Aeneid X
Concilium Deorum/ Council of the Gods (1-146)
Standard Epic topos: A commonplace element of a narrative that is reworked and
regenerated within texts of a shared generic heritage.
Has the sententia of the gods changed? He forbid war. Is this true (i.e. did he nod)?
He references the Punic Wars and the part they will play in it (reference to Naevius’
Bellum Punicum). “Consent to the pact (foedus) I have decreed.” Remember Venus and
Juno and Juno and Allecto have already performed their own types of foedera.
Venus’ response: Trojans are besieged and Aeneas is ignorant; burning of the ships at
Eryx, Aeolus, Iris, Allecto; she only wants to save Ascanius. She does not care what
happens to Aeneas or the rest of the Trojans. No mention of her own actions in
Carthage.
Juno’s response: She has had nothing to do with Aeneas’ actions in going to Italy and
beginning war. “Wasn’t it he who exposed your wretched Trojans to the Greeks? What
inspired Europe and Asia to surge up in arms, underhandedly break the bonds of
friendship” (109-10) Europamque Asiam et foedera solvere furto. The rape of Helen of
Troy (furto) is the cause of the violation of foedera between Europe and Asia. Various
myths (including vase painting) suggest that Aeneas was present at the rape of Helen.
The gods reaction is like a breeze which warns sailors of greater storms (Aeolus and the
cave of winds). Jupiter must follow their sententia; foedera will not be struck.
Jupiter’s language at “since it is not allowed that Latins and Trojans join in pacts of
peace” recalls the language of Allecto. “Fates will find a way,” yet each man is “weaving
his own web.
The entire epic cycle is set within the binary of an East-West binary (shield of Aeneas),
yet the Aeneid has continually emphasized the process of reuniting East and West
while simultaneously constructing a north-south antagonistic axis between Rome and
Carthage (Alexandria).
Concilium Deorum, Vat lat. 3867: Folio 235
Death of Pallas (138-603)
Vergil begins by reviewing the troops on the Trojan side and setting
the stage, then moves to Aeneas making a foedus with Tarchon, an
Etruscan king; Pallas asks Aeneas about the stars and his labors.
Vergil invokes the Muse for a second catalogue of Etruscan troops:
Massicus (Clusium, Cosae); Abas (Populonia, Ilva); Asilas (prophet
and seer, Pisa); Astyr (Caere, Pyrgi, Graviscae); Cunarus, Cupavo;
Ocnus (Mantua, Vergil’s birthplace); Aulestes. Notice the imagery of
mixed kinds such as Cyncus becoming a swan and the ships Centaur
and Triton.
The sea-nymphs approach Aeneas and inform him of the plight of
Ascanius (this makes the Nisus and Euryalus episode even more
needless).
Turnus again gives a good speech (“Let each fighter think of his own
wife, his home...”), but he hesitates in his commands, allowing Aeneas
to land. Tarchon’s ship?
Vergil’s death narratives: Name, biographical sketch (broadly
understood), then manner of death (372 ff). Men become merely
names and mangled bodies. How would a Roman interpret this?
How do we interpret this? Notice that Turnus has disappeared as
Aeneas performs his slaughter.
The Death of Pallas (Jacques-Henri Sablet)
425: Vergil then shifts the narrative to another part of the battlefield and focuses on the boy Pallas
(between 15-17 perhaps). Pallas’ aristeia ensues. Thymber and Daucus are identical twins, but become
distinct in the manner of their death.
Pallas and Lausus (son of Mezentius, another beautiful boy warrior) fight for a moment then are separated
to meet their on distinct fates. Juturna (a river Nymph and sister of Turnus) advises Turnus to save
Lausus.
This battle is modeled on Iliad 16: the death of Sarpedon and Patroklos are mixed (although Patroklos is
actually the Aeneas--the older man--in his relationship with Achilles) and Turnus becomes assimilated to
both Patroklos (killer of Sarpedon) and Hektor (killer of Patroklos).
Turnus and Pallas: Turnus wishes Pallas’ father were there to witness his death (Neoptolemus in Aeneid
2). The battle seems to stop and open up before the two heroes. Lion versus Bull simile. Pallas prays to
Hercules but he cannot grant his prayer (like Zeus and Sarpedon). Jupiter (strangely) comments on this
moment of the battle stating that the death of Pallas will seal Turnus’ death. Turnus kills Pallas and also
gives the body back for burial.
The Baldric of Pallas (a sword belt): called a nefas-a crime it depicts the myth of the Danaids, a group of
50 brides and sisters, 49 of whom murder their husbands (and cousins) on their wedding night.
Hypermnestra is the only bride not to kill her husband. This baldric will result in Turnus’ death. What
does it mean (premature death; violation for stripping armor; familial pollution)? The baldric takes its
image only at the moment when Turnus touches it.
Turnus is wearing a shield with Io and a Baldric with the Danaids
Furor of Aeneas(604-1079)
Aeneas hears of the death of Pallas. Her performs a series of violent acts that are all connected to human sacrifice: 4 sons of Sulmo
and 4 sons of Ufens are taken prisoner to be sacrificed later (modeled on Iliad); Magus (manner of death, 626ff, recalls Pyrrhus’
sacrifice of Priam); Haemon (a priest, whose dress is like a sacrificial bull, verb mactare used); Tarquitus (becomes a trunk and
Aeneas states he will not be buried--like Priam). Aeneas becomes Achilles and Neoptolemus. Significance?
611: “As Pallas, Evander, all ‘things’ rise before Aeneas’ eyes, the welcoming board that met him that first day, the right hands
clasped.” Book 8 is before his eyes. Focalization. Same actions as Neoptolemus in Book 2, but his motivations are the opposite:
one operates on the level of annihilation and oblivion, the other on creation and memory.
Aeneas equated to Agaeon, a monstrous giant who fought Jupiter (gigantomachy). Significance? Furor has transformed Aeneas
into something else.
Jupiter and Juno again enter the narrative and Jupiter states a lie, that Venus had a part to play in this battle. Juno asks to save
Turnus, and Jupiter assures her that he will die soon anyway. Why does she save him and create more time? What is she
planning?
She creates (another) fake Aeneas. Turnus chases it into a boat and Juno sends him out to sea. This is worse than a death; Juno
will not let him kill himself.
Mezentius, the scorner of Gods, kills many (like a boar, lion, Orion), yet he shows honor in battle and seems to revere Jupiter. He
encounters Aeneas and promises the armor to Lausus. Aeneas hits Mezentius in the groin and hastens to kill him, but Lausus
(addressed like Nisus and Euryalus) saves his father. He is slaughtered by Aeneas.
Aeneas then pities the beautiful boy. Does not take his armor and respects his lost life. Mezentius grieves that he lived and that his
behavior in life made him guilty, while his son died. He mounts a horse and rides out to meet Aeneas. Aeneas kills the horse, then
Mezentius. Before dying, Mezentius requests his burial.
Aeneid XI
Funerals and Unification (1-254)
Funeral Games for Patroklos in Iliad 23 (2nd to last book), which are a mark of closure are here
replaced by actual funerals (in the second to last book) but there is no sign of closure.
Aeneas dedicates the arms of Mezentius to an oak whose limbs are lopped off and trunk lay bare:
where is Mezentius’ body? Why is his helmet dripping blood? Why are there twelve puncture
marks in his armor? The tree is an analogy to the reality of Mezentius. 12 Etruscan cities.
The burial of the dead and Pallas: “is this my binding pledge?” (65); Aeneas does not realize that
Pallas’ death was requisite for the pledge to become manifest. “Oh, Italy, oh, what a rugged
bastion you have lost, how great your loss, my Iulus.” By the end of the poem Iulus is the last male
heir through whom the progeny of the future of Rome might come into being. Pallas compared to
a violet or a Hyancinth cut by a girl. Wrapped in a Didonian shroud. Reference to the eight
sacrificial victims. Trees trunks dressed in enemy armor carried and the men lament like women
(there are no women). Chariots are covered in blood in this procession.
The procession includes Trojans, Etruscans, Arcadians. There are two ethnicities absent, the
Latins/Italians, and more importantly, the Romans. Rome is an amalgamation of all of these races,
but the Latins/Italians are essential for the creation of the Roman race. Rome is not an ethnicity, it
is a hybridization of ethnicities.
Aeneas laments the war to the Latin embassy and wishes that he and Turnus could have ended this
already. Drances, a rival of Turnus, agrees that he Latins and Trojans should form a compact.
They make a 12 day truce (12 Books of the Aeneid) and Trojans and Latins cut the same forests in
making their pyres for the dead. This effacement of the Italian landscape is analogous to that of the
human landscape. We are watching the men die again. Their ashes (240-50) become part of the
landscape
Evander, after his lament, addresses the absent Aeneas, “Aeneas, now Pallas is dead and gone, it is
your right arm that owes the life of Turnus to son and father both.” (210) If Aeneas does not killAeneas
Turnus this will be a violation of his compact with Evander.
Hanging the Armour of Mezentius (1469)
Council of the Latins (255-580)
The debate is over Turnus and whether he should fight
Aeneas alone. Amata and his exploits lend Turnus weight.
Council: Venulus (an ambassador to Diomedes sent in Book
7) relays the message that Diomedes and the rest of the
Greeks have been punished for sacking Troy (ultimately, no
hero is left but Aeneas). PTSD? Diomedes tells them to
perform a iunctio dextrarum.
Latinus proposes a foedus and Drances rises and attacks
Turnus. His rhetoric is designed to instigate Turnus into
battle. Turnus responds in kind to Drances, and then turns to
Latinus, stating that he will fight along with the Italians or
alone. His rationale is modeled on the Homeric ideal of the
hero: “I rate that man the luckiest one among us, first in the
work of war, first in the strength of heart, who spurning the
sight of surrender, falls...” (498ff). This old Homeric ideal is
no longer operative in a world of foedera, of alliance and the
subsumation of the individual for the state.
A messenger arrives and states that the Trojans are marching
against the city. Turnus commands his allies to join in war.
Latinus sulks off, Lavinia sits looking bashful, the matrons
pray to Minerva (parallel to the Trojan women in the Iliad).
Latinus, Amata, and Turnus (?)
Death of Camilla (581-1068)
Turnus’ plan is to ambush Aeneas in the forest as Camilla and Messapus decimate the Etruscan
calvary.
Camilla is an Italian Heroine (Volscian) and her literary heritage connects her to the likes of
Amazonian warriors (Penthesiliea in particular), but she is also something very different. Diana
narrates the mythical biography of Camilla: Metabus (her father) and his baby daughter are
forced from the city of Privernum and the citizens are trying to kill him. He encounters the river
Amasenus which has flooded its banks. He ties Camilla to a spear and throws her over the bank
then swims across. He vowed to dedicate her to Diana if she survive. They live in the woods
and he nurses her on milk of horses straight from the udder. She is raised as a warrior.
Etruscan mothers wish she belonged to them. Diana then sends Opis down with an arrow to
destroy whoever kills Camilla.
Battle ensues. Camilla leads a troop of Italian warrior women. Significance? Greek context of
Amazons operated as the “other,” even used as parallels with Persians, operating in a context of
Orientalism. These women are Italian. They are not other in any capacity, but the origin of the
future race of Rome. Camilla’s Aristeia follows.
Jupiter’s only part in any battle occurs at 855, in order to spur Tarchon, an Etruscan, to rally his
troops against the Latins as Camilla slaughters them.
Arruns begins to stalk Camilla. Camilla becomes entranced by Chloreus, a priest to the goddess
Cybebe. He is a eunuch, gleaming in Phrygian gear, wearing reds and purples. To say the least
he is outlandishly and foppishly extravagant. She becomes seduced by his effeminacy.
Arruns prays to Apollo and shoots Camilla. Her last words are to Acca and she gives a military
command to Turnus to free the town from the Trojans. 976=last lines of the Aeneid (breath
fled...to the shades below). Opis kills Arruns, who dies alone and unburied. The Latins are
pushed back into the City. The Stag>Nisus-Euryalus>Pallas-Lausus>Camilla>.....Turnus (all
pretty, all young, all dead). The beautiful death. Turnus quits the ambush and he and Aeneas
rush to the city. Night falls.
Death of Camilla (Guillaume)
Aeneid XII
Foedus (1-396)
Turnus is the first word of this book. Arma virumque; is the poem about Aeneas and his
arms, or Turnus and his? Turnus rages as all eyes are on him, but the stare of his fellow
citizens is compared to the attacks of hunters upon a Carthaginian Lion.
He calls for a foedus with Lavinia going to the winner. Latinus asks that peace is made
before he battles. Latinus refers to his violation of his foedus with Turnus in taking Lavinia
away from him. This only inflames him more. Amata approaches him next. She states that
her fate is one with his (similar speech to Hecuba and Hector, wife and husband).
Lavinia’ blush: 86ff: “her warm cheeks bathed with tears, a blush flamed up and infused her
glowing features.” Like ivory stained with ruddy dye, or lilies aglow in a host of scarlet
roses. The simile is an intertextual reference to the wound suffered by Menelaos in Book 4
Iliad. Menelaos (husband of Helen of Troy) has beaten Paris (who was saved by
Aphrodite) in single combat. The Greeks and Trojans made a foedus (horkos) that stated that
whoever won the battle would receive Helen, ending the war. Pandarus shoots an arrow (at
the behest of Athena) and hits Menelaos in the thigh. The blood from this wound is
described with the same simile as Lavinia’s blush. Significance? Her blush incites Turnus’
love and he agrees to the foedus. Turnus also calls this a devotio.
The foedus: modeled on Iliad 3. The ritual itself is a mixture of Greek, Latin and Italian elements. There are two major
differences between this foedus and Iliad 3: the presence of Altars and the actual moment of the violation of the foedus.
Juno incites Turnus’ sister and river nymph, Juturna, to renew the war between the armies. Juno knows that Turnus must
die, so why is she delaying the inevitable?
Latinus-Turnus and Aeneas meet at the altar and give an oath. Aeneas invokes the Sun, Italy, Jupiter, Juno, Mars, springs
and streams, gods in the sky and sea and Latinus invokes Earth, Sea and Stars, Diana and Apollo, Janus, infernal Gods,
Jupiter.
Conditions of the foedus: if Turnus wins, Aeneas will depart to Evander’s city with Iulus. If Aeneas wins, he will command
the Italians to bow to the Trojans, but both nations with rule under equal laws in aeterna foedera pacis. The foedus is struck at
259. It cannot be undone.
Violation of the foedus: Juturna takes the form of Camers and she attempts to prod the Italians to engage in war, and this
infects the Latins and other allies. She then sends a bird sign of an eagle killing a swan and the augur Tolumnius suggests
this sign signified that the Trojans will leave Italy. He casts a spear. Pandarus in Iliad 4? The spear does not hit Aeneas, but
rather one of nine brothers, who all rush against the Italians. The Latins then rush, which brings the Etruscans and Trojans
into the fray. Latinus flees with repulsed gods and foedera infecta. Messapus is described as “avidus confundere foedus”; this
phrase is used only one other time in reference to Pandarus in Book 5, the very hero who ruptured the foedus in Iliad 4. The
Etruscan Aulestes falls on the altars (requires a piaculum) and Messapus kills him (human sacrifice); Corynaeus (a Trojan)
then uses a torch from the altar to kill the Latin (Ebysus).
Significance? 340ff: “Altars plundered for torches, down from the menacing clouds a torrent of spears, and
the iron rain pelts thick-and-fast as they carry off the holy bowls and sacred braziers.”
The storm imagery and violation of altars in the context of a foedus recalls the death of Orontes in
Aeneid 1 on the Arae during the storm of Aeolus. Remember, the Arae were named from a foedus
struck between Carthage and Rome. Orontes’ death was proleptic gesture to the Punic Wars, so to
which wars is this violation of altars a reference? Social and Civil Wars.
The foedus is infectum, infected. How does this affect the oath of Aeneas? Both parts of Aeneas’ oath
come true because Italians, Latins, Trojans, and Etruscans all participate in the infection of this foedus.
Alba Longa does fall and Iulus’ race does move to Evander’s city (future site of Rome) and Italy and
Rome do rule with equal foedera.
The Roman race is founded on (infected) foedera. Cycles of violence. Any act of Civil War is a
violation of the most ancient Roman foedera, and this violation requires absolution and purification
through punishing the violators of the foedus. The problem: the violators are Romans themselves.
Each act of Roman bloodshed in Civil War renews the pollution of violated foedera.
Only Aeneas is free from pollution. He is hit by an arrow: “Nobody knows who shot it, whirled on to
bring the Rutulians such renown...” 385. How does he know a Rutulian shot it? Turnus enters battle
at this moment and becomes infected in participating in the violated ritual. Aeneas becomes the agent
of punishment for violating the foedus.
Narrative Dilations (397-778)
Turnus enters the battle. Iapyx attempts to heal Aeneas to no avail.
Venus plucks dittany (medicinal herb) from Crete and she slips it
into Iapyx hand, which allows him to heal Aeneas’ wound. Aeneas
tells Ascanius to remember him and his uncle Hektor when he is a
man (exempla).
Aeneas hunts Turnus in the melee while Juturna knocks Metiscus
from the chariot and guides Turnus away from Aeneas. Aeneas
then enters the battle. Does this infect him?
Turnus and Aeneas are equals in comparison to every other man
they fight. Venus then compels Aeneas to besiege the city.
The narrative hangs in the balance, whether it will become another
Aeneid 2 or something else entirely. Amata sees the attack and
assumes Turnus is dead. She commits suicide.
Turnus sees that the city is being besieged. Although his sister
attempts to persuade him on a different course, he has recognized
Juturna and he realizes he must defend the city. “With love
spurred by rage and a sense of his own worth too,” he turns back
towards the city (amor=patria). He asks to renew his fight with
Achilles.
Aeneas being healed
Death of Turnus (779-1114)
Turnus and Aeneas meet for the duel, and it is not a contest. Turnus’ sword
breaks against Aeneas’ immortal armor while Aeneas’ spear becomes stuck in a
sacred olive tree that had been cut down by the Trojans. Juturna gives Turnus a
sword and Venus loosens the spear.
Jupiter and Juno agree to a foedus: “when they join in their happy weddingbonds in pacts of peace at last, never command the Latins to exchange their ageold name, to become Trojans, alter their language, change their style of dress...Let
Roman stock grow strong with Italian strength. Troy has fallen with the very
name of Troy.” Jupiter nods.
In this poem Juno causes the Carthaginian War, Social and Civil Wars, while also
creating the Romans from the amalgamation of Latins and Trojans. Jupiter then
sends down the fury Megaera in the form of the a bird which flaps in Turnus’
face, a sign to Juturna that Turnus will die.
The battle renews. Turnus attempts to lift a stone no 12 men born now could
carry. Turnus is attempting to lift the Aeneid itself. His legs buckle and he falls.
1058 compares his state to sleep paralysis.
Turnus attempts to supplicate Aeneas, admitting defeat. Aeneas would have
spared him until he sees the baldric of Pallas. He becomes overcome by fury and
rage and states that Pallas sacrifices Turnus. Condere Ferrum. The final lines
echo the death of Camilla. If Aeneas spares Turnus, he does not perform the
requisite act of fulfilling the foedus that opens book 12 nor does he perform the
duty owed to Evander. In killig Turnus he performs both foedera. The problem
is that this foedus is infectum.
What does the ending of the poem mean? Why is the death of Camilla invoked at
the end of the poem? Is Turnus buried? What does the poem say about the
foundation of Rome?
Death of Turnus