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The Death of Turnus and Roman Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Peter Burnell
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Extract

Is Aeneas right or wrong to kill Turnus at the end of the Aeneid? Virgil himself has raised the issue by creating Aeneas' dilemma. In the equivalent scene of the Iliad the first wound which Hector receives in combat with Achilles is fatal, and so the possibility of sparing his life does not arise; but Turnus is not mortally wounded, he asks for mercy, begins to be successful, and then is killed after all. About this moral question all the logically possible opinions have been recently asserted by scholars: that the killing is right, that it is wrong, and that it is morally neutral. One of these must, of course, be right.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , October 1987 , pp. 186 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1987

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References

Notes

1. See Williams, G., Technique and Ideas in the Aeneid (New Haven and London, 1983), p. 92Google Scholar.

2. ‘Pathos, Tragedy and Hope in the Aeneid,’ JRS 75 (1985), 74Google Scholar.

3. E.g. by both V. Pöschl and R. D. Williams, despite their differences concerning this passage.

4. Virgil's Iliad. An Essay on Dramatic Narrative (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 211–217Google Scholar.

5. It is assumed here that the ‘Helen’ passage (567–88) is genuine, on the grounds that Venus in the passage immediately after (whose authenticity is accepted) remonstrates with Aeneas about his ‘uncontrolled anger’, indomitas iras, but in the lines preceding the disputed passage (lines which if that passage were not genuine would come immediately before Venus' speech) Aeneas is not angry.

6. Op. cit., pp. 224–25.

7. Darkness Visible (Berkeley, 1976), p. 133Google Scholar.

8. Virgil. A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1964), p. 380Google Scholar.

9. The Altar and the City (New York, 1974), pp. 238–39Google Scholar.

10. Virgils Epische Technik (Leipzig and Berlin, 1915, repr. Stuttgart, 1972), p. 211.

11. Die Dichtkunst Virgils, Eng. ed., The Art of Virgil (Ann Arbor, 1962), p. 136Google Scholar.

12. Virgil's Aeneid. A Critical Description (London, 1967), p. 276Google Scholar.

13. Two other scholars generally on Quinn's side are R. D. Williams (most recently with Pattie, T. S. in Virgil. His Poetry through the Ages (London, 1982), pp. 55–56Google Scholar and Putnam, M. C. J. in The Poetry of the Aeneid (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), p. 193Google Scholar. The latter, however, goes to the extreme: Aeneas leaves Turnus ‘victorious in his tragedy’. Such romantic nihilism would suit an interpretation of Lucan's Pharsalia better than one of Virgil's Aeneid.

14. Op. cit., p. 238.

15. This is not to deny the general similarity of this scene to some of Augustus' actual deeds, as opposed to his words.

16. A deed given prominence by both Virgil (A. 6.817–23) and Livy (2.5.5–10).

17. For Virgil he is infelix, and for Livy a man who when he should not even have had to be present had to preside over the executions. Cicero betrays doubt even about the morality of the action when he says nemo reprehendit about it (Sul. 11.32). If the deed had not in some circles been thought morally dubious, he would not have needed to say that.

18. Phil. 1.6.13, 2.11.26, 2.44.114, etc., de Oral. 1.9.37, 2.55.225, Fin. 2.20.66, etc.

19. Livy (8.7) says that Torquatus' orders were a thing of terror at the time, but ‘a sinister precedent’ (exempli… tristis) for posterity. Thus Livy contrives to admit that the act was exemplary and part of Roman tradition, while asserting that still one's gorge rises at it.

20. The passage is a detailed discussion of Cato's speech, defending it against its critics; thus we can assume that what he gives us is closely based on the original.

21. ‘Aeneas and the Roman Stoic Ideal,’ G&R 3 (1933–1934), 8–21Google Scholar.

22. Op. cit., p. 357.

23. The Aeneid (Oxford, 1930), p. lxviGoogle Scholar.

24. See Wimsatt, W. K. Jr, and Beardsley, M. C., ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, Sewanee Review 54 (1946), 468–88Google Scholar.

25. Op. cit. 227.

26. See Pohlenz, M., Antikes Fiihrertum (Leipzig and Berlin, 1934) passim, but in particular pp. 143–45Google Scholar. Cf. Rist, J. M., Stoic Philosophy (London, 1969), p. 193, where it is pointed out that Cicero further adapted the Stoic ideasGoogle Scholar.

27. Editors usually delete inferioris.

28. Quoted by Gellius 10.3.5.

29. This is not to suggest that Turnus' offence is minor, as was the Venusian's. The point is simply that the aspect of the young envoy's offence to which Gracchus takes particular exception is his lack of self-control.

30. Op. cit., 17.

31. The choice of phrase is Quinn's, Kenneth (Horace, The Odes (London, 1980), ad loc)Google Scholar.

32. See Kiessling-Heinze, , Horatius, Oden und Epoden (Berlin, 1960), p. 257, ad locGoogle Scholar.

33. Loc. cit. See also Kiessling-Heinze, ad loc.

34. Similarly, in 1.19.9–10 Horace allows a heroic tone to run through a description of anger, ‘which neither the Norican sword scares off, nor the shipwrecking sea’; but the poem as a whole is a recantation of anger, though Nisbet and Hubbard do not take that view.

35. According to St. Augustine (Civ. Dei 9.5) there are the three specific elements of misericordia: alienae miseriae (suffering) in nostro corde compassio (sympathy), qua utique, si possumus, subvenire compellimur (consequent impulse to generosity towards the sufferer).

36. Miserans (823), miserande (825), infelix miseram solabere mortem ‘in your misfortune you shall have consolation for your pitiful death’ (829).

37. This principle is the basis of the whole plot: Menedemus makes sure that his neighbour is supposedly fooled, for so great is that man's remorse that in reality he would give his son anything. This, Menedemus knows, would damage his neighbour's way of life if the son knew about it; hence the complicated plots and double plots of the play.

38. It is, for example, the moral basis of Sophocles' Philoctetes. Neoptolemus against his conscience (86–95) has helped to deceive Philoctetes, but when he sees that hero writhing in agony his heart is touched, he is converted, chooses the part of honour, and defies Odysseus (and, by extension, all the Greeks). Cf. Eur. (Ino) frg. 407 (Nauck).

39. Moritz, L. A., Humanitas (Cardiff, 1962), pp. 9–15Google Scholar; Clarke, M. L., The Roman Mind (London, 1956), p. 135Google Scholar.

40. Improbus shows the same tendency. Its basic meaning is simply ‘lacking in virtue’; but in A. 9.47–68, Turnus is like a wolf which when haunting a fold ‘rages, harsh and bad with anger, asper et improbus ira saevit. Similarly in Hor. (C. 3.9.22–23) a girl describes her errant lover as ‘more subject to anger than the bad Adriatic’, improbo iracundior Hadria. In both the word connotes ‘lacking in gentleness’. Cf. A. 10.727, 12.687, Stat., Theb. 4.319.

41. By Lucan, for example, in the Pharsalia.

42. It is said enthusiastically among the enemy that Scipio has been carrying all before him cum armis turn benignitate ac benefidis, ‘not only by arms but by kindness of mind and of action’.