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.