3 1822 02201 6901 LIB1 ' UN VERS T OF CAL FORM A SAN DIEGO 31822022016901 Social Sciences & Humanities Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. Date Due JUL o 1 1996 .KIN \ 1996 C\39(2J95) UCSDLb. THE DEATH OF TURNUS BT THE SAME AUTHOR, AND UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME : VIRGIL'S GATHERING OF THE CLANS : BEING OBSERVATIONS ON AENEID VII., 601-817. With Text and Parallel Translation. Second Edition. Four Shillings and Sixpence net. AENEAS AT THE SITE OF ROME. BEING OBSERVATIONS ON AENEID VIII., with Text. Second Edition, Four Shillings and Sixpence net. OXFORD : B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST. NEW YORK AGENTS LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. FOURTH AVENUE AND 3<3TH STREET THE DEATH OF TURNUS OBSERVATIONS ON THE TWELFTH BOOK OF THE AENEID BY W. WARDE FOWLER M.A., HON. LL.D. EDIN. " I'll fight with none but thee : for I dc hate thee Worse than a promise breaker." Coriolanus. OXFORD B. H. BLACKWELL BROAD STREET MDCCCCXIX IN MEMORY OF MY AMERICAN FRIEND, JESSE BENEDICT CARTER, WHO GAVE HIS LIFE FOR THE ITALY THAT HE LOVED SO WELL CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTORY NOTE - - . . i TEXT OF AENEID XII - 7 OBSERVATIONS - - - - 39 rii THE DEATH OF TURNUS INTRODUCTORY NOTE AFTER the publication of " Aeneas at the Site of Rome," I went on to the ninth and following books, relieving by such studies the constant anxiety of last winter and spring (1917-18). These last books of the Aeneid seemed to me to demand more know- ledge of things Roman and Italian than the earlier ones; and a long experience of life and thought in ancient Italy is my only real justification for attempting to illuminate any part of Virgil's poems. Once more, then, I venture some observations on a single book, encouraged by much friendly corre- spondence and criticism. The choice of the twelfth book is explained by the fact that it is the only one of the last four which contains a complete story in itself, while at the same time it forms a magnificent conclusion to the greater story of the whole epic. I may add that it is in my judgment the poet's most mature work, and reveals his mind more fully to those who study it closely than any other book but the sixth; and i The Death of Turnus that its great wealth of detail and incident, its psychological subtlety, and the comparative diffi- culty of its language, give it a claim to closer study and more leisurely reflection than any other book in the poem. It is, indeed, so full of detail and difficulty that it is not easy to grasp the story it tells and to keep it in the memory. It may be of some use to the reader if, instead of a synopsis still more bewildering than the poetry, I venture to suggest that the book falls conveniently into three parts or acts, of which the first and third are the shortest and most im- portant, and the second the longest and least interesting to a modern. In the first act (down to line 215) we have the earnest endeavour of Aeneas and Latinus to make a fair and lasting peace between Trojans and Latins, in accordance with the decrees of Fate. Turnus, however, claims his right to the hand of Lavinia, and the right to do battle for it with Aeneas ; and his furious anger, refusing all compromise, makes a satisfactory peace impossible without a single combat between himself and his rival. Aeneas and Latinus solemnly ratify the treaty with religious rites, but the single combat is to be allowed, and its decision is to govern the fate of Italy. The second act (216-697) shows this passionate individual misleading the Italians into a repudiation The Death of Turnus of the treaty just concluded; they think he is unfairly matched with Aeneas: they fancy that the omens are in their favour; they outrage both civil and religious laws by rushing into the battle. Fighting goes on with varying fortune: Aeneas is wounded and healed by his divine mother's help; to the other side Juno sends divine aid in Juturna. At last the battle inclines against the Latins, Aeneas attacks the city of Laurentum itself, and the Latin queen Amata hangs herself in despair. Turnus is summoned to the point of danger as the last hope of the losing side. The third act (6g8-end) contains the single combat of Turnus and Aeneas, interrupted in the narrative only by a sudden change of scene to Olympus, where Jupiter and Juno settle the course of the future history of Italy by a compromise honourable for both Trojans and Latins. But Turnus must first be conquered, for he represents the spirit of disunion and strife; and a terrible messenger is sent from Jupiter to effect this by paralyzing his energies. Aeneas has him at his mercy; but would have spared him, if his eye had not caught the ill-omened spoil he was wearing, the belt of his victim Pallas, Evander's beautiful son. Angered by the sight of this, Aeneas hesitates no longer to slay his enemy. The style, diction, and versification of this book 3 The Death of Turnus interest me greatly, but it is not for me to write at length about them. I will only say this, that Virgil seems to me here more completely master of his language and his metre than ever, more entirely free to use and vary them as he pleases. Not that the result is on that account always more pleasing; if we turn back from this book to the golden beauty and soothing smoothness of the Georgics, we may possibly be inclined to think that the poet had outlived his period of perfection, " vivendo vicisse sua fata." It is not unlike what we experience in going back from " Cymbeline " to the " Merchant of Venice," or from " Paradise Regained " to the first two books of " Paradise Lost "; or, again, from Beethoven's posthumous quartets to those of his middle period. The difference in Virgil is, indeed, less marked than in either Shakespeare, Milton, or Beethoven; but I think it is there, and worth the attention of students. The late F. W. H. Myers expressed this difference very happily in his Essay on Virgil. " Nothing, perhaps, in Latin versification is more interesting than the traces of a later manner in process of formation, which are to be found in the concluding books of the Aeneid. The later manner of a painter or poet generally differs from his earlier manner in much the same way. We observe in him a certain impatience of the rules which have guided him to 4 The Death of Turnus excellence, a certain desire to use materials more freely, to obtain bolder and newer effects. A tendency of this kind may be discerned in the versification of the later books, especially of the twelfth book, of the Aeneid. The innovations are individually hardly perceptible, but taken together they alter the character of the hexameter line in a way more easily felt than described. Among the more definite changes we may note that there are more full stops in the middle of lines, there are more elisions, there is a larger proportion of short words, there are more words repeated, more assonances. . . . Where passages thus characterized have come down to us in the making, the effect is forced and frag- mentary. Where they succeed they combine, as it seems to me, in a novel manner the rushing freedom of the old trochaics with the majesty which is the distinguishing feature of Virgil's style. Art has concealed its art, and the poet's last words suggest to us possibilities in the Latin tongue which no successor has been able to realize." * I have, as before, avoided commenting on passages already in my judgment fully explained 1 "Classical Essays," p. 138. From the twelfth book he gives as examples lines 48, 72, 179, 429, 615-616, 632-649, 676-680, 889-893, 903-904. My attention was drawn to this passage of Myers's Essay by my friend Mr. A. L. Irvine of the Charterhouse. 5 The Death of Turnus Dr. Henry has again been my constant companion, together with Servius, Nettleship (who wrote the commentary on this book in Conington's edition), and Mr. Page, whose notes on the last six books are almost always excellent. Professor Con way, "certus amicus" as ever, has read most of my notes in manuscript, and laid me again under deep obligations. In closing my work on the twelfth Aeneid, I cannot but look back over the two years during which Virgil, with his large and liberal humanity, has been my constant and helpful companion. It has been a time of great anxiety and sorrow ; but the dark days are now passing away. As I write, it is becoming daily more certain that violentia, with its delusions and pretences, is not to prevail, and that iustitia and fides are still to be the foundation-stones of our civilization. I have all along not only hoped but believed that this would be so. I now not only hope but believe that justice and good faith will also be our guides through all the difficulties and dangers that may be yet to come. W. W. F. October i, 1918. P. VERGILI MARONIS AENEIDOS LIBER XII TVRNVS ut infractos adverse Marte Latinos defecisse videt, sua mine promissa reposci, se signari oculis, ultro implacabilis ardet attollitque animos. Poenorum qualis in arvis saucius ille gravi venantum vulnere pectus 5 turn demum movet arma leo, gaudetque comantis excutiens cervice toros fixumque latronis impavidus frangit telum et f remit ore cruento : baud secus accenso gliscit violentia Turno. turn sic adfatur regem atque ita turbidus infit : 10 ' nulla mora in Turno ; nihil est quod dicta retractent ignavi Aeneadae, nee quae pepigere recusent. congredior. fer sacra, pater, et concipe foedus. aut hac Dardanium dextra sub Tartara mittam, desertorem Asiae (sedeant spectentque Latini), 15 et solus ierro crimen commune refellam, aut habeat victos, cedat Lavinia coniunx.' Olli sedato respondit corde Latinus: ' o praestans animi iuvenis, quantum ipse feroci virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est 20 consulere atque omnis metuentem expendere casus. 7 B The Death of Turnus sunt tibi regna patris Dauni, sunt oppida capta multa manu, nee non aurumque animusque Latino est. sunt aliae innuptae Latio et Laurentibus agris, nee genus indecores. sine me haec baud mollia fatu sublatis aperire dolis, simul hoc animo hauri : 26 me natam nulli veterum sociare procorum fas erat, idque omnes divique hominesque canebant. victus amore tui, cognato sanguine victus coniugis et maestae lacrimis, vincla omnia rupi : 30 promissam eripui genero, arma impia sumpsi. ex illo qui me casus, quae, Turne, sequantur bella, vides, quantos primus patiare labores. bis magna victi pugna vix urbe tuemur spes Italas; recalent nostro Tiberina fluenta 35 sanguine adhuc campique ingentes ossibus albent. quo referor totiens ? quae mentem insania mutat ? si Turno exstincto socios sum ascire paratus, cur non incolumi potius certamina tollo ? quid consanguine! Rutuli, quid cetera dicet 40 Italia, ad mortem si te (fors dicta refutet !) prodiderim, natam et conubia nostra petentem ? respice res bello varias, miserere parentis longaevi, quern nunc maestum patria Ardea longe dividit.' haudquaquam dictis violentia Turni 45 flectitur; exsuperat magis aegrescitque medendo. ut primum fari potuit, sic institit ore: ' quam pro me curam geris, hanc precor, optime, pro me deponas letumque sinas pro laude pacisci. et nos tela, pater, ferrumque haud debile dextra 50 8 The Death of Turnus spargimus, et nostro sequitur de vulnere sanguis. longe illi dea mater erit, quae nube fugacem feminea tegat et vanis sese occulat umbris.' At regina nova pugnae conterrita sorte flebat et ardentem generum moritura tenebat : 55 ' Turne, per has ego te lacrimas, per si quis Amatae tangit honos animum (spes tu nunc una, senectae tu requies miserae, decus imperiumque Latini te penes, in te omnis domus inclinata recumbit), unum oro : desiste manum committere Teucris. 60 qui te cumque manent isto certamine casus et me, Turne, manent; simul haec invisa relinquam lumina nee generum Aenean captiva videbo.' accepit vocem lacrimis Lavinia matris flagrantis perfusa genas, cui plurimus ignem 65 subiecit rubor et calefacta per ora cucurrit. Indum sanguineo veluti viola verit ostro si quis ebur, aut mixta rubent ubi lilia multa alba rosa : talis virgo dabat ore colores. ilium turbat amor figitque in virgine vultus. 70 ardet in arma magis paucisque adfatur Amatam: ' ne, quaeso, ne me lacrimis neve omine tanto prosequere in duri certamina Martis euntem, o mater ; neque enim Turno mora libera mortis, nuntius haec, Idmon, Fhrygio mea dicta tyranno 75 haud placitura refer : cum primum crastina caelo puniceis invecta rotis Aurora rubebit, non Teucros agat in Rutulos; Teucrum arma quiescant et Rutuli: nostro dirimamus sanguine bellum; illo quaeratur coniunx Lavinia campo.' 80 9 The Death of Turnus Haec ubi dicta dedit rapidusque in tecta recessit poscit equos gaudetque tuens ante ora frementis, Pilumno quos ipsa decus dedit Orithyia, qui candore nives anteirent, cursibus auras, circumstant properi aurigae manibusque lacessunt 85 pectora plausa cavis et colla comantia pectunt. ipse dehinc auro squalentem alboque orichalco circumdat loricam umeris, simul aptat habendo ensemque clipeumque et rubrae cormia cristae, ensem quern Dauno ignipotens deus ipse parenti 90 fecerat et Stygia candentem tinxerat unda. exim quae mediis ingenti adnixa columnae aedibus astabat, validam vi corripit hastam, Actoris Aurunci spolium, quassatque trementeni vociferans: ' nunc, o numquam frustrata vocatus 95 hasta meos, nunc tempus adest : te maximus Actor, te Turni nunc dextra gerit ; de sternere corpus loricamque manu valida lacerare revulsam semiviri Phrygis et foedare in pulvere crinis vibratos calido ferro murraque madentis.' 100 his agitur furiis, totoque ardentis ab ore scintillae absistunt, oculis micat acribus ignis: mugitus veluti cum prima in proelia taurus terrificos ciet atque irasci in cornua temptat arboris obnixus trunco, ventosque lacessit 105 ictibus aut sparsa ad pugnam proludit harena. Nee minus interea maternis saevus in armis Aeneas acuit Martem et se suscitat ira, oblato gaudens componi foedere bellum. turn socios maesiique metum solatur luli no The Death of Turnus fata docens, regique iubet responsa Latino certa referre viros et pacis dicere leges. Postera vix summos spargebat lumine mentis orta dies, cum primum alto se "gurgite tollunt Solis equi lucemque elatis naribus efflant: 115 campum ad certamen magnae sub moenibus urbis dimensi Rutulique viri Teucrique parabant in medioque focos et dis communibus aras gramineas. alii fontemque ignemque ferebant velati limo et verbena tempora vincti. 120 procedit legio Ausonidum, pilataque plenis agmina se fundunt portis. hinc Troius omnis Tyrrhenusque ruit variis exercitus armis, baud secus instruct! ferro quam si aspera Martis pugna vocet. nee non mediis in milibus ipsi 125 ductores auro volitant ostroque superbi, et genus Assaraci Mnestheus et fortis Asilas et Messapus equum domitor, Neptunia proles, utque dato signo spatia in sua quisque recessit, defigunt tellure hastas et scuta reclinant. 130 turn studio effusae matres et vulgus inermum invalidique senes turris ac tecta domorum obsedere, alii portis sublimibus astant. At luno e summo, qui nunc Albanus habetur (turn neque nomen erat neque honos aut gloria monti), 135 prospiciens tumulo campum aspectabat et ambas Laurentum Troumque acies urbemque Latini. extemplo Turni sic est adfata sororem diva deam, stagnis quae fluminibusque sonoris praesidet (hunc illi rex aetheris altus honorem 140 ii The Death of Turnus luppiter erepta pro virginitate sacra vit) : ' nympha, decus fluviorum, animo gratissima nostro, scis ut te cunctis unam, quaecumque Latinae magnanimi lovis ingratum ascendere cubile, praetulerim caelique libens in parte locarim: 145 disce tuum, ne me incuses, luturna, dolorem. qua visa est Fortuna pati Parcaeque sinebant cedere res Latio, Turnum et tua moenia texi : nunc iuvenem imparibus video concurrere fatis, Parcarumque dies et vis inimica propinquat. 150 non pugnam aspicere hanc oculis, non foedera possum. tu pro germano si quid praesentius audes, perge; decet. forsan miseros meliora sequentur.' vix ea, cum lacrimas oculis luturna profudit terque quaterque manu pectus percussit honestum. ' non lacrimis hoc tempus ' ait Saturnia luno; 156 ' accelera et fratrem, si quis modus, eripe morti ; aut tu bella cie conceptumque excute foedus. auctor ego audendi.' sic exhortata reliquit incertam et tristi turbatam vulnere mentis. 160 Interea reges, ingenti mole Latinus quadriiugo vehitur curru (cui tempora circum aurati bis sex radii fulgentia cingunt, Solis avi specimen), bigis it Turnus in albis, bina manu lato crispans hastilia ferro. 165 hinc pater Aeneas, Romanae stirpis origo, sidereo flagrans clipeo et caelestibus armis et iuxta Ascanius, magnae spes altera Romae, procedunt castris, puraque in veste sacerdos saetigeri fetum suis intonsamque bidentem 170 The Death of Turnus attulit admovitque pecus flagrantibus aris. illi ad surgentem conversi lumina solem dant fruges manibus salsas et tempora ferro summa notant pecudum, paterisque altaria libant. Turn plus Aeneas stricto sic ense precatur: 175 ' esto nunc Sol testis et haec mihi Terra vocanti, quam propter tantos potui perferre labores, et pater omnipotens et tu Saturnia coniunx, iam melior, iam, diva, precor; tuque inclute Mavors, cuncta tuo qui bella, pater, sub numine torques; 180 Fontisque Fluviosque voco, quaeque aetheris alti religio et quae caeruleo sunt numina ponto: cesserit Ausonio si fors victoria Turno, convenit Euandri victos discedere ad urbem, cedet lulus agris, nee post arma ulla rebelles 185 Aeneadae referent ferro ve haec regna lacessent. sin nostrum adnuerit nobis Victoria Martem (ut potius reor et potius di numine firment), non ego nee Teucris Italos parere iubebo nee mihi regna peto: paribus se legibus ambae 190 invictae gentes aeterna in foedera mittant. sacra deosque dabo ; socer arma Latinus habeto, imperium sollemne socer ; mihi moenia Teucri constituent urbique dabit Lavinia nomen.' Sic prior Aeneas, sequitur sic deinde Latinus 195 suspiciens caelum, tenditque ad sidera dextram: ' haec eadem, Aenea, terram, mare, sidera, iuro Latonaeque genus duplex lanumque bifrontem, vimque deum infernam et duri sacraria Ditis ; audiat haec genitor qui foedera fulmine sancit. 200 tango aras. medios ignis et numina tester: 13 The Death of Turnus nulla dies pacem hanc Italis nee foedera rumpet : quo res cumque cadent ; nee me vis ulla volentem avertet, non, si tellurem effundat in undas diluvio miscens caelumque in Tartara solvat, 205 ut sceptrum hoc ' dextra sceptrum nam forte gerebat ' numquam fronde levi fundet virgulta nee umbras, cum semel in silvis imo de stirpe recisum matre caret posuitque comas et bracchia ferro olim arbos, nunc artificis manus acre decoro 210 inclusit patribusque -dedit gestare Latinis.' talibus inter se nrmabant foedera dictis conspectu in medio procerum. turn rite sacratas in flammam iugulant pecudes et viscera vivis eripiunt, cumulantque oneratis lancibus aras. 215 At vero Rutulis impar ea pugna videri iamdudum et vario misceri pectora motu, turn magis ut propius cernunt [non viribus aequis]. adiuvat incessu tacito progressus et aram suppliciter venerans demisso lumine Turnus 220 pubentesque genae et iuvenali in corpore pallor, quem simul ac luturna soror crebrescere vidit sermonem et vulgi variare labantia corda, in medias acies formam adsimulata Camerti (cui genus a proa vis ingens clarumque paternae 225 nomen erat virtutis. et ipse acerrimus armis) in medias dat sese acies baud nescia rerum rumoresque serit varios ac talia fatur: ' non pudet, o Rutuli, pro cunctis talibus unam obiectare animam ? numerone an viribus aequi 230 non sumus ? en, omnes et Troes et Arcades hi sunt, The Death of Turnus fatalesque manus. infensa -Etruria Turno. vix hostem, alterni si congrediamur, habemus. ille quidem ad superos, quorum se devovet aris, succedet fama vivusque per ora feretur: 235 nos patria amissa dominis parere superbis cogemur, qui mine lenti consedimus arvis.' Talibus incensa est iuvenum sententia dictis iam magis atque magis, serpitque per agfnina murmur : ipsi Laurentes mutati ipsique Latini. 240 qui sibi iam requiem pugnae rebusque salutem sperabant, nunc arma volunt foedusque precantur infectum et Turni sortem miserantur iniquam. his aliud maius luturna adiungit et alto dat signum caelo, quo non praesentius ullum 245 turbavit mentes Italas monstroque fefellit. namque volans rubra fulvus lovis ales in aethra litoreas agitabat avis turbamque sonantem agminis aligeri, subito cum lapsus ad undas cycnum excellentem pedibus rapit improbus uncis. arrexere animos Itali, cunctaeque volucres 251 convertunt clamore fugam (mirabile visu), aetheraque obscurant pennis hostemque per auras facta nube premunt, donee vi victus et ipso pondere defecit praedamque ex unguibus ales 255 proiecit fluvio, penitusque in nubila fugit. Turn vero augurium Rutuli clamore salutant expediuntque manus, primusque Tolumnius augur ' hoc erat, hoc, votis ' inquit ' quod saepe petivi. accipio agnoscoque deos; me, me duce ferrum 260 corripite, o miseri, quos improbus advena bello The Death of Turnus territat invalidas ut avis, et litora vestra vi populat. petet ille fugam penitusque prof undo vela dabit. vos unanimi densete cater vas et regem vobis pugna defendite raptum.' 265 dixit, et adversos telum contorsit in hostis procurrens; sonitum dat stridula cornus et auras certa secat. simul hoc, simul ingens clamor et omnes turbati cunei calefactaque corda tu.multu. hasta volans, ut forte novem pulcherrima fratrum corpora constiterant contra, quos fida crearat 271 una tot Arcadio coniunx Tyrrhena Gylippo, horum unum ad medium, teritur qua sutilis alvo balteus et laterum iuncturas fibula mordet, egregium forma iuvenem et fulgentibus armis, 275 transadigit costas fulvaque effundit harena. at fratres, animosa phalanx accensaque luctu, pars gladios stringunt manibus, pars missile ferrum corripiunt caecique ruunt. quos agmina contra procurrunt Laurentum, hinc densi rursus inundant Troes Agyllinique et pictis Arcades armis. 281 sic omnis amor unus habet decernere ferro. diripuere aras, it toto turbida caelo tempestas telorum ac ferreus ingruit imber, craterasque focosque ferunt. fugit ipse Latinus 285 pulsates referens infecto foedere divos. Infrenant alii currus aut corpora saltu subiciunt in equos et strictis ensibus adsunt. Messapus regem regisque insigne gerentem Tyrrhenum Aulesten, avidus confundere foedus, 290 adverse proterret equo, ruit ille recedens 16 The Death of Turnus et miser oppositis a tergo involvitur aris in caput inque umeros. at fervidus advolat hasta Messapus teloque orantem multa trabali desuper altus equo graviter ferit atque ita fatur : 295 ' hoc habet, haec melior magnis data victima divis.' concurrunt Itali spoliantque calentia membra, obvius ambustum torrem Corynaeus ab ara corripit et venienti Ebyso plagamque ferenti occupat os flammis : olli ingens barba reluxit 300 nidoremque ambusta dedit. super ipse secutus caesariem laeva turbati corripit hostis impressoque genu nitens terrae applicat ipsum; sic rigido latus ense ferit. Podalirius Alsum pastorem primaque acie per tela ruentem 305 ense sequens nudo superimminet ; ille securi adversi frontem mediam mentumque reducta disicit et sparso late rigat arma cruore. olli dura quies oculos et ferreus urget somnus, in aeternam clauduntur lumina noctem. 310 At pius Aeneas dextram tendebat inermem nudato capite atque suos clamore vocabat : ' quo ruitis ? quaeve ista repens discordia surgit ? o cohibete iras ! ictum iam foedus et omnes compositae leges, mini ius concurrere soli, 315 me sinite atque auferte metus; ego foedera faxo firma manu, Turnum decent haec iam mihi sacra.' has inter voces, media inter talia verba ecce viro stridens alis adlapsa sagitta est, incertum qua pulsa manu, quo turbine adacta, 320 quis tantam Rutulis laudem, casusne deusne, attulerit; pressa est insignis gloria facti, 17 The Death of Turnus nee sese Aeneae iactavit vulnere quisquam. Turnus ut Aenean cedentem ex agmine vidit turbatosque duces, subita spe fervidus ardet; 325 poscit equos atque arma simul, saltuque superbus emicat in currum et manibus molitur habenas. multa virum volitans dat fortia corpora leto, seminecis volvit multos aut agmina curru proterit aut raptas fugientibus ingerit hastas. 330 qualis apud gelidi cum flumina concitus Hebri sanguineus Mavors clipeo increpat atque furentis bella movens immittit equos, illi aequore aperto ante Notos Zephyrumque volant, gemit ultima pulsu Thraca pedum circumque atrae Formidinis ora 335 Iraeque Insidiaeque, dei comitatus, aguntur: talis equos alacer media inter proelia Turnus fumantis sudore quatit, miserabile caesis hostibus insultans : spargit rapida ungula rores sanguineos mixta'que cruor calcatur harena. 340 iamque neci Sthenelumque dedit Thamyrumque Pholumque, hunc congressus et hunc, ilium eminus; eminus ambo Imbrasidas, Glaucum atque Laden, quos Imbrasus ipse nutrierat Lycia paribusque ornaverat armis vel conferre manum vel equo praevertere ventos. Parte alia media Eumedes in proelia fertur, 346 antiqui proles bello praeclara Dolonis, nomine avum referens, ammo manibusque parentem } qui quondam, castra ut Danaum speculator adiret, ausus Pelidae pretium sibi poscere currus; 350 18 The Death of Turnus ilium Tydides alio pro talibus ausis adfecit pretio nee equis aspirat Achilli. hunc procul ut campo Turnus prospexit aperto, ante levi iaculo longum per inane secutus sistit equos biiugis et curru desilit atque 355 semianimi lapsoque supervenit, et pede collo impresso dextrae mucronem extorquet et alto fulgentem tingit iugulo atque haec insuper addit : ' en agros et, quam bello, Troiane, petisti, Hesperiam metire iacens : haec praemia, qui me 360 ferro ausi temptare, ferunt, sic moenia condunt.' huic comitem Asbyten coniecta cuspide mittit Chloreaque Sybarimque Daretaque Thersilochumque et sternacis equi lapsum cervice Thymoeten. ac velut Edoni Boreae cum spiritus alto 365 insonat Aegaeo sequiturque ad litora fluctus ; qua venti incubuere, fugam dant nubila caelo : sic Turno, quacumque viam secat, agmina cedunt conversaeque ruunt acies; fert impetus ipsum et cristam adverse curru quatit aura volantem. 370 non tulit instantem Phegeus animisque frementem, obiecit sese ad currum et spumantia frenis ora citatorum dextra detorsit equorum. dum trahitur pendetque iugis, hunc lata retectum lancea consequitur rumpitque infixa bilicem 375 loricam et summum degustat vulnere corpus, ille tamen clipeo obiecto conversus in hostem ibat et auxilium ducto mucrone petebat, cum rota praecipitem et procursu concitus axis impulit effunditque solo, Turnusque secutus 380 19 The Death of Turnus imam inter galeam summi thoracis et oras abstulit ense caput truncumque reliquit harenae. Atque ea dum campis victor dat funera Turnus, interea Aenean Mnestheus et fidus Achates Ascaniusque comes castris statuere cruentum 385 alternos longa nitentem cuspide gressus. saevit et infracta luctatur harundine telum eripere auxilioque viam, quae proxima, poscit : ense secent lato vulnus telique latebram rescindant penitus, seseque in bella remittant. 390 iamque aderat Phoebo ante alios dilectus lapyx lasides, acri quondam cui captus amore ipse suas artis, sua munera, laetus Apollo augurium citharamque dabat celerisque sagittas. ille ut deposit! proferret fata parentis, 395 scire potestates herbarum usumque medendi maluit et mutas agitare inglorius artis. stabat acerba fremens ingentem nixus in hastam Aeneas magno iuvenum et maerentis luli concursu, lacrimis immobilis. ille retorto 400 Paeonium in morem senior succinctus amictu multa manu medica Phoebique potentibus herbis nequiquam trepidat, nequiquam spicula dextra sollicitat prensatque tenaci forcipe ferrum. nulla viam fortuna regit, nihil auctor Apollo 405 subvenit, et saevus campis magis ac magis horror crebrescit propiusque malum est. iam pulvere caelum stare vident : subeunt equites et spicula castris densa cadunt mediis. it tristis ad aethera clamor bellantum iuvenum et duro sub Marte cadentum. c The Death of Turnus Hie Venus indigno nati concussa dolore 411 dictamnum genetrix Cretaea carpit ab Ida, puberibus caulem foliis et flore comantem purpureo; non ilia feris incognita capris gramina, cum tergo volucres haesere sagittae. 415 hoc Venus obscuro faciem circumdata nimbo detulit, hoc fusum labris splendentibus amnem inficit occulte medicans, spargitque salubris ambrosiae sucos et odoriferam panaceam. fovit ea vulnus lympha longaevus lapyx 420 ignorans, subitoque omnis de corpoje fugit quippe dolor, omnis stetit imo vulnere sanguis. iamque secuta manum nullo cogente sagitta excidit, atque novae rediere in pristina vires. ' arma citi properate viro ! quid statis ?' lapyx 425 conclamat primusque animos accendit in hostem. ' non haec humanis opibus, non arte magistra proveniunt, neque te, Aenea, mea dextera servat: maior agit deus atque opera ad maiora remittit.' ille avidus pugnae suras incluserat auro 430 hinc atque hinc oditque moras hastamque coruscat. postquam habilis lateri clipeus loricaque tergo est, Ascanium fusis circum complectitur armis summaque per galeam delibans oscula fatur: ' disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem, 435 fortunam ex aliis. nunc te mea dextera bello defensum dabit et magna inter praemia ducet. tu facito, mox cum matura adoleverit aetas, sis memor et te animo repetentem exempla tuorum et pater Aeneas et avunculus excitet Hector.' 440 Haec ubi dicta dedit,. portis sese extulit ingens 21 The Death of Turnus telum immane manu quatiens; simul agmine denso Antheusque Mnestheusque ruunt, omnisque relictis turba fluit castris. turn caeco pulvere campus miscetur pulsuque pedum tremit excita tellus. 445 vidit ab adverse venientis aggere Turnus, videre Ausonii, gelidusque per ima cucurrit ossa tremor; prima ante omnis luturna Latinos audiit agnovitque sonum et tremefacta refugit. ille volat campoque atrum rapit agmen aperto. 450 qualis ubi ad terras abrupto sidere nimbus it mare per medium (miseris, heu, praescia longe horrescunt corda agricolis : dabit ille ruinas arboribus stragemque satis, ruet omnia late), ante volant sonitumque ferunt ad litora venti: 455 talis in adversos ductor Rhoeteius hostis agmen agit, densi cuneis se quisque coactis adglomerant. ferit ense gravem Thymbraeus Osirim, Arcetium Mnestheus, Epulonem obtruncat Achates Vfentemque Gyas; cadit ipse Tolumnius augur, 460 primus in adversos telum qui torserat hostis. tollitur in caelum clamor, versique vicissim pulverulenta fuga Rutuli dant terga per agros. ipse neque aversos dignatur sternere morti nee pede congresses aequo nee tela ferentis 465 insequitur : solum densa in caligine Turnum vestigat lustrans, solum in certamina poscit. Hoc concussa metu mentem luturna virago aurigam Turni media inter lora Metiscum excutit et longe lapsum temone relinquit. 470 ipsa subit manibusque undantis flectit habenas cuncta gerens, vocemque et corpus et arma Metisci. 22 The Death of Turnus nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes pervolat et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo pabula parva legens nidisque loquacibus escas, 475 ct nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc umida circum stagna sonat : similis medios luturna per hostis fertur equis rapidoque volans obit omnia curru, iamque hie germanum iamque hie ostentat ovantem nee conferre manum patitur, volat avia longe. 480 haud minus Aeneas tortos legit obvius orbis, vestigatque virum et disiecta per agmina magna voce vocat. quotiens oculos coniecit in hostem alipcdumque fugam cursu temptavit equorum, aversos totiens currus luturna retorsit. 485 heu, quid agat ? vario nequiquam fluctuat aestu, diversaeque vocant animum in contraria curae. huic Messapus, uti laeva duo forte gerebat lenta, levis cursu, praefixa hastilia ferro. horum unum certo contorquens derigit ictu. 490 substitit Aeneas et se collegit in arma poplite subsidens ; apicem tamen incita summum hasta tulit summasque excussit vertice cristas. turn vero adsurgunt irae, insidiisque subactus, diversos ubi sensit equos currumque referri, 495 multa lovem et laesi testatus foederis aras iam tandem invadit medios et Marte secundo terribilis saevam nullo discrimine caedem suscitat, irarumque omnis effundit habenas. Quis mihi nunc tot acerba deus, quis carmine caedes 500 diversas obitumque ducum, quos aequore toto inque vicem nunc Turnus agit, nunc Troius heros, 23 c The Death of Turnus expediat ? tanton placuit concurrere motu, luppiter, aeterna gentis in pace futuras ? Aeneas Rutulum Sucronem (ea prima ruentis 505 pugna loco statuit Teucros) baud multa moranlcm excipit in latus et, qua fata celemma, crudum transadigit costas et cratis pectoris ensem. Turnus equo deiectum Amycum fratremque Dioren, congressus pedes, hunc venientem cuspide longa. 510 hunc mucrone ferit, curruque abscisa duorum suspendit capita et rorantia sanguine portat. ille Talon Tanaimque neci fortemque Cethegum. tris uno congressu, et maestum mittit Oniten, nomen Echionium matrisque genus Peridiae; 515 hie fratres Lycia missos et Apollinis agris et iuvenem exosum nequiquam bella Menoeten. Arcada, piscosae cui circum flumina Lernae ars fuerat pauperque domus nee nota potentum munera, conductaque pater tellure serebat. 520 ac velut immissi diversis partibus ignes arentem in silvam et virgulta sonantia lauro, aut ubi decursu rapido de montibus altis dant sonitum spumosi amnes et in aequora currunt quisque suum populatus iter: non segnius ambo 525 Aeneas Turnusque ruunt per proelia; mine, nunc fluctuat ira intus, rumpuntur nescia vinci pectora, nunc totis in vulnera viribus itur. Murranum hie, atavos et avorum antiqua sonantem nomina per regesque actum genus omne Latinos, 530 praecipitem scopulo atque ingentis turbine saxi excutit effunditque solo; hunc lora et iuga subter 24 The Death of Turnus provolvere rotae, crebro super ungula pulsu incita nee domini memorum proculcat equorum. ille ruenti Hyllo animisque immane frementi 535 occurrit telumque aurata ad tempora torquet : olli per galeam fixo stetit hasta cerebro. dextera nee tua te, Graium fortissime Cretheu, eripuit Turno, nee di texere Cupencum Aenea veniente sui : dedit obvia ferro 540 pectora, nee misero clipei mora profuit aerei. te quoque Laurentes viderunt, Aeole, campi oppetere et late terram consternere tergo : occidis, Argivae quern non potuere phalanges sternere nee Priami regnorum eversor Achilles; 545 hie tibi mortis erant metae, domus alta sub Ida, Lyrnesi domus alta, solo Laurente sepulcrum. totae adeo conversae acies omnesque Latini, omnes Dardanidae, Mnestheus acerque Serestus et Messapus equum domitor et fortis Asilas 550 Tuscorumque phalanx Euandrique Arcades alae, pro se quisque viri summa nituntur opum vi ; nee mora nee requies, vasto certamine tendunt. Hie mentem Aeneae genetrix pulcherrima misit iret ut ad muros urbique adverteret agmen 555 ocius et subita turbaret clade Latinos, ille ut vestigans diversa per agmina Turnum hue atque hue acies circumtulit, aspicit urbem immunem tanti belli atque impune quietam. continuo pugnae accendit maioris imago : 560 Mnesthea Sergestumque vocat fortemque Serestum ductores, tumulumque capit quo cetera Teucrum concurrit legio, nee scuta aut spicula densi 25 The Death of Turnus deponunt. celso medius stans aggere fatur: ' ne qua meis esto dictis mora, luppiter hac stat, 565 neu quis ob inceptum subitum mihi segnior ito. urbem hodie, causam belli, regna ipsa Latini, ni frenum accipere et victi parere fatentur, eruam et aequa solo fumantia culmina ponam. scilicet exspectem libeat dum proelia Turno 570 nostra pati rursusque velit concurrere victus ? hoc caput, o cives, haec belli summa nefandi. ferte faces propere foedusque reposcite flammis.' dixerat, atque animis pariter certantibus omnes dant cuneum densaque ad muros mole feruntur. 575 scalae improviso subitusque apparuit ignis, discurrunt alii ad portas primosque trucidant, ferrum alii torquent et obumbrant aethera telis. ipse inter primes dextram sub moenia tendit Aeneas, magnaque incusat voce Latinum 580 testaturque deos iterum se ad proelia cogi, bis iam Italos hostis, haec altera foedera rumpi. exoritur trepidos inter discordia civis : urbem alii reserare iubent et pandere portas Dardanidis ipsumque trahunt in moenia regem; 585 arma ferunt alii et pergunt defendere muros. inclusas ut cum latebroso in pumice pastor vestigavit apes f umoque implevit amaro : illae intus trepidae rerum per cerea castra discurrunt magnisque acuunt stridoribus iras; 590 volvitur ater odor tectis, turn murmure caeco intus saxa sonant, vacuas it fumus ad auras. Accidit haec fessis etiam fortuna Latinis, quae totam luctu concussit funditus urbem. 26 The Death- of Turnus regina ut tectis venientem prospicit hostem, 595 incessi rrmros, ignis ad tecta volare, nusquam acies contra Rutulas, nulla agmina Turni, infelix pugnae iuvenem in certamine credit exstinctum et subito mentem turbata dolore se causam clamat crimenque caputque malorum, 600 multaque per maestum demens effata furorem purpureos moritura manu discindit amictus et nodum informis leti trabe nectit ab alta. quam cladem miserae postquam accepere Latinae, filia prima manu floros Lavinia crinis 605 et roseas laniata genas, turn cetera circum turba furit, resonant late plangoribus aedes. hinc totam infelix vulgatur fama per urbem. demittunt mentes, it scissa veste Latimis coniugis attonitus fatis urbisque ruina, 610 canitiem immundo perfusam pulvere turpans. [multaque se incusat, qui non acceperit ante Dardanium Aenean generumque asciverit ultro]. Interea extreme bellator in aequore Turnus palantis sequitur paucos iam segnior atque 615 iam minus atque minus successu laetus equorum. attulit hunc illi caecis terroribus aura commixtum clamorem, arrectasque impulit auris confusae sonus urbis et inlaetabile murmur. ' hei mini ! quid tanto turbantur moenia luctu ? 620 quisve ruit tantus diversa clamor ab urbe ?' sic ait, adductisque amens subsistit habenis. atque huic, in faciem soror ut con versa Metisci aurigae currumque et equos et lora regebat, talibus occurrit dictis: ' hac, Turne, sequamur 625 27 The Death of Turnus Troiugenas, qua prima viam victoria pandit ; sunt alii qui tecta manu defendere possint. ingruit Aeneas Italis et proelia miscet: et nos saeva manu mittamus funera Teucris. nee numero inferior pugnae nee honore recedes.' 630 Turnus ad haec : ' o soror, et dudum agnovi, cum prima per artem foedera turbasti teque haec in bella dedisti, et nunc nequiquam fallis dea. sed quis Olympo demissam tantos voluit te ferre labores ? 635 an fratris miseri letum ut crudele videres ? nam quid ago ? aut quae iam spondet fortuna salutem ? vidi oculos ante ipse meos me voce vocantem Murranum, quo non superat mihi carior alter, 639 oppetere ingentem atque ingenti vulnere victum. occidit infelix nostrum ne dedecus Vfens aspiceret ; Teucri potiuntur corpore et armis. exscindine domos (id rebus defuit unum) perpetiar, dextra nee Drancis dicta refellam ? 644 terga dabo et Turnum fugientem haec terra videbit ? usque adeone mori miserum est ? vos o mihi, Manes, este boni, quoniam superis aversa voluntas. I * ^/ i- * _ u>/ i _ . - sanctal adjvos aninja^atqute! istiuslinscialculpae descendam magnorum haud umquam indignus avorum.' Vix ea fatus erat, medios volat ecce per hostis 650 vectus equo spumante Saces, adversa sagitta saucius ora, ruitque implorans nomine Turnum : ' Turne, in te suprema salus, miserere tuorum. fulminat Aeneas armis summasque minatur 28 The Death of Turnus deiecturum arces Italum excidioque daturum, 655 iamque faces ad tecta volant, in te ora Latini, in te oculos referunt ; mussat rex ipse Latinus quos generos vocet aut quae sese ad foedera flectat. praeterea regina, tui fidissima, dextra occidit ipsa sua lucemque exterrita fugit. 660 soli pro portis Messapus et acer Atinas sustentant acies. circum hos utrimque phalanges stant densae strictisque seges mucronibus horret ferrea: tu currum deserto in gramine versas.' obstipuit varia confusus imagine rerum 665 Turnus et obtutu tacito stetit ; aestuat ingens uno in corde pudor mixtoque insania luctu et furiis agitatus amor et conscia virtus, ut primum discussae umbrae et lux reddita menti, ardentis oculorum orbis ad moenia torsit 670 turbidus eque rotis magnum respexit ad urbem. Ecce autem flammis inter tabulata volutus ad caelum undabat vertex turrimque tenebat, turrim compactis trabibus quam eduxerat ipse subdideratque rotas pontisque instraverat altos. 675 ' iam iam fata, soror, superant, absiste morari; quo deus et quo dura vocat Fortuna sequamur. stat conferre manum Aeneae, stat, quidquid acerbi est, morte pati, neque me indecorem, germana, videbis amplius. hunc, oro, sine me furere ante furorem.' dixit, et e curru saltum dedit ocius arvis 68 1 perque hostis, per tela ruit maestamque sororem deserit ac rapido cursu media agmina rumpit. ac veluti mentis saxum de vertice praeceps 29 The Death of Turn us cum ruit avulsum vento, seu turbidus imber 685 proluit aut annis solvit sublapsa vetustas ; fertur in abruptum magno mons improbus actu exsultatque solo, silvas armenta virosque involvens secum : disiecta per agmina Turnus sic urbis ruit ad muros, ubi plurima fuso 690 sanguine terra madet striduntque hastilibus aurae, significatque manu et magno simul incipit ore : ' parcite iam, Rutuli, et vos tela inhibete, Latini; quaecumque est fortuna, mea est ; me verius unum pro vobis f oedus luere et decernere ferro. ' 695 discessere omnes medii spatiumque dedere. At pater Aeneas audito nomine Turni deserit et muros et summas deserit arces praecipitatque moras omnis, opera omnia rumpit laetitia exsultans horrendumque intonat armis : 700 quantus Athos aut quantus Eryx aut ipse coruscis cum fremit ilicibus quantus gaudetque nivali vertice se attollens pater Appenninus ad auras, iam vero et Rutuli certatim et Troes et omnes convertere oculos Itali, quique alta tenebant 705 moenia quique imos pulsabant ariete muros, armaque deposuere umeris. stupet ipse Latinus ingentis, genitos diversis partibus orbis, inter se coiisse viros et cernere ferro. atque illi, ut vacuo patuerunt aequore campi, 710 procursu rapido coniectis eminus hastis invadunt Martem clipeis atque aere sonoro. dat gemitum tellus; turn crebros ensibus ictus congeminant, fors et virtus miscentur in unum. ac velut ingenti Sila summove Taburno 715 30 The Death of Turnus cum duo conversis inimica in proelia tauri frontibus incurrunt, pavidi cessere magistri, stat pecus omne metu irmtum, mussantque iuvencae quis nemori imperitet, quern tola armenta sequantur ; illi inter sese multa vi vulnera miscent 720 cornuaque obnixi infigunt et sanguine largo colla armosque lavant, gemitu nemus omne remugit: non aliter Tros Aeneas et Daunius heros concurrunt clipeis, ingens fragor aethera complet. luppiter ipse duas aequato examine lances 725 sustinet et fata imponit diversa duorum, quern damnet labor et quo vergat pondere letum. Emicat hie impune putans et corpore toto alte sublatum consurgit Turnus in ensem et ferit; exclamant Troes trepidique Latini, 730 arrectaeque amborum acies. at perfidus ensis frangitur in medioque ardentem deserit ictu, ni fuga subsidio subeat. fugit ocior euro ut capulum ignotum dextramque aspexit inermem. fama est praecipitem, cum prima in proelia iunctos conscendebat equos, patrio mucrone relicto, 736 dum trepidat, ferrum aurigae rapuisse Metisci; idque diu, dum terga dabant palantia Teucri, suffecit : postquam arma dei ad Volcania ventum est, mortalis mucro glacies ceu futtilis ictu 740 dissiluit ; fulva resplendent fragmina harena. ergo amens diversa fuga petit aequora Turnus et nunc hue, inde hue incertos implicat orbis; undique enim densa Teucri -inclusere corona atque hinc vasta palus, hinc ardua moenia cingunt. Nee minus Aeneas, quamquam tardata sagitta 746 The Death of Turnus interdum genua impediunt cursumque recusant, insequitur trepidique pedem pede fervidus urget: inclusum veluti si quando flumine nactus cervum aut puniceae saeptum formidine pennae 750 venator cursu canis et latratibus instat ; ille autem insidiis et ripa territus alta mille fugit refugitque vias, at vividus Vmber haeret hians, iam iamque tenet similisque tenenti increpuit mails morsuque elusus inani est : 755 turn vero exoritur clamor ripaeque lacusque responsant circa et caelum tonat omne tumultu. ille simul fugiens Rutulos simul increpat omnis nomine quemque vocans notumque efflagitat ensem. Aeneas mortem contra praesensque minatur 760 exitium, si quisquam adeat, terretque trementis excisurum urbem minitans et saucius instat. quinque orbis explent cursu totidemque retexunt hue illuc ; neque enim levia aut ludicra petuntur praemia, sed Turni de vita et sanguine certant. 765 Forte sacer Fauno foliis oleaster amaris hie steterat, nautis olim venerabile lignum, servati ex undis ubi figere dona solebant Laurent! divo et votas suspendere vestis ; sed stirpem Teucri nullo discrimine sacrum 770 sustulerant, puro ut possent concurrere campo: hie hasta Aeneae stabat, hue impetus illam detulerat fixam et lenta radice tenebat. incubuit voluitque manu convellere ferrum Dardanides, teloque sequi quern prendere cursu 775 non poterat. turn vero amens formidine Turnus 32 The Death of Turnus ' Faune, precor, miserere ' inquit, ' tuque optima ferrum Terra tene, colui vestros si semper honores, quos contra Aeneadae bello fecere profanes/ dixit, opemque dei non cassa in vota vocavit. 780 namque diu luctans lentoque in stirpe moratus viribus baud ullis valuit discludere morsus roboris Aeneas, dum nititur acer et instat, rursus in aurigae faciem mutata Metisci procurrit fratrique ensem dea Daunia reddit. 785 quod Venus audaci nymphae indignata lie ere accessit telumque alta ab radice revellit. olli sublimes armis animisque refecti, hie gladio fidens, hie acer et arduus hasta, adsistunt contra certamina Martis anheli. 790 lunonem interea rex omnipotentis Olympi adloquitur fulva pugnas de nube tuentem: ' quae iam finis erit, coniunx ? quid denique restat ? indigetem Aenean scis ipsa et scire fateris deberi caelo fatisque ad sidera tolli. 795 quid struis ? aut qua spe gelidis in nubibus haeres ? mortalin decuit violari vulnere divum ? aut ensem (quid enim sine te luturna valeret ?) ereptum reddi Turno et vim crescere victis ? desine iam tandem precibusque inflectere nostris. 800 ne te tantus edit tacitam dolor et mihi curae saepe tuo dulci tristes ex ore recursent. ventum ad supremum est. terris agitare vel undis Troianos potuisti, infandum accendere bellum, deformare domum et luctu miscere hymenaeos: 805 ulterius tempt are veto.' sic luppiter orsus; 33 The Death of Turnus sic dea summisso contra Saturnia vultu: ' ista quidem quia nota mihi tua, magne, voluntas, luppiter, et Turnum et terras invita reliqui; nee tu me aeria solam mine sede videres Sio digna indigna pati, sed flammis cincta sub ipsa starem acie traheremque inimica in proelia Teucros. luturnam misero (fateor) succurrere fratri suasi et pro vita maiora audere probavi, non ut tela tamen, non ut contenderet arcum; 815 adiuro Stygii caput implacabile fontis, una superstitio superis quae reddita divis. et nunc cedo equidem pugnasque exosa relinquo. illud te nulla fati quod lege tenetur, pro Latio obtestor, pro maiestate tuorum: 820 cum iam conubiis pacem felicibus (esto) component, cum iam leges et foedera iungent, ne vetus indigenas nomen mutare Latinos neu Troas fieri iubeas Teucrosque vocari aut vocem mutare viros aut vertere vestem. 825 sit Latium, sint Albani per saecula reges, sit Romana potens Itala virtute propago: occidit, occideritque sinas cum nomine Troia.' olli subridens hominum rerumque repertor : ' es germana lovis Saturniquc altera proles, . 830 irarum tantos volvis sub pectore fluctus. verum age et inceptum frustra summitte furorem: do quod vis, et me victusque volensque remitto. sermonem Ausonii patrium moresque tenebunt, utque est nomen erit; commixti corpore tantum 835 subsident Teucri. morem ritusque sacrorum adiciam faciamque omnis uno ore Latinos. 34 The Death of Turnus hinc genus Ausonio mixtum quod sanguine surget, supra homines, supra ire deos pietate videbis, nee gen sulla tuos aeque celebrabit honores.' 840 adnuit his luno et mentem laetata retorsit. interea excedit caelo nubemque relinquit. His actis aliud genitor secum ipse volutat luturnamque parat fratris dimittere ab armis. dicuntur geminae pestes cognomine Dirae, 845 quas et Tartarean! Nox: intempesta Megaeram uno eodemque tulit partu, paribusque revinxit serpentum spiris ventosasque addidit alas, hae lovis ad solium saevique in limine regis apparent acuuntque metum mortalibus aegris, 850 si quando letum horrificum morbosque deum rex molitur, meritas aut bello territat urbes. harum unam celerem demisit ab aethere -summo luppiter inque omen luturnae occurrere iussit : ilia volat celerique ad terram turbine fertur. 855 non secus ac nervo per nubem impulsa sagitta, armatam saevi Parthus quam felle veneni, Parthus sive Cydon, telum immedicabile, torsit, stridens et celeris incognita transilit umbras : talis se sata Nocte tulit terrasque petivit. 860 postquam acies videt Iliacas atque agmina Turni, alitis in parvae subitam collecta figuram, quae quondam in bustis aut culminibus desertis nocte sedens serum canit importuna per umbras hanc versa in faciem Turni se pestis ob ora 865 fertque refertque sonans clipeumque everberat alis. illi membra novus solvit formidine torpor, arrectaeque horrore comae et vox faucibus haesit. 35 The Death of Turn us At procul ut Dirae stridorem agnovit et alas, infelix crinis scindit luturna solutos 870 unguibus ora soror foedans et pectora pugnis: ' quid nunc te tua, Turne, potest germana iuvare ? aut quid iam durae superat mihi ? qua tibi lucem arte morer ? talin possum me opponere monstro ? iam iam linquo acies. ne me terrete timentem. 875 obscenae volucres: alarum verbera nosco letalemque sonum, nee fallunt iussa superba magnanimi lovis. haec pro virginitate reponit ? quo vitam dedit aeternarri ? cur mortis adempta est condicio ? possem tantos finire dolores 880 nunc certe et misero fratri comes ire per umbras ! immortalis ego ? aut quicquam mihi dulce meoru te sine, frater, erit ? o quae satis ima dehiscat terra mihi, manisque deam demittat ad imos ?' tantum effata caput glauco contexit amictu 885 multa gemens et se fluvio dea condidit alto. Aeneas instat contra telumque coruscat ingens arboreum, et saevo sic pectore fatur: ' quae nunc deinde mora est ? aut quid iam, Turne retractas ? non cursu, saevis certandum est comminus armis. verte omnis tete in f acies et contrahe quidquid 891 sive animis sive arte vales; opta ardua pennis astra sequi clausumve cava te condere terra.' ille caput quassans : ' non me tua fervida terrent dicta, ferox; di me terrent et luppiter hostis.' 895 nee plura effatus saxum circumspicit ingens, saxum antiquum ingens, campo quod forte iacebat, limes agro positus litem ut discerneret arvis. 36 The Death of Turnus vix illud lecti bis sex cervice subirent, qualia nunc hominum producit corpora tellus; 900 ille manu raptum trepida torquebat in hostem altior insurgens et cursu concitus heros. sed neque currentem se nee cognoscit euntem tollentemve manus saxumve immane moventem; genua labant, gelidus concrevit frigore sanguis. 905 turn lapis ipse viri vacuum per inane volutus nee spatium evasit totum neque pertulit ictum. ac velut in somnis, oculos ubi languida pressit nocte quies, nequiquam avidos extendere cursu? velle videmur et in mediis conatibus aegri 910 succidimus non lingua valet, non corpore notae sufficiunt vires nee vox aut verba sequuntur: sic Turno, quacumque viam virtute petivit, successum dea dira negat. turn pectore sensus vertuntur varii; Rutulos aspectat et urbem 915 cunctaturque metu letumque instare tremescit, nee quo se eripiat, nee qua vi tendat in hostem, nee currus usquam videt aurigamve sororem. Cunctanti telum Aeneas fatale coruscat, sortitus fortunam oculis, et corpore toto 920 eminus intorquet. murali concita numquam tormento sic saxa fremunt nee fulmine tanti dissultant crepitus. volat atri turbinis instar exitium dirum hasta ferens orasque recludit loricae et clipei extremos septemplicis orbis: 925 per medium stridens transit femur, incidit ictus ingens ad terram duplicate poplite Turnus. consurgunt gemitu Rutuli totusque remugit mons circum et vocem late nemora alta remittunt 37 The Death of Turnus ille humilis supplexque oculos dextramque pre- cantem 930 protendens ' equidem merui nee deprecor ' inquit ; ' utere sorte tua. miseri te si qua parentis tangere cura potest, oro (fuit et tibi tails Anchises genitor) Dauni miserere senectae et me, sen corpus spoliatum lumine mavis, 935 redde meis. vicisti et victum tendere palmas Ausonii videre; tua est Lavinia coniunx, ulterius ne tende odiis.' stetit acer in armis Aeneas volvens oculos dextramque repressit ; et iam iamque magis cunctantem flectere sermo 940 coeperat, infelix umero cum apparuit alto balteus et notis fulserunt cingula bullis Pallantis pueri, victum quern vulnere Turnus straverat atque umeris inimicum insigne gerebat. ille, oculis postquam saevi monimenta doloris 945 exuviasque hausit, furiis accensus et ira terribilis : ' tune hinc spoliis indute meorum eripiare mihi ? Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas immolat et poenam scelerato ex sanguine sumit.' hoc dicens ferrum adverse sub pectore condit 950 fervidus. ast illi solvuntur frigore membra vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras. OBSERVATIONS Lines 1-53. There can be little doubt that Virgil would have revised and improved this book if his life had been spared. Possibly he would have shortened it; the tragic conclusion seems too long delayed as it stands. 1 The really interesting point for a dis- cerning reader is the character of Turnus, and its contrast with that of Aeneas; and the contrast of the causes which each of these heroes represents is also continually before us. It is my experience that the twelfth book calls for more thinking, more leisurely reading, than any other part of the poem; and a few words about these contrasts of men and causes, and more particularly about Turnus, who even in this last book is far less familiar to us than i The late F. W. H. Myers thought that the following passages might perhaps be omitted without injury to Virgil's reputation: 266-311, 529-592 ("Classical Essays," p. 137). But Mr. Myers, as it seems to me, greatly under- valued the last three books, which, he says, have come down to us " in a crude and unpruned condition." " Un- pruned " may pass; but " crude" is far too strong a word. Mr. Mackail, who as translator of the whole Aeneid should be of all men best able to judge, has said that books vi- and xii. are the two in which the general workmanship is most elaborate, and in which Virgil is perhaps at his greatest. With this judgment I cordially agree. 39 D The Death of Turnus his rival, may be of use to a reader at the beginning of his study. We know that when Aeneas arrived in Italy Turnus was seeking the hand of Lavinia, daughter of the king, Latinus, and that his suit was warmly favoured by Amata, Latinus' queen. We know also from book vii. that Latinus was deterred from sanctioning this marriage by unfavourable omens, and by the oracle of Faunus which he consulted, and that in obedience to these he promised his daughter to Aeneas. But the fiery Turnus would not renounce his suit, and Juno, induced to support him by her hatred of the Trojans, stirred up war against the new arrivals, overcoming and alarming the old king, who retired into his palace leaving things to take their course (vii. 600). At the beginning of book xii. Latinus has returned to authority, and once more accepts Aeneas as son- in-law (xi. 3oo/.). Thus Turnus is left out in the cold, and his wrath is ungovernable; he insists on a mortal duel with Aeneas, and this is agreed to in a solemn treaty between Aeneas and the king. There seems to be no doubt that Turnus was passionately in love with Lavinia, and that his passion was not prompted by any possible political advantages. Lavinia's own feelings are less obvious, but as far as I can see she also returned his love. She blushed deeply when her mother was entreating Turnus not to fight and declaring that she would not live to see Aeneas her son-in-law ; and this blush drew from the poet a beautiful simile, and from 40 The Death of Turnus Turnus a look of deep passion: " ilium turbat amor figitque in virgine vultus." The poet does not expatiate on the beauty of Lavinia, but we may take it for granted that she was fair as well as royal. Turnus beyond doubt had great personal attractions; when we first meet with him he was most beautiful (pulcherrimus) , J and (as we shall see directly) he was in the very first bloom of early manhood, full of a semi-divine grace, 2 ardent, passionate, and courageous. His one fatal weak- ness was want of self-control; he had none of the temperantia by which the Roman set such store. 3 And now his passion is only increased by opposi- tion, by Latinus and his oracles; it is so furious that he can hardly speak, and he works himself into a rage like that of a mad bull. The simile of the bull has real meaning here (103 ff.} : Turnus is one of those untameable men who enjoy lashing them- selves into fury. " Mugitus veluti cum prima in praelia taurus terrificos ciet atque irasci in cornua temptat arboris obnixus trunco, ventosque lacessit ictibus aut sparsa ad pugnam proludit harena." So, too, the lion (v. 4) " gaudet comantes Excutiens cervice toros," answering to " accenso 1 vii. 55: "ante alios pulcherrimus omnes " (i.e., the suitors). 2 He was kin to deities: see " Gathering of the Clans," p. 82; and " Aeneas at the Site of Rome," p. 34. 3 Cic. de Officiis, i., ch. xxxvii. (from Panaetius). Virgil must have known this book. 41 The Death of Turnus gliscit violentia Turno " (line 9). We find this same characteristic rather quaintly (as it may seem to some) shown in rhetoric, in the great speech of Turnus in book xi. (390 ff.}, where the word pulsus, inflicted on him by his enemy Drances, suddenly fires his wrath. I may note in passing that that speech, like this one, is stimulated by anger against an individual: there is no sense of public interest in it. His fury here is that of a lover, and the war is his personal affair, into which he has been driven by love and jealousy, in order to win back the girl who (as he thinks) has been unjustly filched from him. That is his way of looking at it; but it is clear that there had been no betrothal, 1 no contract of any kind. It was the mother Amata who favoured Turnus, and jumped to the conclusion that two young lovers ought straightway to be married. The mother is moved by individual passion, the father by judgment (consilium} and the will of i Servius in his note on line 31, which has a value as showing the interest Roman readers could take in such questions, points out that if there had been a betrothal Latinus would never have consulted the oracle of Faunus for guidance in this matter. Note that in xi. 359, where Drances says of Turnus " cedat, ius proprium regi patriae- que remittat," he is not alluding to any right of Turnus to Lavinia, but to the right of Latinus and the Latins to dispose of her hand. Turnus in his violentia was claiming a right where he had none. Let me add that this'^violentia of Turnus was first fully appreciated by H Nettleship : see his " Lectures and Essays," pp. 109 ff. 42 The Death of Turnus Heaven. Here, then, is the old family story, the prudence of the father in conflict with the feeling of the mother for youth and beauty; and we are expected to feel with the father, not with the mother: with Aeneas, the mature representative of wisdom, not with the brilliant and passionate young lover. So it must ever be; so it was a thousand times over in Roman social life, where marriages de convenance were the regular practice and the passion of love was the illegitimate thing. 1 A Roman would understand it all : how Latinus could blame himself (line 30) for abandoning the claim of Aeneas: how he had done the wrong thing in preferring the individual passion of a youthful hero not destined to great works of peace or civilization. None the less, it takes us an effort to sympathize with Aeneas in this question; and I am not sure that Virgil himself found it natural to do so. In the parallel case of Dido we may be sure that his heart was with the queen, and there are signs in this book that it was with Turnus too. Yet his judgment was always with Aeneas, and the twelfth book sways between the two moods. Virgil, we must remember, was not a Roman by birth ; he was really a Homo, a Man in the widest sense of the term, with a large and generous outlook on the world. He had a heart above legal contracts. But in the end there returns on him the greater 1 See " Social Life at Rome in the Time of Cicero," pp. 140 ff. The point of view is prominent in Ovid's Ars Amatoria, passim. 43 The Death of Turnus nobility, pietas, justitia, fides, of his own hero, and the book closes in the right key for a Roman, and perhaps for all of those who place the claims of society above those of the individual. To show how Roman this feeling was, I may quote some words of Cicero which describe the opposite character, that of such men as Turnus: " Sed ea animi elatio quae cernitur in periculis et laboribus, si iustitia vacat, pugnatque non pro salute communi sed pro suis commodis, in vitio est ; non modo enim id virtutis non est, sed est potius immanitatis omnem humanitatem repcllcutis." 1 These words are doubtless, like the rest of the first book of the " De Omciis," from the Stoic philosopher Panaetius, the liberal-minded Stoic who well under- stood how to suit his teaching to the Roman mind. And in Virgil's contrast of his two heroes we may assuredly see the influence of Roman Stoicism. " Much modern criticism revolts against the character of Aeneas because it is without sympathy for Stoic ethics. To understand Aeneas we must iirst picture a man with his whole soul filled by a reverent regard for destiny and submission to Jove, who represents destiny on its personal side. He can therefore never play the part of the hero in revolt; but at the same time he is human, and liable to those petty weaknesses and aberrations from which even the sage is not exempt. He can hesitate or be hasty, can love or weep; but the 1 De Officiis i. 23; quoted by Heinze, " Virgil's Epische Technik," p. 207. 44 The Death of Turnus sovereignty of his mind is never upset. In a happy phrase Virgil sums up the whole ethics of Stoicism : " Mens immota manet; lacrimae volvuntur inanes " l (iv. 449). Lines 11-13. " Nulla mora in Turno: nihil est quod dicta retractent," etc. These words are spoken in bitter anger by one who is hardly master of himself ; consequently they are not easy to understand. Nettleship in Conington says all that is necessary: "There had been no compact, and no sign on Aeneas' part of withdrawing from the challenge; but Turnus characteristically blames anyone rather than himself." Lines 18 ff. Latinus' reply: " Olli sedato re- spondit corde Latinus." The king quieted his anxious mind for the moment, and began with the grauitas of the Roman paterfamilias, as Macrobius remarked in the fifth century A.D. (Sat., V. i. 16), rather oddly comparing the style of this speech to that of the great orator Crassus, for which see Cic., Brutus, 143, 148. In the time of Macrobius 'rhetorical style was the chief subject of study, 2 and his comment is characteristic. Certainly there is a dignified appeal to practical good sense and 1 From " Roman Stoicism," by E. Arnold, p. 391. Professor Arnold is thinking of the fourth book and Dido, but his remarks will also apply to this twelfth book. 2 See Dill, " Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire," p. 350. Cp. Macr. V. i. i, where it is claimed that Virgil was as much orator as poeta. 45 The Death of Turnus mutual advantage in the speech, and also to religion and good faith. Lines 28 to 32 show this trait of the old Roman clearly. Latinus had broken his promise to Aeneas, which was founded on the oracle of Faunus and the replies of soothsayers, and the war that followed was therefore arma impia. But Macrobius has not remarked on what is really the interesting part of the speech. Virgil seems to think of Latinus as a weak and broken old king, who can only assume this grauitas for the moment. No sooner does he mention the war and all its bloodshed than the weakness returns on him: " recalent nostro Tiberina fluenta Sanguine adhuc, campique ingentes ossibus albent. Quo referor totiens, quae mentem insania mutat ?" This sudden breakdown of the king, followed by the passionate appeal of the queen, and the furious obduracy of Turnus, make this scene a tragic one, and it is only by weighing it well that we can under- stand the suicide of Amata later on. Our poet's mind was here rather with the . Greek tragedians than with Homer; perhaps, also, with the Roman tragedians, for Macrobius in another passage tells us that the opening lines of Latinus' speech are from the Antigone of Attius. Line 25. " Nee genus indecores." Mr. Page has a useful note on " the rhetorical figure litotes or meiosis," but does not really explain it. Every rhetorical device answers to some instinct of human nature; and human nature loves negatives, as every- 46 The Death of Turnus one who lives in an English village knows. So did Latin nature, which had a word for No, but none for Yes. Human nature loves to appeal to the imagination by lowering the strength of language: " that was not a bad shot," we used to say at golf, leaving the adversary to fill up our modest short- coming. Line 35. " Tiberina fluenta." This must surely mean something more than the Tiber proper, for the fighting was not going on on the banks of the main river. I am disposed to think of this ex- pression as confirming what I said in " Aeneas at the Site of Rome " (pp. 37 ff.} about Virgil's idea of a water system. So, I think, we may take the " Aniena fluenta " of Georg. iv. 369. Line 36.- " Campique ingentes." Mr. J. W. Mackail, who thoroughly investigated Virgil's use of the word ingens in Classical Review, 1912, pp. 251 ff., takes this use and that of xi. 367 (ingentes agros) as nearly meaning " our native plains and native fields." That this meaning is inherent in the word no one will doubt who reads Professor Con- way's note at the end of Mr. Mackail's article. Perhaps the word " undersense," used by the latter on p. 254, best expresses what is meant. The word indiges seems to be closely connected with ingens; we shall have Aeneas himself called Indiges in 794, in order to mark the fact that he was to be taken as rightly belonging to the land of Latium. 47 The Death of Turnus Lines 48, 49 : " quam pro me curam geris, hanc precor, optime, pro me deponas letumque sinas pro laude pacisci." These lines are curiously difficult to translate, and their meaning has often been misunderstood. If, however, we take the second line as practically explaining the first, according to a common habit of Virgil, the sense will be, as Servius took it long ago, and .as Henry took it recently, " You are now anxious for my life; put off that anxiety, and be anxious now for my honour." Never mind my death so long as it leads to glory. We may perhaps translate all three pro's in the same way: "The burden of anxiety which you bear for my sake, lay down now for my sake too, and let me bargain to give my life for the sake of honour." He is hardly claiming to be a champion of the Latins, I think; he is thinking of his own personal grievance. But we shall see directly that the idea of self- devotion does seem to enter his mind later on, for a moment at least, and again in the last struggle he claims purity of motive, something better than love of revenge and slaughter: " Sancta ad vos (Manes) anima atque istius nescia culpae descendam (line 648). He has fine instincts; his wild courage is not simply brutal. But at this moment his mind returns to his personal enemy: " I can fight as well as Aeneas," he goes on, " in spite of the tricks of his divine mother." " Longe illi dea mater erit." " Longe," says 'The Death of Turnus Henry, means here "of no use." In the passage quoted by him from Florus (ii. 6) it may certainly be so translated: " Syracusae, quamvis Archimedis ingenio defenderentur, aliquando cesserunt. Longe illi triplex murus, totidemque arces, portus ille marmoreus, et fons celebratus Arethusae, nisi quod hactenus profuere ut pulcritudini victae urbis parceretur." Henry does not suggest that Florus may have been thinking of this very line of Virgil; but it is quite likely, for in the time of Hadrian he wrote an essay on Virgil as an orator (rhetorician) of which the introduction is preserved. 1 Anyone writing on such a subject would be sure to know by heart the early part of this twelfth book. Lines 7 ff. ' " Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro si quis ebur, aut mixta rubent ubi lilia multa alba rosa: tails virgo dabat ore colores." The commentators tell us that this simile is from II. iv. 141, where the bleeding of Menelaus' wound is compared to the staining of an ivory cheek- piece of a horse's harness. Once and again Virgil has carried the Homeric simile of fact into the region of feeling and character; the blush reveals Lavinia as she is nowhere else revealed, and the exquisite language of the simile or both similes, for there are two bids the reader pause and let his mind dwell on the picture. What makes the beauty of a simile is not only its own truth to 1 Schanz, " Gesch. der Rom. Lit.," iii. 116. 49 The Death of Turnus nature, as. e.g., in the simile of the swift in 473 j^., but the feeling which it nurses. A beautiful example of this is the comparison of the dying Euryalus (ix. 435) to a flower cut by the plough- share. This is partly suggested by II. viii. 306, partly by Catullus n, 22 and 62, 39 ff.\ and it is good for the reader to turn these passages up, if only to realize the essential beauty of the Virgilian comparison, which is inspired by the fact that it is a beautiful boy, "with all his life before him" 1 (integer aevi) a minute ago, who now lies cut down like a flower. Euryalus had been before us all through that sad story; we could love him almost as Nisus or Ascanius loved him, or, indeed, the poet himself, and the simile touches us keenly we care not whence it comes. It is the same with the simile of the migrating birds in vi. 309, or that of the nightingale robbed of her young in Georg. iv. 511. Sellar 2 has noticed the same poetical power in the famous comparison of Dido in the shades to the moon suddenly swimming into ken in Aen. vi. 453, of which the substance only is in Apollonius Rhodius (iv. 1479). But the Scotch critic is chilly as usual, and was unable to rid his mind of the notion of " imitation." Line 102: " totoque ardentis ab ore Scintillae absistunt." 1 This is Mr. Mackail's charming translation. y SeUar, Virgil, p. 414. 50 The Death of Turnus Absistunt may seem at first sight an odd verb for sparks, but it is the reading of nearly all MSS. " Surely it describes exactly what a spark does it settles down after its leap away " (RSC in lift.). Lines 113-115: " Postera vix summos spargebat lumine mentis orta dies, cum primum alto se gurgite tollunt Solis equi lucemque elatis naribus effiant." The idea of the horses of the sun breathing light from their nostrils was taken by Virgil from Ennius, the expression of it being, as usual, improved. Ennius' words are " funduntque elatis naribus lucem." Henry quotes very happily from Marlowe : " The horses that guide the golden eye of heaven, And blow the morning from their nosterils." 1 This quotation is interesting (though Henry does not notice this), because Marlowe had a classical education, and was probably thinking of-, this very line; he was at King's School, Canterbury, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and translated Ovid's Elegies word for word in rhyme. His con- temporary Shakespeare had less knowledge of the classics, and happily for us abandoned the old and well-worn figure for one that now seems far more beautiful : " But look, the morn in russet mantle clad Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill." 2 1 " Tamburlaine the Great," Part II., Act IV., Scene iii. a " Hamlet," Act I., Scene i., at end. 51 The Death of Turnus Lines 107-112: " Nee minus interea maternis saevus in armis Aeneas acuit Martem et se suscitat ira, oblato gaudens componi foedere bellum. turn socios maestique metum solatur luli fata docens, regique iubet responsa Latino certa referre viros et pacis dicere leges." These lines, at first sight of no great importance, open out in meaning when thoroughly well weighed. They are full of characteristic traits. Aeneas is a man of peace, and rejoices in the prospect of a treaty with the Latins and a cessation of bloodshed. So much is he a man of peace that for the single combat to which he is challenged he has to sharpen his warlike spirit and to work up his wrath against Turnus. But he has perfect confidence in the resulthe has his mother's armour, and he has the assurance of the Fates. 1 This assurance he presses on the mind of his boy, who was trembling with anxiety. Certainly this twelfth book needs to be read with great care and at leisure: I find abundant interest where I quite missed it on a hasty reading. For Mars as the spirit or genius of war, as Apollo was in Virgil's time the spirit or genius of poetry, see my " Roman Ideas of Deity," p. 143. 1 If this divine assurance seems to any reader to detract from the interest or from the heroism of Aeneas, let him spend an hour or two in reading the Book of Joshua. We do not usually complain of the divine assurance of that great leader of an invading army in a strange land. 52 The Death of Turnus Lines 116-120: " campum ad certain en magnae sub moenibus urbis dimensi Rutulique viri Teucrique parabant, in medioque focos et dis communibus aras gramineas. alii fontemque ignemque ferebant velati limo et verbena tempera vincti." Here Virgil is no doubt aiming at ritualistic accuracy, but it does not follow that his picture of the making of a treaty in ancient times is exact. Varro's work on religious antiquities was open to him. but it is unluckily lost to us, and we cannot test him by it. No doubt the arae and foci are correct ritual, and equally so the altars of turf; this older form of temporary altar is often men- tioned. 1 Fire and running water (fons) were, of course, necessities in all religious services. The word limo was attested by Hyginus, who was Augustus' librarian on the Palatine, and had every reason to know what was in Virgil's own manuscript. The limus was an ancient sacrificial apron with a purple stripe (according to Servius), which probably indicates that the business of the wearer was to 1 E.g., in Ovid, Fasti, ii. 645; Trist., v. 5, 9. From a fragment of the Acta Fratrum Arvalium we learn that the foci had a piece of turf placed on the top of them, which suggests that they were a later development of the sacri- ficial ritual, bearing this token of survival from an older form (Henzen, Act. Fr. Arv., p. 27). Some foci were small portable braziers, others were vessels for carrying incense and wine for libations on the altar. See Marquardt, " Staatsverwaltung," III., p. 164 and notes. 53 The Death of Turnus slay the victim. 1 In the time of Servius lino was commonly read, against which he protests. His note is a curious one ; he says that in treaty-making the priests never wore linen, but that Virgil, who always introduces some flaw in ritual when the event is to turn out wrong, may have mentioned linen here for that very reason. But as he goes on at once to refer to the testimony of Hyginus, we need not trouble ourselves with this earlier part of his note. I need hardly mention that the common ex- pression " pro aris et focis " has nothing to do with the ritual we are discussing. The question whether Virgil is or is not accurate in the words " verbena tempora vincti " is too complicated to be discussed here. I must be content with referring to some remarks of Professor Reid in the Journal of Roman Studies, vol. ii. (1912), p. 48, who thinks that he was in error, and that the verbenae mentioned in the ritual of the Fetiales were (as Pliny says, xxii. 5) identical with sagmina, which were originally pieces of grass pulled up by the roots in the arx, with soil adhering to them, thus indicating that they stood symbolic- ally for the soil of Rome. Such bits of grass could not have been made into wreaths for the head. I am not sure that Pliny knew more about the word than Virgil; but I must leave the matter here. 1 See my " Religious Experience of the Romans," p. 177, and note 2 1 . 54 The Death of Turnus Lines 134^. Virgil places Juno on the summit of the Alban Hills, whence, looking towards the sea, she would command the whole scene of the action of this book i.e., the coast from the Tiber to Antium, with Laurentum, the city of Latinus, about midway between the two. All this country is admirably described by Gaston Boissier from personal experience of it in his " Nouvelles Promenades Archeologiques," p. 253 to the end of the volume. This is one of the best helps towards understanding the last six books of the Aeneid, and is most strongly to be recommended to every student. Some interesting photographs of this little-known part of the coast may be found in the translation of Cervesato's book on the Roman Campagna published by Messrs. Fisher Unwin. \Yhy, it may be asked, does Virgil choose Juturna to bring aid to Turnus ? He wanted, no doubt, an equivalent for the divine aid of Venus ; and he chose a deity who was perfectly well known to every Roman, seeing that her temple and fountain were in the Forum, or only just outside it, and that the water of her spring was used by the vestal virgins in all their sacred rites. The temple, which was originally dedicated just after the first Punic war, was rebuilt by Augustus after Virgil's death, in 2 B.C. ;* the fountain was associated with the legend of the battle of the Lake Regillus. Perhaps we may imagine this deity as a sort of abstraction or idealization of all the springs of Latium; we know 1 See " Roman Festivals," p. 293. 55 E The Death of Turnus that she had a healing spring near the sacred river Numicius and the sacred city Lavinium. Servius, from whose note on line 139 we learn this, has a very curious note in addition, to which I wish to draw attention. He says: " Cum enim naturaliter omnis aqua noxia sit extraneorum corporibus, hie omnibus saluberrimus fons est." The word extraneorum has, of course, puzzled Servius' readers; why should cold water disagree with foreigners ? Someone once proposed to correct it to aegrotorum, but there is absolutely no doubt about extraneorum, as is shown in the critical note of Thilo and Hagen's edition. There were curious superstitions about foreigners in ancient Italy, as in many other countries; 1 but of this one I know at present of no other trace, unless it be the reluctance of Naaman to bathe in the Jordan: and my friend Sir James Frazer is as yet unable to help me here. If, however, we agree that strangers were in some sense impure (and I myself have no doubt about this), we can see that they would be dangerous to the pure native water, and as a consequence that the water would be dangerous to them. " The one principle," wrote Robertson Smith, "which runs through all the varieties of legends, and also lies at the base of the ritual, is that the sacred waters are instinct with divine life and energy, " z a belief which helps to explain why Aeneas was i See " Rel. Exp.," pp. 30 ff. ; and Classical Review for 1913, p. 48 (on " Passing under the Yoke "). 3 " Religion of the Semites," pp. 158, 161. 56 said to have eventually become the deity of the River Numicius (see below, p. 138). This divine life and energy, when conceived as belonging to a divine inhabitant of the stream, or even without such a personal conception, must necessarily be hostile to one who had no established relations either with the water or the spirit inhabiting it. " Is there more in Servius' remark," asks my friend Professor Conway, " than that the Juturna- water was especially pure, not so liable to cause fevers to non-natives ? Natives grow hardened to germs." To this I can only reply that Servius' words are curiously explicit. Lines 147 ff. : " qua visa est Fortuna pati Parcaeque sinebant cedere res Latio, Turnum et tua moenia texi : nunc iuvenem imparibus video concurrere fatis, Parcarumque dies et vis inimica propinquat." Juno can only delay the action of the Fates, not alter it (see vii. 313 ff. and Miss Matthaei's article in Classical Quarterly, 1917, p. 15). In this book (line 676) Turnus himself tells Juturna not to delay the Fates any longer, for it is useless (cp. xi. 587). Note that Fortuna is here equivalent to the Parcae; she is 'the cosmic power which is closely related to the Stoic eifuipfievr}, and the editor may be right in printing her with a large F (" Roman Ideas of Deity," p. 70). In line 149 the word/aft's should not be pressed: it means no more, I think, than the sors iniqua of 243 (cp. 395: " proferre 57 The Death of Turnus fata "). Fata is often used by Virgil, not in a cosmical or metaphysical sense, but just as we use the word lot : so, e.g., in xi. 160. where Evander's " vivendo vici mea fata " means little more than that he has reached beyond the ordinary span of human life. Miss Matthaei in the article mentioned above has missed this simple use of fata in several passages, to the detriment of her conclusions. Lines 161 ff. : " Interea reges, ingenti mole Latinus quadriiugo vehitur curru (cui tempora circum aurati bis sex radii fulgentia cingunt, Solis avi specimen), bigis it Turnus in albis, bina manu lato crispans hastilia ferro." Why does Latinus ride in a four-horse chariot, while Turnus has only a biga ? The four-horse chariot was the peculiar distinction of kings in ancient Italy; see an article in the Classical Review for 1916, pp. 156 ff. Thus Dionysius makes Romulus triumph in a quadriga, in order that he might maintain the kingly dignity. 1 Latinus was full king in every sense of the word; Turnus was not so, because his father Daunus was still alive (see lines 932 jf.)- He is rex only in the sense of chieftain, in which sense of the word Virgil can call them both reges. The crown which Latinus wears as a proof of his descent from the sun must be a fancy of Virgil's; a corona with twelve rays was quite unknown at Rome until the later empire, and this 1 Dion. Hal., ii, 34. 58 The Death of Turnus must have been suggested by the corona radiata of Hellenistic kings. 1 Its object as here introduced was simply to throw a halo of divinity over Latinus, as was done in a different way for Turnus by giving him a divine sister. Lines 166 ff. " Romanae stirpis origo." Virgil, as the poem draws to an end, is at pains to connect the persons and doings of Aeneas and his son with the Rome that was to be (see 834^.), resuming, in fact, the colouring of book viii. Ascanius is spes nit era Romae. And the ritual that follows is meant to be strictly ritus Romanus, though the bidens added to the pig usual in treaty sacrifices seems to be a Creek innovation 2 (Varro, R.R., ii. 4, 9; there is abundant evidence for the pig, 3 but no 1 See article " Corona " in " Diet, of Antiquities "; also in Pauly-Wissowa. Evidently Virgil is at pains in these lines to emphasize the greatness of Latinus as compared with Turnus; hence, also, the words ingenti mole, which suggest that he was a man of larger size than ordinary, like Augustus in the Shield of Aeneas (see " Aeneas at the Site of Rome," p. 112), or Priam in Iliad, xxiv. 477. Servius and Heyne are wrong, I think, in explaining mole as ambitu, pompa. It is meant to suggest the divine element in the eponymous king of the country that was destined to be Roman. 2 Greek and Roman ritual, like Greek and Roman gods, are constantly identified by Virgil, who thus presents th e typical difficulty of all study of the Roman religion. Soon after his death, in the ritual of the Ludi saeculares (17 B.C.), we find the same feature: see my " Religious Experience of the Roman People," pp. 443 ff. 3 See Marquardt, p. 425, note 5. 59 The Death of Turnus mention of a sheep). Servius notes this irregularity, which, as Nettleship remarks, seems to be put in from the treaty-making in II. iii. 246. The attitude in prayer towards the rising sun is old Roman: of this we have conclusive evidence in Acta Fratr. Arv. (Henzen), p. 7 (cp. Aen. viii. 68). Lastly, the fruges salsae were the usual salt cakes used in sacri- ficial ritual 1 for scattering on the victim's head: whence the word immolare. Lines 175 ff. : The Making of the Treaty. The invocations of Aeneas and Latinus are conceived in a poetical spirit, and are no sure evidence for what may have been actually said or done in ancient times. There is a general likeness to the passage about treaty- making in the first book of Livy, but no more. 2 \Yhy does Aeneas begin ? Servius says it was because he originated the arrangement. Rather, I think, because he is the hero of the poem and the progenitor of Romans; also, perhaps, because Virgil meant to contrast the Roman dignity and tran- quillity of Aeneas' speech with the greater fervour of that of Latinus, which seems comparatively wanting in self-possession. Aeneas begins with an appeal to the sun and the earth. Sol is here less a deity than a natural phenomenon; he had but lately risen, as we know from line 172. Terra, too, is not the deity of earth, but the land of Italy, for which Aeneas says that i Serv., Aen. iv. 57: Olim hostiae immolatae dicebantur mola salsa tactae. Eitrem, Opferritus, pp. 319 ff. 3 Liv. i. 32. 6 The Death of Turnus he has so long been toiling. Note that Aeneas does not appeal to the deity of an under-world beneath the earth, because he has no dead in it as yet. Latinus can do this, and does it in line 199. The gods invoked (for obvious reasons) are three only Jupiter, Juno, and Mars; to these he adds the spirits of the springs and streams: 1 of the whole inland water-system and those of the sky and sea. The word religio used of the spirits of the air (quaeque aetheris alti religio] is here interesting. It means, I think, whatever in the sky claims our awe and worship. The word is still used subjectively, but is just beginning to acquire a meaning which became common later on; namely, a particular form of worship addressed to individual deities. It is a mistake, I think, to explain it as used simply in a concrete sense for the object of dread, like creySa?, as is done by Nettleship. 2 But by far the most interesting passage in the invocation is that in which Aeneas defines the duties that will fall to him and Latinus respectively under the arrangements for the new community of the united peoples (lines 192 ff.}. This is, in fact, a vital passage for the understanding of the whole 1 In Scipio's prayer (Liv. xxix. 27) we find terra mare and amnes combined. I may be allowed to refer, in illustration of the appeal to springs and streams as parts of a water-system, to what I have said in " Aeneas at the Site of Rome," pp. 37 ff. 2 It is the feeling rather than the object that suggests it. See Transactions of the Congress for the History of Religions, 1908, vol. ii., pp. 172 ff. The Death of Turnus poem. Aeneas is conceived as more deeply con- cerned with religion than with any other part of the life of the community; in other words, the ius divinum is his share of the task, the ius civile is that of Latinus. Aeneas had brought from Troy the deities that were to be the centre of Roman worship; this is one of the threads running through the whole Aeneid. 1 And he was also the destined agent of Jupiter, and more really akin to Numa than to Romulus. He is to undertake the solemn religious duty of founding a new city common to both peoples; to Latinus was assigned the headship of the political and military elements in the State. The words imperium solemne indicate, I have little doubt, the orderly and constitutional settlement of the government. 2 In the prayer of Latinus there is less of a Roman colouring. Apollo and Diana are appealed to, 1 See my note on viii. 679 in " Aeneas at the Site of Rome." Virgil there gives Augustus^the samedivine guard- ians as he gives Aeneas throughout the poem. See below on 794. Their original home was in Italy: iii. 167; vii. 240. 2 Nettleship's note shows that the commentators did not grasp the point of the word. As in viii. 102, where the sacrifice at the ara maxima is called sollemnis honor ; in Eel. v. 74 (" et cum sollemnia vota Reddemus nymphis, et cum lustrabimus agros "), and other passages, sollemnis means (a rite or custom) laid down, established, by a vow or othenvise. This is the only place in Virgil, so far as I can remember, in which it is applied to things not of religion, but the meaning is the same established by authority or immemorial custom, to which we may perhaps add " and renewed frorfi time to time." 63 The Death of Turnus neither of them originally Roman deities; no allusion is made to Aeneas' stipulation about the division of duties, and the somewhat impassioned oath by the sceptre is Homeric (II. i. 234). All this is beyond doubt intentional. So, too, the allusion to Jupiter " qui foedera fulmine sancit;" also the touching of the altar, and the invocation of the numina, whose images seem to have been brought from the city by Latinus. 1 On the. words " qui foedera fulmine sancit," Servius has a note worth quoting as a specimen of what a Saturday Reviewer lately called " Servius' plain notes": 2 " Quia cum fiunt foedera, si corus- catio fuerit, conlirmantur. Vel certe quia apud maiores arae non incendebantur, sed ignem divinum precibus eliciebant, qui incendebat altaria." Did Servius know the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal ? \Vhat Virgil was exactly thinking of I cannot guess. Some scholars have used this line to prove that the silex in the ceremony of the fetiales was Jupiter himself, but the words prove nothing of the kind. 3 All I can say is that the line represents the universal belief that such solemn undertakings were under the special sanction of Jupiter: for which conviction I may refer the reader to my " Roman Ideas of Deity," pp. 39 ff. 1 See below on 286. For the touching of the altar, " Rel. Exp.," 196, note 4. 2 Saturday Review for November 3, 1917. I wondered whether the reviewer had any personal acquaintance with Servius. 3 See Professor J. S. Reid in /. R. S., vol. ii., p. 49. 63 The Death of Turnus Lines 216 ff : " At veto Rutulis impar ea pugna videri iamdudum et vario misceri pectora motu, turn magis ut propius cernunt non viribus aequis. adiuvat incessu tacito progressus et aram suppliciter venerans demisso lumine Turnus pubentesque genae et iuvenali in corpore pallor." These solemn invocations are followed by the sudden appearance of Turnus, downcast and de- pressed. This is so astonishing that I am tempted to suppose that the passage was left unfinished; and this is suggested by line 218, in which there is obviously something wanting. 1 We left Turnus (lines 100 ff.\ in a state of excitement, but full of courage and high spirit. Now, a reaction would be natural enough in a passionate and impulsive youth, when the consciousness of his fate suddenly fills his mind; but such a reaction seems to need a word or two of explanation. The poel has not explained how he comes to be approaching the altar sadly and stealthily and with downcast eyes; but a little later on he gives a hint that Turnus believed that he was devoting himself to death according to the old practice of Italian warriors : " Ille quidem ad superos, quorum se devovet aris, succedet fama vivusque per ora feretur." 1 It is curious that Servius, commenting on line 234 (devovet aris), says " quia ait supra (220) Nobis animam et aram suppliciter venerans." The first two words, " Nobis animam," are not in the text of Virgil. He goes 64 The Death of Turnus \Yith these lines we may compare book xi. 442, where the same word is used by Turnus. 1 If this be the true explanation of the strange appearance of Turnus, it certainly seems to need more definite expression. In line 221 I have restored pubentes, the reading of all the best MSS., of which the sense is to me quite plain. It is explained by the words iuvenali in corpore that follow; the youth of Turnus is contrasted with the maturity of Aeneas, and makes him the inferior of the two in the chances of combat. It may be that readers of these last six books have failed to realize the youth of Turnus; he is, of course, just reaching early manhood, and is repeatedly called iuvenis, as, for instance, by Latinus in line 19. 2 He is older than Pallas, but Pallas him- self is called puer in line 943 of this book. Servius, commenting on line 212, compares Turnus with Paris in the third book of the Iliad, whom he calls adolescens. To me, then, it is quite clear that the word pubentes fits in exactly with the word iuvenis, on to quote xi. 442: " Sed vobis animam hanc soceroque Latino Devovi. Nam ipsa iterat verba." It looks as if he had a different text from ours before him. 1 " vobis animam hanc soceroque Latino Turnus ego, haud ulli veterum virtute secundus devovi." On this Conington remarks that Turnus goes through a sort of formula of self-devotion, not unlike that in Livy viii. 9 (See " Rel. Exp.," 206 ff.). The same feeling comes upon him in the passage we are considering. 2 Also in ix. 806, xi. 123, xii. 149, 598. 65 The Death of Turnus and that Turnus, though not actually beardless, was showing on his cheeks the first signs of early manhood. But nearly all the editors, including the editor of the Oxford text, failing to realize the full force of the contrast between this youth and the mature widower Aeneas, the tried warrior of the plains of Troy, have adopted from a very few inferior MSS. the reading tabentes, 1 suggesting a picture of Turnus which to me at least is most unacceptable. The word is only found in one other place in Virgil, where it translates the Homeric description of Odysseus washed ashore from shipwreck in a dirty condition. 2 Why the young hero should be described by such a word as he approaches the altar I am quite unable to understand, and sincerely trust that future editors may recognize and restore the reading of all the oldest and best MSS. Lines 234 ff. " Ille quidera ad superos, quorum se devovet aris, succedet fama vivusque per ora f eretur : nos patria amissa dominis parere superbis cogemur, qui nunc lenti consedimus arvis." 1 The very doubtful evidence for this reading will be found in Henry's note in small print, p. 276 of his last volume. It seems to have been first introduced by Pierius jn the sixteenth century. 2 i. 173: " et sale tabentes artus in litore ponunt " (cp. Od. vi. 127). Cp. viii. 487, of the victims of Mezentius* cruelty: " sanie taboque fiuentes Complexu in misero longa sic morte necabat." 66 The general meaning is clear: Turnus, if he falls, will be believed to have ascended to the gods to whom (literally to whose altars) he is now devoting himself; and will be famous, too, for ever here on earth; while our fate will be to obey a tyrannous conqueror, etc. Note that they do not claim for Turnus a definite immortality of the soul or body: the word fa ma makes it clear that what is meant is a popular belief in his survival ; 1 and this is con- firmed in Virgil's characteristic manner by the words that follow, " vivus per ora feretur." It is what we should call an immortality of fame that is meant, almost of literary fame, though it is put into the mouth of the uncivilized Rutulians. The nearest parallel to the passage, in sense if not in words, is the touching aspiration in ix. 446 ff., in which such immortality is claimed for Nisus and Euryalus : " Fortunati ambo, si quid mea carmina possunt, nulla dies unquam memori vos exiraet aevo, dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit." Virgil makes a fine stroke here by adapting the words of Ennius' epitaph, familiar to every educated Roman of his day " Nemo me lacrimis decoret, nee funera fletu faxit: cur ? volito vivu' per ora virum," 1 Cp. Cic., Cat. iii. i, 2: " Romulum ad deos immortales benevolentia famaque sustulimus " (Nettleship from Forbiger). Cp. the tollete humo of Georg. iii. 9. The Death of Turnus and in order to understand exactly what he means, we must be clear as to what Ennius meant. Henry has here one of his tremendous expositions, several pages in length, to prove that neither Ennius nor Virgil meant by ora the lips of men, as we have been used to believe. As usual he ranges over the whole of Latin literature from Ennius to Ausonius, without any consideration for the ever-changing ideas of successive periods. What he does prove is that in prose authors and in later poets the phrase per ora often means " before the faces of men " e.g., in Livy ii. 38 of children " traductos per ora hominum." And on these slender grounds he insists that Ennius thought of himself as flitting before the faces of men in some mysterious form of immortality which I do not understand, and which, unless I am greatly mistaken, was unknown to Ennius. 1 That poet was a man of letters, and literature was then comparatively a novelty at Rome; to be immortalized by your own poetry was an idea far fresher and more telling than it is now. We may safely think of " volitare per ora " as meaning not only that the lips of men would speak his praise, but that they would repeat his 1 Henry insists that Cicero, when quoting this epitaph, took it as meaning an immortality of the soul in the visible form of the individual (Tusc. Disp., i. 34). Assuredly Cicero is not thinking of any existence after death in bodily "form (see " Rel. ~xp.,~" p. 388)"; Henry was misled by another couplet quoted by Cicero in the same passage' inscribed on a statne of Ennius. 68 poetry like the ancient bards. For we are not to suppose that in his day there was as yet any organized system of publication,, such as existed in the age of Cicero. 1 But the real question for us is what Virgil under- stood by Ennius' words when he adopted them as his own. He had done this long ago at the begin- ning of the third Georgic, where he says that he must work out a new line of poetry, abandoning the Alexandrian mythological manner: " temptanda via est qua me quoque possim Tollere humo vic- torque virum volitare per ora." In the twelfth Aeneid, near the end of his life, his mind returned to this passage: even the contrast between humo and volitare per ora is retained in our lines " qui nunc lenti consedimus arvis " is in contrast to the rise of Turnus to immortality. But what immor- tality is this ? Is our poet thinking in Georg. iii. 9 of anything beyond the eternal praise of men, which is still his? I doubt it; it is exactly the same thought as that of the last ode of Horace's third book, " Exegi monumentum aere perennius . . . non omnis moriar," and so on. 2 So, too, the immortality of Turnus is to be an immortality in the mouths of men with perhaps a side-glance of the poet at the power of his Aeneid to make 1 Even then it can hardly be said to be organized: see Marquardt, " Privatleben der Romer," 803, quoting Cic. Q. Fratr., ii. 4, 5. 2 The last ode of book ii. is not to be taken too seriously. 69 The Death of Turnus Turnus for ever famous, like Nisus and Euryalus in book ix. 1 This is made all the more certain by the comparison with xi. 296, where Henry himself allows that per ora must mean the lips of the Ausonides: " Vix ea legati, variusque per ora cucurrit Ausoni- dum turbata fremor " ; and " trepida ora quierunt " in line 300 following. Yet the words ad superos seem to show that the idea in the poet's mind is not simple, but complex. The superi here are actual gods " quorum se devovet aris " not a vague term for heaven, as in ix. 641, " sic itur ad astra." Virgil is here reflecting the new idea of the upward flight of the spirit at its departure from the body, to join the company of heaven. This idea is first found at Rome in Cicero's " Somnium Scipionis ": Scipio is to pursue iustitia and pi etas : EA VITA VIA EST IN CAELUM. He returned to it later in " Tusc. Disp." i. 43, where he tells that the soul is fiery breath, and must rise when freed from the body; that such ascent was for those only who had deserved immortality. Either in Cicero or in Posidonius, the authority used by Cicero, Virgil found this idea, and reflects it in several passages both in the Georgics and Aeneid. " Quid me caelum sperare iubebas ?" says Aristaeus to Cyrene in Georg. iv. 325. In the same book is the famous pantheistic passage: * This is how Servius understood both passages. So, too, for the sense of Georg. iii. 9, I may quote the great authority of Norden, on Aen. vi., p. 362. 70 " scilicet hue reddi deinde ac resoluta referri omnia, nee morti esse locum, sed viva volare sideris in numerum atque alto succedere caelo." In vi. 719 Aeneas asks his father " anne aliquas ad caelum hinc ire putandum est Sublimis animas. . . ." (cp. 795 of xii.). In vii. 210 Dardanus is received into heaven : " aurea nunc solio stellantis regia caeli accipit et numerum divorum altaribus auget." At the beginning of Georg. i. and in Aen. i. 289 the idea is extended to Augustus, always with goodness and benevolence in the use of power as a condition of such immortality (cp. Lucan, Phars. ix. 1-18). So we must add to the simple notion of the survival of Turnus per ora virum a side glance no more, T think at the new idea of immortality in caelo. 1 Lines 244^. The misleading omen of the eagle and swan (cp. II. xii. 200). Fulvus (line 247) suggests the Golden Eagle, but all the eagles of the Mediterranean might, I think, be described by the word (cp. xi. 751). Rubra in aethra is an exaggeration, says Nettleship, as applied to the ordinary light of day; but it is not so applied, for the sun was just rising (172) when the treaty was made, and the sky was still red. No other meaning is possible. 1 Turnus himself, when he knew his death was coming, expected not to rise, but to descend : 646 ff. of this book. 71 F The Death of Turnus Line 250: " Cycnum excellentem." " Magnum," says Servius, and all the commentators have fol- lowed him in making Virgil as dull as themselves. I have no doubt it means that the swan was rising in flight above the rest, and so was selected by the eagle as a victim: as Festus interprets exccllere (342 Lindsay) " in altum extollere." The swan rose from the marsh at the approach of the enemy, and was instantly seized; then the others mobbed the eagle, and made him drop his prey. Wild swans have a leader, as Virgil doubtless knew. " On they came," says Knox of wild swans (" Game Birds and Wild-Fowl," p. 69), " but suddenly their leader seemed to have discovered my position," etc. Line 256. " Proiecit fluvio." What river is this ? The scene of the treaty-making was near Laurentum, the city of Latinus; and the people of Laurentum are to look on at the combat that follows. The nearest stream that can be called a fluvius is at present the Rio Torto, probably the Numicius. But we do not know for certain where the original Laurentum was, and we may be content to take two lines of Ovid 1 as suggesting that city and river were near enough for a poet's purposes : " Litus adit Laurens, ubi tectus arundine serpit In freta flumineis vicina Numicius undis." (Met. xiv. 598. 1 Quoted by Burn, " Rome and the Campagna," p. 353, who has a useful map of this still wild district. A palus Laurentia is mentioned in Aen. x. 709. Boissier, 297 note. The Death of Turnus Lines 258 ff. Tolumnius the augur accepts the false omen with enthusiasm. Professor Conway tells me that this seems to him more like satire than anything in Virgil. Tolumnius was apparently meant to be a knave; and the poet had a dislike of the Etruscans and their augury. Cp. ix. 325, where Rhamnes, the favourite augur of Turnus, was slain while asleep and snoring ; and xi. 732 ff. . the locus classicus in Virgil for Etruscan short- comings, with which the poet was familiar at Mantua, a half- Etruscan city. 1 Lines 283 ff. : " Diripuere aras, it toto turbida caelo tempestas telorum ac ferreus ingruit imber, craterasque focosque ferunt, fugit ipse Latinus pulsates referens infecto foedere divos." I put a comma after ferunt, instead of the usual full stop; then the four clauses, thus loosely strung- together, will all suggest the confusion and rapidity of the action, as does the repeated alliteration. They clear the altars of the sacred things upon them because they see the attack coming; then the storm breaks, and amid a shower of javelins they snatch up the bowls and portable altars (see above on 118) while the king carries away with him the images of his gods, badly knocked about by the iron hail. Diripuere does not mean, as it is often taken, 1 Was there an Etruscan strain in the poet's family ? (Cp. Braunholtz in Classical Review, 1915, p. 109). 73 The Death of Turn us that they plundered the altars for firebrands, as Corynaeus did soon afterwards (298). They did not want to set anything on fire, as the Rutuli did in ix. 75. No; the sense here is the same as in Georg. iv. 214, " constructaque mella Diripuere ipsae et cratis solvere favorum"; or in Aen iii. 227, where the Harpies diripiunt dapes. Pulsatos divos should be taken literally of the blows given by the missiles. Servius started the wrong meaning violates, laesos, fractis foederibus ; but (i) if Virgil is thinking of images, he must be also thinking of their being upset and injured. (2) Pulsar e suggests repeated blows, as in the superb passage in Georg. i. 496, of the empty helmets on the field of Philippi against which the harrow knocks, or of the blows of Entellus in v. 460. It may be asked, Is Virgil really thinking of images of gods here ? He has not mentioned them so far in this book. But as on the Shield Augustus appears with the images of the Penates and the Di Magni, and as Aeneas when leaving Troy (iii. 12) had these same guardians with him, so Latinus brought the Latin equivalents of these to witness the solemn treaty-making. That he had images in his palace we know from vii. 177 ff. the images of his divine forefathers. Virgil clearly recognizes the icon in his system of divinity (though at Rome there were none in the earliest times), along with the Olympians who with the Fates preside over the whole action of the poem, and those unknown and invisible di agrestes, whom in his heart of hearts he loved better than all the rest. 74 Lines 311 ff.\ " At plus Aeneas dextram tendebat inermem nudato capite atque suos clamore vocabat: quo ruitis ? quaeve ista repens discordia surgit ? o cohibete iras ! ictura iam foedus et omnes compositae leges, mihi ius concurrere soli, me sinite atque auferte metus : ego f oedera faxo firma manu, Turnum debent haec iam mihi sacra." I think it will be found that when Virgil calls Aeneas by the epithet which has so often irritated men of the world like C. J. Fox, he had some special reason for it, just as he had almost always a special reason for calling his hero by a patronymic. 1 Here the reason for pius is obvious, if we understand the word with Henry in the large and gracious sense of kindly, true, honest, as well as dutiful towards gods and family. 3 Perhaps I can best express the meaning here, as illustrated by the lines that follow, if I quote some admirable remarks of Boissier on this passage: 3 " Dans son combat avec Turnus, il pousse jusqu'a I'exe6s le respect de la foi juree. Quand les Latins, rompant violemment la treve, recom- mencent la lutte, il ne croit pas d'abord que leur parjure 1'autorise a violer son serment. Sans armes, la tete nue, il veut arreter les siens qui essayent de se defendre; et pendant qu'il les empeche de repondre aux coups de 1'ennemi, il est lui-meme 1 See " Aeneas at the Site of Rome," pp. 86 ff. 2 See below, on line 839. 3 " Nouvelles Promenades Archeologiques, " p. 368. 75 The Death of Turnus blesse. Ce qui est encore plus remarquable, c'est que le poete a su lui conserver son humanite et sa douceur jusque dans la scene sanglante de la fin. La surtout se marque la difference de son caractere et de celui d'Achille." "Son humanite et sa douceur": that is, his pietas. Here, then, he is pius because he is appeal- ing to good faith, to humanity, to the solemn obligation of a treaty, which in those happy days was to be regarded as a matter both of ius and fas, and for ever binding : x . " paribus se legibus ambae invictae gentes aeterna in foedera mittant." (line 190.) For the combination of pius with fides andfoedus, see Catull. 86 init. : " Siqua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas Est homini, cum se cogitat esse pium, Nee sanctam violasse fidem, nee foedere in ullo Divom ad fallendos numine abusum homines. ..." 1 Latinus himself had placed this binding force on a still higher ground, when he first invited the Trojans to hospitium (vii. 202 ff.) : ' ' Ne fugite hcspitium, neve ignorate Latinos Saturni gentem haud vinclo nee legibus aequam, sponte sua veterisque dei se more tenentem." This may be taken as Virgil's own view, and probably that of the great Stoic lawyer Sulpicius (" Social Life at Rome," pp. n8#). 7 6 The Death of Turnus Lines 324 ff. I commented on these lines in " Aeneas at the Site of Rome," pp. 33 ff., in order to show the idealization of Turnus as a warrior. I did not, however, touch on 335 ff., " circum- que atrae Formidinis ora Iraeque Insidiaeque, del comitatus, aguntur." These splendid impersona- tions that accompany the War-god seem perfectly natural in their Roman guise, for it had been a peculiarity of the Roman religion to divinise ab- stractions e.g., Spes, Fides, Pudicitia, Victoria, and so on: the last of these we have met with in this book already. In i. 294 Furor sits within the gates of Janus bound with a hundred chains. In vii. 326 we have alread}^ had " irae insidiaeque et crimina noxia," dear to the heart of the horrible Allecto. But the language here comes from Homer (II. iv. 440), where it seems as modern and literary as in Virgil: tea epis aporov fj.efj.ava. But the effect is hardly so grand: the Latin words are more impressive and the expression quite as simple. Milton .could not outdo his master here, when at the end of his second book he describes the comitatus of Chaos: " with him enthroned Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things, The consort of his reign, and by them stood Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name Of Demogorgon : Rumour next and Chance, And Tumult and Confusion all embroiled, And Discord with a thousand various mouths." 77 The Death of Turnus Why is Formido here called atra ? Ater is a word frequently used by Virgil to give the idea of ghastliness, grisliness; he has used it in ix. 719 of Timor the opposite of Formido as he uses the word here : " immisitque Fugam Teucris atrumque Timorem." Dark, foul, murky, noxious, can all be expressed by this word, which is used of snakes, poison, smoke, and storms; but to this I will return when dealing with line 450. Now, as Formido is here active, not passive i.e., that which strikes fear we ma}' translate it exactly by Milton's words for Death: " So spake the grisly Terror " (P. L., ii. 704). * In the battle scene that ensues, Virgil seems to follow Homer again and again, as all commentators point out. Recently this and other battle scenes have been specially treated by Heinze in his book ' Virgil's epische Technik," especially pp. 189 ff. On p. 190 he has noted the general principles on which the poet worked; I will content myself with giving these for the reader to verify at his leisure: (i) The interest in the fighting is limited to as few personalities as possible. (2) Roman national features are emphasized wherever there is oppor- tunity. (3) Human psychology, apart from nation- ality, is never lost sight of. (4) The reader's interest is kept up by variety of action and by energetic 1 For the same expressiveness of our word " black " as it can be used by a great poet, see Mr. A. C. Bradley's " Shakespearian Tragedy," pp. 336-337 (Macbeth). 7 8 The Death of Turnus dramatic swiftness. In the constant use of simile Homer is also followed, and even in the choice of simile; of nine examples, only two seem to be Virgil's own, but one at least of these, that of the swallow (or swift) in 473 ff., is the most beautiful in the book. 1 Lines 353 /. Hunc procul ut campo Turnus prospexit aperto, ante levi iaculo longum per inane secutus sistit equos biiugis et curru desilit atque semianimi lapsoque supervenit, et pede collo impresso dextrae mucronem extorquet et alto fulgentem tingit iaculo atque haec insuper addit." This is the most remarkable " paratactic " passage in Virgil, I think. Mr. Page, however, makes no comment, nor does Conington. Mr. Mackail (Classical Review, December, 1915, p. 228) remarks on it as a sign of later composition, like the " short rhythms found in this book " (see above, p. 4). Beyond doubt it was deliberately intended to assist the rapidity, or breathlessness, of the narrative. By such methods did our poet en- deavour to relieve the monotony of his task in describing the fighting of his heroes. 1 Heinze strangely says that Virgil shows no familiarity \vith natural phenomena; he might well be referred to Sir A. Geikie's " Love of Nature among the Romans," where in the index, s.v. Virgil, he would find abundant refutation. See also Mr. Royds's " Beasts, Birds, and Bees of Virgil," passim. 79 The Death of Turnus Line 366. The wind pursues the waves as Turnus the Trojans: ftuctus is surely beyond all doubt ace. plural. Line 395 : " Ille ut deposit! proferret fata parentis scire potestates herbarum usumque medendi maluit et mutas agitate inglorius artes." lapyx preferred to pursue his humble role of physician, and rejected the offer of Apollo to teach him music and poetry. His motive was one of true pi etas : his father's life was despaired of, but it might be prolonged by skill in medicine. Depositi is interesting: it was the custom to place a dying man on the ground, as Servius tells us in a note on this line" ut extremum spiritum redderent terrae." There is a trace of this custom in a fragment of Lucilius: " Symmachu' praeterea iam turn depostu' bubulcus exalans animam pulmonibus aeger agebat." * " Proferret fata " : fata is used without any meta- physical meaning, as I have already pointed out (see p. 58) : it means span or lot, simply. 1 Quoted by Nonius, s.v. deponere (ed. Lindsay, p. 430). " Deponere est desperare," says Nonius: " unde et deposits desperati dicuntur." He also quotes this line of Virgil, two from Accius, and Cicero, Verr. ii. i, 5: " itaque mini videor, iudices, magnam ct maxime aegram et prope depositarn rei publicae partem suscepisse." The custom has been recently investigated by A. Dieterich in his " Mutter Erde " (ed. Wiinsch, p. 26), where examples 80 The Death of Turnus Line 397. " ^Mutas agitare inglorius artes." Nettleship quotes Silius and' Statius as having appropriated this phrase, using it in different senses (Sil., iii. 579; Stat., Theb. iv. 183), but he does not quote the far more beautiful appropriation by Gray in his " Elegy ": " Some village Hampden, who with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood." Line 403: " Spicula." The Homeric arrow-point was barbed, and had three tongues. See " Diet. Ant.," Sagitta, and II. v. 393. Line 412. " Dictamnus." There is much in Pliny, N.H., about this plant and its botanical relations (see index, s.v. puleium and nepeta). It is possible that it was some kind of strong-smelling mint (Plin., xx. 158, xix. 160), the strong scent of which attracted the animals, especially goats, who were said to have used it for healing their wounds. Nettleship adds Theophrastus, Hist. Plant, ix. 16, and Arist., Hist. An. ix. 6. i. This is one of many Mediterranean legends to be are given from Germany, and one or what looks very like one from Ireland (see Mooney's " Funeral Customs of Ireland," in Proc. Amer. Philos. Society, vol. xxv., p. 226). The idea seems to have been that as the child comes from the earth, so the man when dying returns to it more easily if placed thereon. But the argument must be followed throughout Dieterich's excellent book. 81 The Death of Turnus found in Homer, Virgil, and other poets e.g., Ovid. Usually they are about ships, sea-birds, and so on. The fairy-story of the ships turning into sea-nymphs in ix. 79 is a good example; another is that of the aves Diomedeae, for which see my note in Classical Review, May- June, 1918. This is the last appearance of Venus in the poem except when (786 ff.) she gives her son a moment's necessary aid by releasing his spear for him. I may pause for a moment to ask the question, Is she of any real use in the story ? For the critics usually tell us that the feud of Venus and Juno is quite superfluous, except in the way of " variety ": the tale would have been told just as well without it nay, without any Olympic deities. . But to this I cannot assent; these deities are " part of the vital architecture of the poem " (RSC) and why ? Because Virgil shared the view of all the thinking men of his day that there was a great driving force in the world, which was responsible for the rise and growth of Rome: a force which had met with strong and bitter opposition from other forces, more especially from the power of Carthage. This opposition is represented in the Aeneid by Juno; and to appreciate fully its persistent strength, the best way is to learn by heart the first fifty lines of book i. : there the force of the Power pulling against Aeneas is intentionally emphasized as the first fact in the story. Against such divine antagonism there must surely be divine aid. The Homeric hymn to Aphrodite had made Anchises the para- 82 The Death of Turnus mour of that deity, and their son Aeneas could be helped by his divine mother all the better because of the traditional idea of the connexion of the Julii with Venus. The Fates and Jupiter are on the same side: the Roman Empire was their work. But an epic poem needed a more personal and dramatic aid for that cause, a woman's aid against the wiles of Juno: thus Venus came into the story. Both the goddesses are character-sketches, or rather types, of Roman women, if I am not mistaken; and the Roman reader would find an interest in them which, alas, is denied to all or most of us. 1 I explained in " The Gathering of the Clans," p. 39, that when Virgil made Juno an unpleasant character, he did not hurt Roman religious feeling. The same may be said of Venus, and even more strongly. Venus was not originally a Roman deity, and this was quite well known to the Romans themselves. The evidence is good : Macrobius (Sat. i. 12, 12) quotes Cincius on the Fasti and Varro to prove it. 2 Nothing was known of her till the second Punic war, when she came from Sicily as Venus Erycina i.e., Aphrodite of Eryx. In this semi-Greek form she was the object of the invocation of Lucretius; and then she was adopted by the Caesars as V. Genetrix, with the help of Greek legends of Aeneas. Virgil was free to make what 1 See on this subject Sellar, "Virgil," 365 ff.\ Glover, " Virgil," 216 ff. and 297. 8 See the latest and best account of Venus in Wissowa, " Religion und Kultus der Romer " (ed. 2), 289 ff. 83 The Death of Turnus he pleased of her; and he has fashioned a very charming figure. Had he in mind some beautiful statue of Aphrodite ? She is a Greek deity, with something about her of the Roman matron, dignified, shrewd, and capable. But let me quote Sainte-Beuve, in whose " Etude sur Virgile " she holds an important place (pp. 246 ff.} : he is speaking of her first appearance in book i. : " La Venus de 1'Eneide, qui s'adresse ici a son pre avec ses beaux yeux noyes d'une larme qui les rend encore plus brillants, est, comme part out dans le poeme, ravissante de grace, de pitie, de defence. Les traits principaux qui la composent, toutes ses beautes, ses charmes, sont naturellement de"ja chez Hom&re et chez les poe'tes qui ont suivi; mais Virgile, en ne deployant qu'a demi la ceinture de la de"esse, 1'a accommode'e avec une supreme convenance pour celle qui va 6tre de"sormais la patronne des Remains. C'est une Venus charmante toujours, tendre, amoureuse, sobre pourtant et se"rieuse, maternelle avant tout pour les Troyens et pour cette tige des Ce"sars d'oii sortira le plus aimable des grands homines." Line 416: " Hoc Venus obscuro faciem circumdata nimbo, Detulit." A word on the " nimbus " of the gods in Virgil may be useful. It is necessary to remember that the Homeric gods lived in an atmosphere of their own called aether, and that when they appeared The Death of Turnus on earth traces of it still clung to them, 1 as in II. i . 199. So often in the Aeneid: most charmingly in the first description of Venus (i. 402) : " Dixit et avertens rosea cervice refulsit, ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem spiravere ; pedes vestis defluxit ad imos : et vera incessu patuit dea "; or again in ii. 589^. : " cum mihi se, non ante oculis tarn clara, videndam Obtulit et pura per noctem in luce refulsit Alma parens." In iii. 151 the Penates appear to Aeneas " multo manifest i lumine"; and in iv. 358 Mercurius is also seen " manifesto in lumine." This lumen accompanying the presence of the deity 2 may be called a nimbus i.e., a shining effulgence: as in ii. 615 (if the reading of all the best MSS. is to be relied on), " Pallas insedit nimbo effulgens," and in the passage I am now discussing. Thus nimbus came to be an attribute of divinity, as Servius distinctly says in several places e.g., on ix. in he explains it as " lumen quod capita deorum ambit," and on ii. 616 " (nimbus) est fulgidum lumen quo deorum capita cinguntur: sic enim pingi solent." Cp. on iii. 148. At first it was thought of as enveloping the whole body, but artistic difficulty produced a convention of confining it to a halo of light round the head, 1 There are some useful remarks bearing on this point in Mr. G. A. K. Thomson's " Studies in the Odyssey," p. 4. 8 Oi a human being nearly related to a deity, as in Aen. i. 68 1. "Veiled rn a cloud of fragrance," of Eve: Milton, PL. ix. 425. 85 The Death of Turnus where it appears either as a nimbus proper, as explained above, or as an aureole with rays. 1 Lines 435^. Aeneas' farewell to his son: " Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem fortunam ex aliis, nunc te mea dextera bello defensum dabit et magna inter praemia ducet. sis memor, et te animo repetentem exempla tuorum et pater Aeneas et avunculus excitet Hector." All the commentators, down to Mr. Page, tell us that Virgil is " copying " the famous lines in Sophocles' " Ajax " (550): a "- 735- 87 Q The Death of Turnus coast of Epirus and then by Dido. But he is growing ; Andromache, seeing him, is reminded that her boy would be growing too. 1 Dido might take him on her knee, but he was big enough to learn to ride, and delighted in his pony. Virgil loved dearly this boy of his creation, as this picture proves : " gaudet equo, iamque hos cursu iam praeterit illos, spurnantemque dari pecora inter inertia votis optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem." On their arrival in Sicily we note a great advance- ment in his career; he takes part with his father in the rites of the Parentalia at the grave of his grandfather, and in the games that follow his part is to lead the boy-riders in the game of Troy. Here we discover that he has a tutor or guardian, and also a boy friend Atys: " genus unde Atii duxere Latini, parvus Atys pueroque puer dilectus lulo." (v. 568 ff.) Almost directly after this he suddenly takes on himself a man's part ; at the first news of the burning of the ships by the women he gallops off to the spot, and calls on them to stay the fatal crime; his frightened guardians could not stop him. 2 Clearly Virgil meant to show that he was old enough to act for himself, and not only to take a swift resolution, but to speak with force and point. But he is still a boy, and he might not accompany his father, it need hardly be said, on his descent 1 iii. 491 ff. * v. 667 ff. 88 The Death of Turnus into Hades; in the sixth book he is not even mentioned. When we come to the last six books, the books of war and bloodshed, we find Virgil in a difficulty about the boy. He could not make him grow up suddenly, and probably did not wish to do so; yet if he remained a boy, he could not take part in the fighting that was what no Roman boy ever did until he took the manly toga. 1 Ascanius was, in fact, in danger at this point of falling out of the story altogether. Virgil ingeniously saves him from this fate by introducing him only where there is no fighting going on; he is on the very edge of it, but, except for a moment, is carefully kept out of it. In the seventh and eighth books we see but little of him ; but in the ninth book he is more prominent than in any other. Critics have often puzzled their heads to explain why the immortal episode of Nisus and Euryalus is inserted in this book, without any very obvious connexion with the story. 2 I am inclined to think that one reason not the only one, perhaps was to bring Ascanius once more to the reader's mind as a boy just approaching his first manhood. He cannot join the two young heroes in their attempt to meet Aeneas, though he would gladly do so. They, so to speak, have taken the manly toga and are ripe for service, though Euryalus is 1 Marquardt, " Privatleben," i. 131, note 7. 2 See, e.g., Heinze, " Virgil's epische Technik," p. 438. 89 The Death of Turnns really still a boy and addressed as such by Ascanius. 1 But Aeneas' son can take his father's place without going into the battle, and does so. He is at the council to which the ardent youths ask admittance, and is the first to bid them enter and speak. In the scene that follows, one of the most beautiful in all poetry, an old councillor gives the hint to Ascanius, " with all his life before him," to join with the gods and his father in promising never to forget the heroic pair; and the boy catches at it, and in a speech that is almost inspired rises suddenly above his own boyhood. 2 He addresses Nisus with an appeal such as his father himself might have made, 3 and then, turning to Euryalus with the language of fond boyish affection, he promises to care for his widowed mother as if she were his own, should death overtake Euryalus. 4 All accompany the youths to the gates of the camp: 1 This is the age for which Virgil, like Scott, had a peculiar tenderness: " Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech and speech is truth." These two perfect lines occur in the Introduction to the second Canto of Marmion. The Warden of Wadham remarks in the Literary Supplement of The Titnts, June 13, 1918, that " Scott's children are always just gi owing up." It is so with Euryalus, Lausus, and Pallas, and Ascanius grows all through the Aeneid. a ix. 258 # a " per magnos, Nise, penates, Assaracique larem et canae penetralia Vestae." ix. 295 ff. 90 The Death of Turnus " necnon et pulcher lulus ante annos animumque gerens curamque virilem, multa patri mandata dabat portanda; sed aurae omnia discerpunt et nubibus inrita donant." 1 This of itself would be enough to show what Virgil thought a noble Roman boy could do when suddenly called on to act in the absence of his father. But there is still more; in the attack on the camp that followed the deaths of the two youths, Ascanius is for the moment drawn into the fight by the taunts of Remulus, and kills him with an arrow. But this must not go farther; Apollo intervenes for the destiny of Rome in the world : 2 ' Macte nova virtute, puer, sic itur ad astra, dis genite et geniture decs." These famous words are not supposed to be heard by the boy himself, but mark the secret delight of Apollo, who then descends in the form of the guardian Butes, and bids him stay his hand. Ascanius is withdrawn almost entirely from our sight during the fighting of the next two books. 3 He reappears in the twelfth book, but not to shed blood: he is still a boy. He assists his father at 1 ib. 310. 2 ib. 641 ff. 3 In x. -601 he issues from the camp to meet his victorious father, who has fought his way thither; " tandem erum- punt et castra relinquunt Ascanius puer et nequiquam obsessa iuventus." The word puer is here significant of his inability to join in the struggle. 91 The Death of Turnus the sacrifice that should seal the treaty with Latinus; he assists him, too, when wounded by the spear of Turnus. 1 And he is still a boy, though fast approaching manhood, when his father bids him farewell before going to his last fight. With such clear, strong touches, Virgil has left an enduring picture of the growth, physical and mental, of a noble Roman boy, whose purple-edged toga suggested not only the weakness of boyhood and its need of protection by a holy garment, but kept daily before the eyes and mind of its wearer that duty to family, State, and gods, which was the foundation of all that was best in the Roman character. Line 450 : " Campo atrum rapit agmen aperto." As I have remarked above on 335, there is usually in Virgil's use of ater (a word of which he seems fond) a sense of ghastliness or dreadf ulness ; and I doubt whether it is simply meant to translate rcvdveai in II. iv. 282, as has generally been assumed. It is used by him of storms, snakes, smoke, poison, marshes, the Styx, blood, rather in the sense of thick or murky, dangerous or ghastly, than simply black. 2 Here I think it means not merely that the army was seen dark as against the plain on 1 xii. 168, 385. 3 See vii. 214; Georg. ii. 308, i. 129; Aen. ix. 239; Georg. ii. 130; Aen. vii. 801 ; Georg. i. 243; Aen. iii. 33, cp. ix 333- 9 2 The Death of Turnus which they were marching, but that it was hostile, noxious to the enemy, alarming, deadly: the last word is Mr. Page's, in an excellent note which only lacks two or three examples of Virgilian usage. A careful reader of " Macbeth " will find good parallels of this in the use of our word black e.g., IV. i. : " You secret, black, and midnight hags." l The word niger is a far milder one, and is generally used of material substances without added meaning e.g., of the soil in Georg. ii. 203, 255; of sheep, Aen. iii. 120; and of the hirundo, probably a swift, in 472 of this book. 2 Line 451: " quails ubi ad terras abrupto sidere nimbus it mare per medium. ..." I seem able to make out Virgil's picture all except the words " abrupto sidere." They do not cor- respond to any words in the Homeric original, 8 which, I may parenthetically remark, always 1 " The very thunder-cloud which, from the beginning almost to the ending, wraps this fearful tragedy in physical darkness and lurid glare, does but reflect and harmonize with the moral blackness of the piece " (George Fletcher's " Studies of Shakespeare," p. no). a In ix. 33-36 we have the two words used apparently of the same thing viz., the dust raised by a marching army: nigro pulvere and caligine atra. Why is this ? Simply because nigro pulvere is only Virgil's description, while caligine atra is the excited expression of Caicus, who is trying to make an impression on his hearers. a II. iv. 275 ff. 93 The Death of Turnus reminds me in almost every particular of a terrific storm which I saw approaching us when we were about to land on the coast of Asia Minor to visit the temple of Apollo at Branchidae on April 24, 1905, and which broke on us immediately we had landed. But what does Virgil mean by this addi- tion to the Homeric picture ? Mr. Page rightly rejects the idea of a waterspout, which has been suggested by some who read without due care Lucretius' account of a " prester " (vi. 423). That phenomenon is not perilous for shepherds or any landsmen, but for ships, and there is no breach of a cloud, but only a depression towards the water: in both these points Lucretius is exact, and differs from the Virgilian picture. A study of Virgil's use of the word abruptus has shown me that, as applied to earth, sea, or sky. it suggests a steep or precipitous break e.g., iii. 422 of a whirlpool, " sorbet in abruptum fluctus " : of a cloud torn straight down by lightning, iii. 199: of storm-clouds breaking downwards on the Helles- pont, Georg. iii. 259. If Virgil had meant that the cloud was broken by lightning, he would, I think, have made it clear, as in the second of these passages. I rather think he meant that the heaven (sidus) was torn down like a curtain to let the rain or hail descend, an apparent phenomenon not uncommon in our own country, sheets of grey hail seeming to sweep downwards through a rift in the cloud. The student of Virgilian and Mediterranean storms will do well to consult Pliny's account of them (N.H. 94 The Death of Turnus ii. 131-134) ; he will find that the tearing or breaking of clouds is a characteristic of most of them. Cp. ix. 671 : Quam multa grandine nimbi in mare praecipitant, cum luppiter horridus austris torquet aquosam hiemem et caelo cava nubila nimpit." Lines 473 /.: " Xigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes pervolat et pinnis alta atria lustrat hirundo, pabula parva legens nidisque loquacibus escas, ct nunc porticibus vacuis, mine umida circum stagna sonat." I have been assured by JVIr. John Sargeaunt, of \\'estminster School, that the bird of this most beautiful and original simile is not a swallow, but a swift, which he has seen occupied in exactly this way at an Italian farmhouse. I at once accepted his assurance. The epithet nig-ra seemed to me to suit a swift better than a swallow, for the swift is not black-blue like the swallow, but rather of a dingy brown-black. As regards this argument, however, I find that niger is the usual word for black animals when alive, and even for a comix (raven ?), as in Pliny, N.H. x. 124 (cp. x. 37 and 56) ; but this need not throw doubt on Mr. Sargeaunt's conviction. " Alta atria circum." Virgil uses the plural atria rather loosely, as in Aen. i. 726, ii. 483, 528, and I agree with Mr. Page that we may translate " halls." Large farmhouses and villae of rich 95 The Death of Turnus persons often had peristyles and colonnades which might be called atria, apart from the still more spacious porticoes outside the main building. A glance at a plan of Diomedes' villa at Pompeii will show what is meant. 1 Virgil does not say where the bird would be nesting: probably under the eaves of one of these airy halls. The food for the nestlings would be in every open portico in that warm climate, and also at the fish-ponds, which were always at hand. Line 474. Lustrare is one of the most beautiful words in the Latin language, and at the same time one of the most untranslatable. I may be allowed to quote a few words which I wrote about it some years ago: " We commonly and vaguely translate lustratio by ' purification/ lustrare by ' purify ' ; but in Latin literature there is another sense of the word, which shows well how one particular kind of purification had become associated with it I mean the sense of a slow, ordered movement in procession. This stately processional movement, so characteristic of the old Roman character, so characteristic still of the grandeur and discipline of the Roman Church in Italy, impressed itself for ever on the Latin language in the word lustrare. Let me quote a 1 See " Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero," p. 255. The last chapter of Varro, " De Re Rustica/' book iii., will tell the reader all about fish-ponds; and Columella, i. 6 ad fin., may be looked up for farmyard-ponds. 9 6 The Death of Turnus single beautiful example of it. When Aeneas first sees and addresses Dido he says: In freta dum fluvii current, dum montibus umbrae Lustrabunt convexa, polus dum sidera pascet, Semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt, Quae me cumque vocant terrae (i. 607-10.) ' So long as the cloud-shadows move slowly over the hollows of the hills.' Long ago, when fishing in Wales, I watched this procession of the shadows, and ever since then it has been associated in my mind with the many ancient Italian processions which I have had to study. Such is the magical power of a great poet of nature." * From the religious sense of lustrare, to go round in procession, driving away or keeping out evil from farm, city, or army, all the Virgilian uses of the word may easily be traced: whether it be the movement of the eye over surfaces, as in i. 453; of following footsteps with the eye and feet, as just above in xii. 467 and elsewhere; of movement without the eye, as in the passage about the shadows on the hills (cp. ii. 528) ; or of the sun moving over the earth, beholding and illuminating it " Sol qui 1 This view of lustrare was accepted in the main by Professor L. Deubner in Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft, 1913. Pp- I2 7 ff-> but he holds that lustrum, from which lustrare is constructed, originally meant " Reinigungs- mittel," and troubles himself a good deal because lustratio > which ought to be " cathartic," is on the contrary " apo- tropaic " in practice. I do not think that this distinction need trouble us here. 97 The Death of Turnus terrarum flammis opera omnia lustras." 1 I wrote of this movement as slow and ordered, and so in religious usage it undoubtedly is; but in view of passages in which the idea of pursuing is involved, it may be better to call it regular and continued, and in most cases also slow and dignified. It is necessary to feel the word, for to translate it is hopeless. Mr. Mackail comes near it in rendering the passage before us " circles in flight the lofty halls," by which he means, I think, that the bird follows the same course over and over again. If so, he is fairly true to nature; for though a swift or swallow may deviate slightly in her pursuit of flies, the main lines of her course are usually the same. Line 497 : " lam tandem invadit medics et Marte secundo terribilis saevam nullo discrimine caedem suscitat, irarumque omnis effundit habenas." " Marte secundo." These words also occur in x. 21 and xi. 899, in exactly the same sense of 1 Aen. iv. 607. Mr. Page, commenting on this line, says that lustras is here perhaps not so much " behold " as "illumine"; he thus omits the sense of motion, which in my feeling is the primary one. This comes (if I may say so, with all respect for so excellent a commentator) of starting your interpretation with a similar line in Homer, II. iii. 277, where the sun sees and hears, but does not move. Soph., Ajax 845, which he also quotes, has the sense of motion in the word SitpprjXaruv. We must be careful not to dim Virgil's Latin by pouring too much Homeric light on it. 9 8 The Death of Turnus furious and successful fighting. They would seem to be a phrase developed in these later books, as suitable to the hexameter, and expressing much in two words for a Roman reader. The interest for me lies in the question whether the phrase is purely literary, Mars being used as an abstraction for fighting, or whether Virgil still uses it with a trace of feeling for the god of war. In either case secundo would be appropriate, but if there is even a soupcon of deity in Mars, it must mean " favour- ing," while in the other case it would suggest onward and successful movement, like " secundo defluit amni " in Georg. iii. 447. Let it be remem- bered that we have already in this book (332) had a fine passage in which it is impossible to deprive Mars of his divinity altogether: ".sanguineus Mars clipeo increpat," etc.; here that divinity is undoubtedly fainter, almost extinct, as it seems wholly extinct later in the book (712) : " procursu rapido coniectis eminus hastis invadunt Martem clipeis atque aere sonoro." Or above (187) : " sin nostrum adnuerit nobis Victoria Martem." And yet I doubt whether even in the passage before us Mars is perfectly clear of divinity. The fact is that we are here just on the very verge of the extinction of pure polytheism. 1 Mars has done his 1 See " Roman Ideas of Deity," last lecture, where it is shown how in the Augustan age literature, and especially the poets, did much to kill polytheistic ideas. 99 The Death of Turnus work well both as an agricultural and a warlike deity; now his name begins to stand for war in poetry, and though he dies hard, not even Augustus with his Mars Ultor will be able to restore him to life. Lines 500 ff. "What god may now unfold for me in verse so many woes, so many divers slaughters and death of captains, whom now Turnus, now again the Trojan hero, drives over all the field ?" This is Mr. Mackail's translation, which I quote because it will serve as an antidote to Mr. Page's note, which is for once wanting in clearness. Virgil expresses here his reluctance to enter on a new battle scene, and one of which the issues are so far-reaching : he may be also thinking of the pain he feels at the coming death of Turnus, on whose heroic figure he has lavished his art. It is the last task of this un- welcome kind that as a poet he has to face : and he asks the aid of the spirit of poetry. With all respect for so excellent a commentator, I think Mr. Page is wrong in saying that mihi has nothing to do with the distant expediat. "Carmine mihi expedire" is "to unravel my difficulties in this verse-making." The tale did not need a god to sing it: but our peaceful poet might well ask for divine aid in a task so uncongenial. Lines 503-504: " tanton placuit concurrere motu, luppiter, aeterna gentes in pace futuras." 100 The Death of Turnus I should like to take these words as a happy omen for the future; but there is clear proof that Prussian militarism and its unscrupulous plans for world-power are not going to allow the gentes to live in eternal peace, or in any sort of security against war, if they can possibly help it. Lines 506-508 : " haud multa morantem excipit in latus, et, qua fata celerrima, crudum transadigit costas et cratis pectoris ensem." These lines are not too easy. It is curious that Servius' copy had moratum for morantem; he explains it " non diu moratum quod scilicet vim Aeneae diutius sustinere non potuit." Six lines further down he alludes to it again, but quotes it as " haud multa moratus." The Verona fragment (V.) which contains lines 488-507, and belongs, perhaps, to the fourth century, reads morantis, but all other MSS. have morantem, which makes the best sense viz., that Sucro could not stop the onslaught of Aeneas. Fata here apparently means death : another proof of the folly of trying to make too much of Virgil's use of the word. See above, p. 58. " Crudum ensem." Mr. Mac kail translates " harsh sword." " Harsh " is a word of rather vague meaning (very often too vague in its use by commentators), but comes very near the true meaning of crudus, without exactly hitting it. Crudus seems to be used by Virgil of something to 10 1 The Death of Turnus which no artificial process has been applied no process of healing, cleaning, or preparation. " Raw ' ' will translate it when it is used of hide, as in vii. 690 (cp. the caesium in v. 69), or of untanned bark, in ix. 743. Crudus ensis must, I think, mean that the sword was bloody and unwiped. The verb crudescere is used in vii. 788 (" crudescunt sanguine pugnae ") to mean that the fighting grows raw and bloody there is no cleaning up. The main idea of the word is well shown in Ovid, " ex Ponto," i. 3, i6 5 " horrent admotas vulnera cruda manus " (quoted by Henry on x. 682); the wounds are raw i.e., have not been surgically treated. Lines 517 /.: " Et iuvenem exosum nequiquam bella Menoeten, Arcada, piscosae cui circum flumina Lernae ars fuerat pauperque domus nee nota potentum munera*- conductaque pater tellure serebat." In the last of these lines the question between munera and limina is a very curious and interesting one, and not to be settled offhand one way or the other. True, by all rules which usually guide us we should accept munera, with most editors; for it is given by all MSS. but one, and was also read by Servius; and secondly, it is the more difficult word of the two: it is more probable that munera should have been changed into limina than vice versa. Supposing, then, that we accept munera, how are we to understand it ? Virgil uses munus i Muncra, PR and Servius; limina, M. 102 The Death of Turnus in both its common senses (which senses often run into each other) of (i) gift, and (2) duty or burden; 1 but the best commentators are agreed that the word should here mean the burdens borne by the potentes, not the duties paid to them by the poor ; for a fisherman in a remote spot would not be paying duties to the rich, nor receiving gifts from them. But would munera in this sense of the burdens of the rich address itself to the reader of Virgil's own day ? Were the rich of that day heavily burdened ? There may be an allusion to Augustus and Agrippa, and a few other hard workers, but the burdens of the rich as a class were not a familiar feature of social life for at least two centuries later. This is the real difficulty about munera : how to make it suit the age in which it is supposed to have been written. For this reason, though I had made up my mind to accept munera with the Oxford text, I turned again to consider the reading limina, though it is supported by the Medicean MS. only. It is adopted by Henry on purely literary grounds i.e., the occurrence of the phrase limina potentium in authors from Horace to Claudian. The occurrence in Horace 8 is really a strong argument, because the second epode was certainly familiar to Virgil when 1 The former sense is the more common; but the latter is found in vi. 629, 886. 2 Ep. 2, 8: " forumque vitat et superba civium poten- tiorum limina." Columella, Praefatio (quoted by Henry): " An honestius duxerim mercenarii salutatoris mendacis- simum aucupium circumvolitantis limina potentiorum. . . ." 103 H The Death of Turnus he wrote this line, which may be an echo, in the courteous manner familiar at the time, of the earlier poem, as the fourth eclogue was perhaps an answer to the sixteenth epode. 1 The same words occur in the preface to Columella's work on agriculture, written only a generation later. Thus limina seems to be historically the better word of the two ; for there were good reasons why Virgil should have written it, in an age when, as we all know, the poor were continually in the habit of waiting at the rich man's door in the hope of bounty. But supposing that he did write limina, how are we to account for the appearance of the less obvious word munera in Servius and in all the MSS. but one ? I will make the following suggestion for what it is worth. Servius explains munera by the word obsequia that is, the humble duties paid by the poor to the rich and great. He was writing at the end of the fourth century, and the MSS. which read munera belong to the fifth century. Now, in the fourth century and onwards the word potentes was used for the great landowners, themselves exempt from taxation, whose estates were the refuge of ruined men both from the middle and lower classes. 2 1 On the borrowings of Virgil from Gallus see chapter v. of the late Professor Skutsch's " Vergil's Friihzeit." * For the word potentes see Dill, " Roman Society in the last century of the Western Empire," pp. 222 ff. These were the great landholders of the senatorial order. Both the curiales of the munieipia and the ascripti glebae were passing into strict dependence on these powerful men. See Dill, pp. 218 ff., and throughout the chapter. 104 The Death of Turnus Whoever will read Sir Samuel Dill's most interesting chapter on the aggrandisement of the aristocracy in this age, will see that Servius might have had good reason for this explanation in the social life of his own time. Is it possible that munera may have been a gloss of the third or fourth century, which found its way gradually into most MSS. just because it was more comprehensible than limina to the reader -of that age ? Line 520. " Conductaque pater tellure serebat." Pater is put in happily to give the idea of headship of a household. His land was hired, not his own, but he lived contentedly by honest work and brought up a family. This man is supposed to be a Greek of Argolis, where the waters of Lerna were, but doubtless Virgil is writing in terms of the social life of Italy in his own time. Small tenancies were not unknown, perhaps not even uncommon. Cicero tells us that he let his ancestral land at Arpinum in praediola, whence one may infer that other land- owners did the same. 1 Columella (i. 7) has a good deal to say about the tenancies of free cultivators, and quotes Saserna, who wrote on agriculture, as far as can be determined, about a century B.C. 2 It is possible that small holdings of this kind had long been in existence. But the subject is an 1 Cic., Att., xiii. ig, 2; " Social Life at Rome," p. 254. 2 There were two Sasernae, father and son. For what is known about them, Schanz, " Gesch. Rom. Litt.," II., P- 505- 105 The Death of Turnus obscure one, and Gummerus, 1 the best writer on it, has not been able to increase our knowledge. Line 521 : " Ac velut immissi diversis partibus ignes arentem in silvara et virgulta sonantia lauro, aut ubi decursu rapido de montibus altis dant sonitum spumosi amnes et in aequora currunt quisque suum populatus iter. . . ." Virgil's similes, so often suggested by Homeric ones, are almost as often modified and vivified by his own Italian experience. Homer's torrent rushes down to the sea in II. xvi. 391, but to the plain in xi. 492; which does Virgil mean ? If he is think- ing of his own country below the Alps, the latter; if perchance of the east coast and the Apennines, the former. Aequora might mean either sea or plain. But in this book he uses the word repeatedly for the plain viz., in lines 333, 501, 614, 710, and 742. In 742 it is in the plural, but in the other lines in jthe singular. " ergo amens diversa fuga petit aequora Turnus." On the whole I should guess that he is thinking of the foothills of the Alps and his own haunts. It is not likely that he knew much of the east coast. The simile of the burning forest may also be taken as reflecting the poet's own experience in that same region. Lucretius' imaginary forest fire (v. 1243 ff.}, which revealed metals to mankind, may have been caused, he says, in various ways, 1 " Der Rom. Gutsbetrieb," p. 64. 106 The Death of Turnus one of which was in making clearings for agricultural purposes, " pandere agros pingues et pascua reddere rura;" another was in hunting wild animals; either of these may have come within the experience of Virgil. It has been suggested, however, that by silvae Virgil only means the undergrowth on fallow or waste lands, both here and in x. 405 ff. Why, asks Heyne, in his note on this last-mentioned passage, should men burn woods in the heat of the summer ? And does not silva mean stubble in Georg. i. 76, and noxious growths among the corn, ib. 152 ? He might have quoted Silius Italicus (vii. 365 ff.}, who draws a picture of the shepherd of Calabria sitting on the hills of Garganus and watching the fire devouring the saltus below " ad pinguia pabula " to increase their fertility. These saltus were winter grazing-grounds for sheep and cattle. " In many cases the winter grazing in these districts was found upon farms which were under cultivation during the summer. In August the parched stubble and herbage was burnt, to improve the growth of the fresh vegetation which sprang up after, the winter rains." 1 This passage of Silius is so like Virgil's in x. 405 ff. that I am disposed fo"'guess that both poets were thinking of the same process, in spite of the fact that Virgil uses the word silvae for the thing burnt : 1 From the late Professor Pelham's very interesting paper (" Pascua ") in his " Essays on Roman History," p. 304. For forest fires on foot-hills, see Hooker's " Hima- layan Journals," i. 146. 107 The Death of Turnus Ac velut optato ventis aestate coortis dispersa immittit silvis incendia pastor, correptis subito mediis extenditur una horrida per latos acies Volcania carapos, ille sedens victor flammas despectat ovantes." In the passage before us it is not so easy to decide the question. ' Virgulta sonantia lauro " rather suggests uncultivated land. Lines 532 /. : " hunc lora et iuga subter provolvere rotae, crebro super ungula pulsu incita nee domini meraorum proculcat equorum." Let us be quite clear what is happening. Nettle- ship in Conington oddly misleads us, saying that Virgil has here put the chariot before the horses, a most unlikely thing for him to do, even in a battle-piece. Heyne seems to have put it into the heads of the commentators that the wheels went over Murranus; but it is perfectly clear that the horses trampled on him, and if so, the wheels could not have gone over him at the same time. To me it is quite plain that the rapid movement of the chariot -wheels flung him forward as he fell under the impact of the stone forward under the yoke and reins, where the horses in their excitement trampled on him. Provolvere rotae does not mean that the wheels went over him, but that they flung him forwards. Proculcat in the next line is an example of " pro " in composition meaning forwards- downwards, and more downwards than forwards; 108 The Death of Turnus cp. " procumbit humi bos," and many uses of prosterno e.g., Culex: 335. Line 539. Why Virgil chose this name Cupencus we cannot tell; but if he had not done so we should not have known fro Servius's note (Interpol.) that the word is a Sabine one meaning a priest of Hercules, or, according to the original Servius, a priest of any kind. " Nee di texere sui " seems to confirm this, as Servius remarked. Varro, L.L., v. 159, tells us that Cyprus was the Sabine word for good; what is known about it will be found in Roscher, Lex., vol. ii., 3006, and Wissowa, " Rel. und Kult.," ed. 2, p. 216, note 5. Professor Con- way tells me that the word is puzzling. The only parallels to its suffix are iuvencus and averruncus (Gradenwitz, " Laterculus vocum Latinarum "), and its meaning seems uncertain. Lines 554 /. : " Hie raentem Aeneae genetrix pulcherrima misit. ..." Nettleship is occasionally pedantic in his notes on this book. ' Virgil is inconsistent here; in 557 he says that the idea of attacking the city was started in Aeneas' mind by the sight of it." Surely we may understand that the inspiration came to him from his mother at the moment when his eyes fell on the city. The psychology is true, as it is all through this book, the poet's ripest work; these inspirations come suddenly, and the actor knows not whence. I seem here to find a clue to the 109 The Death of Turnus deification of Mens, the date of which was just after the terrible disaster of Trasimene. Good judgment bona mens, as it was often called happy inspira- tion on the field of battle, was then sorely needed. Wissowa in his account of Mens (" Rel. und Kult.," 314), which is by far the best we possess, shows that technically she may be of Greek descent, and that the word translates the Greek Sophrosyne; but the deification is in the Roman manner of the period. 1 Mens in the line before us can only mean inspiration; to say that it is equivalent to consilium, as Nettleship does, is so far misleading that the latter word rather implies deliberation. Sulla re- corded in his Memoirs that all his most successful actions had been the result of " sudden inspiration," not of deliberation. 2 Line 591 : " volvitur ater odor tectis, turn murmur e caeco intus saxa sonant, vacuas it fumus ad auras." * See " Rel. Exp.," 285. 2 Plutarch, Sulla, 6; a chapter of unusual interest, containing several citations from Sulla's autobiography. The origin of inspiration, as we may call it, or a sudden brilliant thought, is in Virgil's mind supernatural: as Nisus says (ix. 184), " dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido ?" But, as Professor Maclnnes says (Classical Review, 1910, p. 173), " in many cases the action of the gods is the reflection in outward nature of the man's mind: divine actions and dreams merely bring to a focus feelings already latent. The men being in the way, the gods lead them." 110 The Death of Turn us In the lines of Apollonius Rhodius which sug- gested this more elaborate and striking simile, there is nothing that exactly corresponds to the adjectives in ater odor or murmur e caeco. Ater, after our experience of it above (p. 92 ff), seems quite natural here, though it may be bold to translate it simply " black." Mr. Mackail is forced to enlarge the expression into " black pungent cloud." Caeco, if translated " blind " (blind murmur), does not strike us as harsh, I think. Both expressions are full of truth and meaning. I should have hardly expected to find such boldness in a young poet of to-day; but in " A Faun's Holiday," by Robert Nichols, which, in spite of some wildness and roughness, is the most beautiful imaginative poem I have read for a long time past, I lighted on the following (p. 99): " Or lay me down 'neath chestnut boughs, And drowse and dream and dream and drowse, Drunk with the greenness overhead, Until a blossom of sharp red, Shook from her high and scalding place, Splash with chill scent my upturned face." SUICIDE OF AMATA. Lines 593 ff.: ' Accidit haec fessis etiam fortuna Latinis, quae totam luctu concussit funditus urbem. regina ut tectis venientem prospicit hostem, incessi muros, ignis ad tecta volare, nusquam acies contra Rutulas, nulla agmina Turni, infelix pugnae iuvenem in certamine credit III The Death of Turnus cxtinctum et subito mentem turbata dolore sc causam clamat crimenque caputque malorum, multaque per maestum demens effata furorem purpureos moritura manu discindit amictus et nodum informis leti trabe nectit ab alta." In order to judge of this strange episode we must consider the whole situation. The breach of faith in the repudiation of the treaty is the pivot on which the whole story of this book turns. As we have been careful to note, it was a breach of the religion of Jupiter, an impious deed which could not be atoned for; hence the unusual passion of Aeneas' words above (565 ff., cp. 311 ff.}, with the threat to destroy the city ; and now this terrible scene of Amata's shame and despair. It suddenly dawns on her that she is the guilty cause (crimen) of it all, and her life is no longer worth living. In these days, when it is openly maintained by German publicists that treaties are not meant to be kept, but are only makeshifts, scraps of paper, the study of the twelfth Aeneid should be useful in reminding us of the profound conviction of the Roman that good faith in all his dealings, private and public, was expected of him by the great deity of his stock and of the pure heaven above him. This aspect of Jupiter is no mere adaptation from the Greek Zeus opKios, as commentators are apt to suggest; it is a real Roman feeling and conviction (religio). 1 A few words about the form of suicide, the nodum informis leti. Dr. Henry went sadly wrong here 1 " Roman Ideas of Deity," 40-43. 112 The Death of Turnus in insisting that the word informis refers to suicide generally and not to death by hanging (laqueo). On this point Servius is as clear as possible, and quotes the libri pontificates in support of his doctrine : " ut qui vitam laqueo finisset, insepultus abiceretur. Unde bene ait ' informis leti,' quasi mortis infamis- simae." The Servian interpolator adds a quaint story from Cassius Hemina 1 about Tarquinius Superbus, whose workmen, when compelled to 'make sewers, preferred to hang themselves, and also a few words from Varro confirming the ponti- fical books, but running off into absurdities about the well-known oscilla of Roman ritual. There can be no doubt that death by means of the laqueus, whether by strangling or hanging, was degrading in Roman eyes. The harvest thief was hung, " suspensum Cereri necari iubebant," 2 and this entailed the degradation for the criminal of having his hands tied behind his back. How, then, could Virgil picture a queen of Latium putting an end to herself in such a way ? The answer to this question is not simply that which is usually given, that Virgil is thinking of Jocasta in the " Oedipus Rex," or of Phaedra in the " Hippolytus " (802), and writing, so to speak, in terms of Greek tragedy. It is that Amata was out of her mind at the time, overwhelmed with grief and shame, and with the shock of the supposed 1 An annalist of the first half of the second century B.C. Schanz, " Gesch. der Rom. Litt.," i. 268. 2 Plin., N.H., xviii. 8-12. The Death of Turnus death of Turnus. " Mentem turbata dolore " and " multaque per maestum demens effata furorem " put this beyond doubt. It was not a deliberate suicide like that of Dido, but done in wild and sudden passion. We must not forget that when we first meet with her in the seventh book she had strangely pretended to devote herself to the cult of Bacchus (vii. 376), and that the Fury Allecto had then put poison into her soul. 1 Our conclusion must be that Virgil meant to paint this Italian queen as he painted the Italian warrior in Turnus, subject to ungovernable fits of fury; to show how great was the need in the uncivilized Italy of that day of sobering influences, such as ruled in a later age under the Roman religion. 2 Lines 604-611 confirm us in this view: " quam cladem miserae postquam accepere Latinae, filia prima manu floros Lavinia crines et roseas laniata genas, turn cetera circum turba furit, resonant late plangoribus aedes." They and the Bacchic dance in vii. 373 ff. remind us, not of the staid and orderly Roman lady, but rather of the Italian women under Bacchic influences as described by Livy in xxxix. 14 ff. 1 We need not stop to ask how Virgil came to introduce Dionysiac orgies into Italy in " prehistoric times." Milton did not think it absurd to introduce gunpowder into the battles of his angels and devils. 2 See my " Religious Experience of the Romans," pp. 108 ff., 173 ff., and 249 ff. Nettleship (" Essays in Lat. Lit.," p. 109, note) compares Olympias in Plut., Alex., 2. 114 The Death of Turnus Lines 646 ff. : " usque adeone mori miserum est ? vos o mihi, Manes, este boni, quoniam superis aversa voluntas. sancta ad vos anima atque istius inscia 1 culpae descendam magnorum baud umquam indignus avorum." Nettleship's note on these lines is unusually interesting: "The thought is, Is death so bitter? No; its bitterness is past if it be bravely met; for so I can gain at least the favour of the dead below to them, therefore, I turn. The idea of sympathy of this kind between the dead and the living is un-Homeric; but we have it, as Professor Jowett has remarked to the editor, in Sophocles (Ant. 75) : eVel TrXetow %povov' petre & "E/cro/oo? Jupiter weighs the two combatants in the balance or weighs their fata, which in Virgilian language is very much the same thing. Miss Matthaei 1 truly says that this, as an imitation of Homer (II. xxii. 209 ff.}, need not have too much stress laid on it 1 Classical Quarterly for 1917, p. 18; " Aeneas at the Site of Rome," pp. 123 ff. As Mr. Page says, the reader is apt to get as weary of the Fates as Turnus himself (see his note on ix. 130^.). But he would get less weary of them if he would learn to discriminate more certainly between fata (or fatum) in a cosmical or metaphysical sense, and fata when it is simply used either poetically or rhetorically. Here (xii. 726) it is used poetically, coming from Homer; a good example of the rhetorical use of the word is ix. 135 ff- " Sat fatis Venerique datum, tetigere quod arva fertiiis Ausoniae Troes. sunt et mea contra fata mihi. . . ." Servius naturally understood this : " hoc falsum est quod dicit Turnus: sed in arte rhetorica tune nobis con- ceditur uti mendacio, cum redarguere nullus potest." It is worth noting how comparatively good Servius is on such passages: they understood rhetoric in his day. 125 i.e., need not be made too much of as representing Virgil's philosophy of fate. Yet she goes on to do this very thing. " It does," she says, " fit into his general scheme, for the weigher is only the agent after all; it is not he who shall determine on which side the scales shall sink. It is the weights in the scales, the fates of Aeneas and Turnus, which make them sink or rise: he who holds the scales is only an agent, a pivot, powerless in himself, a mere instrument." On another page she speaks of the verdict of this weighing as overruling all qualities of skill, strength, courage, or virtus, which Turnus might possess. "This is Virgil's pessimism: thus does the sphere of greater things, of fate, make mockery of humble human effort." I doubt whether we should see " pessimism " here, or treat the passage as philosophy rather than poetry. The simple question for us is this why was Turnus' scale the heavier i.e., the sinking one ? For the image of the balance is only a poetical way of contrasting the " values " of the two rivals. 1 What Virgil had in his mind, I think, was this: Aeneas at that critical moment stood for the right cause, Turnus for the wrong one ; the destiny- controlling their lives was a moral agency. The great future of Rome in Mediterranean civilization, which is present to the poet's mind all through the 1 It is a natural and familiar image. Cp. Daniel v. 27: ' Thou art weighed in the balances, and found wanting." In Virgil the heavy scale is the bad one : see note below on the next line. 126 The Death of Turnus Aeneid, recurring in all his poetry like a great fugue subject, lies with Aeneas, his fortune, his posterity: Turnus stands for himself and his individual passion, has no future to look forward to, nor cares to look beyond the present; he stands for the fighting instinct (which Virgil deprecates all along), and for tribal disunion. This is why the fata of Turnus sink the scale, and condemn him. It is true that Virgil, like Milton after him, was attracted by the character, his own creation, of the champion of the wrong side, and has made him a worthy antagonist of his hero has made him so great a figure in his self-sacrifice for the wrong cause that in the last line of the book the word indigmta 1 is justified. But this is poetry, not philosophy, just as Milton's treatment of Satan is poetry, not theology. As I have said elsewhere, " no one can read even the sixth Aeneid without feeling that poetry was all in all to him ; that learn- ing, legend, philosophy, religion, whatever in the whole range of human thought and fancy entered his mind, emerged from it as poetry and poetry only." 2 Lines 725-727 continued. I turn to the Latin, which is difficult. The usual way of interpreting it is by turning out two passages of Homer, II, viii. 7 2 an d xxii. 212, and then proceeding to adapt Virgil's words to Homer's. This method is 1 " Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras." 8 " Rel. Exp.," p. 424. 127 The Death of Turnus nearly always misleading: Virgil takes the idea of his image or simile from Homer, Apollonius, or another poet, but almost always adapts that poet's words to his own poetical needs, or to the ideas and beliefs of his own time. It is therefore putting the cart before the horse to adapt his words to his predecessor's; it is misleading to talk of his " copy- ing," a process of which a mind like his would never be guilty. Yet commentators go on fancying that when they have quoted Homer they have ex- plained Virgil. Are we to suppose that Virgil meant by his fata to translate or reproduce Homer's /d/pe? (II. xxii. 210) ? What does Homer mean by that word ? As Miss Harri- son says truly, Homer's Ker of death (tcrjp Oavdroio] is itself heir to a long ancestry; the meaning of Ker has changed much, and was still changing when Homer used it. " In Homer we catch the word Ker at a moment of transition : it is half death, half death-spirit." 1 From Homer to Virgil is a long way, and meanwhile the meaning of the word in literature and art had so much changed that Aeschylus could easily make it mean, not death, but soul, and in his play, the Psychostasia, could make the action turn on the weighing of souls or lives. " This is certain," says Miss Harrison, " because Plutarch, from whom we learn about this play, placed at either side of the scale the mothers Thetis and Eos praying for their sons Achilles and Memnon " (P- 183). 1 Prolegomena to " Greek Religion," p. 174. 128 The Death of Turnus We do not know whether Aeschylus attached a moral idea to this Psychostasia, but it is highly probable that he did so, and that the value of the souls, or lives, had some effect on the result of the weighing. Four centuries later, with all Greek literature and philosophy to help him, is it likely that Virgil's idea of this weighing should revert to the Homeric type, and compel us to translate fata duorum as the deaths of the two rivals ? Surely not : fatum, fata, all through the Aeneid, conveys or implies the idea of moral values. Aeneas is the instrument of a just destiny, that is to bring good government and finally peace to the world. To suppose that the balance is to decide the fate of the two men without reference to their values is to my mind preposterous; it is to be false to the history and literature of the Graeco-Roman world in the last century B.C. I put it to myself thus: if Cicero had lived to read the Aeneid, what would he have made of fata in these lines ? Surely I need not answer this question. " Quern damnet labor, et (aut ?) quo vergat pondere letum." Jupiter put two different fates into the two scales i.e., not only two different fortunes, but two different values, to see which would sink and which would rise. (Must he not have known beforehand, it has very naturally been asked ?) Now, one would naturally expect that Virgil would express both the fates in this line, the one that would rise and the one that would sink; but all modern commentators seem to agree that 129 he has only mentioned the sinking one, and that " quern damnet labor " means exactly the same as " quo vergat ponder e letum " : the two clauses show- ing his characteristic manner, which Henry loves to call theme and variation. But the Latin inter- preters took the line the other way, Servius, Nonius, and apparently Priscian; for the two latter read aut for et, which implies that the two clauses for them did not mean the same thing, and Servius explicitly says so. His interpolator, who is at least as good a scholar as himself, adds, " Nonnulli sic tradunt: quern labor suus liberet, quem mors urgeat." Here is a divergence between ancient and modern opinion of a very interesting kind. Servius seems to have found no difficulty in taking damnet to mean "release" i.e., the opposite of condemn: " quem voto liberet labor praeliandi " ; and Nonius 1 quotes one or two passages in which damno has this meaning. Apparently this verb originally meant to give a verdict, which either cast a defendant in a suit or decided in his favour. If the latter, it brought the case to an end and released him from all obligations. This sense of releasing, however, survived only in religion, where a man who had made a vow was reus until he had performed it, and 1 P. 425, Lindsay. Besides this passage and Eel. v. 80, he quotes Turpilius in Leucadia (Poetae Comici, 127; Ribbeck), " Sisenna Hist.," (iv. fragm. 100 [Peter]) : " quod voto damnati fetum omnem dicuntur eius anni statim consecrasse " i.e., they did this as people released from their vow. See Macrobius iii. 2, 6, quoted below. 130 The Death of Turnus then damnatus voti, released from all further obliga- tion. I doubt if we have any good right to say that our poet did not mean to use the word here in this sense: "whom the coming struggle will release from all obligations." He had already used damno in an unusual sense in the sixth Eclogue: " damnabis tu quoque votis." I believe this means ' You, Daphnis, as a god, will now (like a Roman magistrate) release from all obligation those who have paid their vows to you "^i.e., you will share the privilege of the gods in releasing men from their vows. This was what a god did when a vow duly made had been at length duly paid. So Macrobius, Sat. iii. 2, 6: " qui suscepto voto se numinibus obligat, damnatus autem qui promissa vota iam solvit." I think, then, that we ought not too readily to dismiss the Latin interpreters, as, e.g., Nettleship did in his note on this passage, seeing that they were nearer to the spoken word than we are we who have for twenty centuries associated the word damno with simple condemnation. But beyond this I am not disposed to go: it is here impossible to be certain. 1 1 Virgil does not seem to have been averse at the end of his work to use an antique form or meaning of a word, cp. the subjunctive edit in line 80 1, where there is no doubt about the reading. We may also lemember his boldness in line 648 (see above, p. 115). The strange use of the word superstitio in 817 is another example (see below, p. 142 ff.). The Death of Turnus Lines 749 ff. Aeneas pursuing Turnus. " Inclusum veluti si quando flumine nactus cervum aut puniceae saeptum formidine pennae venator cursu canis et latratibus instat; ille autem insidiis et ripa territus alta mille fugit refugitque vias, at vividus Umber haeret hians, iam iamque tenet similisque tenenti increpuit mails morsuque elusus inani est: turn vero exoritur clamor, ripaeque lacusque responsant circa et caelum tonat omne tumultu. ille simul fugiens. . . ." Commentators refer us to II. xxii. 188 and x. 360 (this last for the bite of the dog), and to Apollonius Rhodius ii. 280, who follows Homer closely so far as the hound is concerned. Virgil, too, as Servius says, translates Apollonius (almost) verbum verbo in this same matter of the eluded bite : ev yevveo-ffi \iaii]v apd/Stjcrav But Virgil's simile is much more elaborate than any in Homer or Apollonius, and seems to be a picture from Italian life; and my object in studying it has been to revive the colours of that picture, though the task is not easy. Let us first be clear as to what the " puniceae formido pennae " was. I quote from Keightley's note on Georg. iii. 372: " The formido (prfpivdos} was a cord with red feathers fastened along it which the hunters stretched in open places in the woods : the deer, when roused 132 The Death of Turnus and driven toward it, terrified by the motion of the feathers, turned aside, and thus rushed into the nets (casses) that were ready to receive them." " Cum maximos ferarum greges linea pennis distincta contineat et in insidias agat: ab ipso effectu dicta formido " (Sen., de Ira, ii. 12). In this case we must imagine the stag turned aside by the formido from any possible way of escape, and forced on to a precipitous cliff overhanging a river, a feature frequent in central Italy. The only difficulty in this picture is the word aut in 750, which is the reading of all MSS. ; et would have been more natural if the poet wished to imply that the quarry was caught between the formido and the cliff. 1 But we need not make too much of this as a difficulty; for also in the parallel passage in Georg. iii. 372 he seems to write as if dogs, nets, and formido, were separate ways of hunting, instead of three parts of one method : " hos non immissis canibus, non cassibus ullis puniceaeve agitant pavidos formidine pennae. ..." We may take it, I think, that Virgil meant that the stag was scared by the red feathers (insidiis) and driven to the cliff-edge (ripa alto), as described in 756, where we have the et we naturally expect. 1 The Interpolator of Servius saw this difficulty: " Alterutro inclusum, aut flumine, aut formidine, aut duobus inclusum : infra enim ait ' insidiis et ripa territus alta.'" These last words explain the suggestion "aut duobus." 133 The Death of Turnus Then " mille fugit refugitque vias," pursued by the " vividus Umber," the big dog, nimble in mind and body : the excitement is so great, as he all but grips the stag with his teeth, that all the lookers-on shout and cheer him, and the banks and pools 1 i.e., the river channel and its banks " answer round about, and all the sky echoes the din" (J. W. M.). Lines 766 ff. : " Forte sacer Fauno foliis oleaster amaris hie steterat, nautis olim venerabile lignum, servati ex undis ubi figere dona solebant Laurenti divo et votas suspendere vestes." Faunus was a favourite, I think, with Virgil; he was one of those di agrestes whom our poet knew and loved (Georg. ii. 493). And he was a peculiarly Latin numen? and thus very naturally brought forward in these last books of the poem. He is appropriate, too, in an age of imperfect civilization, when all the coast country lying between the Tiber and the Numicius was wild and uncultivated, as it is once more, alas! at the present day; 3 for Faunus 1 Lacus, the pools in the marsh, says Nettleship. What marsh ? Is he not transferring these two lines to Lauren- turn and the combatants ? Interpol. Serv. raised the question of this transference, but answered it in the negative, rightly beyond doubt. * Wissowa, " Rel. und Kult.," ed. 2, p. 212. 3 Boissier, " Nouvelles Promenades Archeologiques,' pp. 262, 326. 134 The Death of Turnus was at all times a truly wild spirit, never willing, like Silvanus, to take a part in man's life and work as a guardian of gardens and enclosures. 1 This is surely why his sacred tree is here the wild olive, not the cultivated one. 2 Commentators from Heyne downwards try to explain the choice of the oleaster on literary grounds, but unnecessarily and without success. We hear nothing, of course, of Faunus till the story reaches Latium; but at the beginning of book vii. we suddenly come on him in his capacity of prophet, which is one of his leading character- istics, possibly the oldest. In book viii., pluralized, he represents the indigenae of the country; see " Aeneas at the Site of Rome," note on line 314. Now he is chosen to hold in his tough stump the spear of the invader of the land. These invaders had pulled up recklessly (nullo discrimine) the root of Faunus' sacred tree, and Turnus now implores the local numen to hold fast the enemy spear, adding in his prayer the deity of the land herself, who had been violated by this uprooting. 3 Faunus and Terra lend their help, but Venus comes to the aid of her son, and he escapes. The introduction of the offerings which wrecked " Roman Festivals," 260 ff. a The oleaster was used in historical times as a stem on which to graft the cultivated tree: Pliny, N.H. xvii. 129; Palladius, v. 2. 3 See above on line 176, where Terra is also the deity of the land of Latium. 135 K The Death of Turnus mariners had hung on the branches has no other object, I think, than to give the tree distinction. There may. of course, be a local allusion of some kind; but the old commentators do not mention it. The sight of such offerings, whether hung by sailors or others, was probably familiar along the Italian coasts; they are alluded to not only in the familiar ode of Horace (i. 5), but in Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, iii. 29, and Juv. 12, 27, with Mayor's note. 1 A curious example of the use of trees for a similar purpose will be found in Apuleius' Florida, i. i. Lines 788 ff. : Olli sublimes armis animisque refecti, hie gladio fidens, hie acer et arduus hasta, adsistunt contra certamine Martis anheli." Certamina is the reading of the best MSS. ; but it may have come in through the dislike of copyists to writing contra without its accusative. The last three words are to me inexplicable ; I cannot take anheli as nom. plural of the combatants just after it has been said that they were " armis animisque refecti." But Mars anhelus is astonishing. I am inclined to agree with Mr. Mackail (Classical Review, December, 1915) that incompletion at the end of the line may perhaps be suspected here. He also suggests that it may be a case of Virgil's " later shorthand notation"; this he explains in the 1 Add De Marchi, " La Religione nella Vita Domestica," vol. i., pp. 293 and 305. The vota of sailors are mentioned by Petronius (103). 136 The Death of Turnus passage immediately preceding the one I refer to (p. 228). " In both Virgil and Milton there is some amount of reaction (i.e., in their later work) towards short and even broken rhythms " e.g., 480 of this book, " volat a via longe." In any case it seems to be waste of time to try to extract a satisfactory meaning from 790 as it stands. Lines 791-842. To some it may seem that Jupiter and Juno are too homely in their talk to be presiding over the destiny of the world. But whatever the machinery, the object and meaning of this episode are as plain for us as for the Roman reader. We are nearing the end of the story, and it must end, not in a Trojan, but in a Latin key. Aeneas is to be Indiges that is, a deity of the country; the people of Latium are to be Latins, not Trojans, and to speak a Latin tongue; the Penates brought by the wanderers, " the religious centre of the whole story," are to rest in a Latin city, Lavinium, till Rome is ready for them. 1 The promise of Jupiter contained in lines 834 ff. is of the greatest importance for the proper understanding of the feeling of Virgil's own time. Not only the language, but the manners and customs of the Latins are to remain unaffected by the Trojan invasion ; the con- tribution of the Trojans is not to extend beyond the sphere of religion, but that contribution is to be of lasting value to humanity. And let us notice that it is not Rome only, but Italy, that is to inherit the i See " Aeneas at the Site of Rome," pp. 53, 113. 137 The Death of Turnus benefits of this alliance; it is to be Italian virtus that is to make the strength of Rome. This is no new point in the Aeneid; we have seen it on the shield of Aeneas in book viii., and it expresses not only the poet's own feeling, but the large and wise policy both of Julius Caesar and Augustus. 1 Line 795 : " Indigetem Aenean scis ipsa et scire fateris deberi caelo fatisque ad sidera tolli." After long years of discussion and dispute about the meaning of indiges, it is now pretty well agreed that the word means " belonging to, native to, a particular region " (a sense not unlike that of ingens in some contexts). 2 Here, then, it means that Aeneas was to be established as a deity in Latium one of native origin, not a foreigner. This apparent paradox will be explained as we read on to the end of the conversation between Jupiter and Juno. It is interesting to note that Aeneas here simply takes the place of an earlier Jupiter Indiges, whose cult was on the banks of the river Numicius. Pliny, mentioning the objects of interest between Ostia and Ardea in their order from north-west to south- east, writes: " In principio est Ostia colonia a Romano rege deducta, oppidum Laurentum, lucus 1 See a useful paper by Professor Maclnnes in Classical Review, 1912, pp. i ff. 3 Wissowa, " Gesammelte Abhandlungen," p. 180, and " Rel. und Kult.," ed. 2, 124. 138 The Death of Turnus lovis Indigetis, amnis Numicius, 1 Ardea. . . ." Livy i. 2 ad fin. says, in curious language which must not delay us now, that Aeneas died and was buried " super Numicium flumen," and that they call him Jupiter Indiges. The truth seems to be that when the story of Aeneas had taken root in Latium, a home had to be found for him among the Latin deities; and this was chosen because of the belief that Lavinium was the ancient home of the Penates of the Roman state. 2 Thus an ancient form of the Latin Jupiter-worship became absorbed by a Trojan hero. A parallel, exact in every point except that the usurper was not a Trojan, but Latinus himself, is found on the Alban mount, where Latinus, according to Festus, 3 disappeared after a battle and was recognized as Jupiter Latiaris. These are curious attempts to fit legends of Greek origin into the religious ideas of Latium. Line 828: " Occidit, occideritque sinas cum nomine Troia." I borrow from Professor Conway the following note on this passage : 4 " Juno's second request to Jupiter is like the first : Troy has perished, and neither it nor its name 1 N.H. iii. 56. Evidently the lucus was on the north- west or right bank of the river. 2 For Lavinium and the Penates see Varro, L.L. 5-144; Boissier, op. cit., pp. 144 # and 278; Marquardt, 477. 3 P. 212, ed. Lindsay. * National Home Reading Union, Special Course Maga- zine, June, 1909, p. 194. 139 The Death of Turnus must be revived. Many readers, no doubt, have felt this a strangely verbal compensation to give to Juno for the death of Turnus. But we know now from Mommsen's brilliant interpretation 1 of longer but not less impassioned utterances of Horace, (Odes, iii. 3) and Livy (v. 51-54) on the same theme, that there was a real [or supposed ? W.W.F.] danger at the time when Virgil was writing lest the capital of the Roman Empire should be transferred by Augustus, as it was three centuries and a half later by Constantine, to Asia Minor. The change would have meant in the last century B.C. precisely what it meant in the fourth century A.D. namely, the gradual submergence of the great Roman traditions of law and government into the corrup- tions of Oriental despotism. And hence it was far from an unmeaning conclusion to Virgil's story that the condition of the settlement of Aeneas that is, of the establishment of the Roman Empire should be a solemn pledge that that Empire should embody the noblest conceptions of sovereignty and 1 Mommsen's paper will be found reprinted in the first volume of his " Red en und Aufsatze," p. 168 ff. I cannot agree with all the conclusions of that paper, especially his treatment of the great Regulus ode (iii. 5) ; but I am clear that he was right in the point which concerns us. There may be an allusion to the same matter in Aen. ix. 641, where Apollo says to Ascanius " nee te Troia capit " i.e., Troy is not large enough for thee: as Philip told Alexander that Macedonia, the old home of his race, as Troy was the old home of Aeneas and his son, was not spacious enough for him (Plutarch's Life of Alexander, ch. vi.). 140 The Death of Turnus the purest conceptions of private life that the world had yet produced. Here, then, more than ever, Jupiter represents some of the great ethical laws on which Virgil was fain to believe that the Roman universe was built." Lines 814 ff. : " luturnam misero (fateor) succurrere fratri suasi et pro vita maiora audere probavi, non ut tela tamen, non ut contenderet arcum; adiuro Stygii caput implacabile fontis, una superstitio superis quae reddita divis." This is one of the strangest and most difficult passages in the book. Juno seems weak, and cer- tainly feminine in her weakness. " I did," she says, " induce Juturna to defend her brother, but the shot that wounded Aeneas was not my doing." There is something almost comical about this, as Mr. Page has remarked in an excellent note. And Juno is feminine not only in laying the blame on another woman, but also in swearing by the Styx for what seems to us hardly to need such a terrific asseveration. Hera in Homer also does this, and the situation is almost exactly the same. 1 Zeus is angry, and she fears his anger, swearing by the Styx that it was not her doing that Hector was wounded and the Trojans put to flight. But in Homer the Olympian machinery is always more natural, or less unnatural, than in Virgil, and the humorous element, if such there be, is less obvious. But now another point, and a purely Latin one. ' II. xv. 38. 141 The Death of Turnus Why does Virgil choose the word superstitio to reproduce Homer's idea of the Stygian oath, " the greatest and most terrible oath that the blessed gods may use/' even putting it into the mouth of Juno ? I have given a great deal of time and thought to the two words religio and superstitio, and I cannot be satisfied with the explanations that I find in the commentators. Nettleship says that s^lperstitio is here used for the object of dread (that is, the Styx), as religio is used for the object of religious awe in line 183 of this book; and he is followed by Mr. Page. That seems to me quite untenable; the word does not refer to the Styx, but to the oath by the Styx, as is clear from Homer. \Yhat Virgil wants to express by the word is the extreme awfulness of the oath in the mouth of a heaven-god, and what we have to explain is his selection of the word to express this. He himself has only once before used it, in viii. 187, where it clearly means the performance of a rite outside of the Roman ritual, as it often does in other writers. In fact, this is the commonest use of the word in the last century of the Republic and the early Empire. But it has been pointed out that in Plautus and the early play-writers superstitiosus had a somewhat different meaning, that of a man able to prophesy. 1 The_fojlpwing 1 See W. Otto in Archiv fur Religions wisscnschaft, vol. xii., p. 551. The passages quoted by him are Plaut., Amphitruo 323, Curculio 397, Rudens 1139; Ennius, Trag. 42 and 272; Pacuvius, 216. 142 The Death of Turnus passage of Cicero suggests that this meaning, and other kindred ones, would be understood even in the last century of the Republic ;i " Superstitionis omnes stirpes eiiciendae. Instat enim et urget et, quo te cunque verteris, persequitur: sive tu vatem, sive tu omen audieris: sive immolaris, sive auem aspexeris: si Chaldaeum, si haruspicem videris: ,si fulserit, si tonuerit, si tactum aliquid erit de caelo: si ostenti simile natum factumve quippiam: quorum necesse est plerumque aliquid eveniat : ut nunquam liceat quieta mente consistere." Here we have the same general idea of the word to which we are accustomed, with instances given of it which show how wide a field of quasi-religious feeling it might cover. There seems, however, to be always in the word the idea of some feeling which lies outside of the calm and regulated order of the religion of the City-state. As that order gradualty lost its power of touching the emotions and even the consciences of men, so much stronger and wider became the range of superstitio. Now, if we think of the unusual and awful character of the oath by Styx, as indicated by Homer and by Virgil himself " Stygii per flumina fratris per pice torrentis atraque voragine ripas adnuit, et totum nutu tremefecit Olympum " (x. 113), 1 Cicero has just been explaining religio not only as belonging to the order of civic life, but as consistent with natura acterna, and the knowledge of the universe, thus 143 The Death of Turnus we may guess why the word superstitio is chosen. Hades is outside of the " mos civitatis " of Olympus, and the terrible word implacabilis puts it in a totally different religious region from the cults of Italian cities e.g., the " pinguis et placabilis ara Dianae." Perhaps the best way to realize this is to turn back to the great scene in book vi. where Palinurus meets Aeneas on the bank of the dread river, and to the answer which the Sibyl had given the latter just before the meeting : " Anchisa generate, deum certissima proles, Cocyti stagna alta vides Stygiamque paludem, di cuius iurare timent et fallere numen." Such an oath is indeed permitted to the Superi as a right (reddita), but only to be used under special stress of circumstance ; and this and its dark and awful character mark it (rather as superstitio than religio. 1 Lines 838-840 : ' nine genus Ausonio mixtum quod sanguine surget supra homines, supra ire deos pietate videbis, nee gens ulla tuos aeque celebrabit honores." giving it a wider sense by far than it usually bore. Then he goes on to do the same for superstitio. 1 The name Stygian seems to have been applied to at least one sacred fountain in Syria, the oath by which was a terrible one. (R. Smith, "Religion of the Semites"), pp. 154, 161. 144 The Death of Turnus Line 839 is the one that needs explanation; a very strange one it seems at first sight. But there is no real difficulty in understanding it, if we keep two things clearly in mind. First, Jupiter is reproving his wife for ill-temper, persistent and spiteful, and ironically calls her (830) the true offspring of himself and Saturn. Whatever that may mean mythologically, the one thing it certainly does mean is that Jupiter and his father were good- tempered, reasonable, and benevolent gods, and that she had none of these good qualities. The words otti subridens in line 829 show clearly that Jupiter is speaking ironically. 1 Anyhow, he is reproving her for her persistent persecution of the Trojans, her bad temper, her spite. Secondly, this is exactly the kind of temper which was unusual among the Romans, and probably very distasteful to them. Whatever else they were, they were not spiteful, and hardly had a word to express this kind of spitefulness. They did not persecute, or go into passions, or sing hymns of hate ; the famous lines about them in book vi. 847 ff. show an entirely different temper. The truth is that until after the war with Hannibal they were singularly considerate to their enemies. What of their women ? it may 1 ix. 94 ff. So in x. 742. Cp. Mezentius. At the same time he wishes to conciliate her, and succeeds, by giving way on the point so dear to her the Trojans are in no true sense to be lords of Italy. The irony returns in 839 with the words I am trying to explain, but it is skilfully concealed, and in her joy she does not perceive it: " Adnuit his luno et mentem laetata retorsit." 145 The Death of Turnus be asked. I think that the same quiet temper may be predicated of them too. The only case of spite- fulness that I can recall is that of Pomponia, wife of Quintus Cicero, recorded in a famous letter written by his brother to Atticus. 1 These two points made clear, we see, or at least I see, how the Romans could be said to exceed even the gods in pietas. Gods like Juno, as Jupiter wishes her to see herself, are far below the moral level of Roman public life; and if anyone is aston- ished at this, let him remember that, as she appears in the Aeneid, she was not a Roman deity in any- thing but her name. 2 She was simply the Hera of the Iliad transported to Italy for the purposes of a Roman epic. But to complete the argument it is necessary to ask what exactly was meant by the word pietas. Here is a good opportunity, for this is the last occurrence of the word in the Aeneid. Let us go back to the first occurrence and to Henry's lengthy note on it in the first volume of his ' Voyage." 3 Henry quotes as usual from Roman 1 Ad Att. v. i; " Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero," p. 152. 2 See remarks in " Virgil's Gathering of the Clans," PP- 38 # 3 "Aeneidea," vol. i., pp. 175 ff. He applies his doctrine of pietas in commenting on the lines we are discussing, reaching much the same conclusion as that in the text: " You shall see the race of Aeneas surpass not men alone, but even gods, in tenderness and gentleness of heart, where the allusion is plain to Juno's deficiency in this same quality of pietas." 146 The Death of Turnus literature without any regard of periods, but his collection of passages is delightful, and his remarks are most instructive. " Pietas, the Greek eu