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Jupiter and the Fates in the Aeneid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

C.H. Wilson
C.H. Wilson
Affiliation:
Tonbridge School
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Extract

‘Vergil lässt keinen Zweifel darüber, dass in Wahrheit das Fatum nichts anderes ist als des höchsten Gottes Wille.’ Thus Heinze, apparently following an observation by Seruius auctus, and in turn generally followed by scholars who have subsequently considered the nature of the fata in the Aeneid. But questions concerning the interpretation of the Aeneid are rarely simple; and the question of Jupiter's relationship to the fata may repay further enquiry.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , December 1979 , pp. 361 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1979

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References

1 Throughout this paper I am greatly indebted to Mr. Charles Whittaker, of Southampton University. Mr. D. A. Russell, of St. John's College, Oxford, has also kindly read an early draft of the paper.

2 Heinze, , Virgils epische Technik5 (Stuttgart, 1965), p. 293Google Scholar; Seru. auct. to 4.614, ‘fata: dicta, id est Iouis uoluntas’- cf. Norden to 6. 45 ff. and 376. Cf., e.g. Bailey, , Religion in Virgil (Oxford, 1935), pp. 215 ff.Google Scholar; Büchner, , Der Schicksalsgedanke bei Vergil, Wege der Forschung 19 (Darmstadt, 1966), pp. 274 f.Google Scholar; Klingner, , Römiscbes Geisteswelt3 (Munich, 1956), p. 240.Google Scholar

3 2.617 f.; 4.222 ff.; 5.726; 12.806 ff: At 4.110 f. Venus is sometimes taken to be saying, ‘…uncertain of the fates, as to whether Jupiter wishes …’-cf. Boyance, , La Religion de Virgile (Paris, 1963), p. 52Google Scholar; Wagenvoort, , Gnomon 41 (1969), 281Google Scholar. But to take fatis with incerta like this appears impossible-TLL., sv. incertus, cites comparable language only from Tertullian; and an alternative translation is available, which neither strains language nor makes any equation between Jupiter's will and the fata-cf. Austin ad loc.

4 The council of the gods at the beginning of Aeneid 10 1 consider below.

5 The first three of Heinze's passages are from Aeneas' narrative to Dido, where we would hardly expect to find statements about the will of Jupiter.

6 1.239; 7.293 f.; 11.160-cf. n. 13 below For all its powerful emotion, Euander's lament over Pallas is impressive in its simple dignity and statesmanlike wisdom-aspects in which it may be instructively contrasted with the outbursts of parental distress of Euryalus' mother and Mezentius at 9.481 ff. and 10.846 ff. Euander's tears are not to be misunderstood; they ennoble rather than discredit him-see Rieks, , in Albrecht, and Heck, (edd.), Siluae: Festschrift E. Zinn (Tübingen, 1970), pp. 183 ff.Google Scholar

7 The word is not in the vocabulary of Mezentius, the contemptor diuum. A complete catalogue of the problem-passagesconcerning fata should include 8.397 f., where Vulcan appears to profess that he had been quite at liberty to interfere in the course of the Trojan war had he chosen to.

8 10.112 f. The ensuing discussion will show why I prefer a colon to the full-stop commonly written at the end of 112.

9 Theocritus had been used similarly in the Eclogues-cf. Skutsch, , BICS 18 (1971), 26 ff.Google Scholar For the Homeric originals of Vergil's council, see Klingner, , Vergil…. (Zurich-Stuttgart, 1967), pp. 567 fGoogle Scholar. Different from this para prosdokian use of the original is the technique whereby Vergil recalls Homer and allows the reader to supply from his knowledge of Homer details which Vergil leaves out; cf. Knauer, , Die Aeneis und Homer (Göttingen, 1964), pp. 286 ff.Google Scholar

10 But, despite abnueram and uetitum at 10.8 f., Jupiter has foreseen the war at 1.263 ff. Cf. Thornton, , The Living Universe: Gods and Men in Virgil's Aeneid, Mnemosyne Suppl. 16 (Leiden-Brill, 1976), 123 f.Google Scholar

11 Cf. Austin's cautious note to 2.54.

12 I would likewise suggest, ‘It has not proved possible’, as the translation of ‘haud licuit’ in Dido's notoriously puzzling ‘degere more ferae’ sentence at 4.550 f.

13 When Euander says, ‘contra ego uiuendo uici mea fata’, he is saying that it is contrary to his experience of history for fathers to outlive their sons; and when Juno speaks of ‘fatis contraria nostris/fata Phrygum’, she is contrasting her own hopes for the future course of history the premature death of Dido had had no place.In considering the nature of the fata in the Aeneid, I find Tolstoy';s observations on ‘ the words, ‘chance’, and, ‘genius’, illuminating. These words, he says, ‘do not denote anything that actually exists’, but ‘merely indicate a certain degree of comprehension of phenomena’; their use is forced upon us by our ignorance of the purposes of history-Tolstoy, , War and Peace, trans. Edmonds, (Harmondsworth, 1957), pp. 1342 f.Google Scholar

14 Tolstoy, , op. cit., pp. 1213, 886-cf. pp. 956 ff., 1285 ff.Google Scholar

15 12.806,895.

16 At 10.606 ff., though already summissa, Juno is not yet ready to recognize Jupiter's authority. The tortuous word-order of 12.808 f. makes clear what an effort her present recognition is costing her. Saturnia in 807 is perhaps meant to direct us to the heart of Juno's difficulty; a child of Sanimus, she has been obliged to watch the collapse of the Saturnian world before the world of Jupiter.

17 Recognition-808- 18; request-819–28. Exact equality would be achieved by the often proposed rejection of 817 (cf. Warde, Fowler, The Death of Turnus (Oxford, 1919), pp. 141 ff.Google Scholar), but that is not in itself a reason for rejecting it. Vergil often gives us proportions which are significant without being mathematically exact-cf. Heinze, , p. 6Google Scholar, on the divisions of the Iliupersis. How far Vergil's proportions are also a function of purely aesthetic considerations of the sort that Duckworth has suggested it is, of course, no part of this paper to consider.

18 Jupiter';s use uictus at 12.833 may be compared with Anchises' use of the same word at 2.699. Anchises, like Jupiter here, has been surprised by the latest course of events and he is forcedinto a drastic reassessment of the present situation.

19 Jupiter's prophecy is 1.263–96, i.e. 34 lines. The lines quoted in the text are 278–82. It is common to spot verbal similarities between the first and the last god–scenes of the poem-cf. Buchheit, , Gymnasium 81 (1974), 499 ff.Google Scholar; the understanding of the one is enriched by reference to the other.

20 The whole Mezentius-sequence at the end of Aeneid 10 is so fine that it surely deserves more critical attention than it has yet received. What I find particularly interesting are: the totally different Mezentius that Aeneas finds at close quarters from the simplistic long-range view he had received from Euander at 8.481 ff.; the way in which, as he dies, Mezentius quite puts Aeneas to shame (as, by entirely different means, Turnus also does); and Aeneas' numbed horror at the beginning of Aeneid 11 as he ponders what he has done in killing Mezentius.

21 From what Euander says of him at 8,481 ff., I infer that Mezentius had grown up in the world of Saturnus. Turnus is younger than this. Mezentius' ‘Kill and be killed’ morality is the same as that shown by the warriors of Aeneid 2-hence, no doubt, the recurrence in that book of similes already used in the Georgics. What is here said of Mezentius' limited vision could also be demonstrated for Camilla.

22 12.676; the whole of this speech is crucial to understanding the change that hearing Saces has wrought in him and how he is now pointed towards ‘di me terrent et Iuppiter hostis’.

23 Dante preserves these aspects of Vergil';s scene in his reworking of it in the Jacopo Rusticucci episode at Canto XVI of the Inferno-cf. w. 43–45.

24 These literary programmes always tend to be shadowy affairs-cf. Ogilvie to Tac. Agr. 3.3. On the proem to G. 3 see Büchner, RE 15.2.1291 ff.; Klingner, , op. cit. at n. 9, pp. 278 ff.Google Scholar: Buchheit, , DerAnspruch des Dicbter in Vergils Georgika…, Impulse der Forschung 8 (Darmstadt, 1972), pp. 77 ff.Google Scholar

25 Hardie, , in ch. 8 of Levick, (ed.) The Ancient Historians… (London, 1974)Google Scholar, seems to me to argue persuasively for the restoration of the conventional dating; one might perhaps add that, when Tityrus sings, ‘deus nobis haec otia fecit’, there is surely no guarantee that Vergil necessarily agrees with him. With what is here said of the Eclogues cf. Büchner, , Vergil: Dichtung und Chaos, at pp. 461 ffGoogle Scholar. of Mélanges Boyancé (Rome, 1974).

26 Vergil's recurrent search for a Heilbringer is emphasized by Klingner in his essay on the unity of Vergil, ';s work-op. cit. at n. 2, pp. 256 ffGoogle Scholar. (= Rom. Mitt. 45 (1930), 43 ff.). Büchner, RE 15. 2.1271 f., stresses that G. 1.118 ff. is to be taken with the poem';s introduction. The difficulties that have been felt over improbus, on which see Richter, , Vergil: Georgika (Munich, 1957)Google Scholar, ad loc, are surely groundless. TLL., sv., lists Vergil's usage at G. 1.146 under the heading, ‘de eo, quod modum excedit, i.q. immensus’; this is how his labor appears to the farmer.

27 Cf. Richter, , op. cit., p. 136Google Scholar; Elvira, Ruiz de, CFC 3 (1972), 9 ff.Google Scholar

28 Büchner, RE 15.2.1319 f.

29 I hope to write elsewhere on the human characters in the Aeneid and the intelligibility of history. Turnus'; ‘di me terrent et Iuppiter hostis’ is a moment when he begins to understand history as he had not understood it before.

30 How far Vulcan understands history it is not possible to say. The shield is made with tremendous speed; and Vulcan's choice of subjects seems to be made on aesthetic grounds-what will make a good artefact- rather than intellectual ones. It is interesting to consider how the tone of the show of heroes and of the shield conforms to that of the books in which they each appear-they are as different from one another as Aeneid 6 is different from Aeneid 8. The one is to the other, perhaps, as Wagner is to Mozart. The tortured agonizing of the show of heroes comes across very clearly when comparison is made with Justinian's majestic review of history at Paradiso VI.

31 This is perhaps particularly noticeable when in his final breath Turnus says, ‘uicisti et uictum tendere palmas/Ausonii uidere’. That the Ausonians should have seen Aeneas' victory is very important to the Jupiter-Juno scheme of things, as it is a necessary condition of the Ausonians voluntarily accepting the consequences of Aeneas' victory. But that is not at all what Turnus means; he means no more than, ‘As the Ausonians have seen your victory already, do not press it home by killing me.’

32 His first dispatch of Mercury to Carthage at 1.297 ff. may be a precaution that Aeneas come to no harm there. But it follows so immediately on the Venu-scene that it may perhaps be little more than a gesture to Venus (which she fails to accept in the manner intended).

33 It is interesting to consider how far Aeneas'; experiences in the Underworld are intended to direct him towards the same ideals of statesmanship as Tolstoy represents in Kutuzov. Vergil surely did not write Aeneid 6 before he had pondered long over what made Augustus the man that he was. Livy has not thought so deeply in giving his account of Hannibal's leadership at 21.4.3 ff.

34 Attempts to disentangle the different strands have been made, for Juno by Lieberg, , A & R 11 (1966), 145 ff.Google Scholar; for Venus by Wlosok, , Die Gottin Venus in Vergils Aeneis (Heidelberg, 1967).Google Scholar