Dido and Anna, Turnus and Juturna

Some notes from R.D. Williams on Aeneid XII.843f., interspersed with the relevant passages and translations. For more on the links between Dido and Turnus, I quite like this essay: Chaotic Passions; Turnus and Femininity in the Aeneid. It includes a chapter on both Dido and Juturna.

We are powerfully reminded of the scene in Aeneid 4 where Dido, another tragic victim of the events of the poem, visits her dead husband’s grave and is terrified by omens, voices and the hooting of owls by night

XII        postquam acies videt Iliacas atque agmina Turni,

alitis in parvae subitam collecta figuram,

quae quondam in bustis aut culminibus desertis

nocte sedens serum canit importuna per umbras—

hanc versa in faciem Turni se pestis ob ora               865

fertque refertque sonans clipeumque everberat alis.

When she sees the Trojan battle-lines and the troops of Turnus the Fury, changed suddenly into the form of that small bird which, sitting late at night on tombs and deserted buildings, often sings her ill-omened songs through the shadows - changed into this shape the fiend throws herself again and again into the face of Turnus, shrieking and beating upon his shield with her wings. 

 

IV         praeterea fuit in tectis de marmore templum

coniugis antiqui, miro quod honore colebat,

velleribus niveis et festa fronde revinctum:

hinc exaudirivuoces et verba vocantis                       460

visa viri, nox cum terras obscura teneret,

solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo

saepe queri et longas in fletum ducere voces;

 

And furthermore, there was in her palace a marble chapel, sacred to her first husband, which she venerated with utmost love, keeping it decorated with snowy fleeces and festal greenery. Now from this chapel when night held the world in darkness she thought that she distinctly heard cries, as of her husband calling to her. And often on a rooftop a lonely owl would sound her deathly lamentation, drawing out her notes into a long wail.

 

There are other deliberate reminiscences of the story of Dido; Juturna’s position as a sister who cannot help is similar to that of Anna, and the repetition (871) of the line describing Anna’s grief (4.673) takes the thoughts back to that other tragedy.

 

XII        At procul ut Dirae stridorem agnovit et alas,

infelix crinis scindit Iuturna solutos                            870

unguibus ora soror foedans et pectora pugnis:

But when ill-fated Juturna, his sister, recognised the sound of the Fury's wings she tore at her untied hair, marring her cheeks with her fingernails and bruising her breast with her fists.

  

IV         audiit exanimis trepidoque exterrita cursu

unguibus ora soror foedans et pectora pugnis

per medios ruit, ac morientem nomine clamat:

'hoc illud, germana, fuit? me fraude petebas?          675

hoc rogus iste mihi, hoc ignes araeque parabant?

 

Her sister heard [the sounds of mourning] and the breath left her. Marring her cheeks with her fingernails and bruising her breast with her fists she dashed in frightened haste through the crowds, found Dido at the very point of death, and cried out to her: “O sister, so this was the truth? You planned to deceive me! Was this what your pyre, your altars and the fires were to mean for me?”

 

The complaint of Juturna that she cannot accompany her brother in death (880-1) recalls Anna’s words to Dido;

 

XII        quo vitam dedit aeternam? cur mortis adempta est

condicio? possem tantos finire dolores                      880

nunc certe, et misero fratri comes ire per umbras!

immortalis ego? aut quicquam mihi dulce meorum

te sine, frater, erit? o quae satis ima dehiscat

terra mihi, Manisque deam demittat ad imos?'

 

Why did Jupiter grant me eternal life? Why was the possibility of death stolen from me? Now indeed I would be able to put an end to such great suffering and to accompany my poor brother through the shadows! Why am I immortal? How will any part of my life be sweet without you, my brother? O what earth will gape wide enough to swallow me and to send me down to the deepest Shades?' 

 

IV         his etiam struxi manibus patriosque vocavi               680

voce deos, sic te ut posita, crudelis, abessem?

exstinxti te meque, soror, populumque patresque

Sidonios urbemque tuam. date, vulnera lymphis

abluam et, extremus si quis super halitus errat,

ore legam.'                                                                 685

 

“With these hands I built your pyre and cried aloud upon our ancestral gods, only to be cruelly separated from you as you lay in death! Sister you have destroyed my life with your own, and the lives of our people and Sidon’s nobility, and your whole city too. Come, let me see your wounds – I must wash them clean with water, and gather with my own lips any last hovering breath.”

 

and her wish to be swallowed up in the depths of the earth (883) is reminiscent of Dido’s words in 4.24f.

 

IV         Anna (fatebor enim) miseri post fata Sychaei           20

coniugis et sparsos fraterna caede penatis

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,25

pallentis umbras Erebo noctemque profundam,

ante, pudor, quam te violo aut tua iura resolvo.

 

“Yes, Anna, I shall tell you my secret. Ever since the tragic death of my husband Sychaeus, whose sprinkled blood, which my own brother shed, desecrated our home, no one but this stranger ever made an impression on me, or stirred my heart to wavering. I can discern the old fire coming near again. But I could pray that the earth should yawn deep to engulf me, or the Father Almighty blast me to the Shades with a stroke of his thunder, deep down to those pallid Shades in darkest Erebos, before I ever violate my honour or break its laws.”

 

In the sympathy it evokes, this final tragic death in the poem is thus deliberately made parallel with the death of Dido, the other great opponent of the mission of Aeneas.