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The Haughty Soul of the Avenger: The Myth of Lucius Brutus in the Aeneid (6,817–823)
55–71.Views:52In Book 6 of the Aeneid, Virgil constructs his own version of an epic Underworld and, innovatively, combines it with a panoply of future Roman heroes. This article focuses on the laconic introduction given to one of these heroes, Lucius Iunius Brutus, the founding father of the Roman Republic. More specifically, it examines the opening lines of a striking passage that, in an act of diction that has puzzled readers since antiquity, applies the adjective superbus to Brutus, rather than to his adversary, Tarquin the Proud, whose cognomen bears precisely this meaning. To interpret these lines, the article will attempt—using other literary versions of the work combined with comparative material from similar narratives—to reconstruct the traditional story of Brutus as it was known to Virgil and his contemporaries to determine, firstly, if this elucidates what such a retelling would have meant to the Augustan reader and, secondly, what its possible political and cultural implications would be if read with the traditional myth in mind.
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The early reception of the inconsistency between the two Palinurus episodes in Virgil’s Aeneid
21–42.Views:70The paper investigates how ancient commentators and Roman poets recognized and reacted to the inconsistency between the two Palinurus episodes in Virgil’s Aeneid (5,833-871 and 6,337-383). First, I discuss how Servius and Tiberius Claudius Donatus, in their notes on 6,348, remove the inconsistency (regarding divine intervention) by assuming a punctuation different from the one adopted by all modern editors; however, while doing so, they both give rise to another inconsistency between Aeneas’ question and Palinurus’ answer. Second, I examine a passage from Statius’ biography of his father (Silvae 5,3,124–132), where the poet alludes to the Virgilian story apparently according to the version we read in Aeneid 6, but also creatively reproduces some elements of the Virgilian inconsistency. The last text discussed is Ovid’s Remedia amoris, where the poet recalls his vision of Amor Lethaeus at the temple of Venus Erycina; here again, elements of the Virgilian inconsistency are reproduced.
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Saevus, Superbus - On the Use of Words by Horace and Virgil
133–145.Views:50This paper deals with Horace’s and Virgil’s use of two terms, saevus and superbus. On the basis of statistical and connotation studies, the paper concludes that, compared to contemporary poets, the use of these terms is slightly more frequent in both authors, and that they often appear in texts in contexts that give rise to surprising meanings: in the Aeneid on the relationship between the figure of Iuno and Aeneas, and in Horace’s carmina in relation to the Augustan regime. The text argues for a pessimistic reading of both authors.
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The Ambiguous Arms of Aeneas
37-42.Views:198Virgil subtly connects the scene of Dido’s discussion with her sister Anna about the new Trojan arrival Aeneas, and the later first arrival of the Trojans in Latium. By a careful corre-spondence between the two passages, Virgil portends the dark amatory rationale behind the sub-sequent outbreak of war in Italy
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Waiting for the Sybil (Vergilius: Aeneis 6,14–41)
43–53.Views:73The sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid stands out from the text because it is the crystallization of the structural and allusive procedures that organize the text. The narrative of the founding myth of the Temple of Apollo in Cumae and the description of the reliefs decorating the temple’s gate, with the figure of the mythical architect-inventor-sculptor Daedalus in the center (6,14–41), were placed at a highlighted position within the key sixth book: at the beginning. Aeneid philology interprets the temple scene of the sixth book mostly from the point of view of ekphrasis, more precisely in connection with the other ekphrases in the Aeneid. In my paper, I will not concentrate on the interpretation of Daedalus’ reliefs, but on the entirety of the Cumae scene. Specifically from the perspective of the roles, I shall examine the layers of meaning that can be formed in the textual space of Aeneid around Aeneas’ scrutiny of the image during the time of waiting and around the narrator’s description of the image.
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Sinon on his “pal” Palamedes (Virgil, Aeneid II 81-104)
151–165Views:172Sinon’s speech to the Trojans falsely represents him as Palamedes’ friend. The present article endeavours to show how in this connection Virgil avails himself of etymology.
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Phoenician Vengeance: Dido, Anna, and the Lore of the Numicus
5–19.Views:112Scholarly attention has been paid to the depiction of the Carthaginian sisters Dido and Anna, particularly in Virgil’s fourth Aeneid. Close attention to the later portrayals of Anna in Ovid (Fasti 3) and Silius Italicus (Punica 8) reveals a portrayal of Dido’s sister as the unwitting agent of the fulfillment of the queen’s curse against Aeneas. The hitherto unappreciated connection between the festival of Anna Perenna and the date of the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar may be seen in light of Dido’s curse on Aeneas and the Julian gens descended from his son Iulus.
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Aeneas at the Europa Hotel: Canon and Nostalgia in Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s Novel Grand Hotel Europa
147–157.Views:72Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s novel Grand Hotel Europa (2018), through its explicit and structural references to the Aeneid, not only affirms the canonical status of Virgil’s poem but also raises fundamental questions about the significance of cultural traditions in general. The novel emphasises Aeneas’ status as profugus, connecting him to Europe’s refugee crisis during the 2010s. This essay examines the intertextual character of the novel and the concept of ‘nostalgia’, which proves to be central to its vision of European culture.
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Acrostic Conversation: Horace, Ode I 18
67-100Views:282This article argues that gamma-acrostical disce in Horace’s Ode I 18 (ll. 11–15) alludes to the land-confiscatory acrostics recently identified in Virgil’s Eclogues (I 5–8; VI 14–24; IX 34–38). Horace has carefully signposted his acrostical intent. Virgil himself interfaces with this Horatian cryptography by means of other acrostics of his own. The result is an ‘acrostic conversation’.
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Et Latrator Anubis: Egypt and Egyptian Deities in the Aeneid
101–118.Views:70Egypt and Egyptian deities play an important role in Virgil’s Aeneid, in which the epic poet celebrates the contemporary victory of Augustus over the forces of Cleopatra and her lover Antony. Close consideration of all the references to res Aegyptiacae in the poem reveals that Egyptian lore is important not only for the Virgilian hommage to Actium, but also for influencing the reader’s interpretation of the final scene in Book 12 between Aeneas and Turnus.
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Virgil’s Dido and the Death of Marcus Antonius
351-356Views:252Virgil’s account of the death of Dido at the end of Aeneid IV has been the subject of an appreciably extensive critical bibliography. What has not been recognized to date has been the influence of the tradition of the suicide of the former triumvir Marcus Antonius on Virgil’s depiction of Dido’s demise.
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Hoc nemus ... habitat deus (Verg. Aen. 8, 351-352). : Presence des dieux dans la campagne virgilienne: qui sont les di agrestes?
73–82Views:200In the pastoral landscapes of the Geogics (particularly in this poem’s opening invocation), in the Eclogues, and in some descriptions of the Aeneid, for example when Aeneas visits the site of Rome with Evander (Verg., A. VIII 306-368), gods are present in nature, in the wild space, in the fields ; and the Roman feels the presence of undefined divinities. The pastoral and agricultural themes include many gods of the countryside and of agricultural life; Virgil calls them agrestum praesentia numina (G. I 10). This paper will focus on such divinities as Faunus, Pan and Silvanus. Links have been established between these divinities by way of interpretatio, especially between Faunus and the Greek god Pan. Faunus is present in the religious calendar of Rome (Lupercalia); the worship of Silvanus is also well attested in the Roman world. The concept of di agrestes, well attested in Virgil’s works, helps us to define a special category of gods, living in a special area, between civilization and wild space. Some of these divinities combine human and animal features.
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„Read the edge”: Acrostics in Virgil’s Sinon Episode
45–72Views:890Virgil’s famous Sinon episode at the start of Aeneid II contains four hitherto unidentified acrostics. Examination of these particular instances sheds light on Virgil’s acrostical practice in general.
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Lucius Brutus of Rome and Cypselus of Corinth
27–44.Views:279The story of Lucius Brutus, the founder of the Roman Republic has often been analysed as a historical story, somewhat mythicised, and embellished by literary tropes; and some have also interpreted it as primarily a myth, historicised by a later Roman culture more interested in the exemplary than in the marvelous. Starting out in the latter tradition, this article explores a connection that has been hinted at from antiquity, and has been analysed from the historical and historiographic perspective to some extent, but has not been interpreted in detail as a connection between two myths: the numerous parallels that the story of Brutus and the Tarquins, as told by Virgil, Livy and Ovid, has to the saga of the aristocratic Bacchiad and the tyrannical Cypselid families of early Corinth, as told by Herodotus and Aristotle. The newly discovered parallels (and the re-examination of the known ones) between these stories also invite the reader to reflect on the ways they might have evolved, their political and cultural functionality and on the complex interplay between myth and history.
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Quis est nam ludus in undis? (Virgil, Eclogue IX 39-43)
43–58Views:217The undis-acrostic that has recently been discovered in Eclogue IX 34-38 has proved problematic. The present article argues that the acrostic’s point is the etymology of litus as the place where these “waves” do not “play” (39: ludus), but “strike” (43: feriant for synonymous but exceedingly scarce lidant). This acrostic is accordingly hot-potato politics, since it pertains to the land confiscations round Virgil’s “wave”-begirt Mantua. The poet also provides endorsement in the form of an unidentified onomastic.
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Acrostic shit (Ecl. IV 47-52)
21–37Views:268The cacata-acrostic (Ecl. IV 47-52) is considered accidental, as being inconsistent with the dignitas of this “Messianic” Eclogue. It is however possible to demonstrate that Virgil employs such acrostics on other occasions with the object of undercutting such political panegyric. The intentionality of this cacata-acrostic is further buttressed by clues in the lines it spans as well as by winks tipped in other parts of the poem. Pointers to this acrostic are also embedded in the foregoing third Eclogue, especially in the section devoted to Pollio, dedicatee of Eclogue IV. Problematic passages in both these Eclogues are elucidated by the presence of the cacataacrostic.
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Homer's First Battle Supplication and the End of Virgil's Aeneid
53-66Views:292One of the less appreciated literary influences on the Virgilian depiction of Aeneas' decision to slay Turnus at the end of the Aeneid is the first battle supplication scene in Homer's Iliad, the encounter of Adrestus with Menelaus and Agamemnon. Close consideration of Virgil's response to the Homeric scene sheds light on the poet's concerns in his presentation of the choice his Trojan hero Aeneas confronts in light of Turnus' appeal. Acrostics at the end of the Aeneid invite further reflection.