The Aeneid (5 page)

Aeneas returns at the head of the Etruscan armies. Turnus kills Pallas and tears the belt off his dead body. As Aeneas slaughters the Latins in an orgy of revenge, Juno saves Turnus from his fury by spiriting him from the battlefield. Mezentius takes his place, and in battle with Aeneas his life is saved by the intervention of his young son Lausus. Aeneas kills Lausus, and the wounded Mezentius challenges him and dies in single combat.

Jupiter opens the debate of the council of the gods by asking why Italians are at war with Trojans against his express will. Strange. After all he is omniscient – he knows the answer to all questions, and he is omnipotent – his will is the unalterable decree of fate. That is the theology, but in epic theology does not always apply. Sometimes Jupiter is not the all-powerful lord of the universe, but the father of a rowdy family where there is constant trouble between jealous wife and unruly daughter. The gods in epic sweep the action to the heights, as at the beginning and end of his episode. They also pull it down to the level of domestic comedy, as when Venus and Juno wrangle in council like a pair of rhetorically trained fishwives.

Venus complains that after all these years her son is still homeless and his people are under siege again, this time on Italian soil; Juno says that if they are suffering, it is by their own choice. Venus pretends to believe that the destiny of empire pronounced by Jupiter at the beginning of the epic is being
altered; Juno’s reply is that the Trojans are not fulfilling their destiny, but obeying the prophecies of a madwoman, Priam’s daughter Cassandra. Venus objects to the storm Juno raised against Aeneas in Book
1
; Juno wilfully misunderstands and says that Aeneas’ voyage back from Etruria is none of her doing. In Venus’ view Turnus is swollen with his success in war; for Juno he is taking his stand in defence of his native land. Venus grumbles because she is at risk from the violence of mere mortals; Juno’s reply sketches Turnus’ descent from the gods of Italy. Venus tries to rouse pity for the Trojans because of the absence of Aeneas; Juno advises him to stay away. It is an established device of ancient oratory to appeal for clemency by bringing in the children of the defendant at the end of a speech. Venus brings in Ascanius, and begs to be allowed, if all else is lost, to take him to safety in one of her beautiful sanctuaries in Amathus, Paphos, Cythera or Idalium; Juno taunts her by telling her to be content with Paphos, Idalium and Cythera and to keep away from these rough Italians. Point by point Juno has stripped down Venus’ arguments, offering two lies for every one by Venus and adding half-a-dozen new ones of her own.

The speeches of Sinon in Book
2
were a satirical attack upon Roman rhetoric, the technical study of the arts of persuasion on which Roman education was based. This clash between Venus and Juno is the
coup de grâce
. Why should Virgil launch these attacks upon the false values of Roman rhetoric? An obvious approach to this question would be to connect it with the political conditions of the day. In the first century
BC
the Roman republic was torn apart by the rivalries of ambitious men, fought out not only on battlefields but also in political debates in the Senate and in political trials in the courts. In both arenas, lies, calumny, melodrama, confrontational debate, all the vices of rhetoric, had been common coin. The Augustan settlement took the power from these arenas and lodged it with the
princeps
, and the style of government changed. Augustus had no love for the liberties which had destroyed the republic and had no intention of allowing them to weaken his own position. We may remember that Anchises in the Underworld started his litany of
the areas in which Greeks would surpass Romans by saying ‘Others will plead cases better’ (6.849), a calculated obliteration of the memory of Rome’s greatest orator. Augustus had connived at the killing of Cicero in 43
BC
. He would also have enjoyed Virgil’s demolition of rhetoric.

According to an ancient commentator the
Aeneid
is written to imitate Homer and to praise Augustus with respect to his family. But panegyric is raised to poetry by Virgil’s deep sense that victory has its price. The Latin warriors, we have seen, are courageous and upright, and they and their women suffer the cruelty of war. Dido is a noble queen who died a death she did not deserve, and Virgil so told her story that for over two millennia men have grieved for her. Turnus is the great enemy of the hero of the epic, but by the end of it he has claims to our admiration and pity. Mezentius is a villain through and through, a monster of cruelty to his subjects and a scorner of the gods, but when he stands alone against all his enemies we begin to admire him. When he refuses to cut down Orodes from the rear and manoeuvres to meet him face to face, we know we are in the presence of a hero. The most revealing moment comes with his answer to Orodes’ dying taunt: ‘Die now. As for me, that will be a matter for the Father of the Gods and the King of Men’ (743–4). The scorner of the gods is now admitting and accepting the supremacy of Jupiter. It is almost as though Virgil had not the heart to let the villain die a villain. When the balance of Mezentius’ life is about to swing from wickedness to tragedy, Virgil’s sympathies reach out towards him.

Soon Mezentius is wounded by Aeneas, and would have been killed had not his son Lausus so loved his father, that, lightly armed as he was, he threw himself between the combatants. Aeneas kills him, and when he sees his dying face and features, the face ‘strangely white’, he is reminded of his love for his own father (821–2) and we too are reminded of it when Virgil here refers to Aeneas by his patronymic,
Anchisiades
, son of Anchises. Our sympathies are divided. Then, while Mezentius is trying to recover from his wound on the banks of the Tiber,
he hears the wailing in the distance and knows the truth, and bursts into a paroxysm of grief and self-hate. Before Mezentius goes to fight his last battle, like Achilles in the
Iliad
, he addresses his horse, and each man’s utterance is a testimony to human and animal courage and the obstinacy of affection. Nothing in Mezentius’ life becomes him like the leaving it.

Crude panegyric is unrelieved, direct praise with no regard for truth. The panegyric of the
Aeneid
praises Augustus, intermittently and often obliquely, and it is always based upon a genuine and intelligent response by the poet to the contemporary political situation. It also takes in a great sweep of human experience. While saluting the victor and acclaiming his victories, Virgil records the sufferings of the defeated and of the innocent. He also acknowledges the cost to the victors in the persons of Aeneas and Augustus.

Pallas is mourned and his funeral rites conducted. The Latins send an embassy to Aeneas to beg a truce in order to gather up their dead. He consents and makes it clear that the war was not of his choosing. Turnus could have met him in single combat and only one man would have died. The Latins engage in fierce debate, Drances abusing Turnus and pleading for an end to the war, Turnus returning the abuse and offering to meet Aeneas in single combat. Despite that, when news comes that Aeneas is approaching the city, Turnus immediately rouses his forces for battle. The maiden Camilla volunteers to confront the enemy cavalry while Turnus waits in ambush for Aeneas in a pass in the hills. Camilla is killed, and Turnus gives up his ambush. A moment later Aeneas enters the pass, and both armies move towards the city of Latinus within sight and sound of each other.

This book, like all the books of the
Aeneid
, can be divided into three sections; here, the funerals, the debate, the cavalry engagement. In each of these the dice are weighted against Turnus and to the credit of Aeneas. In the first Aeneas’ great
grief at Pallas’ death was partly because he had failed to protect the young man in his first battle, but Latinus insists that Aeneas is in no way to be blamed for his son’s death. In his dealings with the Latins (100–21), Aeneas behaves with clemency and consideration. At the debate in the Latin assembly a report is received by an embassy which had been sent to ask help from Diomede, whom Aeneas had called the ‘bravest of the Greeks’ (1.96). Diomede had refused: ‘We have faced each other, spear against deadly spear, and closed in battle. Believe me, for I have known it, how huge he rises behind his shield’ (282–4). At the end of the assembly King Latinus blamed himself for the war by his failure to give full support to Aeneas. And in the cavalry engagement, a question may hang over Turnus’ military judgement in granting such an important battle role to Camilla, and in his own impotence in sitting in ambush far from the battlefield and leaving the position at precisely the wrong moment: ‘this is what the implacable will of Jupiter decreed’ (901).

Turnus now demands to meet Aeneas in battle, and Aeneas and Latinus strike a treaty agreeing that the victor will receive Lavinia in marriage, and that if Aeneas is defeated, the Trojans will withdraw peacefully and settle with Evander in Pallanteum. But Juno suborns Turnus’ divine sister Juturna to engineer a violation of the treaty. In the mêlée which follows Aeneas is wounded by an arrow shot by an unknown assailant. He is healed by the intervention of Venus and returns to battle. Once again Turnus is rescued from the wrath of Aeneas – this time by Juturna – but when Aeneas attacks the city of Latinus, Turnus realizes his responsibilities and returns to the field. Jupiter and Juno are reconciled, and Juno gives up her opposition to the destiny of Rome. Aeneas wounds Turnus and kills him as he begs for mercy.

‘I sing of arms and of the man’ is how Virgil began his epic, and nowhere does he sing more intensely of Aeneas than in the last book. It opens with bold words from Turnus as he steels himself for battle, taunting Aeneas and issuing a ringing challenge: ‘Let the Trojan and Rutulian armies be at peace. His blood, or mine, shall decide this war’ (78–9). While he dons his splendid armour and girds on his sword (the wrong one, as shall emerge), roaring like a bull and lashing himself into a fury, Aeneas, too, is rousing himself to anger, but is also reassuring his allies, comforting his son, accepting the challenge and laying down the terms of the peace that will follow the duel.

The steadiness and maturity of Aeneas are thus shown by means of a contrast with the wildness of Turnus. This technique of tacit contrast is also used by Virgil when the armies meet to ratify the treaty. Day has dawned with the most glorious epic sunrise, and the first witness Aeneas then calls upon is the Sun, a courteous compliment to Latinus since the Sun is his grandfather, but that address is followed immediately by an invocation of the great Olympians, Jupiter, Juno and Mars: Jupiter, since the golden rule is always to begin with him; Juno, because Aeneas is remembering the instructions he received from the god Tiber at the beginning of Book 8; and Mars, as god of battle and later to be the father of Romulus. This is theologically correct, and a striking contrast to the ragbag of divinities addressed by Latinus, ending, contrary to the golden rule, with Jupiter. The contrast demonstrates Aeneas’ piety towards the gods.

The next display of character by tacit contrast comes after the Rutulians, egged on by Juturna, have violated the treaty in the very moment of its ratification. In the battle which follows, Aeneas, unhelmeted, tries to control his allies, insisting that a treaty has been made and that by its terms no one is allowed to fight except Turnus and himself. But when the arrow comes whirring from an unknown hand and Aeneas is led wounded from the field, Turnus seizes his opportunity. Clapping on his
armour he launches into a fierce and bloodthirsty attack upon the Trojan forces. The contrast demonstrates Aeneas’ sense of justice.

Some readers have found Aeneas an unsympathetic character, cold and inhibited. This notion is nowhere more thoroughly refuted than in the episode which follows. As he is taken back to the camp bleeding from his wound, he is in a fury of impatience, tugging at the broken arrowhead and ordering his comrades to hack it out of his flesh. There he stands in the camp growling savagely while the doctor plies his mute, inglorious art, and the enemy are heard fighting their way nearer and nearer to the camp. No sooner has Venus healed the wound than he is throwing on his armour and storming back to battle. But first he takes his leave of Ascanius, whom he loves. Those who do not admire Aeneas are amazed that he does not take off his helmet to kiss his son. Others will listen to his words and see in Aeneas a heroic ideal in the Roman mould.

Turnus had cut a swathe of slaughter through the Trojan ranks, but when Aeneas now routs the Rutulians he ignores the fugitives. He is stalking Turnus, and only Turnus, and he would certainly have caught him, had not Juturna seized the reins of Turnus’ chariot and driven him off to kill stragglers in remote parts of the battlefield.

Betrayed, wounded and now thwarted, Aeneas erupts in an orgy of killing. Here we notice no difference between Aeneas and Turnus: in the heat of battle neither is a ‘verray parfit gentil knight’. Each is driven by uncontrollable passions of hatred, contempt, rivalry and revenge, and each taunts his wounded enemies and kills his suppliants. This is not a diminution of the individuals, but a fact of war, and part of the power of these last books is that Virgil does not flinch from fact. Until the mid twenties
BC
when Virgil was in his mid-forties, Rome had been in a continual state of war. He did not romanticize it. He knew as well as his contemporaries, and as well as John Hampden, quoted by Macaulay, that ‘the essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is imbecility’.

Aeneas’ attempt to end the war by single combat has failed. Turnus is not to be seen and full-scale battle is raging. At this
desperate point Aeneas orders his men to break off the fighting and follow him to attack Latinus’ undefended city. His sole purpose is to smoke out Turnus, to bring him to combat, but even so, this is scarcely an act of high chivalry. At this point we see Virgil’s determination to preserve the character of his hero. The plan to attack an undefended city is not in origin his own: ‘At that moment Aeneas’ mother, loveliest of the goddesses, put it into his mind…to lead his army’ (554–5) against the walls of the city. We have already seen double motivation in action, for example when Dido fell in love as a woman, while at the same time Venus and Cupid manoeuvred her into the madness of love. There the double motivation made the event more complex and more profound. Here it is put to ingenious use. When the hero thinks of a course of action which does him little credit, any stain on his character is lessened by a narrative which attributes the motive force to a god, who by definition cannot be resisted.