Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:43:45.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Notes on Aeneid 8.514–517

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Theodore D. Papanghelis
Affiliation:
University of Thessaloniki

Extract

Evander promises Aeneas two hundred of his Arcadians for the war against the Italians, with as many cavalry under Pallas into the bargain; and puts his son under the Trojan leader's command:

hunc tibi praeterea, spes et solacia nostri,

Pallanta adiungam; sub te tolerare magistro

militiam et graue Martis opus, tua cernere facta

adsuescat, primis et te miretur ab annis.

Type
Shorter Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Gransden, K. W., Aeneid, Book VIII (Cambridge, 1976), p. 150Google Scholar. Fordyce, C. J., Aeneidos Libri VII–VIII (Glasgow, 1977), p. 261Google Scholar and Binder, G., Aeneas und Augustus. Interpretationen zum 8. Buch der Aeneis (Meisenheim am Glan, 1971), p. 74Google Scholar, point out the Argonautica and the Odyssean passages respectively as models for Evander's offer.

2 See Knauer, G. N., Die Aeneis und Homer (Göttingen, 1964), pp. 254–5Google Scholar.

3 See, for instance, Od 3.32, ἔνθ' ἄρα N⋯στωρ ἧστο σὺν υἱ⋯σιν …

4 See Arg. 2. 802–5:

ξυνῇ μ⋯ν π⋯ντεσσιν ⋯μ⋯στολον ὔμμιν ἔπεσθαι

Δ⋯σκυλον ⋯τρυν⋯ω, ⋯μ⋯ν υἱ⋯α. τοῖο δ' ἰ⋯ντος

ἠ τ' ἄν εὐξε⋯νοισι δι⋯ξ ⋯λ⋯ς ⋯ντι⋯οιτε

⋯νδρ⋯σιν, ⋯φρ' αὐτοῖο ποτ⋯ στ⋯μα Θερμώδοντος

5 It is worth noting that ⋯νμμελ⋯ης qualifies Peisistratus in Od. 3.400. For other Homeric echoes in these lines, see Campbell, M., Echoes and Imitations of Early Epic in Apollonius Rhodius (Leiden, 1981), p. 2Google Scholar.

6 τηλ⋯γετος is a Homeric epithet, and its meaning was a subject for dispute in antiquity; ‘cherished’, ‘born to him in his old age’, ‘spoilt darling’, ‘born away from one's father’ are some of the meanings that have been suggested, and all, except, possibly, the last one suit the passage. But Apollonius, as is his wont, may be just hinting at a controversy of Homeric scholarship without, in this particular case, coming down on one side or the other of the fence. See Bedell, W. Stanford, ‘Τηλ⋯γετος’, CR 51 (1937), 168Google Scholar, and Kirk, G. S., The Iliad: A Commentary, Vol. i, Books 1–4 (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on Il. 3.175, but cf. Heubeck, A., West, S. and Hainsworth, J. B., A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey. Vol. i, Books I–VIII (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar, on Od. 4.11.

7 See 1.398–401, 4.654 and 6.217.

8 ‘Easterners’ have been at work on the story of Pallas, arguing that Virgil has modelled it upon an episode from the Mahabharata in which Arjuna entrusts his son Abhimanyu, a handsome young fighter, to his brother Yudhisthira. Abhimanyu is killed in the battle, is lamented by both father and uncle, and revenged by the former. The right to disbelieve is, I suppose, as sacrosanct as that to search. On the question, see Lallemant, J., ‘Turnus and Duryodhana’, TAPhA 92 (1961), 98103Google Scholar and Duckworth, G. E., ‘Une source de l'Enéide: le Mahabharata’, Latomus 18 (1959), 273–4Google Scholar.