Talia per Latium

Talia per Latium. quae Laomedontius heros
cuncta videns magno curarum fluctuat aestu,
atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc dividit illuc
in partisque rapit varias perque omnia versat,
sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen aenis
sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine lunae
omnia pervolitat late loca, iamque sub auras
erigitur summique ferit laquaria tecti.
nox erat et terras animalia fessa per omnis
alituum pecudumque genus sopor altus habebat,
cum pater in ripa gelidique sub aetheris axe
Aeneas, tristi turbatus pectora bello,
procubuit seramque dedit per membra quietem.

(Aeneid VIII.18-30)

Identify the tone of this extract and explain how Virgil's language has helped to create this tone.

regna pallida, dis invisa

One of the most exciting and vivid passages in Aeneid VIII comes at the climax of the story of Hercules and Cacus. Hercules has succeeded in tearing the roof from Cacus' cave, and Cacus responds by spewing out great clouds of smoke and fire.

Audax Pallas

Question 3

Ut celsas videre rates atque inter opacum
adlabi nemus et tacitis incumbere remis,
terrentur visu subito cunctique relictis
consurgunt mensis. Audax quos rumpere Pallas
sacra vetat raptoque volat telo obvius ipse
et procul e tumulo: `Iuvenes, quae causa subegit
ignotas temptare vias, quo tenditis?' inquit.
`Qui genus? Unde domo? Pacemne huc fertis an arma?'
Tum pater Aeneas puppi sic fatur ab alta
paciferaeque manu ramum praetendit olivae:
`Troiugenas ac tela vides inimica Latinis,
quos illi bello profugos egere superbo.
Euandrum petimus. Ferte haec et dicite lectos
Dardaniae venisse duces socia arma rogantis.'
Obstipuit tanto percussus nomine Pallas:
`Egredere o quicumque es' ait `coramque parentem
adloquere ac nostris succede Penatibus hospes.'
excepitque manu dextramque amplexus inhaesit.

How has Virgil characterised both Pallas and Aeneas in these lines to display their heroic qualities? (5 marks)

Nymphae, Laurentes Nymphae

Question 2

“nymphae, Laurentes nymphae, genus amnibus unde est,
tuque, o Thybri tuo genitor cum flumine sancto,
accipite Aenean et tandem arcete periclis.
quo te cumque lacus miserantem incommoda nostra
fonte tenet, quocumque solo pulcherrimus exis,
semper honore meo, semper celebrabere donis
corniger Hesperidum fluvius regnator aquarum.
adsis o tantum et propius tua numina firmes.”

How has Virgil infused these lines with a sense of religious awe and reverence? (5 marks)

Belli Signum

I recently gave my year 12 class an assessment task on Aeneid VIII; over the next couple of days I'll post some of the questions, and my own responses. Feel free to criticise my answers, or to add anything to them. Here's the first one:


ut belli signum Laurenti Turnus ab arce
extulit et rauco strepuerunt cornua cantu,
utque acris concussit equos utque impulit arma,
extemplo turbati animi, simul omne tumultu
coniurat trepido Latium saevitque iuventus
effera. Ductores primi Messapus et Ufens
contemptorque deum Mezentius undique cogunt
auxilia et latos vastant cultoribus agros.

How has Virgil used language to convey the dramatic preparations for war in this passage? (4 marks)
Virgil has used a range of language techniques to effectively convey the chaotic preparations for war amongst the Latin peoples. This is obvious from the opening line. Virgil has used a long sentence (from ut belli to iuventus effera), containing multiple subordinate clauses to create the impression of frenzied action. The tricolon in lines 1-3, emphasised by the repetition of ut… utque… utque, give the passage a dramatic build up, before we reach the focus of the sentence in lines 4-5. These lines also contain an abundance of verbs (extulit, strepueunt, concussit, impulit, coniurat, saevit, cogunt, vastant), many of them in the present tense, which convey the dramatic action of the scene, and create a vivid picture in the reader’s mind.

Spelunca Caci

Perhaps the cave of Cacus looked something like this...

This is how Virgil describes it in Aeneid VIII:

iam primum saxis suspensam hanc aspice rupem,
disiectae procul ut moles desertaque montis
stat domus et scopuli ingentem traxere ruinam.
hic spelunca fuit vasto summota recessu,
semihominis Caci facies quam dira tenebat
solis inaccessam radiis; semperque recenti
caede tepebat humus, foribusque adfixa superbis
ora virum tristi pendebant pallida tabo.

Now first of all look at that cliff, all overhung with rocks, and see how the great bulk of the mountain has been scattered far and wide, and how that cave lies deserted and how the crags speak of some great destruction. Here was the cave, sunk deep down into a vast cavern, where the dreadful form of the half-human Cacus used to live, inaccessible to the rays of the sun; the ground was always warm with fresh slaughter, and, fixed to the haughty door frame, hung the faces of men in gloomy decay.

(Aeneid VIII, 190-197)

If you imagine some dismembered heads hanging by the entrance I think it's not a bad match.

Landscapes of emotion: Aeneas and the Tiber

For my year 12 class, studying hard over this weekend for an assessment task, here are some excerpts from an article (by Richard Jenkyns) I found in a back issue of Omnibus:

It is Virgil's habit to look at familiar things as though they were strange... [and in the Aeneid] he takes the landscape of Italy and... makes us see the familiar as strange. It is also his practice in the Aeneid to look at people and things from various different viewpoints... The Sibyl calls Turnus a second Achilles, but in the end he will play the role of Hector. To Juno and Amata Aeneas seems like a Paris (or so they unjustly claim), but at different times we see him in lights that suggest Hector, Achilles, Jason, Augustus and so on. Virgil walsk round his characters, so to speak, examining them from different angles, casting different lights upon them...

Let us then... apply [these two practices of Virgil's] to the voyage up the Tiber. He allows the reader to the scene from four or five separate points of view, and in each of them the familiar is made strange in at least one way.

First there is the Trojans' viewpoint. They are witnessing a miracle, and they are penetrating into the unknown: the 'cutting through the green woods' is splendidly jungly, and the fine phrase longos superant flexus, which has them 'conquering' each new bend, conveys the sense that they are discovering and exploring things utterly unkown before. Then there is the viewpoint of ourselves, Virgil's Italian readers (I say that because we must imagine ourselves to be Italians of the Augustan age if we are to get into the spirit of the poem): we see the familiar stretch of river between Ostia and Rome made strange in two ways. We see what in our own day is the most densely populated area in the world turned into jungle; and we see the turbulent silty Tiber turned by miracle into a glassy calm (Tiber was notoriously yellow from the mud it carried; we see it in this form, yellow and eddying, near the start of the seventh book)...

One last point of view remains, that of the landscape itself. The passage is flooded with words for wonder: 'mirantur... miratur' But by a stroke of genius Virgil attributes this not to the Trojans - we can take it for granted that they marvel - but to the woods and waters... Virgil makes us suppose that the wonderment of nature here is not just a loose way of talking but a reality, part of the wonder itself: one aspect of the miracle is that the landscape comes alive and feels.

Tiberinus

This is how I imagine Tiberinus would have looked. I'm not sure who the actual statue is meant to be (it was taken in the gardens out the front of a castle built by the mad king Ludwig on an island in the middle of a lake in Bavaria), but it has the kind of wild sollemnity that Virgil describes in these lines from Aeneid VIII:

Huic deus ipse loci fluvio Tiberinus amoeno
populeas inter senior se attollere frondes
visus; eum tenuis glauco velabat amictu
carbasus, et crinis umbrosa tegebat harundo.
tum sic adfari et curas his demere dictis:

'O sate gente deum, Troianam ex hostibus urbem
qui revehis nobis aeternaque Pergama servas,
exspectate solo Laurenti arvisque Latinis,
hic tibi certa domus, certi (ne absiste) penates.'

To this man [Aeneas] the god of that place, old Tiberinus himself, appeared, lifting himself up from his hallowed stream, between the poplar leaves; a thin linen garment cloaked him with its grey-green mantle, and a clump of shady reeds hid his hair. Then the god spoke to him, and took away his worries with these words: 'O seed of the race of the gods, you who brings back to us the Trojan city, and who preserves eternal Pergumum, long-awaited on Laurentine soil, and in the Latin fields, here is a fixed home for you, here (fear not) are your fixed gods.'

[Aeneid VIII.31-39]

Rome, the past and future

As my year 12 class has studied Aeneid VIII this year, we've been looking at how Virgil represents Rome's past and future (ie the future from Aeneas' point of view. For Virgil it was the present, for us it's the past.). It's easy to spot references to the Rome of Virgil's day as you read Aeneid VIII, but it's more difficult to explain Virgil's purpose in doing so. I recently read an article which, I thought, expressed it well. Talking about the "interweaving of present, past and future" it says:

‘One of the themes of the book is the union of different peoples. The Trojans, the past inhabitants of Italy, fuse with her present inhabitants into a future people, the Italians. The fact that Evander anticipates this development and thus speaks of “we Italians” (VIII, 331 f.) is not one of Virgil’s “inconsistencies”, but serves to underscore this theme explicitly. A last example of this interplay of the various time levels may be taken from the Hercules-Cacus episode itself. Evander speaks of Hercules’ adventure as if he and his men had been present (200-1):

attulit et nobis aliquando optantibus aetas
auxilium adventumque dei.
It would seem, then, that Evander, Hercules and Aeneas were contemporaries. This was chronologically untenable, and thus the event, represented first as contemporary, is later projected into the mythical past (268-9):

ex illo celebratus honos laetique minores
servavere diem.
On a different level, the et nobis may well refer to Vergil’s contemporaries, the god whose advent is being celebrated being Augustus. Thus the line between past and present is again blurred, and the “Augustan future” is superimposed on the original time level.’

[Karl Galinsky, "The Hercules-Cacus Episode in Aeneid VIII," AJP 87 (1966) 22 f. Thanks to James for recommending this article.]