CHARON, CHIASMUS, ALLITERATION

The major deity/mythological creature who actually appears in the IGCSE set passage is
Charon. Charon was a well-known deity and Virgil may possibly have had an actual picture
in his mind as he wrote.

At first Virgil's picture is merely disgusting – he is a figure of “dreadful filth” (line 299) with
unkempt grey hair and a long straggling beard but then in line 300 stant lumnia flamma we
realise he is also frightening. His dishevelment is complete when we are told that instead
of a broach or pin his cloak is knotted to fasten it. He has to work the sails and pole of his
boat alone (ipse line 302) and although he is old, he is a deity and so his old age is fresh,
cruda (line 304). This is a coarse word (c.f. English “crude”) which fits in with his dirty and
unpleasant appearance.

385 navita quos iam inde ut Stygia prospexit ab unda

per tacitum nemus ire pedemque advertere ripae,
sic prior adgreditur dictis atque increpat ultro:
'quisquis es, armatus qui nostra ad flumina tendis,
fare age, quid venias, iam istinc et comprime gressum.
390 umbrarum hic locus est, somni noctisque soporae:
corpora viva nefas Stygia vectare carina.
nec vero Alciden me sum laetatus euntem
accepisse lacu, nec Thesea Pirithoumque,
dis quamquam geniti atque invicti viribus essent.
395 Tartareum ille manu custodem in vincla petivit
ipsius a solio regis traxitque trementem;
hi dominam Ditis thalamo deducere adorti.'

We can notice an interesting literary device in line 391 which Virgil has built up very
carefully.
nefas Stygia
viva vectare
corpora carina.

Notice how the line falls into three parts each containing two words: a central section and
two parts
one on each side which mirror each other alliteratively: corpora viva ... vectare carina.
This kind of arching structure is a literary device called chiasmus.

There is another more obvious example of alliteration in this passage:

ipsius a solio regis traxitque trementem
One commentator says:
“As a good guard dog, Cerberus should have stayed by the gate. Charon observes with
some
contempt that he ran to seek the protection of is master. This contempt is noticeable in the
brief
alliterative phrase traxitque trementem; and indeed one would not expect Cerberus to be
seen
shivering with fright.”
 GODS AND MYTHICAL CREATURES

Virgil begins by invoking the gods (and also the shades of the departed as well as Chaos
and Phlegethon. He is being “pious” like Aeneas himself in not revealing what Aeneas has
seen (which is not normally for mortal eyes) without the permission of the gods.
The Romans had a confused idea of the gods and their powers, perhaps because they
inherited their Pantheon largely from the Greeks, equating their own Roman deities with
Greek
ones as far as possible. A very good case can be made out for the Greek gods and their
associates
being a distortion of actual history rather than a total invention.
Aeneas himself is the son of a goddess. The Sibyl calls him Anchisa generate, deum
certissima
proles. He has come to the underworld through the favour of his goddess-mother Venus.
Palinurus
is correct when he says that is through her direction and protection that Aeneas has come
and
“neque enim, credo, sine numine divum flumina tanta paras Stygiamque innare paludem”.
Venus is
the goddess of love (Aphrodite, Ἀφροδίτη, in Greek) and the patroness of the Trojans. She
protects
her son whenever Juno tries to hurt him and this causes conflict among the gods. In
Virgil's Aeneid
Juno hates the Trojans because they are destined to found Rome which is destined to
destroy Carthage, her favourite city. It was important to the Romans to see themselves as
descended from
the gods via Aeneas. Although the war with Carthage (the Punic Wars) took place long
ago in 264-
146BC (Virgil wrote the Aeneid between 29and 19BC) the Romans remembered Carthage
as a
traditional enemy. Virgil's patron was the Emperor Augustus and Virgil was keen to point
out the
parallels between him and Aeneas. Aeneas founded Rome: Augustus founded a New
Rome. Aeneas
was the son of a goddess: Augustus was the adopted son of Julius Caesar who had been
declared a
god after his assassination in 42BC.
There is a clue in the opening of the IGCSE extracts to how educated Romans such as
Virgil may
have thought of the gods. When the Sibyl takes Aeneas to the Underworld entrance what
does he
see? You should be able to remember the tribe of horrible creatures that Aeneas first
encounters.
List as many of them as you can here
___________________________________
Chaos, Death, Grief, Hunger, Old Age,
______________________________________
___________________________________
Sickness, War, Discord, Furies, Pain,
______________________________________
Need, Sleep, Evil Pleasures of the mind.
___________________________________
______________________________________
___________________________________
______________________________________
___________________________________
______________________________________
___________________________________
______________________________________
___________________________________
______________________________________
“In this passage Virgil transforms ideas like War and Hunger into godlike bodies—adding
weight to
the argument that the other gods in the Aeneid's might also be more like embodied human
wishes
than full, accountable characters.” I find it hard to think why Hunger and War should be
“wishes”
so perhaps “embodiments or personifications of human experiences, desires and
problems” might
be more accurate.
Lines 347-350 reveal that the gods might – or might not – be responsible for the things
that happen to human beings. Aeneas is horrified to find Palinurus since Apollo had
foretold that is was his fate to reach Italy. He asks Palinurus what god was responsible for
drowning him, presumably, he thinks, against the decree of fate. “Nec me deus aequore
mersit” replies Palinurus. It was not a god who had done the deed, the rudder had been
torn away forte. Yet despite that chance event the destined fate, as we saw in the
previous lesson, had not been thwarted and he had landed in Italy. Not everything that
happens is due to the gods. The gods cannot thwart fate. The oracles of Apollo
always come to pass although apparently the gods can sometimes swear falsely if what
they swear
by is not sufficiently powerful – Cocyti stagna alta vides Stygiamque paludem,di cuius
iurare
timent et fallere numen.
After the personified miseries at the entrance Aeneas encounters, under the elm, eight
gruesome
mythical creatures. List them here:
___________________________________
______________________________________
False Dreams, Centaurs, bi-formed
___________________________________
Scyllas, Gorgons, Harpies, Chimaera,
______________________________________
___________________________________
hundred-handed Briareus, Lernean
______________________________________
Hydra.
___________________________________
______________________________________

These are different from the first group in that they are not just personifications of human
woes
depicted by Virgil but creatures from mythology. It is these monsters that Aeneas tries to
fight with his sword – until the Sibyl reminds him that he cannot kill their ghostly forms with
his weapons.
The main deity/mythological monster in the passage set for IGCSE is Charon. There are
mentions of other gods – Orcus, Dis, Jupiter, Night, Heracles, Theseus and Pirithoüs,
(sons of gods like Aeneas himself) and Proserpine.
Orcus god of the underworld who punished oathbreakers.
Dis Dis Pater is the Roman equivalent of the Greek Πλούτων Pluto(n). Both
words mean
riches or wealth (as in “plutocrat”) but Pluto's wealth is the souls of the dead
over
whom he rules.

Jupiter King of the gods (and wife of Juno, Aeneas' enemy)

Alcaeus (birth name of Hercules/Heracles); Theseus and Pirithoüs, (sons of gods like
Aeneas
himself) and Proserpine are mentioned by Charon.

HUMANITY AND DIVINITY, MIGHT AND PIETY

We have seen that Aeneas, like Hercules, Perseus, and Theseus is half human, half
divine. However, unlike these heroes who had divine fathers, it was Aeneas mother,
Venus, who was divine – his father was Anchises. When Virgil wants to emphasise
Aeneas' humanity therefore it is natural that he should mention his father Anchises.
Aeneas' response to the horrors he encounters in the underworld shows his humanity. He
is terrified
(subita trepidus formidine L290) by the sight of the monsters – a very human reaction. He
tries, as
any human might, to attack them with his sword but is restrained by the Sybil who reminds
him that
this is useless as they are just “thin spirits” (tenuis vitas).
Then Aeneas is moved (motus) in a human way at the sight of the unburied souls
crowding the
shores of the Styx. In reply to his questions about them the Sybil addresses him as
Anchisa
generate, deum certissima proles, (L322). Is this because he is sorrowing as Anchisa
generate,
(human) and she wants to remind him that he is deum certissima proles?
Aeneas human pity for the unburied souls is indicated again at his response to the Sybil's
speech:
constitit Anchisa satus et vestigia pressit (L331). Virgil also adds emphasis by means of a
technique called Theme and Variation (repetition of an idea in different words): constitit
and
vestigia pressit both mean “he stopped.”
He is Miseratusque animo. His human hesitation and empathy is emphasised by Virgil's
mention of
his human father.

Although he is part human, Aeneas is a hero. He is ingentem Aeneam (L413). This

description of his physical size not only contrasts him with the insubstantial souls Charon
clears off his boat to
accommodate him but also emphasises his greatness compared with normal humans – his
half
divine nature gives him more than human stature.
Troius Aeneas, pietate insignis et armis (L403) the Sybil calls him and she is respectful in
her
description. She calls him imago tantae pietatis (L405) and this contrasts with her
sarcastic remarks
about Cerberus and even Pluto and Persephone themselves. Pietas involves duty to
family, the gods
and to one's country. In the depiction of Aeneas on a Roman coin above we see him with
Anchises
on his back (family), carrying the household gods Lares (gods) setting out from Troy to
found
Rome (country). Virgil was aiming to make parallels in his readers' minds with Augustus,
his
patron.
“...the Aeneid was probably mainly propaganda, supposedly in support of the new
Augustan regime. After the fall of the Roman Republic the people would be wary of a sole
leader, and so by
connecting himself to the figure of Aeneas through lineage Augustus can show that he
embodies a
value [Pietas] so important to the Roman sense of national identity. Augustus himself
restored
temples, settled peace in Rome for the first time in decades, and many of his new laws
focused on
family values of marriage, and children. He showed himself to have a faithful and good
wife, and
didn't stand for things such as adultery, even exiling his daughter for the crime. Piety was a
hugely
significant value for him.”
In these lines then was Virgil depicting Aeneas as “the armed representative of pietas
boldly
stepping out where few have stepped before... the predecessor of Augustus as he appears
in the
statue at Prima Porta”?
Notice the statue has bare feet. This was only allowed for statues of gods.

FATE: PALINURUS THE HELMSMAN

There are a number of themes in the Aeneid and it will help you answer questions on the
literature
part of the paper if you understand them. One of those themes is Fate. The actions of the
often
conflicting gods are controlled by an over-arching destiny so that even they cannot not act
independently. One of the common themes in the Aeneid is that fate always comes true.
Jupiter as
king of the goods is seen as the author of this master-plan and he ensures that it will come
to pass
by intervening if the actions of the other gods threaten it.
The Romans also thought that the three Fates or Parcae called Nona, Κλωθώ (Clotho, the
Spinner);
Decuma, Λάχεσις (Lachesis, the Alloter) and Morta Ἄτροπος (Atropos the Inflexible)
controlled
human destiny. How this interacted with Jupiter's control is not clear.
The word Sibyl means “prophetess” and Deiphobe, the Sibyl of Cumae, was important to
the
Romans as of all the Sibyls she was the one nearest, geographically to Rome. Her home
was at
Cumae, a Greek colony near Naples. In the Aeneid she was a link between the underworld
and the
world of the living and as a prophetess she had knowledge of the “fates”. She wrote her
prophecies
on oak leaves which she arranged in order inside the entrance to her cave. From time to
time the
wind would disorder the leaves leaving people puzzled about the events they foretold but
Deiphobe
would not help by re arranging the leaves. Fate, the ancients thought, is fixed but mortal
knowledge
of it can be disordered.
In the extract from the Aeneid we are studying, there are two incidents which relate to fate.
The first
is Aeneas' meeting with Palinurus the helmsman in lines 337 to 383.
In these lines Aeneas encounters crowds of ghosts of those who were not properly buried
and so
have to wait a hundred years before crossing the river. Among them Aeneas sees the
ghost of
Palinurus. Aeneas cannot understand how Palinurus could have died, since a prophecy
had
predicted that it was his fate to reach Italy. He asks Palinurus what god was responsible
for
drowning him, presumably against the decree of fate. “ nec me deus aequore mersit”
replies
Palinurus. It was not a god who had done the deed, the rudder had been torn away forte.
Yet,
despite that chance event, the destined fate had not been thwarted and he had landed in
Italy.
Palinurus explains that he floated to Italy after falling off the ship, but was killed by the
inhabitants.
He goes on to ask for a proper burial for his body so that he can be taken across the river,
or for
Aeneas to help him cross over. The Sibyl Deiphobë, Aeneas' guide, tells him not to try to
cheat his
fate by trying to get across the river before he is fated to do so. Deiphobë tells him his
body will be
buried and in fact honoured. This prophecy will help him bear his fate until this happens
and he is
allowed to cross. Note that the Romans thought that no one could be happy in the after life
unless
properly buried.
The second incident involves the golden bough. This is a kind of magic wand which opens
the way
for Aeneas and the Sybil. The bough seems to have been something that Virgil made up
rather than
taking it from pre existing mythology. However, it has been noted1 that a golden bough was
a
symbol of Plato. In the his Republic Plato tells the story of Er, who visited the realms of the
dead
and returned. Virgil may be acknowledging Plato by this symbol. You may be able to recall
Plato's
views on the nature of the afterlife from the work we did in the first year of this course.2
Before
entering the underworld, Deiphobë told Aeneas he must obtain the bough of gold which
grew
nearby in the woods around her cave, and must be given as a gift to Persephone, the
queen of Pluto,
king of the underworld. In the woods, Aeneas's mother, the goddess Venus, sent two
doves to aid
him in this difficult task, and these helped him to find the tree. When Aeneas tore off the
bough, a
second golden one immediately sprang up, which was a good omen, as the Sibyl
Deiphobë had said
that if this did not happen the coming endeavour would fail. In the set IGCSE extract
Charon is
unwilling to ferry Aeneas and Deiphobë over the river. Deiphobë shows him the golden
bough. This
at once awes him into complying with her wishes. Virgil describes it in line 409 as fatalis
virgae
“fateful rod/wand”.