Book 1, lines 198-222: Aeneas rallies his men

First of all, some interesting aspects of the language:

Aeneas' speech contains three different instances of anaphora (O...O, 198-9; vos...vos, 200-1; per...per, 204); clearly there is an effect that Vergil is looking to create through all of this repetition of key initial words - what might it be?  Is Aeneas using these rhetorical devices to hammer his point home to his men - emphasizing these words to get their attention and pull them out of their rut?  Is there another, perhaps more specific explanation?

I suspect that Vergil chooses to use both anastrophe and polysyndeton in l. 218 very deliberately as well (spemque metumque inter dubii) in order to emphasize this point of uncertainty - the two words are particularly linked because of the double use of -que, and the delay of dubii (and to a lesser extent inter) somewhat mimics that uncertainty.

We discussed as well the variatio in lines 220-222; by switching the direct object from casum to crudelia fata to fortemque Gyan fortemque Cloanthum, Vergil heightens the depth of this lament, making it increasingly personal.

It is interesting, within Aeneas' speech, to see the emphasis on the Trojans' previous struggles.  Obviously, this is the angle of Aeneas' speech - think of all we've been through, this isn't so bad, and the ending will be worth it; still, he hits this theme six different times in ten lines, which seems to be more than really necessary.*  Vergil is surely giving us a hint about the next two books, particularly Book 3, when Aeneas will recount these troubles; he has grabbed our attention by beginning in medias res, and now he is drawing us in with hints of what we will soon read about.

Considering, then, that part of Vergil's purpose within this speech is to draw the reader into the story, we might ask how effective Aeneas actually is within the speech.  Is it a good rhetorical strategy to talk so much about their past struggles?  The major cause of worry, and what must be lowering morale the most, is the uncertainty about the other thirteen Trojan ships, yet Aeneas never directly addresses this - what do we make of this?

*The six examples:

1) neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum (198)

2) O passi graviora (199)

3) Vos et Scyllaeam rabiem penitusque sonantis/ accestis scopulos (200-201)

4) vos et Cyclopia saxa/ experti (201-202)

5) Per varios casus (204)

6) per tot discrimina rerum (204)

Book 10: Jupiter in the Council of the Gods

We return after a short break in which fall trimester comments consumed any free time. As promised in the last post, we'll begin with a discussion of Jupiter's role in the council of the gods in Book 10 before returning, in successive posts, to Book 1 and closer readings of the text.

Jupiter's first speech seems wholly ineffective - he tells the gods and goddesses to accept the treaty that has been agreed upon. Yet Venus and Juno immediately launch into their complaints, blatantly ignoring what Jupiter has just said. In his final speech, although he does get the last word and make the ultimate decision, it is a choice to do essentially nothing; in particular, he has backed off his previous stance that the fighting must stop because a treaty has been agreed upon. It is an interesting combination of strength and weakness - it certainly stops the bickering of the gods, at least visibly at this point and the language is fairly strong and to the point. At the same time, the position itself is a weak one - Jupiter is backing off his previous stance and refusing to make a decision in favor of either Juno or Venus, as if he's afraid of angering either one.

It is perhaps possible to see this as part of a cunning plan on Jupiter's part to resolve this quarrel among the gods with the minimum of conflict. First of all, we know coming into Book 7 that the Trojans will be fighting a major war with the Latins; it has been prophesied several times, including by Jupiter to Venus in Book 1 (bellum ingens geret Italia, populosque ferocis contundet - 'he will wage a huge war in Italy, and he will crush ferocious peoples,' 1.263-4). When Jupiter makes his speech, he is undoubtedly aware of his previous prophecy, and he should realize that this war must happen, if the fates that he has spoken earlier are to "find their way" (10.113). So why does he push for peace in his first speech of this book? It may be that Jupiter, in the interest of maintaining some peace within the gods (and specifically with Juno), does not want to appear to decide the outcome of this war - although we have seen how closely Jupiter is related to fata (and one can argue that fata is what Jupiter has spoken - fatus est), here Jupiter distances himself from fata so that he does not incur the wrath or complaints of Juno. This, along with the fact that he grants Juno permission later in the book to save Turnus, puts him in a better position to negotiate with her in Book 12 so that she will come to buy into the Trojan victory and future Roman greatness.

Of course, it's also possible I'm overanalyzing this, and Vergil has conveniently 'forgotten' Jupiter's earlier speech in the interest of making this section more interesting. Thoughts?

Book 10: The Council of the Gods

Homework this weekend was to read Book 10 in English, so this post will be somewhat different than the past few; I've decided to write about a scene that I find one of the most fascinating in the entire Aeneid - the council of the gods (lines 1-117). This post will focus on Juno and Venus, and I plan on addressing Jupiter in the following post.

A couple questions come to mind in looking at these opposing speeches - who is convincing (or meant to be convincing)? Are Venus and Juno accurate and honest in their claims (it certainly would not be surprising if they weren't - Roman politicians, whether speaking in the Senate, to the people, or in the law courts, generally do not feel the greatest attachment to the truth)?

Venus begins by claiming that the Trojans are about to be destroyed while Aeneas is far away and unaware; this is technically true - Aeneas at this moment is unaware of the pressure the Trojan camp is under, but war had already been declared when he left to seek allies, and his instructions to the Trojans to remain within their walls surely shows that he anticipates this situation. Juno essentially makes this point in lines 68-71 - she has not put Aeneas and the Trojans in this particular situation. Venus goes on to bring up the prophecies that support the Trojans' settling in Italy, while very effectively playing the pity card ('go ahead, kill them, just let me save dear little Ascanius' - you can almost imagine her looking at the other gods with sad, puppy-dog eyes). Juno counters by claiming that the Trojans have grossly misinterpreted the fates, driven on solely by Cassandra's mad words. This, though, is demonstrably not true - we have heard of the Trojans' destiny several times from different prophetic sources, not least of which is Jupiter himself in Book 1 (lines 257-296).

Juno adds two more points in her speech, first claiming that Aeneas is the one who has chosen to fight, and that she has nothing to do with it. This is a fairly bold lie - after all, it is Allecto, on Juno's instructions, who has stirred up Turnus and the Latins to war; Aeneas is clearly hopeful of settling there peacefully when he first lands (hence the embassy and gift exchange).  Her second point is that this entire situation is Venus' fault because she caused the Trojan War by helping Paris steal Helen of Troy.  While this is certainly looking fairly far back in time, and Aeneas and his men have little to do with this original crime, the point is generally valid, and perhaps this is what seems to win Juno at least some support from the other gods, who variously mumble assent or dissent.

The final verdict is a difficult one (Jupiter certainly seems to have a tough time); Venus, at least in my mind, comes out slightly ahead, but she is also arguing from a position of strength.  It is interesting to see, though, the extent to which these goddesses misconstrue or flat out lie in their arguments.  No rhetorical punches are pulled, to say the least.  There are certainly periods of Roman history when arguments of this style are commonplace - for example, the rivalry of the politicians/gang leaders Milo and Clodius in the 50s B.C. or, for that matter, between Cicero and Clodius.  It is an interesting question to wonder whether such debates are still present under Augustus; if they were, he might certainly play the same arbiter role as Jupiter, though he may have frowned upon such disputes as compromising the unity and peace of Rome.

I have meandered through these speeches somewhat, but I'm curious to know what others think of them.  Is our understanding of Venus and/or Juno changed or enhanced particularly by these speeches?  Do the speeches themselves have particularly interesting features?  More to come soon on Jupiter's response...

Book 1, lines 180-197: Aeneas hunts

Link to text on Perseus

As last time, we'll lead off with a couple of minor but delectable examples of Vergil playing with language and meaning.  First, one that I just noticed from the previous passage - in lines 160-161, Vergil has placed omnis and the word it modifies, unda, particularly far apart (there are 7 words between them) - they are broken apart, split up, just as the waves themselves are broken and split by the island.  Moving on to this passage, Vergil may be going for a similar effect in line 186 by putting longum at the start of the clause and agmen at the end of it - in doing so, he mimics the length of the column of deer.  A couple lines before, in 184, we experience a very brief moment of hope - Navem in conspectu, '[he sees] a ship in sight' - before it is crushed by the addition of nullam modifying navem.

We turn now to the passage as a whole.  This is the first time that we have seen Aeneas acting as a hero (his actions and speech during the storm are hardly heroic).  In many ways, his actions here are anticipating his speech that immediately follows - while he is surely disappointed not to see the ships of any of his comrades, upon spying the deer, he immediately represses that disappointment and takes advantage of the situation to provide for his men.  As we will see a few lines later, his speech is meant to fortify his men mentally, just as the deer he has killed has fortified them physically.  Looking ahead to line 209, right after his speech, Vergil states that Aeneas premit altum corde dolorem ('presses down his deep sorrow in his heart'), and although it is unsaid, the same must be the case in this passage.

Another question that we might raise about this passage (one that I will leave open for comments) is whether it is significant that Aeneas' first act upon landing in Libya is an act of violence - killing these deer (and beginning with the three leaders).  It is interesting to note that Dido is later compared to a deer struck by an arrow (conjecta cerva sagitta, 4.69) and that the initial cause of fighting once the Trojans land in Latium is the killing, by Ascanius, of a sacred deer.  I'll also note that the Trojans once before have immediately begun killing animals after landing in a foreign land, and as a result they were attacked and then cursed by the Harpies.  Are their meaningful connections to be made with any of these other scenes, or are they just coincidence?  Can Aeneas' actions here be understood on a symbolic level as well?

Book 1, lines 156-179: the Trojans land in Libya

Before getting into a more general discussion of this passage, I just wanted to note a couple of interesting features of the language in this passage. First of all, line 164 has a particularly apt caesura, as it falls after silent - one can imagine someone reading it out loud to linger on that pause slightly longer than normal to emphasize the silence of the sea. Secondly, we discussed in class how the alliteration of the letter s in line 161 (sinus scindit sese) might mimic the gently lapping waves in the bay (or, if you prefer to say them a bit more emphatically, one could argue they are more like the breaking of the waves against the protective island before they flow more gently into the inlet); likewise, the combined alliteration of c and s in lines 174 and 175 (silici scintillam excudit Achates/susceptique ignem foliis atque arida circum) surely is meant to recall the sound of Achates striking his flint against iron to start the fire.

I find the description of the place where Aeneas and his men land quite interesting. In lines 159-161, Vergil begins to describe a peaceful, safe harbor; this fits in perfectly with the mood of the last few lines, in which Neptune's majestic presence alone disperses the storm and calms the waves.  After such an act, the reader can expect the Trojans to get a brief respite from their sufferings, and at first this protected inlet seems like it will be a perfect place for them to catch their breath. In lines 162-166, however, that all changes. Now huge cliffs hang over them on all sides, complete with quivering woods, dark groves, and bristling shadows. The verbs Vergil uses, minantur and imminet, mean 'tower' or 'overhang,' but both can also mean 'threaten,' and certainly these images must be threatening to the weary Trojans. The cave is filled with hanging rocks, another potentially threatening image, and even the line aequora tuta silent reads more ominously within the context of the surrounding words.

Right after we read about the hanging rocks, though, the tone shifts again, and suddenly this is a cave with sweet waters and seats naturally formed from the rock - a home of nymphs.  It is a wild site, perhaps, but it is comforting nonetheless.  The following lines reinforce the theme - chains and anchors are unknown and unnecessary here - it is a place of nature, but above all it is a place of safety.

Why, then, does Vergil interject five lines of threatening imagery in the middle of this scene?  I'm not sure that I have a wholly satisfactory answer, but I'll toss out a couple of ideas.  First of all, Vergil may be placing the reader in the minds of the Trojans, describing the scene as they see it.  At first, they feel relief that the seas have calmed, but as the landscape around them appears, in their weary states everything seems more dangerous and mysterious.  Possibly, as they enter the cave, their eyes are first drawn to the hanging rocks before they begin to pick up the more comforting aspects within.  The overall impression, if we read the lines this way, is that the Trojans are feeling an almost indistinguishable jumble of hope and fear at this point.

Another way we might read the lines makes the scene representative of Libya as a whole and Carthage in particular.  Just as the inlet and cave are places of quiet and safety, so the Trojans' time in Carthage will be a time of rest, recovery, and overall safety.  Yet at the same time danger looms - they are in the territory of another people, one who will later be Rome's greatest enemy, and essentially at their mercy.  Both Aeneas and Venus will be very cautious in the Trojans' first encounter with Dido and the Carthaginians - Venus cloaks Aeneas in mist until it is clear that he is safe.  In book 4, we will have the disastrous end to Dido and Aeneas' love affair, and perhaps these foreboding woods are the first subtle hints of that scene.  Interestingly enough, when Dido's shade turns away from Aeneas in the Underworld, she retreats in nemus umbriferum ('into the shade-bearing grove,' 6.473), very similar to the nemus horrenti umbra of line 165.  Perhaps this is just coincidence, and groves are frequently described in this manner, but one might also draw an intriguing connection between the two scenes.

In any case, I'd love to hear what others think about these lines - does one of these explanations seem stronger?  Might both be in play somehow?  Might there be another explanation?

Book 1, lines 124-156: Neptune calms the storm

We had a focus question a few days ago asking why Vergil chose to begin the action of the Aeneid with the storm scene.  Among many good observations was one particularly interesting point - that it provides an opportunity for Vergil to introduce several different gods very early on in the epic.  In these lines, we are introduced to Neptune, a fascinating choice for several reasons.  First of all, Neptune is traditionally opposed to the Trojans - he supports the Greeks in the Trojan War - yet here he is saving them from the storm.  It is worth noting that Neptune does save Aeneas from Achilles in the Iliad, stating that he is guiltless (Apollo egged Aeneas on to fight Achilles), pious in his sacrifices (sound familiar?), and destined to carry on the Trojan race.  Secondly, this is Neptune's one significant appearance in all of the Aeneid.  Why does Vergil give him this important scene at the very beginning of the story, then never return to him?

I would suggest that Vergil's purpose here is to lay the foundation for the behavioral code of the gods throughout the epic.  Neptune is an apt choice because he is an important god yet does not have a stake in the outcome, and thus he can be representative of the gods as a whole, regardless of whether they are for or against Aeneas and the Trojans.  Furthermore, Neptune is compared to a respected man calming a crowd - it is essentially an image that parallels Roman society, whether the gravis pietate et meritis represents an important Senator of the Republican period or Augustus, who would later claim in the Res Gestae that he wielded power through the reverential respect others gave him.  As we progress through the rest of the story, we will see the council of the gods patterned closely on the Roman Senate, and Neptune's appearance here may be presaging that depiction.

There is more to the way that the gods behave than this similarity to the Roman Senate, though.  If we examine the passage closely, Neptune does not seem to be acting because the Trojans are in trouble; rather, he is acting because his traditional area of power has been infringed upon.  When he becomes aware of the storm and rises up to survey the situation, he does see Aeneas' plight and understand its source, but his words to the winds do not address Aeneas' situation at all; rather, he chastises the winds for disturbing his realm and instructs them to tell Aeolus to boast in his own halls and stay out of Neptune's business.  Even as he pulls Aeneas' ships off the rocks, he is merely restoring the sea to its pre-storm situation; he never says a word to Aeneas and he is gliding away in his chariot as soon as things are back to normal.  When we take these actions in concert with Juno's complaints a few lines earlier that no one will worship her if she is unable to destroy the Trojans, we find that the gods are supremely concerned with protecting their particular province and, along with it, their reputation.  In the do ut des world of ancient Greek and Roman religion, such an attitude is natural on the part of the gods - if they do not project an image of strength, control, and power for their prospective worshippers, they will lose those worshippers.

Finally, a small note that perhaps also fits in with this idea.  I have always been amused at the particular winds that Neptune abuses - Eurus and Zephyrus.  Eurus, of course, we have seen before; along with Notus and Africus, he has been merrily destroying everything in his path.  Zephyrus, on the other hand, we encounter for the first time - we have not seen him destroying anything; this is for good reason, as Zephyrus, the west wind, is traditionally the gentlest of the winds, and is also known as the messenger of spring.  Is he just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or does Neptune perhaps know full well that Zephyrus is essentially innocent, but Neptune believes that the harsher he appears, the more respect he will also gain?

In any case, those were my (very long-winded) thoughts about this particular passage.  Responses, either to these particular ideas or to the passage in general, are always welcome.

A New School Year...

And so we will begin from the beginning of the Aeneid - or rather, from about 130 lines in, as that is where we have progressed to so far this year.

Book 4: The End

Vergil plays up the theme of vengeance at the end of the book, with ulta in 656 and inultae in 659; this very much follows from the speech of Dido that we skipped, in which she calls down curses on Aeneas - that he struggle to reach Italy, that he be worn out by war once he should reach Italy, that he see Ascanius die, and that he himself die before his time.  Finally, she calls for eternal war between Rome and Carthage.  In this light, it is sort of interesting reading Moriemur inultae in 659; it is, of course, literally accurate in that when Dido dies, Aeneas has received no hardship on her account.  I would suggest, though, that it also hints that Dido's curses, though dreadful, will be ultimately unsuccessful (and that she perhaps suspects this) - Aeneas does have to face adversity and war, but neither he nor Ascanius dies early, he does establish a new kingdom in Italy, and Rome will eventually defeat and destroy Carthage.  Furthermore, nowhere in the rest of the book do we get the impression that Dido's curse had any effect on these events - most of them have already been predicted/foreshadowed before we ever met Dido.  It is perhaps the ultimate example of Dido's tragedy - for all that she loves and hates, burns and rages, and constantly fills the story with tension and passion, her final curse matters little, and her dying words acknowledge that she has been nothing but the plaything of the gods.  It is something we should keep in mind when we read about Amata (though I don't think we encounter her much in our passages in Latin).

Practice Essay Question

I slacked off last week, but hopefully we'll get going again this week. While you wait, a practice essay question. Instead of actually writing out an essay for this (well, I guess you can do that if you really want to), I invite you to comment with any particular points that you might write about if you were given this question. Try it without going back to look at a translation or notes first. Note - this is a 45 minute question involving the comparison of 2 passages.

(A)
"Anna, fatebor enim, miseri post fata Sychaei
coniugis et sparsos fraterna caede Penates
solus hic inflexit sensus animumque labantem
impulit. Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.
Sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat
vel pater omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras,
pallentes umbras Erebo noctemque profundam,
ante, Pudor, quam te violo aut tua iura resolvo.
Ille meos, primus qui me sibi iunxit, amores
abstulit; ille habeat secum servetque sepulchro."
Aeneid 4.20-29

(B)
"Te propter Libycae gentes Nomadumque tyranni
odere, infensi Tyrii; te propter eundem
exstinctus pudor et, qua sola sidera adibam,
fama prior. Cui me moribundam deseris, hospes,
hoc solum nomen quoniam de coniuge restat?
Quid moror? An mea Pygmalion dum moenia frater
destruat aut captam ducat Gaetulus Iarbas?
Saltem si qua mihi de te suscepta fuisset
ante fugam suboles, si quis mihi parvulus aula
luderet Aeneas, qui te tamen ore referret,
non equidem omnino capta ac deserta viderer."
Aeneid 4.320-330

The passages above reveal Dido's feelings at the beginning and at the end of her relationship with Aeneas. In a well-developed essay, contrast her feelings in these two passages.
BE SURE TO REFER SPECIFICALLY TO THE LATIN THROUGHOUT THE PASSAGES TO SUPPORT THE POINTS YOU MAKE IN YOUR ESSAY. Do NOT simply summarize what the passages say.

Book 4, lines 259-278

Well, I've had all weekend to catch up, and here I am at 1 AM Sunday night, and I'm just getting to the blog.  Plus, I've still got to grade quizzes so that we can have a quiz in class on Monday (so if any of you have this on RSS reader or just felt like checking it at 7:30 AM Monday morning, get studying!).  So don't be shocked when this ends up a little shorter than normal.

Anyway, I'm going to take a slightly different tack with this entry and focus pretty minutely on one example.  Specifically, I want to compare lines 264 (the last line before Mercury's speech to Aeneas) and 278 (two lines after the speech, when Mercury vanishes):

264: fecerat, et tenui telas discreverat auro.

278: et procul in tenuem ex oculis evanuit auram.

When one is reading through, the parallel between these two lines is reasonably hard to catch.  Stick them next to each other, though, and it's remarkable.  In both lines, a form of tenuis occurs after the first syllable of the second foot of the line; in both lines it agrees with the last word in the line, which in both cases begins with aur-.  The parallel is too great for this to be coincidence; it must be on purpose.  The question, then, is why Vergil did it?  Is he merely doing some clever punning?  Is this wordplay meant to bookend the speech in some way, somehow making it more significant?  Does it perhaps suggest that the attraction of Dido and her rich gifts (symbolized by the fine workmanship of the 'thin gold') has been dispelled by the miraculous disappearance of Mercury 'into thin air?'  Other ideas?

Along these lines, often it takes multiple readings for us to catch things like this; if you find something you find interesting as we go along, please feel free to post it as a comment here or in the most recent post.  I will try to repost these as entries (with appropriate credit, of course) so that they are easy to find for general discussion.

Book 4, Lines 238-255

We have here an interlude between Juppiter's speech to Mercury and Mercury's speech to Aeneas relaying Juppiter's command.  The first question that comes to mind for me is simply why we have these lines in the first place - why do we need a six line description of Mercury getting ready followed by a fourteen line description of his flight from the heavens down to Carthage (including six lines about Atlas, who I don't think ever appears again in the story)?  All that is really necessary to make the plot flow smoothly is to say that he obeys the command of Juppiter (l. 238), takes off from Olympus (l. 245, more or less), and soon sees Aeneas at Carthage (picking up at line 259).  The first explanation that comes to mind, for me, is that Vergil wanted to create some space between two speeches that will necessarily be fairly similar (since Mercury will more or less be repeating Juppiter's speech).  I'm not sure if that is a sufficient explanation though - does anyone have other ideas?

A couple small, but possibly interesting notes: there is an awful lot of alliteration with the letter p in lines 238-9: ...patris magni parere parabat/ imperio: et primum pedibus...  Could all these ps give a sense of Mercury's quickness?  Perhaps even mimicking the beating of his winged sandals and hat (ok, that might be stretching it, I admit)?

There is also a lot of alliteration with s in 240-1; could that be mimicking the gusts of wind that carry him on his way?

Book 4, lines 198-237

This is a lengthy passage (due to my laziness right before spring break), encompassing Iarbas' prayer to Juppiter and Juppiter's response, spoken to Mercury.  A couple smaller notes first:

lines 199-202 are a great example of do ut des ('I give so that you give'), an important component of Roman (and Greek) religion; Iarbas has set up all these temples, etc. to Juppiter, so Juppiter should have his back in this situation.  The description of what Iarbas has done leads right into Iarbas' appeal to Juppiter.  Iarbas takes it for granted that Juppiter should back him over Aeneas as a potential husband for Dido, simply because he has done so much for Juppiter.

Vergil builds the tension nicely leading into the speech by delaying the expected complementary infinitive with dicitur (orasse) for a full line and a half, going so far as to add somewhat superfluous phrases in the middle such as media inter numina divum, which is fairly redundant after ante oras.

Throughout this whole episode, I find the character of Juppiter quite interesting.  First of all, it seems odd that he knows nothing about what is going on; while Venus and Juno watch Aeneas and his situation like hawks, Juppiter is completely oblivious, having to find out through Iarbas' prayer.  In the Iliad, when various gods want to help the Greeks without the permission of Zeus, Hera has to seduce him and lull him to sleep; here, no distraction has been necessary - he's just not paying attention.

Interesting, too, is that no reply or reference is made to Iarbas' plea; Aeneas must leave because his fate lies in Italy and, therefore, Dido is the wrong woman for him.  Iarbas' plea seems to be little more than a plot device to alert Juppiter, especially since Venus' feigned agreement with Juno's plan would keep her from complaining to Juppiter.

We find in Juppiter's speech the threefold task/reward/fate of Aeneas (229-231) - to rule Italy, found a new race from Trojan blood, and submit the entire world under their laws.  Of course, the first of these Aeneas only partly accomplishes - he will defeat the Latins and establish a kingdom in Italy, but it will be nearly 800 years before the Romans actually rule all Italy; the last of them is certainly an accomplishment of the later Romans, and may even be meant to refer specifically to Augustus, who had certainly expanded the already significant Roman dominions.  The lines, especially with the mention of Ascanius about to come, seem to foreshadow the conversation of Aeneas and Anchises in Book 6 in the underworld, when the future greatness of Rome is described, along with its own task - to spare the humble and war down the proud.

Book 4, lines 173-197

Today's passage encompasses the extended description of Fama.  There is certainly plenty to be said about the passage; one thing that struck me is that Vergil seems to continually build the sense of personification throughout the description.  If the first line, Extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes, stood alone, one could certainly argue for fama instead of Fama; the next line probably requires the capital letter and personification, but the description remains vague.  With lines 175-178 we begin to see an actual form emerge (or perhaps more appropriately, 'flourish and acquire strength'), but all we hear is that it stretches from the ground into the clouds.  The next two lines gives us our first connection to the human world, as Fama's family is described; then in 180 we find the first physical description - pedibus celerem et pernicibus alis.  From there, we dive into a deliciously, monstrously detailed description of the many eyes, tongues, mouths, and ears.  A few lines later, she actually speaks (although it is in indirect statement).  The overall effect is of continuously increasing tension and involvement of the reader (or at least this reader) in the scene.

One more small note: I think the way Vergil describes the actions of Fama towards people is quite clever and appropriate.  In 189, 'she fills the people with manifold speech/gossip,' and in 195 she 'spreads these things into the mouths of men;' in both cases there is a sense of putting her words into men so that they will spread them.  In 189, there seems to be a sense of being filled with gossip so that that gossip can be spread; in 195, the words are put into the mouths, not the ears, of men specifically so that they can be passed on.

As I said, a great deal can be drawn from these passages; these are the thoughts that initially struck me, but (as always) I welcome new thoughts on the lines as well as comments on these thoughts.

Book 4, lines 156-172

Text

l. 156: At puer Ascanius is also used at 1.267 (and I suspect elsewhere); it seems to be a formulaic phrase that fits smoothly at the beginning of a line.

l. 157-8: there is a nice parallelism between the separation of spumantem and aprum and that of fulvum and leonem; whether there is any particular purpose behind it, I am not sure.

l. 160: magno misceri murmure (the blog title!) is directly repeated from 1.124 and is very close to magno cum murmure montis from 1.55; clearly Vergil loves this particular bit of alliteration.  At 1.124, it is used of the storm stirred up by Aeolus at Juno's request, suggesting that it is particularly a storm phrase.  This may be a stretch, but it may be specific even to Juno's storms (i.e. ones unfavorable to the Trojans); the storm in book 5 that puts out the fire on the Trojan ships does not repeat the phrase.  Another thought - is this magnus murmur foreshadowing the passage about Fama that is coming up - after all, what is Fama but a great murmuring/muttering?

The following lines contain more repeated phrases, in this case from Juno's speech telling Venus what she will do, only a few lines earlier (4.115-127).  Commixta grandine nimbus changes only the case of nimbus, while the entire sentence Speluncam...deveniunt is repeated exactly.  It seems to emphasize Juno's preparation, planning, and control (things happen literally exactly as she plans); I find this interesting because 1) Juno's beloved Dido is in the exact opposite frame of mind and 2) Juno's plans nevertheless fail completely.

The major issue of debate in the next several lines is how valid this "marriage" is; I am not going to go into a great deal of detail here, but some quick thoughts: 1) in the end, Vergil pretty clearly comes down against Dido in line 172 in particular - "she calls (vocat) it marriage, and she covers her fault (culpam) with this name."  That seems to make it pretty clear that this is not a binding, official marriage.  At the same time, one could argue that the setting - Mother Earth and Juno as witnesses, lightning for wedding torches, etc. - actually makes it more legitimate, rather than less legitimate as it is not exactly a public, official setting.  On a side note, I believe ululo is commonly used of funereal mourning, which of course would foreshadow the disastrous result of the relationship, adding a subtle element to the plainer statement of 169-70.

While we got through 180 in class, I'm going to wait to discuss the Fama passage as a whole tomorrow.

Helpful Websites

Before we get to the Aeneid, a couple links that may be helpful:

The Latin Library - Vergil - Latin text of all of Vergil's works

Perseus (old)/Perseus (new) - includes two English translations, as well as the Latin text with linked dictionary/parsing tool (sometimes very slow)

Itaque incipit...

This blog is, first and foremost, a collection of my own thoughts and reactions to passages of Vergil, specifically what we have been reading in the AP Vergil class that I teach.  The posts will undoubtedly vary greatly in method, as in some passages individual words or phrases may strike me, while in others I may respond more to broader, underlying themes.  Questions and comments are welcome and encouraged (and my students should know that extra credit will be given for insightful, intelligent, or interesting questions and responses - just make sure that I know who you are!).