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The Insomnium of Aeneas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Agnes Kirsopp Michels
Agnes Kirsopp Michels
Affiliation:
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Extract

One of the major prophecies in the Aeneid is given to Aeneas in the underworld by Anchises, who had ordered his son to come to him to learn of his whole race and the city which would be given to him (5.737). In the prophecy (6.756–886), which covers more than a thousand years, Anchises identifies the spirits who will be born as his descendants, from Aeneas' son Silvius to the young Marcellus, and describes how they will win glory and world dominion for Rome. Aeneas sees the spirit of each man as he will appear in life, and hears Anchises' admonition to the Roman who embodies the race, in which he tells him how to rule the world (6.851–3). The speech is stirring, and one would expect that this vision of the future glory of his race would have some effect on Aeneas, but we may ask whether in fact it does.

First, consider Aeneas' behaviour during his meeting with Anchises. At their first encounter all he asks is to embrace his father (6.697–8). Next, when he sees the spirits near the river Lethe, he shudders and asks who they are. When Anchises tells him that they are waiting to be reborn and that he is eager to point out his descendants, so that Aeneas will rejoice to have found Italy, Aeneas shows no curiosity about the spirits, but protests against the idea that they should have to leave Elysium and go back to the life of the body.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , May 1981 , pp. 140 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1981

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References

1 Only here is laetor used of Aeneas, but laetus describes him, either alone or with others, more often than any other adjective except pius. His joy is, however, usually brief, and followed by some misfortune. When he does reach Latium he is laetus (7.36, 130, 147, 288), but soon plunged into war.

2 Fama is ambiguous. In the Aeneid it most commonly means gossip or rumour, but also reputation, good or bad. Characters who are concerned about their fama, sometimes too late, suffer for it, as do Dido, Turnus and Nisus, while Pallas and Camilla receive it after death. Aside from 6.889, it is connected with Aeneas only three times. Once he describes himself to his disguised mother as fama super aethera notus (1.379), a translation of the phrase with which Odysseus introduces himself to Alcinous (Od. 9.20). He and Dido are oblitos famae melioris (4.221) and Drances flatteringly calls him fama ingens (11.124). He does carry on his shoulders the fama of his descendants, but does not know it. When in 1.94–101 Vergil paraphrases Od. 5.306–12, he omits from Aeneas' words Odysseus' regret that he had not won the glory of death in battle. Furthermore, gloria and laus are connected with Aeneas only when he is unconcerned about them (4.232 f., 272). Apparently Vergil did not intend Aeneas to be interested in his own reputation.

3 Whatever his father told him about the way to deal with the coming war in Latium, Aeneas seems not to remember it, for he still needs guidance and advice later. I can find only two hints in the text that Aeneas might remember anything that Anchises had told him. At 7.122–9 he attributes the prophecy which Celaeno had given Him (3.250–7) to Anchises. One could argue that his father reminded him of the Harpy's words in his last instructions, but Aeneas does not say so. 12.110–11 (Aeneas) tum socios maestique metum solatur Iuli/fata docens might echo 6.759 et te tua fata docebo, but the fata to which Aeneas refers might be simply his own, an assurance that he will defeat Turnus. There is a similar association of fata and docere already in 3.716 f.: sic pater Aeneas intentis omnibus unus/fata renarrabat divum cursusque docebat. Aeneas is familiar with his own fata before Anchises' revelation (1.382, 3.375, 395, 494, 6.166–8). I conclude that 12.111 probably does not echo 6.759. Cf. Camps, W., ‘The role of the Sixth Book in the Aeneid’, P.V.S. 7 (1967), 27Google Scholar: ‘And after this, neither the revelation nor any effect of it is ever mentioned in the poem.'

4 At 4.275 Mercury refers to the regnum Italiae Romanaque tellus owed to Ascanius, but, as Aeneas has not heard of Rome, the adjective can mean nothing to him. Similarly, Hesperia, referred to by Creusa (2.781), has to be identified with Italy by the Penates (3.163–6) before he knows where this western land is, and he still cannot identify the Tiber (5. 83). Although Aeneas' mission is often said to be the foundation of Rome, one has to remember that actually the city was founded by Romulus, 333 years after Aeneas founded Lavinium.

5 It would be impossible here to refer to more than a few of the works in which this idea is developed. It began, I think, in 1903 with Heinze, R.'s first edition of Virgils Epische Technik 270–3Google Scholar, in which he portrays Aeneas as developing self-confidence as the result of Anchises' words, but gaining it fully at last in his battles. Norden, E., P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis Buch VI (1903) 353Google Scholar, and Fowler, W. Warde, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1911), 411–24Google Scholar, saw a more abrupt change in Aeneas as a result of the revelation. In the following years this concept became generally accepted, until it reached its ultimate expression in Otis, B., Virgil: A Study in Civilised Poetry (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar, who says (308), ‘He does undergo an experience of death and resurrection or its psychological equivalent, and emerges from the underworld as a new man’, and (311) ‘Here Aeneas learns to live for the future, to accept the future as what determines his pietas and his destiny. And here therefore Virgil finally completes his picture of the Roman and Augustan hero, the divine-man who devotes his life to the service of future history.’ W. A. Camps, however, rejects the climactic nature of Aeneas' experience (op. cit. (note 3) 26–8, and Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1968), 21–30Google Scholar), as does DiCesare, M. (The Altar and the City (New York, 1974), 118, 123)Google Scholar. Boyle, A. J. (‘The Meaning of the Aeneid’, Ramus 1 (1972), 63–90, 113–51)CrossRefGoogle Scholar also sees Aeneas as experiencing ‘what might be construed as a spiritual regeneration… He returns to his task as the conscious, unfaltering bearer of the imperial destiny of Rome’ (113 f). Boyle, however, reads the Aeneid as an attack on ‘the ideology of empire’, which is a delusion that Aeneas follows to the destruction of his own humanity.

6 cf. recidiva Pergama (7. 322, 10. 58) and Troia nascens (10. 27, 74–5) referred to by Venus and Juno. The Trojan camp is referred to as Troia (10. 214, 378). Cf. Dion. Hal. 1. 53. 3. It is only at Juno's insistence that Jupiter finally agrees to obliterate the name of Troy and the Trojans (12. 828, 834–6), thus with a word destroying what Aeneas was working for.

7 It is clear from the text that all references to Rome in this episode are Vergil's own comments to the reader. Evander and Aeneas are interested only in the past of Latium and the present of Pallanteum, although some modern interpretations see here another revelation for Aeneas.

8 See E. Norden (op. cit. (note 5), 3rd edition, 47–8) on the propriety of presenting a prophecy or apocalypse in a dream. He compares Aeneas' exit by the Ivory Gate to the last words of the Somnium Scipionis — ego somno solutus sum — and says ‘sachlich ist beides identisch’. I cannot find that Norden specifically states that Aeneas dreams the underworld episode, but he seems to imply it. See also his note on Aen. 6. 893 with its reference to false dreams coming after midnight. Cf. Fletcher, F. (Vergil, Aeneid VI (Oxford, 1941), 102)Google Scholar: ‘But we are surely right in feeling that when he sends Aeneas out by the ‘gates of sleep’ there is a suggestion that truths about the after-life can only be expressed in terms of dream and vision’. In ‘Lucretius and the Sixth Book of the Aeneid’, A.J.P. 65 (1944), 135–48Google Scholar, I suggested, on different grounds, that Aeneas' katabasis was a dream, but had not then realized that he might have forgotten it. Brooks, Otis came to the same conclusion (‘Three Problems of Aeneid 6. III. The Two Gates of Sleep’, T.A.P.A. 90 (1959), 173–9)Google Scholar, which was accepted by Williams, R. D., Virgil Aeneid I–VI (1972), ad 6. 893 f.Google Scholar, and apparently by Putnam, M. C. J., ‘Aeneid VII and the Aeneid’, A.J.P. 91 (1970), 408–30Google Scholar, who renders falsa insomnia as ‘treacherous misleading nightmares’. A. J. Boyle (op. cit. (note 5), 121 f.) refers the falsa insomnia to the revelation of Anchises: ‘To believe in fact that the world of man is rational and ordered and that human beings are so constituted that the ideology of empire can be made reality and the glorious process of history assured is to dream and to dream falsely at that.’

9 Norden (op. cit. (note 5), 20–48) discusses other possible Greek sources, but emphasizes the influence of an apocalypse by Posidonius which seems to have been a Traumvision (47–8).

10 Obviously Vergil would have had to change the contents of the dream, since they provide the material for Books 7–12.

11 The Gates of Dreams were, of course, well known to post-Homeric writers, as were the gates of Hades, and it was a commonplace that dreams may come from the dead, but I have not been able to find that any writer before Vergil conflated these ideas and located Gates of Sleep as an exit from Hades.

12 Ussani, V. Jr, Insomnia: Saggio di Critica Semantica (Studi e Saggi, Collana diretta da Ettore Paratore) (Rome, 1955)Google Scholar. Ussani controverts the argument of Getty, R., who maintained that insomnium did not acquire the meaning of dream until the Elder Pliny so used it (‘Insomnia in the Lexica’, A.J.P. 54 (1933), 1–28)Google Scholar, and that in Vergil it meant ‘waking visions’.

13 For the text see Pack, R. A., Artemidori Daldiani Onirocriticon Libri V (Leipzig, 1963)Google Scholar. On the interpretation of dreams in classical antiquity, see Bouché-Leclercq, H., Histoire de la divination dans l'antiquité (1879), 1. 277–329Google Scholar; Hopfner, T., R.E. VIAII (1937), 2233–45Google Scholar; Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), 102–34Google Scholar; Corno, D. Del, Graecorum de re Onirocritica Scriptorum Reliquiae (Testi e documenti per lo studio dell'antichità xxvi, 1969)Google Scholar, with a full bibliography, and ‘I Sogni e la loro interpretazione nell'età dell'impero’ ANRW II, 16. 2, 1605–18.Google Scholar

14 It is interesting to compare with these statements the translation of Homer Od. 19. 564–5 given by Amory, A. on page 31 of her article ‘The Gates of Horn and Ivory’, Y.C.S. 20 (1966), 1–57Google Scholar: ‘[The dreams] which come through [the gate of] sawn ivory are dangerous to believe for they bring messages which will not issue in deeds.’

15 Del Corno, (Graecorum…Reliquiae, pp. 173 ff.)Google Scholar argues that Posidonius had only three categories of dreams, and could not have been the source for the classification which included non-predictive dreams, but Kessels, A. H. M. (‘Ancient Systems of Dream Classification’, Mnemosyne 22 (1969), 394–424)CrossRefGoogle Scholar does not exclude the possibility that, when Cicero, (De Div. 1. 64)Google Scholar refers to Posidonius' triple classification, he includes only those that come deorum adpulsu, which leaves room for the non-predictive dreams also. Although enhypnion is used of dreams in general, it and insomnium may well have acquired their restricted technical meaning early enough, in works now lost, for Vergil to have known it.

16 See T.L.L., s.v. falsus. Servius (Aen. 6. 893) assumes that Vergil's umbrae are somnia vera and explains the falsa insomnia by saying: vult autem inlellegi falsa esse omnia quae dixit. He goes on to say that the Gate of Horn represents the eyes which see vera, while the Ivory Gate represents the teeth through which we speak what can be falsa. But then he adds: est et alter sensus: Somnum novimus cum cornu pingi. et qui de somniis scripserunt dicunt ea quae secundum fortunam et personae possibilitatem videntur habere effectum. et haec vicina sunt cornu: unde cornea vera fingitur porta. ea vero quae supra fortunam sunt et habent nimium ornatum vanamque iactantiam dicunt falsa esse: this explanation sounds as though it had been influenced by the distinction between oneiros and enhypnion. Commenting on the vana somnia which nest in the tree at the entrance to Hades (Aen. 6. 284) Servius Danielis says: et duo somniorum genera putantur: unum de caelo ut visa dehinc caelo facies delapsa parentis Anchisae, quod est verum, aliud ab inferis quod est vanum, which suggests that vanus may on occasion be a synonym for falsus. Cf. Tiber's words to Aeneas (8.42) ne vana putes haec fingere somnum, and at 10. 593 vanae umbrae. Also Propertius 1. 19. 9: sed cupidus falsis attingere gaudia palmis where the hands of Protesilaus' ghost must be unreal, not lying.

17 I find three exceptions to this principle. The oracle at Delos, after telling the Trojans to seek their ancient mother, adapts to the situation the prophecy of Poseidon, (Iliad 20. 307 f.)Google Scholar, and promises the rule of the unidentified land to the house of Aeneas, its grandsons, and their descendants (3. 94–8). The Penates tell Aeneas that they will raise his nepotes to the stars and give imperium to a city. In this case the city is not named but can hardly be other than Rome, not Lavinium (3. 156–9). The oracle of Faunus promises Latinus that the nepotes of the foreign sons-in-law will rule the world (7. 96–101). All these statements are, however, very vague, give none of the details which characterize the other types of prophecy, and do not name Rome. It is perhaps significant that when Mercury delivers Jupiter's message (4. 227–36) to Aeneas, he omits the part about the distant future (229–31), as though it were not suitable for mortal ears. One might include here Carmenta's prophecy referred to in 8. 338–41, but Vergil does not tell us to whom it was given.

18 The most striking example of these is the description of the scenes from Roman history (8. 626–728) placed on the shield of Aeneas by Vulcan, who was haud vatum ignarus venturique inscius aevi. Vergil tells us explicitly that Aeneas did not understand the subjects of these scenes, although he rejoiced in their representation: rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet (8. 730). The repetition of ignarus contrasts Aeneas' ignorance with the knowledge of Vulcan. Compare ignarus rerum used at 10. 666 in reference to Turnus' ignorance of Juno's trickery. The long description of the shield is obviously intended to excite the reader, like the prophecies of Jupiter and Anchises, not to inform Aeneas.

19 For a discussion of the callousness of the gods in the Aeneid see Camps, W. A., An Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid, 41–50Google Scholar.