Mezentius and Ajax

A few weeks ago I put up a series of posts comparing some of the language used by Virgil to describe Mezentius to similar scenes from Homer's Iliad. To conclude the series, here's an excerpt from an article I found very interesting, Mezentius: a Virgilian Creation.

In fact, [Mezentius] is a Homeric hero in all essentials. Virgil's great model for his battle scenes was naturally the Iliad. And as he moulded the figure of a great Italian warrior, no doubt he scanned closely the many Achaean chieftains to find a working model for his Mezentius. It could not be Achilles since Turnus was already cast for that role. Besides, Mezentius was not a young, swift-footed hero but the gray-haired father of a full-grown son. After much thought - or was it a sudden flash of inspiration? - he found his man in the Iliad: Ajax of Salamis, son of Telamon.

 

Mezentius et Orodes

ille autem exspirans: 'non me, quicumque es, inulto,
victor, nec longum laetabere; te quoque fata
prospectant paria atque eadem mox arva tenebis.'
ad quem subridens mixta Mezentius ira:
'nunc morere. ast de me divum pater atque hominum rex
viderit.' hoc dicens eduxit corpore telum.
olli dura quies oculos et ferreus urget
somnus, in aeternam clauduntur lumina noctem.

But as Orodes lay dying, he said: ‘Whoever you are that have conquered me, I shal be revenged. You will not enjoy your victory for long. A similar fate awaits you too and soon you will hold these same fields.’ Mezentius, sneering and churned up with anger, said to him: ‘Now die. But as for me let the father of the gods and the king of men see to it.’ Saying this he pulled the weapon from his body. A dreadful rest and an iron sleep pressed on his eyes, his eyes were closed in eternal night.

(Aeneid X.739ff.)

Mezentius - impastus leo ceu

impastus stabula alta leo ceu saepe peragrans
(suadet enim vesana fames), si forte fugacem
conspexit capream aut surgentem in cornua cervum,
gaudet hians immane comasque arrexit et haeret
visceribus super incumbens; lavit improba taeter
ora cruor—
sic ruit in densos alacer Mezentius hostis.

Just as a hungry lion wandering around his lofty lair (for mad hunger urges him on), if by chance he has caught sight of a fleeing goat or a deer lifting up its horns, rejoices, opening his huge mouth wide and his mane bristles and jumping upon it he clings to its flesh; the foul blood washes his wicked mouth – in the same way Mezentius eagerly rushes into the thick of the enemy.

(Aeneid X.723ff.)

Mezentius - velut aper

ac velut ille canum morsu de montibus altis
actus aper, multos Vesulus quem pinifer annos
defendit multosque palus Laurentia silva
pascit harundinea, postquam inter retia ventum est,
substitit infremuitque ferox et inhorruit armos,
nec cuiquam irasci propiusve accedere virtus,
sed iaculis tutisque procul clamoribus instant;
ille autem impavidus partis cunctatur in omnis
dentibus infrendens et tergo decutit hastas:

But Mezentius is just like that boar driven down from the high mountains by the bite of dogs, whom pine-bearing Mt Vesulus has guarded for many years, and whom the Laurentian marsh has long nourished in its reedy forest, after he has come in amongst the nets, he stops and roars ferociously and his shoulders bristle, and no one has the courage to attack him in anger nor to approach any nearer, but they press upon him with javelins and with shouts from far away in safety; but he fearlessly holds them back on all sides, gnashing with his teeth, and he shakes the spears from his back.

(Aeneid X.707ff.)

Mezentius - velut rupes

concurrunt Tyrrhenae acies atque omnibus uni,
uni odiisque viro telisque frequentibus instant.
ille (velut rupes vastum quae prodit in aequor,
obvia ventorum furiis expostaque ponto,
vim cunctam atque minas perfert caelique marisque
ipsa immota manens)

The Etruscan troops come running up and they press upon this one man alone with all their hatred and with their massed weapons. But Mezentius is like a rock which juts out into the vast sea, open to the fury of the winds and exposed to the ocean, which endures all the violence and the threats of both sky and sea, remaining motionless itself.

(Aeneid X.691ff.)

But for all his fury Hector could not break through their ranks. They closed wall-like against him and stood their ground, like a huge sheer cliff at the edge of the grey sea, which stands against the shrill winds on their rapid pathways and the waves that swell large and burst on it.

(Iliad XV.618ff.)

Mezentius - Homeric Hero

Aeneid X.689-768 – Mezentius enters the battle and performs mighty deeds.

This account of the aristeia of Mezentius, the ally of Turnus who despises the gods (cf. note on line 150-1), is built up carefully to make him a worthy adversary of Aeneas. It is based very largely on Homeric battle-scenes, and indeed Mezentius in his ruthless valour shows all the qualities of a warrior of the heroic age. The victims of Mezentius are sometimes simply listed (699f.), sometimes given a touch of personality (719f.), and the scene ends with a general list of those killed in the battle and a glimpse of the gods watching before it finally focuses once again on Mezentius.

The passage is made particularly Homeric by the frequency of similes (the Iliad has more similes than any other ancient epic). There are four extended similes in seventy lines (693f., 707f., 723f., 763f., the latter a double simile), and the first three are very largely based on Homeric originals. Virgil is closer to Homer here than almost anywhere else in the poem; this is deliberately done to portray the archaic nature of Mezentius’ qualities as compared with those of Aeneas.

(Williams, p.365f.)

Over the next few days I'm planning to post some passages from Aeneid X and the Iliad which show just how thoroughly Homeric the character of Mezentius is. Stay tuned...

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.

Eunoia

I read a review of what sounds like a fascinating book in the paper on the weekend. Here are some excerpts:

Eunoia. Sounds like a urinary tract infection, doesn't it? It's not. It's Greek for "beautiful thinking" and is the shortest English word to contain one instance of each of the English vowels. An appropriate title, then, for a book devoted to fetters of its own making...

Eunoia is a collection of "univocalic lipograms" - a verbose, tautological way of saying it contains texts each of which is devoted to one particular vowel. There are only five vowels so it's a shortish book...

"A" tells the story of Hassan Abd al-Hassad, an Agha Khan, who dies a painfully asthmatic death amid mildly magical events. ("A fantast chants 'abracadabra' as a mantra, wags a wand and (zap) a sandglass cracks.") "E" is a retelling of The Iliad from the perspective of Helen. ("She feels neglected... regrets her wretchedness... nevertheless, she keeps her deepest regrets secret".) "I" begins and ends with "I" ("Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink this pidgin script")...

Underpinning all of it is a central paradox, which is best summed up in a final end-note: "The text makes a Sisyphean spectacle of its labour, wilfully crippling its language in order to show that, even under such improbable conditions of duress, language can still express an uncanny... thought."

Lipograms go back as far as the Greeks, some of whom seem to have had an aversion to the 's' sound (the Greek letter sigma). The Roman poet Fulgentius also managed to write a history of the world (De aetatibus mundi et hominis) with each chapter omitting a different letter. If you're interested to know more, there's an interesting column here giving a brief overview of lipograms in Greek and Latin.

[Update: Yann Martel has also written a review]


Related Posts

• Roman Word Play

Sarpedon

I found this comic (drawn by Martin Pickles) the other day while going through a back issue of Omnibus magazine. The inspiration comes from the Iliad, where Sarpedon (a mighty warrior, allied to the Trojans) attacks the Greek camp. Here is how Homer describes the scene:



Even then the Trojans and glorious Hector would not yet have broken through the gate of the wall and its long cross bar, if Zeus the counsellor had not set his own son Sarpedon at the Argives, like a lion on twist-horned cattle. He held the even circle of his shield in front of him... and with two spears in his grip he set out like a mountain lion, who has been long without meat, and his proud heart urges him to break right in to a close-built fold and try for the sheep: even if he finds herdsmen there, watching over their sheep with dogs and spears, he will not run from the pen without an attempt, but either he leaps in and makes his kill, or is himself hit in the first defence by a spear from a quick hand. So then his heart prompted god-like Sarpedon to storm the wall and break through the battlements.

Iliad XII

Lion similes are common both in Homer and Virgil; at the beginning of Aeneid XII Turnus is compared to a lion in a simile that tells us much about his character:

Turnus ut infractos adverso Marte Latinos
defecisse videt, sua nunc promissa reposci,
se signari oculis, ultro implacabilis ardet
attollitque animos. Poenorum qualis in arvis
saucius ille gravi venantum vulnere pectus
tum demum movet arma leo, gaudetque comantis
excutiens cervice toros fixumque latronis
impavidus frangit telum et fremit ore cruento:
haud secus accenso gliscit violentia Turno.

Turnus, when he sees that the Latins, broken by hostile Mars, had become tired, that now he was being forced to fulfil his oaths and that everyone was seeking him with their eyes, burns with an unquenchable fire, and encourages their spirits. Just like a lion in the fields of Carthage, suffering from the hunters' deep wound in his chest, when it finally picks up the fight, and takes heart, shaking the hairy muscles of its neck, and he fearlessly breaks off the piercing spear of the bandit, and roars with its bloody mouth: just like this did the violence swell in the enflamed Turnus.

Aeneid XII.1-9

Epic

There's a lot of epic going round at the moment. A new Beowulf film opens at the end of this month, and there's also a theatre version of Gilgamesh on in Sydney at the moment. In the last few years there's also been the movie Troy, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was at least epic in scope, if not form.

There's an interesting article in the paper today about myths (Beowulf in particular) and why our culture remains fascinated by them, even after so long. Here are a few excerpts:

Scholars, authors and fans say the poem endures because it is a timeless yarn about brave souls purging peaceful societies of agents of evil...

It seems we just can't let go of Beowulf or it won't let go of us," says Robert Ellwood, professor emeritus of religion at the University of Southern California. "Every time a classic is adapted, some scholars claim it's their providence and others shouldn't mess with it. Some others, however, argue that the more up-to-date a myth is the better."

Ellwood adds: "I tend to agree with [Claude] Levi-Strauss, who said, 'A myth is all of its variants across time and space.' In other words, a myth is for right now; it's a living thing that adapts to different social situations."

I would add another observation, that most epics tend to be about action rather than character, and (generally speaking) action-driven movies are much more appealing to a broad audience than character-driven ones.

I wonder if that's why there hasn't been an English-speaking movie of the Aeneid ever made (as far as I'm aware).

Firstly the Aeneid is largely about the character of Aeneas. Sure, it's full of battles, and there's a bit of a love story thrown in, but what concerns Virgil most is the character of Aeneas, and his transformation.

Secondly, the Aeneid is not a timeless story about good and evil. It's firmly rooted in the history of the first century B.C., and celebrates (in an allegorical manner) the defeat of Antony by Augustus, and his establishment of 'peace'. Civil wars are especially messy, and there's a measure of ambiguity in the Aeneid that reflects this. It's by no means a black and white tale about good and evil.

Aeneid part I- A New Kind of Epic

My year 11 class are doing an introduction to the Aeneid at the moment. We'll be translating ten short passages from the Aeneid, and looking at what they tell us about its story and themes. As we go through each passage I'll post it here, along with a translation and a short discussion of what makes it an important passage. Here's the first instalment.

Aeneid I.1-7

arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram;
multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem,
inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum,
Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae.

I sing of battles, and of the man who first came from the shores of Troy, an exile of fate, to Italy and the shores of Lavinia, greatly harassed on land and sea by the power of the gods, for the sake of the unforgetting anger of Juno; many things he suffered too in war, before he could at last establish a city, and bring his gods to Latium, from whence comes the Latin race, the Alban fathers and the walls of lofty Rome.


Virgil’s Aeneid is essentially the story of a man (virum)- Aeneas, a Trojan prince who leads a band of survivors from the ruined city of Troy to a new homeland in Italy. This was a story that was well known to the Romans and had been told before by the Roman poets Naevius and Ennius. The story of the Trojan War had of course also been told by Homer from the Greek perspective in the Iliad and the Odyssey. In fact, Virgil in his first two words deliberately refers to Homer’s poems. Broadly speaking the Iliad is a poem about battle, and the Odyssey about a man- Odysseus. In fact the first word of the Odyssey is 'ανερ' (aner, man), echoed in sound by arma, and in meaning by virum. Virgil’s point is that his poem is in the same tradition of epic poetry as Homer, dealing with the same themes (wars, gods, heroes). Indeed much of the material in the Aeneid is based on Homer’s poetry, and the Aeneid is often broken into two halves; the story of Aeneas' journey in books I-VI (Virgil’s Odyssey) and the story of the battles he must fight when he reaches Italy in books VII-XII (Virgil’s Iliad). But in this passage Virgil also introduces a new element, something that sets his poem apart from those of Homer: Romae- left til the end of the sentence for emphasis and dramatic effect. Virgil’s poem is not only the story of war and heroes, it is also about Roman identity, morality and destiny. The Aeneid is in a sense Roman propaganda- written in a time when Rome was just emerging from decades of civil war it is a reflection on what made Rome great, and a vision of what Virgil hopes she (and her ruler, Augustus) may become.