AENEAS' REACTION TO THE DEFEAT OF TROY

By PETER J. BURNELL

When Aeneas wakes up and finds Troy overrun {Aen. 2.298 ff.), he
simply wants to die bravely, taking as many Greeks as possible with
him. We are clearly meant by Virgil to consider this reaction inadequate
to the realities Aeneas must face. There is enough in the structure of
the poem and in Virgil's choice of words to leave us in no doubt about
that. As K. F. Quinn says,1 'Aeneas' surrender to impulse is as futile
as Priam's pathetic, foolish gesture'. Aeneas says in retrospect that he
did not have enough reason as he rushed into arms.2 As soon as he
stops to think, he immediately becomes inclined to turn away from
his mindless deathward career (559). Venus (589 ff.) confirms him in Je
this new course, or returns him to it, by showing him the futility of nach
any attempt at defence or revenge. Texte
But what prejudices about such a matter would Virgil's Roman dition
audience have had? This question is relevant to the interpretation of
the poem. It may be put this way: in presenting Aeneas' impulsive
reaction unfavourably, is Virgil correcting Roman attitudes or confirm-
ing them? The answer is not immediately obvious. There is no scholarly
consensus. W. A. Camps describes Aeneas' impulse as 'plainly what
Roman sentiment would approve'.3 Though Camps does not mention
his basis for this opinion, he possibly has one important ancient
testimony on his side, Servius, who says (on line 317):
Succurrit ratio viri fortis. Quid enim aliud a bono cive et forti amissae patriae possit
impendi?
Occurred the reasoning of a brave man. For what else could be laid down by a good
and brave citizen on behalf of his country when it has been lost?
It is not easy to know what to make of this comment. If it is meant
as an actual interpretation of the passage, it is, to say the least, in-
adequate, for reasons already mentioned. (His use of the word ratio
is in rather striking contrast with nee sat rationis.) If it is merely a
personal comment on such matters, without reference to the poem,
except as a source for the idea (a much less likely possibility), then
it supports Camps.
Quinn says something very different from Camps. At the end of a
chapter devoted to showing how the Aeneid expresses criticism of mind-
less revenge and suicidal bravery, he says:4
The Aeneid is one of those works of literature that derive their artistic impetus from
the fact that a stage has been reached in the history of ideas where a whole society

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 64 AENEAS' REACTION T O T H E DEFEAT OF T R O Y
can be brought through literature to the imaginative realization of a moral truth which
a recent traumatic experience has equipped it to grasp.
In this view Virgil is not so much correcting Roman opinion as helping
to bring to fruition something already, but only recently, formed in
it. This is not quite incompatible with what Camps says. But neither
Quinn nor Camps investigates the matter specifically.
Without attempting to find every scrap of evidence that could
possibly be applied, it is worth looking at some obviously relevant
themes and exempla. It is certainly true, for instance, that the Romans
admired extreme bravery and stubbornness in the service of Rome.
An obvious example is the renowned and ancient custom of devotio,
where a Roman would after due ceremony plunge into the midst of
the enemy, to certain death. The Decii were especially famous for these
spectacular personal sacrifices, and are mentioned in Virgil's great list
of heroes in book six (824). One might be inclined to take this behaviour
as a model for Aeneas' precipitate rush into the thick of the enemy
in book two; or at least as something in the Roman tradition that would
have led Virgil's audience to admire it.
Again there is Cato of Utica. Cicero points out how that great man,
that symbol of integrity for many of his contemporaries, chose to die
rather than to see the destruction of the republic: ... fact a ne videret,
vitam reliquerit (Att. 12.4). His nobile letum5 can be seen as a prototype
for the Stoic opposition. Above all there is the monumental portrayal
of him by Lucan. In his first speech of the poem Cato says that even
if all is lost he will still be in attendance:
Non ante revellar
exanimem quam te complectar, Roma, tuumque,
nomen, Libertas, et inanem prosequar umbram. (2. 301-3)
I will not be torn away before embracing your lifeless body, Rome;
Liberty, I will follow your name and your empty shadow.6
Above all in book nine he emerges as the hero of the poem, while
pursuing policies fully in the spirit of this earlier speech. There can
be no doubt that this is a good parallel with Aeneas' initial attitude
at Troy.
Another instance of stubborn bravery is Appius Claudius Caecus.
He had a reputation for intractability. In Pro Caelio (14.33-4) Cicero
brings him into court, in rhetorical imagination, to rebuke his descend-
ant, Clodia. He was famous for the speech he gave to the dithering
senate against appeasing Pyrrhus.7 Ennius included a version of this
speech in his Annales.8
It is not surprising, of course, to find that the Romans admired
outstanding bravery and sacrifice of life for one's country. But these

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 AENEAS' REACTION T O T H E DEFEAT O F T R O Y 65
examples, in particular that of Cato the Younger, might lead one to
go further, and to say that the Romans admired a man who threw his
life away as a gesture of defiant hopelessness. They provide a good
prima facie case pointing in that direction. The best procedure now
is to look more closely at this same evidence.
To take Appius Claudius again, there is a version in Plutarch (19.1-3)
of the speech against appeasing Pyrrhus. If we assume that this is at
least based on the actual speech, we can say that he was certainly not
for mindless resistance to an irresistible enemy. His point is that
Pyrrhus is not so terrible after all:
IJvppov, os TWV 'A\e£av8pov Sopv(fiopojv era yovv at\ irepieiruiv Ka\ depaTrevwv

trembling at Pyrrhus - well, after all, he was continually follower and attendant to
one of Alexander's bodyguard!
Then he appeals very realistically to the prudence of his fellow Romans:
Hy TOVTOV oiv aTraAAafeiv vofil^ere nonjoaixevoi. (plXov.

Don't think you'll rid yourselves of him by making friends with him.
This is stoutness, with a practical basis, with none of the morbidly
frantic quality of Aeneas' first dash into the fight.
As for the Decii and their devotiones, the two elements that Latin
literature most emphasizes are practicality and solemnity. One of the
Decii mentioned by Livy, for example, when on the point of dashing
to his death at the hands of the Samnites, talks about expiating the
dangers to the state (luendis periculis publicis).9 The act is practical,
then, designed to have a specific, positive effect. Also care is taken
to perform the customary rites (secundum sollemnes precationes).10
But is it Livy, rather than the Roman tradition more generally, that
makes a devotio practical and solemn? No. Both elements are present
in a fragment of Ennius (apparently describing a devotio; part of a
speech):
Divi, hoc audite parumper
ut pro Romano populo prognariter armis
certando prudens animam de corpore mitto.11
Gods, give this a moment's hearing, as I on behalf of the Roman people, in conflict
of arms, with presence of mind, knowingly send my soul from my body.
Admittedly this passage is problematical. Nonius Marcellus, who
quotes it, is not necessarily a reliable source.12 But in this case there
is no obvious reason to assume that the passage is entirely fabricated.
Then there is the problem of how prognariter should be translated.
Gnarus tends to involve the sense of 'skill'. Here, then, it would be

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 66 AENEAS' REACTION T O T H E DEFEAT O F T R O Y f
skill in war. But Nonius, who quotes the passage specifically for this .
word, defines it as strenue, fortiter et constanter, 'vigorously, bravely
and firmly'. Nevertheless, if prognariter means 'bravely', it is difficult
to believe that this particular word could refer to a rash sort of bravery.
But anyway, there is prudens, which is much more straightforward.
What is being done is being done competently and deliberately; quite
the opposite of Aeneas at Troy. The speaker is calling the gods to
witness a definite and conscious action. For Aeneas at Troy, where
the gods come in is to prevent him from acting without regard for
them.
Cato the Younger, especially as he is portrayed by Lucan, is the
one clearly applicable example. He really is like Aeneas at Troy before
Aeneas changes his mind. Lucan's portrayal, however, in its tone, is
the exception. Though Cato was much admired, his particular kind
of greatness caused controversy and ambivalence from the start. Cicero,
who looked upon him as a hero,13 was nevertheless uneasy about him.
This combination of emotions can be seen in a rueful comment to
Atticus:
Unus est, qui curet constantia magis et integritate quam, ut mihi videtur, consilio
et ingenio, Cato. (1.18.7)
There is one man who is the sort to be concerned rather with constancy and integrity
than with wisdom and intelligence, Cato.
The same combination can be seen in another letter, in which Cicero
tells Atticus that Cato is harming the republic by his integrity, behaving
more as if he were in Plato's 'republic' than among the 'dregs of
Romulus' (2.1.8). This suggests the same priorities as Cicero states
in De Officiis 1.43.152-3: the duties closest to man's nature are those
that proceed from the social aspect of his being. So Cicero, whether
speaking theoretically or practically, does not have much time for lonely
greatness, separate from service to the state; greatness such as Cato's.
Praise of Cato the Younger remained mixed in the Augustan period.14
Horace mentions him twice in the Odes, and in both passages his
presence is that of a great but somewhat dangerous man. His 'renowned
death'15 is mentioned in the famous list of heroes in 1.12.35-6. He is
mentioned immediately after the superbos Tarquint fasces. The phrase-
ology, as Nisbet and Hubbard point out,16 suggests Tarquinius Super-
bus, the last king of Rome. Not particularly edifying company for Cato
of Utica. There are plenty of other heroes on the list, whose company
would have been unexceptionable. Some editors, who have been
surprised to find Cato's emotionally inflammatory name in Horace's
pageant, have even tried emending him out textually. But with Tarquin
next to him, Cato does not look as if he is being purely glorified.

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 AENEAS' REACTION T O T H E DEFEAT OF T R O Y 67
In another Ode (2.1.24) a similar atmosphere surrounds him. There
is a vivid description of the civil war: the sound of horns, blaring
trumpets, terrified horses, brave generals, and the whole world tamed
praeter atrocem animum Catonis. Cato is not cowed, like the rest of
the world, but he is atrox ('harsh' would be a conservative translation
of the word), and so in a way a symbol of all the terrible passions that
reigned then.
Thus Cato the Younger, the only real exception, among these ex-
amples, to the general hard-headedness, is a man who in Roman
literature does not normally leave an impression of sheer excellence.17
Lucan is the exception. It would not be right, then, to think of Cato
as being in the mainstream of Roman heroism.
These possible, prima facie justifications, from Roman heroic lore,
of Aeneas' audendi extrema cupido have, on a closer look, been shown
to point in the opposite direction. It is worth taking one unexception-
able example of a Roman hero, to show in a positive way the bias that
we have seen towards the practical and the unassuming. Quintus Fabius cunctat
Maximus, unlike the Younger Cato, cannot be banished to the fringe or
of the Roman heroic tradition. From Ennius on he is constantly held
up as a great man and a great Roman.
It is Livy who tells his story at length. At one point we are even
taken into Hannibal's mind, and shown how he secretly admires Fabius
(22.12.4-5). In contrast with Fabius is Minucius, the Master of the
Horse, a showy hero. His kind of heroism brings disaster, and the lesson
in favour of Fabius' solidity is quite clear. The point is not that caution
is a Roman virtue, as opposed to boldness. Scipio in Livy is certainly
bold. But at this stage in the narrative the reader's mind has been made
grave by the spectacle of terrible disasters. What is made to look
ridiculous is not bravery but the simple-minded application of it to
every situation that war offers. Aeneas, in his first reaction to the fall
of Troy, is much more like Minucius than Fabius. By the time the
Aeneid was written, the Romans had long since come to know better
than to admire nonsense like that. Fabius was an important element
in their national self-image.
For Livy was not inventing the heroism of Fabius, or reviving a
long-forgotten image of him. When he paints a magnificent portrait
of Fabius, calm and determined,
ipse qua gravitate animi criminantes se ad multitudinem inimicos tulerat eadem et
populi in se saevientis iniuriam tulit (22.26.5 ff.),
he, with that same solidity of mind with which he had borne his enemies' abuse of
him to the crowd, now bore the affronts of the masses that raged against him,
he is talking about Fabius in a perceivably traditional way. Cicero in

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 68 AENEAS' REACTION TO THE DEFEAT OF TROY
De Officiis (1.24.84) contrasts the Spartan generals Cleombrotus and
Vgl:
Callicratidas unfavourably with Fabius. They (one might call them the
Aenea
representatives, in this passage, of false, Greek heroism) were unwilling s wird
to sacrifice one shred of personal glory for the sake of their country; von
whereas Fabius, the great Roman hero, stood out against unpopularity seinen
for the sake of Rome. Cicero describes him in Ennius' words:
Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem. Feinde
Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem, n
Ergo postque magisque viri nunc gloria claret.18 unmän
One man by lingering mended affairs for us. Not at all did he put rumours above nlich
safety, and therefore afterwards the man's glory now shines all the more.. genan
nt!
It is essentially the same picture as Livy's. Virgil also quotes these J
lines, or nearly quotes them, when he gives Fabius the 'position of I
honour at the end of the pageant'19 of heroes in book 6. This is a very r
important place in the poem for Fabius to hold. If any part of the I
poem could be called its keystone it is this. And not only is Fabius i
of central importance, in the Cicero passage and the Virgil passage,
but it is Ennius' few lines that come to the writers' minds.20 Ennius
has established this picture, of the great man, calm amid a hostile mob,
as the set picture of Fabius in his greatest hour. While the image of
an insistently just man surrounded by a hostile mob is not restricted
in Augustan literature to Fabius,21 that image is, as we have seen,
traditionally much associated with him.
In connection with Fabius one further matter needs to be considered.
He was an aristocrat. Was this ideal of self-control and service likely
to be admired only among the aristocratic faction at Rome? In one
way this does not need to be worried about greatly, because the literary
tradition, as we have seen, was definitely there, whether using an
aristocratic myth or not; and that may be taken as having at least some
significance for the predispositions of the Aeneid's audience.
But in fact there is some evidence that this ideal was more widely
admired among the Romans. Sallust gives us a speech of Marius in
which that great general (certainly outside rarefied aristocratic circles)
claims to have a responsible attitude which makes him less prone than
his rivals to military disasters against Jugurtha:
Deinde exercitus ibi est locorum sciens, sed mehercule magis strenuus quam felix.
Nam magna pars eius avaritia aut temeritate ducum attrita est. Quam ob rem vos,
quibis militaris aetas est, adnitimini mecum et capessite rem publicam neque quem-
quam ex calamitate aliorum aut imperatorum superbia metus ceperit. (85.45-7)
Then there is an army there, familiar with the area, but, by Hercules, more vigorous
than fortunate! For a great part of them has been wiped out because of the greed
or rashness of their commanders. Therefore you, who are of military age, press on

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 AENEAS' REACTION TO THE DEFEAT OF TROY 69
with me, take our state in hand, and let not any of you be seized with fear because
of the disasters of others or the arrogance of generals.
Marius is claiming to have certain qualities. We can recognize them
as the qualities of Fabius. We can also recognize something of Minucius
in the characteristics Marius attributes to the other generals. Although
Marius was behaving as a demagogue, and Fabius was not, the moral
values claimed by Marius and traditionally associated with Fabius are
much the same. This upstart eques is portrayed laying claim to this
particular kind of excellence not before the nobiles but the other classes.
The Romans had learnt lessons from their history, and the Second Herois
Punic War was one of their most crucial national experiences. Hence mus
the brave men of Roman mythology tended to have a touch of Fabius wird
about them. Even before the civil wars, let alone after, the thirst for nicht
death and blood that Aeneas initially shows at Troy would have been ersetzt,
a kind of heroism traditionally repellent to the Romans.
sonder
NOTES n
1. Virgil's Aeneid, a Critical Description (London, 1968) p. 21. integrie
2. 314. It is worth noting that Dryden (who says that Aeneas is a 'perfect prince ... without rt/balan
blemish, thoroughly virtuous', Dedication of the Aeneis (W. P. Ker, Oxford, 1900), p. 179) omits
to translate nee sat rationis in armis in his version, but inserts 'if Fortune favour'd', which has ciert.
no equivalent in the Latin, but makes Aeneas' action sound less nihilistic than in the original.
3. An Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid (Cambridge, 1969), p. 26.
4. Op. cit., p. 22.
5. Horace, Carm. 1.12.35.
6. A little later in the same speech (315—16) Cato hopes that he alone will be struck with
the sword, he who 'vainly protects the laws and meaningless rights' (me frustra leges et inania
iura tuentem).
7. Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus 19.1-3.
8. Ap. Cic. Sen. 6.16.
9. 10.28.
10. We can see the formal nature of the devotio in another passage of Livy (8.9). Here it
is in a very vivid form. The Decius in this case invites the State Priest to dictate to him the
appropriate words, veils his head, and standing on a spear begins his speech: 'lane Iuppiter
Mars pater Quirine Bellona Lares ...'
11. Enn. Ann. 6. fr. 16 (E. M. Steuart (1929) p. 28).
12. See J. E. G. Zetzel, HSPh 77 (1973).
13. In one letter to Atticus (1.17), he calls Cato heros Me noster. He frequently dwells on
Cato's specifically Stoic excellences: perfectus Stoicus (in Paradoxa Stoicorum); and perfectissimus
Stoicus (in the Brutus 31.118).
14. There is Augustus' own Rescripta Bruto de Catone (Suet. Aug. 85), but we do not know
what Augustus said. R. Syme suggests {The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939), p. 506) that this
was not defamation, like Julius Caesar's Anticato, but an assertion that Cato would have supported
• Augustus, because Augustus was the restorer of the liberties Cato died in the name of.
15. Nobilis here may simply mean 'aristocratic'. But in any case it is not the same word,
in range of connotation, as 'noble', because it can mean 'notorious' in a bad sense (examples
in Lewis and Short from Plautus, Terence, Cicero, and Livy).
16. R. G. M. Nisbet and M. Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace: Odes 1 (Oxford, 1970),
ad loc.
17. Cf. the suspicion Tacitus has for those who get glory the cheap way, by a useless death
(Agricola 42).

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 70 AENEAS' REACTION TO THE DEFEAT OF TROY
18. This famous passage of Ennius is conceptually fairly sophisticated. It distinguishes not
only betweenfleetingreputation (rumores) and lasting reputation (gloria), but between the purpose
(salus) and the reward (gloria). D. Earl, The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome (London,
1967), p. 66, implies that gloria was, in the Roman tradition, the purpose of virtus. This passage
of Ennius suggests otherwise.
19. R. D. Williams, The Aeneid of Virgil, Books 1-6 (London and Basingstoke, 1972), note
on lines 845—46. One could in fact say that there are two positions of honour, Augustus', more
or less in the middle of the pageant (791-807), and Fabius', at the end, immediately before the
famous statement of Rome's mission (847-53).
20. Cicero quotes the lines again in Caw Maior 4.10.
21. There is the opening of Horace, Carm. 3.3, for example, where the civium ardor prava
iubentium does not shake the just man from his purpose.

Ton sehr neutral und sachlich. Argumente klar und überzeugend (und sie
unterstützen meine Interpretation).

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