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PORSENNA, HORATIUS CYCLOPS, AND CLOELIA (VIRGIL, AENEID 8.649–51)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2021

Sergio Casali
Sergio Casali*
Affiliation:
University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’
*
[email protected]
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Extract

The fifth scene represented on the Shield of Aeneas describes Porsenna's siege of Rome and the resistance of the Romans, with the two classic exempla of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia (Verg. Aen. 8.646–51):

      nec non Tarquinium eiectum Porsenna iubebat
      accipere ingentique urbem obsidione premebat;
      Aeneadae in ferrum pro libertate ruebant.
      illum indignanti similem similemque minanti
      aspiceres, pontem auderet quia uellere Cocles 650
      et fluuium uinclis innaret Cloelia ruptis.
According to Roman mainstream tradition, at the beginning of the Republic, Porsenna, an Etruscan king of Clusium, tried to reinstate the exiled Tarquinius Superbus by besieging Rome, but the heroism of Romans such as Horatius Cocles, C. Mucius Scaevola and Cloelia impressed him so much that he decided to give up the siege and make peace with his enemies. He then sent his army against the Latins and was finally defeated at the battle of Aricia by the joint forces of the Latin League and their allies from Cumae. However, there circulated also less flattering versions of the story: Tacitus (Hist. 3.72, Porsenna dedita urbe) hints at the fact that the Romans had in fact surrendered to Porsenna, and Pliny refers to a humiliating treaty imposed on them by the Etruscan king (HN 34.139).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 724 - 733
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association.

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Footnotes

I wish to thank Luigi Galasso, John Miller, Jim O'Hara and Fabio Stok for their encouragement and advice. My thanks are also due to CQ's editor, Bruce Gibson, and to the journal's anonymous referee.

References

1 Woodman, A.J., ‘Virgil the historian: Aeneid 8.626–62 and Livy’, in Diggle, J., Hall, J.B., Jocelyn, H.D. (edd.), Studies in Latin Literature and its Tradition in Honour of C.O. Brink (Cambridge, 1989), 132–45, at 134Google Scholar = Woodman, A.J., From Poetry to History: Selected Papers (Oxford, 2012), 147–61, at 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Woodman (n. 1 [1989]), 138 = (n. 1 [2012]), 151. There might be a hint at Mucius and his three hundred comrades allegedly ready to substitute him (Livy 2.12.15) in in ferrum pro libertate ruebant (Aen. 8.648). On the story of Mucius, who snuck into the Etruscan camp in order to assassinate Porsenna, but instead killed his secretary by mistake, and his demonstration of his indifference to torture by plunging his right arm into a fire, see Ogilvie, R.M., A Commentary on Livy, Books 1–5 (Oxford, 1965), 262–3Google Scholar, with further references; Heikkinen, R., ‘A moral example in Seneca: C. Mucius Scaevola, the conqueror of bodily pain’, in Vaahtera, J. and Vainio, R. (edd.), Utriusque linguae peritus. Studia in honorem Toivo Viljamaa (Turku, 1997), 63–72Google Scholar; Langlands, R., Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 2018), especially 18–21, 53–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Livy is not explicit about the fact that Mucius is actually lying to Porsenna, but this is an obviously necessary implication: see Münzer, F., ‘C. Mucius Cordus Scaevola (10)’, RE 16.1 (1933), 416–23, at 419–20Google Scholar (noticing that this is the first mention of the three hundred in Livy, who therefore must have thought of them as an invention); Langlands (n. 2), 55–6.

4 For emphasis on Porsenna's benevolent reaction to Cloelia's deed, cf. also, for example, Plut. Vit. Poplic. 19.7 ἀκούσας δὲ τὸ ὄνομα τῆς Κλοιλίας προσέβλεψεν αὐτὴν ἵλεῳ καὶ φαιδρῷ τῷ προσώπῳ, ‘having heard the name of Cloelia, he addressed her with a gentle and cheerful countenance’.

5 Cf. also Hor. Epod. 16.4 minacis … Porsenae (where Porsenna is included among Rome's most dangerous enemies). Ridley, R.T., ‘The puzzles of Porsenna’, Studi Etruschi 78 (2015), 77–95, at 77Google Scholar characterizes the presentation of Porsenna given by ‘Aristeides of Miletus’, BNJ 286 F 2 (apud [Plut.] Parall. min. 2 [305F–306A]) as also ‘very negative’, accepting the identification of the author cited by Ps.-Plutarch with the second-century b.c. Aristeides, the author of the Milesiaca, but this must be a bogus quotation; see P. Ceccarelli's BNJ commentary ad loc. and, on Ps.-Plutarch's inventions, also Cameron, A., Greek Mythography in the Roman World (Oxford, 2004), 127–34Google Scholar.

6 As to Mucius’ subsequent fate, Dionysius records two versions, one according to which he was sent back to Rome together with the embassy of 5.31, on condition that he give the king his pledge upon oath that he would return, and the other, which Dionysius considers closer to the truth, according to which he was kept in the Etruscan camp as a hostage until the peace was concluded (5.31.2). On the differences between Livy and Dionysius in their presentation of Porsenna, see Musti, D., ‘Tendenze nella storiografia romana e greca su Roma arcaica: studi su Livio e Dionigi d'Alicarnasso’, QUCC 10 (1970), 3–159, at 111–12Google Scholar.

7 Ogilvie (n. 2), 255 (who, of course, is not referring to Virgil). We may wonder if Virgil's negative presentation of the Etruscan king has anything to do with the possibility that ‘Porsenna's reception of Tarquin parallels Turnus’ defense of Mezentius’, as suggested by L.M. Fratantuono and R.A. Smith, Virgil, Aeneid 8. Text, Translation, and Commentary (Leiden, 2018), on 8.646, following Gransden, K.W., Virgil Aeneid Book VIII (Cambridge, 1976), on 8.646–51Google Scholar. The choice of an anti-Etruscan perspective on Porsenna might sound a little peculiar, considering that the Aeneid presents the (bulk of) Etruscans as Aeneas’ allies instead of making them his enemies as in the preceding tradition; Virgil, however, gives no title to Porsenna (thus choosing not to exploit the possibility of making him the ‘king of the Etruscans’ as Dionysius, for example, does at 5.26.1; elsewhere in Dionysius he is the ‘king of the Clusians’: Ant. Rom. 5.21.1, 5.34.5), and does not even mention his ethnicity. Therefore, Porsenna can be seen as an isolated ‘bad king’ like Mezentius himself. After all, Virgil is not primarily interested in giving a ‘positive’ portrait of the relationships between the Etruscans and the proto-Roman Aeneas; rather, by presenting the Etruscans as afflicted by an internal schism and by infighting, he wants to prefigure for the future the notorious disunity among their cities and their internal social tensions, which contributed so much to the demise of their independence.

8 The story is first attested in Polyb. 6.55, the only source in which Horatius dies after having thrown himself into the river; cf. especially Livy 2.10; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.23.2–24.3; Plut. Vit. Poplic. 16.6–9; for a thorough review of the sources, see Münzer, F., ‘Horatius (9)’, RE 8.2 (1913), 2331–6Google Scholar. On Horatius as an exemplum, see Roller, M.B., Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla (Cambridge, 2018), 32–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the various interpretations of the story, see Walbank, F.W., A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1957), 740–1Google Scholar; Ogilvie (n. 2), 256–7; E. Montanari, ‘Coclite’, in Enciclopedia Virgiliana, vol. 1 (Rome, 1984), 830–1; J.W. Rich, FRHist 3.7–8 (on Annales Maximi F 6), with further bibliography.

9 De La Cerda, J.L., P. Virgilii Maronis posteriores sex libri Aeneidos (Lyons, 1617), ad locGoogle Scholar.

10 I have not found the passage La Cerda refers to. While there are indeed a few other notes that make reference to Neptune and Apollo as builders of the walls of Troy (see note on Aen. 3.3 and Explicatio to G. 1.498–514), I can find nothing that even approaches aligning conditor with auctor. Perhaps La Cerda has in mind a vague recollection of his note on G. 3.36 Troiae Cynthius auctor, but there it is not so much a question of Apollo (not Neptune) as conditor of Troy in the sense of auctor but rather the other way round. In any case, the situations of Apollo as ‘founder’ of Troy and of Horatius as ‘destroyer’ of the bridge are not comparable, since in many versions of the story Apollo, as one can see from La Cerda's note itself, does actually build the walls of the city, while Horatius does not destroy the bridge in any known version of the story, apart from Aen. 8.650.

11 A regular use in historiographical prose: just to give one example referring to the destruction of bridges, at Caes. BGall. 4.19.4 we have Caesar … se in Galliam recepit pontemque rescidit, although at BGall. 1.7.1 we have pontem, qui erat ad Genauam, iubet rescindi.

12 C.G. Heyne, P. Vergilius Maro varietate lectionis et perpetua adnotatione illustratus, vol. 3 (rev. by G.P.E. Wagner) (Leipzig and London, 18334), ad loc.

13 J. Badius Ascensius, Aeneis Vergiliana cum Seruii Honorati Grammatici huberrimis commentariis […] Cumque familiarissima Iodoci Badii Ascensii elucidatione atque ordinis contextu (Paris, 1500 [1501 n.s.]), ad loc.

14 See e.g. Fiesel, E., Namen des griechischen Mythos im Etruskischen (Göttingen, 1928), 35Google Scholar; Ernout, A., Philologica, vol. 1 (Paris, 1946), 7 and 46–7Google Scholar; Palmer, L.R., The Latin Language (London, 1954), 52Google Scholar; Ernout, A. and Meillet, A., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine: Histoire des mots (Paris, 19594), s.v.Google Scholar; C. De Simone, Die griechischen Entlehnungen im Etruskischen, vol. 1 (Wiesbaden, 1968), 134; vol. 2 (Wiesbaden, 1970), 283–6. W. Schulze, Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen (Berlin, 1904), 287 n. 7 was somewhat sceptical. The connection of Cocles with κύκλωψ has been seen at least since Joseph Scaliger: Iosephi Scaligeri Iulii Caesaris filii Coniectanea in M. Terentium Varronem de lingua Latina (Paris, 1565), 176.

15 See TLL Οnom. s.v. Cocles 2.519.56–79, to which add Suda ε 1610 (s.v. ἐχεκόπη); Tzetz. Chil. 3.828–9.

16 Cf. also Plin. HN 11.150; Charisius, Gramm. 1.40.14.

17 Cf. Isid. Etym. 10.163.

18 Only a certain Theotimus, FGrHist 834 F 1 / BNJ 470 F 6, apud [Plut.] Parall. min. 8 (307D–E) connects the lost eye with the battle at the Sublician bridge (βέλει δὲ τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν πληγείς, ῥίψας ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν διενήξατο εἰς τοὺς οἰκείους· ὡς Θεότιμος ἐν δευτέρῳ Ἰταλικῶν, ‘struck in his eye by an arrow, he threw himself into the river and swam across to his fellow citizens; so Theotimus in the second book of his Italica’), but it is highly probable that this ‘Theotimus’ is just an invention of Ps.-Plutarch: see C. Higbie and M. Horster's BNJ commentary ad loc. and n. 5 above.

19 A hint at this in Montanari (n. 8), 831: ‘in V., C[ocles] taglia, anzi “svelle” il ponte da solo, il che (in luogo del più realistico rescindere liviano) suggerisce l'idea di una forza sovrumana. Del resto, lo stesso cognomen (Cocles) rappresenta la traduzione latina di un termine, κύκλωψ, che nel mondo greco era riferito soprattutto a contesti mitologici: tra l'altro, già Ennio (Varro De l. L. 7, 71) chiama Coclites i Ciclopi [sic: lege Arimaspi].’

20 In post-Virgilian accounts we sometimes find the compound reuellere used to refer to the demolition of the Sublician bridge by Horatius’ companions: cf. Sen. Ep. 120.7 tam diu prementibus restitit, donec reuulsa ingenti ruina tigna sonuerunt; Sil. Pun. 10.726–8 tulit ille ruentem | Thybridis in ripas regem solusque reuulso | pone ferox ponte exclusit redeuntia regna; Plin. HN 36.100 quod item Romae in ponte sublicio religiosum est, posteaquam Coclite Horatio defendente aegre reuolsus est. For the use of uellere to signify ‘to tear up, uproot, demolish (buildings, etc.)’ (OLD s.v. 2c), cf. Aen. 9.506 (Volsci) et fossas implere parant ac uellere uallum, a phrase with parallels in Livy (as already noted by Servius ad loc.: sic enim et historici): cf. 9.14.9, 10.25.8 (also Sen. Ben. 6.25.4); cf. also Livy 2.25.3 iamque ab omni parte munimenta uellebantur.

21 Secci, D., ‘Hercules, Cacus, and Evander's myth-making in Aeneid 8’, HSPh 107 (2013), 195–227, at 203Google Scholar. This has been first noticed by Hardie, P., Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986), 115–16Google Scholar, while Sansone, D., ‘Cacus and the Cyclops: an addendum’, Mnemosyne 44 (1991), 171CrossRefGoogle Scholar has added the reference to the flowing back of the river; see also J.J. O'Hara, Vergil Aeneid 8 (Indianapolis and Cambridge, 2018), ad loc.

22 See Hardie (n. 21), 101. Maecenas also found that Aen. 10.128 (fert) haud partem exiguam montis (the warrior Acmon carrying a huge rock) alluded to the Cyclops’ breaking off of a piece of the mountain, and contrasted Virgil's phrase with Dorion's tumid ὄρεος ὄρος ἀποσπᾶται ‘he rips a mountain out of a mountain’. Lucretius (2.201) evokes Giants and/or Polyphemus by saying that nature could not produce men of such a size as to be able to magnos manibus diuellere montis; at Aen. 3.575 the anthropomorphized Etna vomits scopulos auulsaque uiscera montis, ‘in precise anticipation of Polyphemus’ (N. Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid 3. A Commentary [Leiden and Boston, 2006], ad loc.; the parallel with the Cyclops regards not only eructans [= 3.632] but also the throwing of rocks); for auellere in contexts evoking Giants, cf. also Lucr. 4.138–9 auulsaque saxa | montibus (‘an implicit connection between flying mountains and Gigantomachy’: Hardie [n. 21], 101).

23 The earliest author to refer to Cloelia is Piso, FRHist 9 F 22 (= F 27 Forsythe); for an overview and discussion of the sources, see Münzer, F., ‘Cloelius (13)’, RE 4 (1900), 110–11Google Scholar; Ogilvie (n. 2), 267; C.L. Walker, Hostages in Republican Rome (Diss., University of North Carolina, 1980), 263–70 (available online: http://chs.harvard.edu/publications.sec/online_print_books.ssp [Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC, 2005]); Forsythe, G., The Historian L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi and the Roman Annalistic Tradition (Lanham, MD – New York – London, 1994), 254–7Google Scholar; C.J. Smith, FRHist 3.629–30; on Cloelia within the exemplary discourse, see Roller (n. 8), 66–94, with further bibliography.

24 Cf. also, for example, Val. Max. 3.2.2 custodiam egressa; [Aur. Vict.] De uir. ill. 13.1 deceptis custodibus; Schol. Iuv. 8.265 ablegatis custodibus. At Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.33.1, the maidens escape the guards under the pretext of bathing in the river (cf. Plut. De mul. uir. 14 [250C]; Polyaenus 8.31). Along these lines, see La Cerda (n. 9), ad loc.: ‘Dici potest rupisse vincula, quæ frustrata est custodias’; Heyne (n. 12), ad loc.: ‘vinclis ruptis, simpl. de custodia accipiendum’; G.G. Gossrau, Publii Virgilii Maronis Aeneis (Quedlinburg, 18762), ad loc. (quoting both Servius and Livy); P.T. Eden, A Commentary on Virgil: Aeneid VIII (Leiden, 1975), ad loc.: ‘Virgil's phrase is a poetic equivalent of Livy's frustrata custodes (2.13.6)’; L. Colantoni Pennini, ‘Clelia’, in Enciclopedia Virgiliana, vol. 1 (Rome, 1984), 819: ‘Probabilmente V. indica con vincla il luogo ove C. sarebbe stata tenuta in ostaggio, giacché è difficile ammettere che una giovane di una delle più nobili famiglie venisse immaginata dal poeta come legata, come se fosse una prigioniera di guerra.’ It is not clear whether in Servius’ (ruptis) custodiis the noun has the concrete sense of custodes (which is ‘common enough’, as noted by N. Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid 6. A Commentary [Berlin, 2013], on 6.574, but would be very awkward with rumpo), or the abstract sense of ‘surveillance’ (a late antique usage: see TLL 4.1555.32–41). Ascensius (n. 13), ad loc., in his first interpretation, explains: ‘vinclis, s. custodiis arctis, ruptis, i. illisis’, probably = ‘having broken the strict surveillance’.

25 Cf. La Cerda (n. 9), ad loc.: ‘Vel referenda est sententia ad ipsum fluuium. Tranavit Cloelia amnem natatu, quia is sine ponte, nam is iam ruptus. Est quippe pons veluti vinculum.’ A variation of this explanation, with a slightly different emphasis, had also been considered by Ascensius (n. 13), ad loc.: ‘aut, ruptis vinclis, i. sic abnatantis et cum summo periculo aufugientis, ac si in vinclis tenta fuisset’.

26 See OLD s.v. uinculum 6.

27 Cf. however Sil. Pun. 10.496–7 (Cloelia) rege haec et foedere et annis | et fluuio spretis.

28 In the Aeneid at 2.134 (‘[s]tock phrasing’, N. Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid 2. A Commentary [Leiden and Boston, 2008], ad loc.), 5.510, 5.543, 9.118, 10.293, 11.492. For uincla in an abstract sense, cf. 12.30 uincla omnia rupi, ‘I threw off all restraint’ (R. Tarrant, Virgil Aeneid Book XII [Cambridge, 2012], ad loc.).

29 For Virgil as following or inventing a different tradition with his image of a literally chained Cloelia, see Kvíčala, J., Neue Beiträge zur Erklärung der Aeneis (Prague, 1881), 12–13Google Scholar (who emphasizes the intimations of potential mistreatment in Livy's account: see the quotation in the following note); Ehlers, W., ‘Porsenna’, RE 22 (1953), 315–22, at 317Google Scholar; G. Binder, Aeneas und Augustus: Interpretationen zum 8. Buch der Aeneis (Meisenheim am Glan, 1971), 183–4 and n. 172; Ridley (n. 5), 90; Ridley, R.T., ‘Lars Porsenna and the early Roman Republic’, Antichthon 51 (2017), 33–58, at 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘If Virgil's unique account […] is correct, she was a captive, not a hostage’. Woodman (n. 1 [1989]), 138 = (n. 1 [2012]), 157–8 thinks that by saying uinclis … ruptis Virgil wants to remove the possibility of suspecting that Cloelia escaped by sexually bribing the guards. At his n. 43, Woodman also notices that ‘[b]roken chains could be depicted vividly in plastic art’. C.J. Fordyce, P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Libri VII–VIII (Oxford, 1977), on 8.646 rightly observes that Cloelia escaped ‘not uinclis ruptis, but, says Livy, frustrata custodes’.

30 Cf. Kvíčala (n. 29), 12: ‘Auch glaube ich, dass erst dann, wenn man eine drückende und unwürdige Behandlung der Geisseln von Seiten der Etrusker annimmt, das Unternehmen der Cloelia gerechtfertigt erscheint’ (Kvíčala's emphasis). From Livy's account itself it appears that Roman hostages were potentially exposed to sexual abuse: cf. 2.13.10, where Cloelia explains why she decided to free impubes, when Porsenna allowed her to release some of her fellow hostages (cf. also [Aur. Vict.] De uir. ill. 13.1). After all, Porsenna was a foreigner, not a Roman, and Caesar frequently notes that the hostage policy of the Gauls and the Germans was much harsher than that of the Romans; cf. e.g. Caes. BGall. 5.27.2, where Ambiorix says that the Aduatuci enslaved and kept in chains (in seruitute et catenis) hostages of the Eburones in order to force them to pay tributes; see Moscovich, M.J., ‘Obsidibus traditis: hostages in Caesar's De bello Gallico’, CJ 75 (1979–80), 122–8Google Scholar, at 123 n. 8; cf. 126 n. 34 on executions of hostages reportedly carried out by the Romans themselves. On (mis)treatment of hostages, see also Walker (n. 23), 94–132, especially 109 on Cloelia.

31 For special emphasis on Cloelia's gender role-reversal, cf. e.g. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.34.3; Manilius 1.780; Val. Max. 3.2.2; Sen. Dial. 6.16.2; Sil. Pun. 13.830. On Cloelia as the ‘manly maiden’, see Allen, J., Hostages and Hostage-Taking in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2006), 195–7Google Scholar; Roller (n. 8), 77–87.

32 R. Syme, Tacitus, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1958), 1.398.

33 See Hardie (n. 21), especially 97–103 (Actium), 120–5 (the Gauls on the Capitol), 336–76 (the Shield as a ‘cosmic icon’). On the Shield's sublimity, see also P. Hardie, Lucretian Receptions: History, the Sublime, Knowledge (Cambridge, 2009), 102.

34 See Hardie (n. 21), 351.

35 O'Hara, J.J., Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan (Cambridge, 2007), 99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Hardie (n. 21), especially 154–6 (on the striking simile comparing Aeneas to the hundred-handed Aegaeon-Briareus, 10.565–70).

36 Hardie (n. 21), 115–16 (see 110–18 on Hercules and Cacus); Sansone (n. 21).

37 See Hardie (n. 21), 120–5; scepticism is expressed in his review of Hardie's book by Griffin, J., JRS 78 (1988), 229–33, at 231Google Scholar.