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Battle Scenes in the Aeneid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

M. M. Willcock
M. M. Willcock
Affiliation:
University CollegeLondon
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Extract

Caedicus Alcathoum obtruncat, Sacrator Hydaspen (Aen. 10.747)

A fine line, with resonant names! It occurs at the beginning of a general list of killings, what in Homeric studies is called an androktasia, one of the few such found in the Aeneid. Perhaps the resonance of the names suggests to us that these are real people; but who are they? The answer is that we have not the faintest idea. Indeed, we are probably uncertain which side each of them is on, Trojan or Latin.

Virgilian battle scenes may properly be compared with those of Homer. In the Iliad, the descriptions are extraordinarily precise; and it is wholly possible, if one is interested, to understand exactly what is being described by the poet. There are certain conventions, which were without doubt fully understood by Homer's audience. Any lack of understanding on our part is not Homer's fault. The conventions, and implications of what happens in the battle scenes, are most clearly set out in the work of Dr Franz Albracht, Kampf und Kampfschilderung bei Homer (1886 and 1895). It is abundantly clear that Virgil not only knew Homer from beginning to end, and used his own personal technique of ‘creative imitation’ in putting together the Aeneid with one eye on Homer, both in the large scale and in detail, but that he also knew the Alexandrian commentaries on Homer. The former of these facts has recently been demonstrated at great length, but still not exhaustively, by G. N. Knauer in Die Aeneis und Homer (1964); the latter in a more selective way by R. R. Schlunk in The Homeric Scholia and the Aeneid (1974). There can thus be little doubt that in deciding how to present the fighting scenes in the ‘Iliadic Aeneid’, as Brooks Otis calls it – the necessary second half of the epic, which engages in the maius opus of establishing Aeneas and his people in Italy – Virgil would pay very close attention to the action of the Iliad.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 29 , 1983 , pp. 87 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

NOTES

1. Their rarity is pointed out by Heinze, R., Virgils epische Technik ed. 3 (1914) 195Google Scholar.

2. This probably oversimplifies the situation. As Prof. Kenney pointed out in discussion at Cambridge, Ennius had intervened. He had certainly described battle scenes, and was doubtless influenced in part by the Iliad, in part by Roman practices and associations.

3. See Iliad 5. 144–165, 11.92–147, 20.460, 484.

4. I do not wholly agree with the analysis of the aristeia theme by Krischer, T. in Formale Konventionen der homerischen Epik (1971) 23–36Google Scholar, but am sure that he is right that there is a thematic pattern which causes repetition and similarity between the major aristeiae.

5. There is something like alternate killing at 9.569–589, when the Latins are attacking the Trojan camp in the absence of Aeneas, and before Pandarus and Bitias decide to open the gate. A series of killings takes place under the wall, with almost precise alternation between Trojan and Latin.

6. Cf. Iliad 14.511–522, 15.329–342.

7. In the Iliad he would have come first (πρῶτος); cf. 5.38, 14.511, 16.284.

8. It may turn out that 10.747–754, of which the first line was quoted at the start of this paper and the whole will be quoted on p. 96, is another example of continuous killing by one side. This will only become clear when we have been able to identify those names, Caedicus, Alcathous, etc. It cannot be wholly true, however, because of line 753, where Salius the victor is immediately the victim.

9. At 10.575 Lucagus and Liger are in a chariot, but not running away; they are rather to be compared with the sons of Dares at Iliad 5, who untypically attack by chariot. At 12.343 Turnus kills the two sons of Imbrasus, where line 345 uel conferre manum uel equo praeuertere uentos may perhaps allude to the respective functions of the parabates and the charioteer (although this is not the usual interpretation). At 12.510 Turnus kills two brothers, Amycus and Diores, the former of whom is described as equo deiectum (cf. the Homeric ἀφ' ἴππων ὦσε, e.g. Il. 11.143), but Virgil may be thinking of cavalry, not chariots.

10. These battle conventions, though quite clearly present in the text, are not specifically referred to in the Homeric scholia, normally a treasure house of exegesis. This negative fact may perhaps not be unconnected with Virgil's general disregard of them (see Schlunk's book referred to on p. 87 above).

11. Napoleon commented that Homer knew what happened in a battle: ‘Quand on lit l'Iliade, on sent à chaque instant qu’ Homère a fait la guerre … Le Journal d'Agamemnon ne serait pas plus exact pour les distances et les temps, et pour la vraisemblance des opérations militaires, que ne l'est son poème.’ (Quoted by Sainte-Beuve, C.-A., Étude sur Vergile (1870) 238 n.1.)Google Scholar.

12. Heinze (n. 1) 197–8.

13. See Iliad 21.177–8.

14. Iliad 5.19 (dismay 27–9), 16.287 (dismay 291).

15. 10.325.

16. See especially Zeus' thought for Hector at Il. 15.612 and 17.206–208.

17. By the end of the Aeneid, Turnus has of course done wrong in many other ways, including the fatally arrogant act of wearing his victim's spoils. Prof. D. A. West points out to me that this is always disastrous in the Aeneid, cf. Coroebus 2.391–3, Euryalus 9.359–66, Mezentius' threat 10.774–6; no doubt it all derives from Hector and the arms of Achilles, cf. the speech of Zeus at 17.201–206.

18. 8.196–7.

19. Cf. n.8.

20. This is not all there is to say about the names. My colleague Dr N. M. Horsfall points out that we should never forget the erudition of Virgil; we may simply be failing through ignorance to pick up allusions. Any or all of the minor names may have carried some sort of learned resonance, which the educated reader of the time would comprehend. Moreover, as was pointed out in discussion at Cambridge, the resonance of the names, particularly in the lines we have been discussing, may derive in some cases from verbal associations: Caedicus sounds like a killer; Sacrator like an official one; and why does Virgil have Parthenius killed by a man called Rapo? Some of them seem to be noms parlants. redende Namen. In Homer there is the would-be assassin Polyphontes the son of Autophonos, Il. 4.395.

21. I am thinking particularly of 6.616–7 saxum ingens uoluunt alii, etc.

22. Versions of this paper were given to the Virgil Society in London in March 1982 and to the Cambridge Philological Society in February 1983. I am grateful to N. M. Horsfall, K. W. Gransden and D. A. West for helpful comments on the draft, and to H. H. Huxley, E. J. Kenney and J. C. McKeown, among others, for persuasive contributions in the discussion at Cambridge.