Aeneid 8.573 and Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus

Extract

In his final words to his son, Pallas, Evander interposes a prayer:

‘At uos, o superi, et diuum tu maxime rector

Iuppiter, Arcadii, quaeso, miserescite regis…’

Of recent commentators, C. J. Fordyce alone is bothered by the reference to Evander's Arcadian origin; he reckons that it alludes to his exiled condition and so establishes a claim on Jupiter's mercy. That may be so, but it is worth suggesting that this is rather a piece of Virgil's Callimachean learning. For at the opening of his first Hymn Callimachus had rejected the story that Zeus was born on Crete in favour of Arcadia (6–7, 10). The Arcadian birth-place was known to Cicero (De natura deorum 3.21,53: principio Ioues tres numerant…ex quibus primum et secundum natos in Arcadia). Yet Cicero is less likely to be in Virgil's mind than Callimachus, from whom he derived so much learned detail. Evander then is appealing to Jupiter as a fellow Arcadian, docte.