#20469 - Commentary Plan Aeneid 2.752 794 - Commentary plan (Virgil's Aeneid. 2.752-94)

Write a commentary on the passage: Book 2, Lines 752-794

Context

• ‘Book 2 is both the first extended epic/tragic sequence, and the first large-scale narrative whole that he has attempted’ (Virgil, Aeneid 2: A Commentary, Nicholas Horsfall, 2008, pg. xiii)

• In a moment of limerence as the men are trying to leave Troy following the fall of the city, yet Aeneas has been caught between the love for his wife and the duty to his city and fate as a whole

• Marks the end of Book 2, a turning point as after this, Aeneas and his men begin their wanderings to find the promised land

Overview/content

• Scene in which Aeneas has realised the loss of his wife whilst leaving Troy

• He turns back into the burning city in a desperate attempt to find her

• He is met by her ghost who prophesises his fate, explaining that losing her was necessary to fulfil his destiny

• Contrast between the general description of the Greek’s pillage of Troy and the intimate conversation between husband and wife

• Similar to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice

Detailed analysis

• 752: emphasis on darkness, ‘obscuraque’ (dark) and ‘per noctem’ (through the night), should be easy to escape but instead easy to lose Creusa

• 753: reversal of a heroic journey in relative clause ‘qua gressum extuleram’, ‘by which I had left the city’, emphasis on his desperation to return to a collapsing city just to find his wife, enhances struggle between marital duty and martial duty

• 753: ‘vestigia’, ‘footsteps/route’ – same word used during their escape as Creusa followed in his footsteps at a distance, bittersweet irony as these are the steps that she accompanied him in whilst leaving the city

• 754: here ‘lumine’ likely refers to ‘eye’ in the poetic sense literally meaning ‘observing with my eye’ (‘lumine lustro’), Tiberius Claudius Donatus claims it refers to the fires still ablaze throughout Troy (TCD, Interpretationes Vergilianae, C4^thAD)

• 755: parallel drawn between ‘horror’ and ‘Danai’, ‘Greeks’, (line 757), as horror is ‘ubique’, Greeks are similarly ‘omne’, ‘everywhere’ – all-consuming terrors have invaded his own home as well as the entire city

• 755: ‘ipsa silentia terrrent’, ‘the silence itself terrifies’ – silence-induced solitude as a theme in Homer’s Iliad (discussed in Porphyry’s Homeric Questions on the Iliad)

• 757: Aeneas arrives at the point that flames begin ‘rolling to the top of the roof’ (‘ignis edax summa ad fastigia… volvitur’), added pathos and emotive suffering as he is forced to witness the fall of not only Troy and his citizens, but also his house – wouldn’t have had to witness it if he hadn’t returned for Creusa – similarly to Orpheus and Eurydice, because of his love for her he turns back and is forced to watch as she is snatched back to the Underworld away from him

• 758: ‘ignis edax’, ‘consuming flames’ – popularised by Virgil but similarly referenced ‘consuming fire’, ‘πυρ εσθιει’ (Hom. Il. 23.182), can be found in Catullus, Horace, etc., also a metaphor for the power of love as an eternal flame – thus consumption of his house reflects the deterioration of his relationship with Creusa

• 758: alliteration of ‘vento / volvitur’, ‘rolled by the wind’ – Paratore claims this reflects the sound of the flames for a multisensory description, other scholars not as persuaded by this argument (Virgil, Aeneid 2: A Commentary, Nicholas Horsfall, 2008, pg. 527)

• 760: ‘sedes Priami’, ‘palace of Priam’ – reminder that he has only just died in this very palace in front of Aeneas, again a show of the trauma he has been through thus allowing his character to appear more heroic for daring to return to this location

• 761: ‘porticibus vacuis’, ‘empty porticoes’ – another reminder of his trauma, as Polites was recently also killed in these (‘he was running through the long porticos of the palace and across the empty halls’, ‘porticibus longis fugit et vacua atria lustrat’, Aen. 2.528) – another reminder of the familial grief, foreshadows that he too is about to lose his wife and father

• 761: ‘Junonis asylo’, ‘on the shrine of Juno’ – seemingly not referenced elsewhere, fitting that the Greeks would use this as a sanctity for Trojan booty (Juno as the greatest enemy of Troy) – TCD claims the adjective means this sanctity is untouched by war, though other religious elements in the poem are (Priam’s death on the altar) (TCD, Interpretationes Vergilianae, C4^thAD)

• 766: ‘pueri et pavidae longo ordine matres stant circum’, ‘children and frightened mothers stand around in long lines’ – reminder that the innocent are also subject to violence, C.A. Williams explains that boys are also seen to be sexually abused in some other falls of cities e.g. Sallust’s War with Cataline, 51.9 describing the Macedonian war (Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 1999, pg104-107) – also seen in Iliad 6.455 as they discuss widows of heroes being ‘dragged off in tears by some bronze-armoured Greek’ (Il. 6.455)

• 768: word choice of ‘ausus’, ‘he dared’ in participle form to ensure a vivid, emotive description, metrically placed at the beginning to further highlight this as he risks being discovered simply to find his wife

• 770: ‘Creusam / nequiquam ingeminans iterumque iterumque vocavi’, ‘I called her name ‘Creusa!’ again and again, but in vain’, Horsfall claims this could be an echo of Georgics ‘Eurydicen uox ipse et frigida lingua/ a! miseram Eurydicen...uocabat;’, ‘the voice alone, the ice-cold tongue, with ebbing breath, cried out: ‘Eurydice, ah poor Eurydice!’ (Georg. 4.525) – another implication that Virgil intends to draw a parallel with this myth – iterumque iterumque as unseen in classical prose yet a ‘generally epic pattern’ also found in Ovid etc., further enhances the tragedy of the narrative (Wills, Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion, 1996, pg116)

• 772 onwards: semantic field of death and shadow, use of pleonasm in ‘simulacrum’, ‘umbra’, ‘imago’, etc though Virgil hasn’t explicitly said that Creusa has died, Horsfall claims that her ‘disappearance from the realm of the living is sufficiently death-like’, but she is not actually dead (Virgil, Aeneid 2: A Commentary, Nicholas Horsfall, 2008, pg. 533)

• 776: speech is similar to that of Eurydice in Georgics 4.494, Highet also provides a strong analysis of this as simultaneously a goodbye, a prophecy, an encouragement, and a consolation (Highet, the Speeches in Virgil’s Aeneid, 1972

• 777: vocative address of ‘o dulcis coniunx’, ‘o sweet husband’ – clear tenderness and shows his domestic side as well as martial/heroic side, rounded portrayal which can be seen as similar to Hector who also has a loving relationship with his wife in the Iliad – also shows she doesn’t view him as neglectful and simply understands her loss as human error,...