The Aeneid: Picking Flowers

[Patricio]

At regina gravi iamdudum saucia cura
vulnus alit venis et caeco carpitur igni. (4.1-2)

Here Dido is already being “plucked at by blind fire,” or hidden fire, in that Latin idiom that brings to mind how small children believe that when they cover their eyes this makes them invisible. Then just a little later her sister asks her,

Solane perpetua maerens carpēre iuventa? (4.32)

Which you could English as something like, “Will you waste away, lonely and sad?” But I like to keep in mind the physical meaning of words even when they’re being used metaphorically, so I think she’s going to be plucked at here as well, maybe plucked away, continuously, until there’s not much left of her.

Ruaeus picks up on this when he notes, “Translatio est a floribus, qui carpuntur manu, atque ita deflorescunt, quasi dicat: Solane tota juventa tristis consumeris ac defloresces?”

Because behind all this is the image of a girl as a flower, which left to itself grows strong and lovely, but once plucked soon wilts and is shunned (cf. Catullus 62.39-48).

The paradox here for Dido, of course, is that she’s no longer young. (How old is she, anyway?) She’s already been plucked by her husband Sychaeus, and some time ago. In Book One Vergil portrayed her as powerful, queenly, godlike, a true dux femina, but here in Book Four she’s like some silly girl with a crush on a boy she just met.

Quem sese ore ferens! quam forti pectore et armis! (4.11)

It’s unseemly, a bit embarrassing, and it won’t end well. The tragedy here lies not in deflowering, but in death, and useless death, unfruitful death.

Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro
languescit moriens. (9.435-436)


--Patricio

[Ed Cryer]

My guess is that Vergil came up with the idea of a curse from early
Carthage to account for the later Punic Wars. That led him to a woman's
vengeance; to Dido. From that he heaped on her the thing that women
are/were notorious for; varium et semper mutabile femina; completely
unStoic revenge.

Ed

[Ed Cryer]

Aeneid IV is Vergil; not Homer. Other books are Homeric, sack of Troy,
funeral games, underworld, wanderings around the Med. But not IV.
And the Latin flows more easily and rapidly than in any other of the 12
books. It reminds me of what Dostoevsky wrote in a letter to a friend
when he was writing The Brothers Karamazov; "the inspired passages come
easily, I have to work hard on the rest".

Why did he use it? Why did he insert this very Greek tragedy? Was he
working off some personal traumatic event in his past?

Maybe. But what would have occurred to contemporary readers would have
been Queen Cleopatra. And Julius Caesar, and especially Mark Antony.
Octavius Caesar was embroiled in a campaign of immense propaganda
against Antony. And the thing that sealed it for him (was it invented?)
was Antony scurrying away from the battle of Actium after Cleopatra's
retreating golden barge; and then holing up in Alexandria with her.
Very unRoman! Very befuddled by some eastern witch! But our hero (pius
Aeneas) rose above that.

At all events, it worked. It raises the Aeneid to what Propertius called
"nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade".

Ed

[Patricio]

Your point about the special status of Book Four is well taken.

I suppose when I read the Aeneid, history and Vergil’s contemporary politics are always burbling away in the background but are seldom in the forefront of my attention. I focus much more on character, motivation, technique; especially the manipulation of symbols (e.g., the flower), narrative structure, and how language is crafted to serve these ends. I favor the personal over the social, the emotional over the rational, the metaphysical over the philosophical. I recognize also that others may profitably read the book exactly opposite.

The historical reference in Dido’s curse is unmistakable: there’s no doubt about who she’s invoking in 4.625 (Exoriare aliquis nostris de ossibus ultor), but it’s at least somewhat subtle, as Vergil doesn’t call him by name. He’s less effective, though, when he hits you over the head with history, as in the ecphrasis on Aeneas’ shield in 8.626-728 (another riff on Homer), which climaxes with Augustus’ triumph after the battle of Actium and indeed includes a borderline hysterical depiction of Cleopatra herself. Similarly awkward is his use of Pythagorean metempsychosis as an excuse for another long history lesson at the end of Book Six (6.755-888). Retrospective prophesy is just as much a cheap trick here as it is in the Book of Daniel.

And to get back to Dido, it’s worth noting that prior to her ultimate curse, which she pronounces just before she mounts the funeral pyre and which will play out in historical time, she offers another more personal imprecation, one she throws in Aeneas’ face, in which she promises to haunt him after she is dead.

I, sequere Italiam ventis, pete regna per undas.
Spero equidem mediis, si quid pia numina possunt,
supplicia hausurum scopulis et nomine Dido
saepe vocaturum. Sequar atris ignibus absens
et, cum frigida mors anima seduxerit artus,
omnibus umbra locis adero. Dabis, improbe, poenas.
Audiam et haec Manes veniet mihi fama sub imos. (4.381-387)

This is the kind of passage I find utterly compelling, both for its mystery and its shocking immediacy. The venom in these words is breathtaking; there’s no clearer expression of the already advanced state of mental dissolution that Dido is suffering, and the progressive fracturing of her consciousness into disparate entities (atris ignibus . . . umbra . . . manes).

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to air some of these ideas that have been kicking around in my brain for a while.


--Patricio

[Ed Cryer]

On second thoughts, I think book IV owes quite a lot to Homer; more to
the Odyssey than the Iliad, but even in the latter there's Achilles and
Briseis. Homer doesn't dally too much on their relationship, but modern
perspectives through Christian-humanist eyes can easily paint Achilles
as a Romantic hero.
In the Odyssey there's Circe (O has a ten-year fling with her) and then
Nausikaa. And I guess you could look on Odysseus as being held back on
his divine mission of getting back home to the wife and kids; which
gives me another amorous woman, Penelope.

Ed

[Ed Cryer]

Oops! Pardon me. It was the nymph Calypso who held O prisoner for ten years.
Circe turned his men into pigs. Which makes me wonder what Aeneas' men
were doing while he was besporting himself in the big house on the hill.
Perhaps they were pigging themselves in the waterfront dives. (James
Joyce would be proud of me!)

Ed

[Patricio]

The difference here is that Dido isn’t a nymph or a witch, despite expectations to the contrary that arise from stories about Calypso and Circe. All that magical folderol she gets up to with the Massylian priestess (4.504-521) is just an elaborate pretext for building a big funeral pyre in the middle of her palace and killing herself on it. Vergil says as much.

Non tamen Anna novis praetexere funera sacris
germanam credit, nec tantos mente furores
concipit, aut graviora timet quam morte Sychaei. (4.500-502)

Dido mostly comes across more as a quite competent and practical career woman, albeit one driven to extremes by desperate circumstances. That’s one reason why she’s having absolutely none of it when Aeneas comes up with what seem to her a string of utterly implausible excuses for leaving Carthage: “The oracle told me to do it. Um, God told me to do it. No, it was my father. That’s right, my dead father told me to do it in a dream!” (4.345-353).

Vergil’s tactic here is to deny and subvert the expectations of his readers. He’s working against Homer rather than elaborating on him.


--Patricio

[Ed Cryer]

She's still the obsessive woman. Like Juno with her implacable hatred
(saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram) she can't let go. When Aeneas meets her
shade in Hades she just stares daggers at him (torva tuentem) and rushes
away to Sychaeus.

Aeneas, for all his apparent woodenness, can let go; he can forgive,
move on to a better destiny.

Ed

[B. T. Raven]

Who did Aeneas have to forgive? He reminds me of the Donald, who doesn't
need God's forgiveness since he can forgive himself. Very American and
maybe very Roman of him, but not very Trojan. Also, 'a better destiny'
is often just an excuse to trade up to a newer supermodel. Why didn't he
walk behind Creusa? She seems to have been left behind to slow down any
pursuing Greeks.

Eduardus.

p. s. Hey, btw, where has Ioannis Patruus been hiding? Until recently he
at least posted a link to the oed word of the day if it was classical in
origin. Is anyone interested in starting up a Bradley's Arnold
translation group again. I think JP found a link to those exercises.

[Johannes Patruus]

On 23/02/2016 18:16, B. T. Raven wrote:

> p. s. Hey, btw, where has Ioannis Patruus been hiding?

Under the compost heap.

> Until recently he
> at least posted a link to the oed word of the day if it was classical in
> origin. Is anyone interested in starting up a Bradley's Arnold translation
> group again. I think JP found a link to those exercises.

A presumably copyright-busting PDF of the BA textbook is here -
http://goo.gl/MGmr7x

The Key (in two parts) is among those here -
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8A3wsWu6fORWnpCdHFwU0VfcEU

Johannes "J-man" Patruus

[B. T. Raven]

Thanks, J-man. Since books published before 1923 were in the public
domain in the year 2000, books published in 1938, 1939 are or soon will
be in the public domain in 2016. Anyway we would only be using a page or
two per week and that sounds like fair use to me. Thanks for the links.

Eduardus