some shut the gates; they do not dare to open them for their own comrades and are deaf to any prayers. And then, a wretched butchery: some guard the gates with swords; their own companions charge against them. Some, shut out, are rolled headlong into the trenches, driven by the rout, before the eyes, the very presence of their weeping parents; some, with loosened reins, blind, spur ahead and batter at the gates, the tough and bolted doors. Even the mothers along the walls, remembering Camilla, s 8. Literally, "as they saw Camilla." On this expression, see n. 46 in the present chapter.

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are rivals in their eagerness to cast their shafts with anxious hands; true love of homeland points out the way; they rush to imitate steel with their sturdy oak clubs and charred stakes; each burns to die first for her city's sake.] This image of a routed army seeking refuge within the walls of its own city finds close correspondence in Iliad 21.9 After a long period of self­ inflicted isolation, Achilles reappears at last on the battleground in Iliad 20; in a state of maddened sorrow for the death of his companion Patroclus, he rages across the battlefield. The helpless Trojans have no alternative but to stream in flight (Il. 21.1-16 ) . As the river Scamander engages Achilles in a mighty combat, the Trojans seek refuge within Troy's walls (Il. 21.537-43 ) ; eventually, while Achilles is once again tricked and delayed in his pursuit of the enemy by Apollo, the Trojans are able to enter the city safely through the gates that have been deliberately opened to receive them (Il. 21.606-11 ) . 10 The development of the action in both poems makes the parallelism even more compelling. By the end of book 21, what remains to be told in the Iliad is the final duel between Hector and Achilles. Similarly, by the end of book 11 of the Aeneid, the stage is ready for the final confrontation between Aeneas and Turnus. The narrative structure of the Virgilian scene, however, recalls another important episode of the Iliad, the description of the death of Hector and the famous 'tELX,oaxo:n:ia of Iliad 22." Compare the following outlines. Aeneid 1 1 868-77

Retreat of the Latins

877-78

Reaction of the Latin mothers

879-86

First slaughter of the Latins

887

Reaction of the Latin parents

888-90

The slaughter continues

891-9 5

Reaction of the Latin mothers

9· Cf. Knauer 1964, ad loc. 10. Cf. also II. 12.120-23, where it is said that the gates of the Achaean camp are left open to allow the soldiers to find refuge. 11. Aside from its employment in the Iliad, tELXOO%oJtla is widely attested in historiography. On this topic, see Paul 1984, at 60.3.

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Iliad 2 2 5 -32

Action outside the city walls

33-37

Reaction of Priam

38-78

Speech of Priam

79-81

Reaction of Hecuba

82-91

Speech of Hecuba

92- 404

Fight between Hector and Achilles12 and death of Hector

405-15

Reaction of Hecuba and Priam

416-28

Speech of Priam

431-36

Speech of Hecuba

437-end

Reaction and speech of Andromache

The constant narrative shift in the Aeneid between the events taking place outside the city wall and the response of the Latin parents, who endure the increasingly dramatic spectacle culminating in the slaughter of their own sons, has a clear antecedent in Iliad 22. There, the events outside the city wail-in this case, the various phases of the fight between Hector and Achilles that eventually lead to the pitiful death of the former-are commented on and framed by the corresponding reactions of grief and sorrow on the part of Hecuba and Priam, the quintessential parents of the epic world. Thus, Aeneid 11.868-95 conflates two important episodes of the Iliad. The rout scene at the end of Iliad 21 may be recognized as the most relevant "exemplary" model for the Virgilian scene; its composite narrative structure, on the other hand, echoes the structure of Iliad 22. In sum, the episode seems to be exquisitely Homeric-that is, epic-in both theme and structure. I now turn to a closer analysis of the imagery of the Virgilian passage. The Latin rout unfolds in distinct phases. After the death of Camilla, the Latin army hastens back into the city, mingling with the Trojans (11.880: mixto . . . agmine) . A sequence of deaths marks out the spatial progression of the retreating forces into the city: some die on the threshold of the city, then some within its walls, and eventually some within the walls of their homes, 12. The narration of the final duel between Hector and Achilles is interrupted by a divine dialogue between Zeus and Athena (II. 22.168-85) and by Jupiter's weighing of their fates on his scales (II. 22.208-13 ) . Both scenes, ignored here, are important models in the final duel between Aeneas and Turnus.

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to which they had run in search of safety (11.881-83: sed limine in ipso, I moenibus in patriis atque inter tuta domorum I confixi exspirant animas) . Thus ends the first part of the description. At this point, a sudden and dramatic change alters the situation. The citizens shut the city gates in front of their own imploring citizens. The result is a miserrima caedes:'3 the re­ treating army, deprived of the only refuge it could have, falls headlong into the fossa or crashes at the gates as a hostile battering ram. The fossa and the gates, once built to secure the safety of the citizens, turn against part of the citizen body. Manifestly, the episode in the Aeneid has retained none of the topoi conspicuously present in its "exemplary" model in Iliad 21 that, recurrent in many other Homeric rout scenes, best qualify the passage in its capacity as a type-scene: the Trojans flee Achilles's mighty force like locusts escaping fire (Il. 21.12-14); covered by the dust of the plain and with their throats parched with thirst, they rush to the city, while Achilles presses on (Il. 21.540-42); in disorderly fashion, they stream safely into Troy (Priam has ordered the gates to be opened); they are no longer curious to find out which one had gotten away and who had died in the battle (Il. 21.6o6-n) .'4 These epic topoi have been carved out, so to speak, from the scene in the Aeneid and replaced with imagery alien to the Iliad. The opening verses of the Aeneid episode offer readers a clear cue of the different narrative register employed here. The participle turbati (Aen. 11.869: turbati fugiunt) , which aptly conveys the idea of "disorder and confusion" (at once concrete and psychological) ' s is used by Livy to mark the initial stage of the type-scene, which Witte labelled signifi­ cantly "den Ausbruch der Flucht" [the outbreak of the flight ] .'6 The follow­ ing examples will clarify Livy's technique. Livy 6.32.8: Sed eques immissus ordines turbauit; turbatis signa pedi­ tum inlata, quantumque Romana se inuexit acies, tantum hostes gradu demoti . . . '7 13. For a similar episode, cf. Aen. 9.722-26: Pandarus . . . portam ui multa conuerso cardine torquet I obnixus latis umeris, multosque suorum I moenibus exclusos duro in certamine linquit . . . For the expression miserrima caedes, cf. Aen. 2.410-12: hie primum ex alto delubri culmine telis I nostrorum obruimur oriturque miserrima caedes I armorum facie et Graiarum errore iubarum. 14. For similar images in the rout scenes of the Iliad, see chap. 3 in the present study. 15. Cf. E. V. s.v. turbo: "Tuttavia nella maggioranza dei casi turbare e il verbo del disordine pro­ vocato non solo sul piano concreto e materiale, rna anche nella sfera psichica. Cosi spesso dipinge insieme il movimento disordinato e l'agitazione, il timore, l'inquietudine nell'atto della fuga." 16. Witte 1910, 395. 17. "But a cavalry charge disordered their ranks; the infantry then made an attack on the disordered ranks; the further the Romans pressed forward, the more decided the retreat of the enemy became . . . "

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7.15.3: Hie primo impetus prope uecors turbauit hostes; eques deinde emissus turbatos auertit. 18 33.18.18: turbati extemplo tumultum primo inter se fecerunt, terga deinde vertunt, postremo abiectis armis in praecipitem fugam effunduntur.19

Turbati thus functions as a powerful lexical indicator, which prompts read­ ers to decodify the imagery of the scene according to a different generic register. The passage reflects conventional imagery indeed, but this conven­ tional imagery does not belong to the Iliad or to epic generally. These topoi belong to historiography, as the following examples show. Mixto Agmine

Livy 1.14.9-11: Ita multiplici terrore perculsi Fidenates prius paene, quam Romulus quique cum eo uisi erant, circumagerent frenis equos, terga uertunt; multoque effusius, quippe uera fuga, qui simulantes paulo ante secuti erant oppidum repetebant. Non tamen eripuere se hosti: haerens in tergo Romanus, priusquam fares portarum obicerentur, uelut agmine uno inrumpit. 20 4.33.12-4.34.1: Alterum agmen fertur per castra in urbem. Eadem et Romanos sequentes impetus rapit, Quinctium maxime et cum eo de­ gressos modo de montibus, recentissimum ad laborem militem, quia ultimo proelio aduenerat. Hi postquam mixti hostibus portam intra­ uere, in muros euadunt, suisque capti oppidi signum ex muro tollunt.2 1 42.54.5: quae cum irae magis inconsultae quam uerae fiduciae uirium esset, pauci et fessi ab integris pulsi terga <dederunt>fugientesque per patentem portam hastes acceperunt. 22 18. "First they charged like madmen and disordered the enemy's lines; the cavalry attack that followed caused the disordered ranks to flee. " 19. "the disordered ranks at once fell foul of one another, then they turn and, at last, flinging away their arms, break into headlong flight." 20. "Terrified by these combined threats, the Fidenates turn and flee almost before Romulus and his men could wheel around to the attack. They made for their town much more quickly than they had just before pursued those who pretended to flee, for their flight was genuine. They could not, however, shake off the pursuit; the Romans were on their heels and, before the gates could be closed against them, they burst into the city together with the Fidenates. " 21. "The other body makes its way through the camp to their city with the Romans in close pursuit, especially Quinctius and his men, who had just come down from the hills and, having arrived toward the close of the struggle, were fresher for the work. After they entered the gates to­ gether with the enemy, they mount the walls and signal to their friends that the city has been taken." 22. "this was due more to impetuosity and rage than to any well-grounded confidence in their strength, and since they were few in number and exhausted, they were repulsed by the

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The Closing of the Gates

Livy 5.13.13: Et Veientium refugientes in urbem multi ante portas caesi, dum prae metu, ne simul Romanus inrumperet, obiectis foribus extremos suorum exclusere. 23 25.15.14-16: Romani, quamquam circumuentos hinc pedes, hinc eques urgebat, tamen aliquamdiu pugnam traxere; postremo et ipsi terga uertunt atque ad urbem fugiunt. Ibi proditores conglobati cum popularium agmen patentibus portis accepissent, ubi Romanos fusos ad urbem ferri uiderunt, conclamant instare Poenum permixtosque et hastes urbem inuasuros ni propere portas claudant. Ita exclusos Ro­ manos praebuere hosti ad caedem . . . 24 44.28.13: Sed propius urbem lemhi accessuque commodiore cum exposuissent armatos, partim in uia fugientes Gallos adepti Mace­ clones ceciderunt, partim ante portam exclusos. Clauserant enim Chii portas ignari, qui fugerent aut sequerentur. 25 Death in the Fossa

Livy 25.11.6: plurimi in fossam praecipitauere occisique sunt plures in fuga quam in pugna.26 44.12.3: inconpositos atque inordinatos fugant persecunturque ad fossam, in quam conpulsos ruina cumulant. Sescenti ferme ibi inter­ fecti, omnesque prope, qui inter murum fossamque deprensi erant, uolnerantur.27 enemy, who was fresh and vigorous. They turned and in their flight through the open gate, they let in the enemy. " 23. "Of the Veientines also, many who were fleeing to the city were killed in front of the gates, which were closed for fear the Romans would break in, and so the hindmost of the fugitives were shut out. '' 24. "Romans kept up the fight for some time despite their being attacked on one side by the infantry and on the other by the cavalry, but at last they, too, turn and flee to the city. There, a body of the traitors admitted the stream of their fellow townsmen through the open gate, but when they saw the Romans routed and running toward the city, they shout that the Carthaginians are at their heels and that the enemy will enter the city together with the Romans unless they instantly close the gates. The Romans accordingly were shut out for slaughter by the enemy . . . " 25. "But as the scout ships put troops ashore nearer the city and at a more convenient landing place, the Macedonians overtook the Galatians and cut them down, partly as they fled along the road, partly when they were shut out of the city gates. The Chians had closed their gates, not knowing who were fleeing and who were pursuing." 26. "a great many flung themselves headlong into the ditch, and more were killed in the flight than in the fighting." 27. "as they are unable to present a firm front or proper line, the enemy routs and pursues them as far as the ditch. Driven there headlong, they lie in heaps. Nearly six hundred were killed there, and almost all who were caught between the wall and the ditch are wounded."

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The relative complexity of Virgilian narration emerges again. On the one hand, the new war of Troy unfolds in front of our eyes; readers of the narration are meant to perceive its Iliadic reference point (or points, as in this instance) and are thus brought in contact with that epic past. On the other hand, the toposlike quality of the imagery assimilates the epic tale to a different generic system and, consequently, projects the primary narrative forward into what is also a different temporal system of reality. In the multilayered generic structure of this passage, genres (and the topoi con­ nected with them) function as vectors moving the narrative toward opposite temporal directions, which effectively begin to crack the temporal frame of the primary narrative by creating powerful dissonances within it. This phe­ nomenon is even more visible in the last phase of the rout scene.

Summum Certamen: Women in Arms

As the unrelenting slaughter of the men is taking place in front of the gates, a final and highly dramatic event brings the episode to its closure. Inspired by the sight of Camilla, the Latin mothers, up to this point passive spectators, take up a more dynamic role: throwing improvised weapons from the city walls, they become active, if desperate, participants in the fray (tela manu trepidae iaciunt ac robore duro I stipitibus ferrum sudibusque imitantur obustis I praecipites, primaeque mori pro moenibus ardent).28 This passage has been the object of heated debates, and its many enigmatic expressions have been a puzzlement for scholars since antiquity. I will discuss them shortly. For now, I will analyze another peculiar aspect of this scene, namely, the altogether un­ Homeric quality of this representation in which women are shown taking up arms to defend their city.29 After a highly emotional encounter with his wife and son, Hector bids farewell to Andromache, inviting her to go back home and attend to her womanly labors at the loom and distaff: "Go therefore back to our house, and take up your own work, the loom and the distaff, and see to it that your handmaidens ply their work also; but the men must see to the fighting, all men who are the people of Ilion, but I beyond others."3o Hector reminds

28. Aen. 11.893-95. 29. Not surprisingly, Knauer (1964, ad loc. ) does not cite any Homeric parallel for this Virgilian scene. 30. II. 6.490-93. For a similar division of roles between men and women, see Od. 1.356-59, 21.350-53·

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Andromache that war belongs exclusively to men (n6A£[tO£ � avogwm [t£A�oet) ;3' women's work is at home with the loom. Significantly, both Helen and Andromache are thus occupied when the former is summoned by Iris and the latter is reached by the news of Hector's death.32 The same idea and the same dichotomy between male and female spheres of competence (war and weaving, city and house) is underscored later in the poem. In Iliad 8, as Hector is making preparations for the night (the Trojans are camping near the Achaean camp), he sends orders to the city: "for the boys who are in their first youth and the grey-browed elders to take stations on the god­ founded bastions that circle the city; and as for the women, have our wives, each one in her own house, kindle a great fire."33 Women witness war only from a distance and in the capacity of inert spectators.Helen watches the Greek army advancing on the plain of Troy in Iliad 3; more dramatically, Hecuba and Andromache witness from the high walls of the city the death of Hector-son and husband, respectively-and the dragging of his body in front of the city. Not surprisingly, the only women warriors in the Iliad are the Amazons, who are mentioned only twice in the Iliad and are granted the significant epithet av-navetgm, "a match for men."34 The matriarchal Amazons, who live in the spatial margins of the world and are put down by prestigious heroes, are a fantastical community. Connoting both maidenhood and martial valor, they are representative of "otherness"; they are the antiparadigm of proper women's behavior.3s In the Iliad, weaving and warfare are represented as irreconcilable alternatives; no crossing between the two spheres of activity is allowed. Amazons and women can share no common ground. The Latin mothers represent a radically different conception of feminin­ ity and seem to share a special bond with Camilla, the bellatrix.36 At the end of Aeneid 7, when Camilla's grand-finale appearance draws to a close the catalog of the Italian warriors, the Latin mothers gaze at Camilla with wonder, and she becomes their undisputed object of admiration. illam omnis tectis agrisque effusa iuuentus turbaque miratur matrum et prospectat euntem, 31. II. 6.492. Cf. 20.137. 32. II. 3.125, 22.440. 33. II. 8.518-21. 34· II. 3.189, 6.186. 35· Hall 1989, 54· 36. For more on the figure of Camilla and its archetypes, see Arrigoni 1982; Horsfall 1988; La Penna 1988; Anderson 1999, 203-9.

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attonitis inhians animis ut regius ostro uelet honos leuis umeros, ut fibula crinem auro internectat, Lyciam ut gerat ipsa pharetram et pastoralem praefixa cuspide myrtum. (Virg. Aen. 7.812-17) [And as Camilla passes, all the young pour out from field and house: the matrons crowd and marvel, staring, in astonishment at how proud royal purple veils Camilla's smooth shoulders, how a clasp of gold entwines her hair, at how she bears her Lycian quiver, her shepherd's pike of myrtle tipped with steel.] The Latin matres reappear in Camilla's final hour and, inspired by her, engage in a desperate fight. The matres in the Aeneid frame the story of Camilla. They greet her entrance in the story and mark her departure from it. Camilla and the Latin women draw close to each other, and their spheres of activity blur in a way that was denied to the women of the Iliad. The quest for alternative models for this passage of the Aeneid has not proved unfruitful. In her detailed study on the character of Camilla, Arrigoni points out that the special relationship between the Latin matres and Camilla is not a Virgilian novelty but has a very close parallel in the Posthomerica of QuintusY Since the account of Arctinus's Aethiopis presents the Trojan women as playing no active role in the defense of the city (at least from what we can evince from the summary of Proclus), Arrigoni goes on to cite as the plausible model behind both Quintus and Virgil a certain Tellis or Telles-probably a Hellenistic author, he is mentioned by Eustathius as the author of an Amazonomachy38-or, alternatively, a Hellenistic tragedy whose few fragments are preserved in Oslo Papyrus 1413, in which the Phrygian women are represented as dropping their knives at the appearance of Achilles's ghost.39 However, Arrigoni's conjecture rests on purely hypo­ thetical grounds; because little is known of the work of Tellis/Telles (Eusta­ thius's summary is not very helpful in this regard) and because the frag­ ments of Oslo Papyrus 1413 are few, we cannot draw any final conclusion on 37. 38. 39. between

For more on the relation between Quintus and Virgil, see chap . 1, n. 2. Eustathius at Od. 11.358, 1696, 51 ff. Arrigoni 1982, 45, 123. On Arctinus's Aethiopis, see Davies 1989, 53-61. On the relation Virgil's account and Oslo Papyrus 1413, see Kakridis 1964.

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the most likely model for our two authors. Relevant here is Quintus, whose text calls for a comparison with the Virgilian scene. As Arrigoni notices, the most visible point of contact between the Trojan women in Quintus and the Latin mothers of the Aeneid is the special bond that they seem to share with the heroines of the poems: Penthesilea in Quintus, Camilla in Virgil. This special relationship is manifest in their desire to identify with the heroines via emulation-stirred by the sight of their heroine, the Trojan women, too, are eager to engage actively in the fray.4° But differences between the two texts are significant. In Quintus, Penthesilea makes her appearance at the opening of the poem and is ac­ claimed by the Trojan throng. Like a lioness thirsty for blood, she becomes the unstoppable protagonist of the battle and spurs the Trojans to combat with her military valor. Under her leadership, the Greeks are described as falling like leaves in autumn or like drops of rain (-wt 6£ ,Booi:t; qruAA-mmv £mxmEt; � 'ljJExa6wm I :n:'Lmov £:n:aomn:Egm).4' Only at this point are Quin­ tus's Trojan women taken by the desire to emulate Penthesilea's heroic feats. Marveling from afar at her martial exploits (TQ(OLU6Et; f) a:n:aVE'lJfu::V UQ�La £gya yvvmxot; I 1tm)[ta�ov)42 and ignited by Hippodameia's speech, they hasten to go to battle for the sake of their town and their people. "Qt; ag' Eqnj' :n:aaum 6' EQWt; at'lJYEQO LO fill1tmo E[t:ltWEv. £oavu£vwc 6E :n:qo •Eixwc &malvwxov BhuEvm £v 'tEvxwmv aqnyeuEvm uwav 'Lm aatE"L xat Aaoi:mv · OQLVE'tO 6E O(J?LOL &uOc. a:Jt6:n:qo11L ff dqta 1tEV'tO xat 'taAaqovc, aAEYELva ff bi EV'tEa XE LQac 'LaAA-ov. (Quintus Posthom. 1.436-46)

[So cried she, and love for stern war seized all those women; with eager speed 40. If a common model may be invoked for Quintus and Virgil, the framing of Camilla's story by the presence of the Latin mothers appears to be exquisitely Virgilian. Contrary to the passage in Aeneid 7, the wonder that Penthesilea arouses by her arrival at Troy is shared by the entire population, and no special relation between her and the Trojan women is singled out at this point of the narration (Posthom. 1.53-57: "The Trojans, hurrying from all sides, greatly marveled when they saw the child of the tireless war god, wearing high greaves; she was similar to the blessed gods, for in her face glowed beauty glorious and terrible" ) . 41. Posthom. 1.345-46. 42. Posthom. 1.403-4.

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they hastened to march outside the walls in arms, afire to battle for their town and people: all their spirit was aflame. Far away they flung the weaving wool and the distaff and stretched their hands to grim weapons By throwing away the distaff and the weaving wool and by replacing them with weapons, the Trojan women symbolically renounce the role proper to their gender. They, too, want a share in the UQ� La EQya, the sphere of activity that Hector had notoriously denied them. Yet they cannot follow through. They cannot turn themselves into Amazons; they are not able to bridge the irreconcilable gap between weaving and warfare. No sooner is their mind set than Theano convinces them to reconsider the hazardous plan: "You rush on without thinking; our strength can never be as that of Danaan men, men trained in daily battle. . . . Therefore stay away from the tumult of the battle and go back to the loom inside the house; war shall be the business of our men [avOQUOL � �[tE'tEQOLOL :rtEQL :lt'tOAE[tOLO [tEA�OEL] ."43 For the Trojan women, participation in the UQ�La EQya remains a fantasy, a craving; persuaded by the Hector-like speech of Theano, they are immedi­ ately reabsorbed into their female universe. The closing of the scene points to the irreconcilable separateness of the two worlds. The scene had opened with the Trojan women marvelling from afar at the martial exploits of Penthesilea. In a sort of ring composition, it ends with the same image: the Trojan women return to gaze from afar at a world that does not belong to them (UO[J,LVT]V � anavm&v EOE0Qaxov) .44 The situation is different in Virgil. Like the Trojan women, the Latin mothers are stirred to action by the sight of Camilla (Aen. 11.892: ut uidere Camillam), but unlike Penthesilea, Camilla cannot be viewed in her capacity as a uictrix, for she is now dead. She has become an exemplum for a different sort of heroism.45 Camilla and her death inspire the Latin mothers to put their own lives at stake in a last, desperate attempt to defend the city. The enigmatic line 892, monstrat amor uerus patriae, ut uidere Camillam, should 43· Posthom. 1.454-69. 44· Posthom. 1.476. 45. For a different interpretation, see Arrigoni 1982, 121. Arrigoni claims that the Roman mothers are eager to emulate Camilla in her capacity as a bellatrix: "Personally I believe that what is meant here is an imitation of Camilla as warrior, of her aristeia, of her behavior as an Amazon."

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be interpreted in this sense.46 The true love the Latin mothers have for their country is expressed in their willingness to die for it. There is no need to view amor uerus patriae as a hypallage in the sense of amor uerae patriae as opposed to the am or patriae alienae of Camilla. 47 As Camilla dies, the Latin mothers are now willing to emulate her example; after the fashion of Tyrtaeus, they are eager to be the first ones to immolate their lives for their country, as is revealed in the verse that marks the end of the episode: primaeque mori pro moenibus ardent (n.895) .E'i:a1tm xal "tTJ\; :n:aga ,;&v yuvmx&v B oTJ &la\; ]." s7 The situation, though, 52. Arrigoni 1982, 124. 53· Arrigoni 1982, 118. 54. Aen. 11.891. Servius rightly understands summa certamine as in extrema discrimine. Cf. also de Ia Cerda 1617, ad loc. : Non defuit feminis, cum uiris deesset, animus. Itaque cum summum illud et extremum putarent esse certamen, e muris tela deuoluere, pugnare acriter, festinare omnia, mori pro patria. For a different interpretation, cf. Arrigoni 1982, 118; Arrigoni interprets ilie expression summum certamen to mean "l'impegno agonistico." 55· Aen. 11.475-76. Servius (ad loc. ) explains matronae puerique, uocat labor ultimus omnis as omnes ad laborem ultima necessitas conuocat. 56. Diod. 13.55-57. 57· Diod. 13.55.4-5·

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soon takes a turn for the worse: the wall collapses, and the Carthaginian commander launches assaults from every side. At this point, women and children, who up to now had been merely aids in the defense, become direct participants in the desperate struggle and throw on the enemy improvised missiles, stones, and tiles ('ta :rtA.�fu] 1:&v yuvmx&v xal naiowv . . . xal 'tOV£ 'tE A.iitov£ xal 'tU£ XEQU[tLOa£ £ � aU ov £nl 'tOV£ :rtOAE[tLO'll £) .58 Similarly, the last day of the city of Veii (ultimum illum diem),59 destined to fall at the hands of the Romans after a ten-year-long siege, witnesses women throwing stones and tiles in a last attempt to ward off the Romans' attempt to set the city on fire (pars cum ex tectis saxa tegulaeque a mulieribus ac seruitiis iacerentur, inferunt ignes). 6 0 The siege of the Spanish city of Iluturgi offers an even more appropriate example. In the eyes of the besieged, Scipio's siege of the city, brought on by the city's treacherous behavior during the Second Punic War, gains the quality of a summum certamen. "Not only freedom was at stake, which whets the courage of brave men alone, " Livy tells us in an editorial comment, "but all had before their eyes extreme penalties and a hideous death" [Non libertas solum agebatur, quae uirorum fortium tan tum pectora acuit, sed ultima omnibus supplicia et foeda mors ob oculos erat}. 6' In this final hour, women and children, with a strength superior to their soul and body (feminae puerique super animi corporisque uires adsunt), join the men in the desperate, if useless, attempt to save the city.6 2 In the passages now examined, as in the Aeneid, women's participation is characterized not by heroic and martial ardor or professionality but by desperation. Their weapons, stones and tiles (again as in Virgil), are improvised weapons, a detail that stresses the des­ peration of the attempt rather than its amateurism.63 Far from being located as Arrigoni believes, in a legendary past, the intervention of the Latin mothers and the dialectical nexus between final struggle and female intervention reflects a topos that belongs conspicuously to historiography. It is properly in a historical context, not in a mythological 58. Diod. 13.56.7. 59· Livy 5.21.6. 6o. Livy 5.21.10. 61. Livy 28.19.14. 62. Livy 28.19 .13. Cf. Sal!. Jug 67.1: ad hoc mulieres puerique pro tectis aedificiorum saxa et alia quae locus praebebat, certatim mittere. 63. Cf. Aen. 9.509-10 (telorum effundere contra I omne genus Teucri); 2.446-49 (his se, quando ultima cernunt, I extrema iam in morte parant defendere telis, I auratasque trabes, ueterum decora alta parentum, I deuoluunt). In these passages, too, the desperate response of the besieged is emphasized by the use of nonprofessional weapons.

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one, that women, in the moment of greatest danger for their city, the summum certamen, are consistently represented as taking part in the final struggle for survival.6 4 If, following Arrigoni, we believe in a common model for Virgil and Quintus, one that explored the close bonds between the Amazon Penthesilea and the Trojan women, we must also conclude that Virgil has refashioned it quite extensively. In Quintus, the bond between the Trojan mothers and Penthesilea is employed to reestablish a contrast between women and Ama­ zons that is typical of the code of behavior of the Iliad. In Virgil, the relation between Camilla and the Latin mothers subverts this antithesis and propels the women outside the epic universe. The Latin mothers, who behaved like true epic women and stared pitifully at the events unfolding before their eyes at the beginning of the Aeneid episode, have undergone a process of evolu­ tion in the space of this brief scene. At the end of the episode, their epic world is shattered, and as if progressing in time, the Latin mothers have stepped out from the mythological past and entered the realm of history.6 s When and where does the story of the Aeneid take place? The answer to this question-an answer that seemed rather obvious at the beginning of this chapter-has suddenly become more problematic. Consequently, in the 64. I do not think that any particular historical event can be traced as a "model" for the Virgilian narration, though other commentators have suggested a reference to specific events of Roman history. For example, de Ia Cerda (1617, ad loc. ) explains the expression sed limine ipso as an allusion to the battle at the gates of Capua. 65. A passage from Pausanias' s Messenia is relevant in this regard. Pausanias ( 4.6.2) seems to imply that his account of the Second Messenian War follows an account that Rhianus, a Helle­ nistic poet who wrote an epic entitled Messeniaca, centered on the famous capture of Eira after the disaster of the Great Trench. The last desperate battle to ward off the Lacedaemonians from the citadel of Eira (the siege had lasted n years) is labelled by Pausanias um;ato� &.ywv ( cf. the Virgilian summum certamen) and is again characterized by the women's intervention in the fight. Here, too, the women's attempt to participate in the struggle is marked, at the beginning, by their willingness to use improvised weapons: "Realizing that the supreme and most desperate crisis had come upon them [yv6vtE� oiiv tOV um;atov Of-lOU %al &.vay%atOtatoV O