SOURCE: "Argonautica and Aeneid," in The "Argonautica" of Apollonius: Literary Studies, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 170-89.

[In the following excerpt, Hunter examines how Virgil incorporated the Argonautica into his Aeneid as a source of motifs and as a model for poetic techniques.]

The study of how the Argonautica is exploited in the Aeneid has a long, and occasionally distinguished, history.¹ That it has not advanced further than it has is due to a number of factors, most notably the relative paucity of serious literary critical work on Apollonius' epic; until we have learned to appreciate the Argonautica, we can hardly expect to understand how Virgil read it and used it. Moreover, too much of what has been written on this subject—particularly by critics whose primary interest is in the Aeneid—betrays a depressing unwillingness to take the Greek poem seriously, indeed often to read all of it, as Virgil manifestly did,² with care and attention, let alone with the same critical awareness that is taken for granted in the reading of Virgil. Until very recently, the working assumption of much criticism, whether openly admitted or not, was the great superiority of Virgil as an epic poet, and the purpose of that criticism was to demonstrate the assumption; most surprising of all, this remained largely true even where it was acknowledged that we are dealing with two radically different poetic projects requiring very different approaches.³ A belief in the superiority of one or the other poet, if based on close study, is harmless enough, and indeed appears to answer a 'natural' desire to create hierarchies of merit; if used, however, to block off interpretation such a belief (or assumption) becomes a form of pernicious philistinism.

Even one of the major preliminary tasks, the collection of material, remains uncompleted; in 1952 Hügi felt able to assert that 'it is by and large clear where Virgil imitated Apollonius',⁴ but this was certainly premature. It is true that 'the profundities of poetic influence cannot be reduced to source-study, to the history of ideas, to the patterning of images',⁵ but these are necessary stages of criticism, particularly when we are concerned in general with a poetic and rhetorical culture which placed heavy emphasis on creative mimesis/imitatio of one's predecessors,⁶ and, in particular, with two poems in which allusion is so obviously an important constructor of meaning; both epics have a clear 'historical self-consciousness⁷ expressed through allusion. The study of Virgil's use of Homer has been well served in this century;⁸ Apollonius and Virgil present different problems, requiring different solutions, because of the varying weight Virgil attached to his two Greek forerunners. Homer has an unchallenged importance for Virgil, carrying in the Aeneid, to quote Thomas Greene, 'the special status of that root the work privileges by its self-constructed myth of origins'.⁹ Hügi rightly followed a traditional path of scholarship in distinguishing between Virgilian aemulatio of Homer, which he saw as the Roman poet's principal artistic motivation, and the constant reflection of Apollonian motifs and passages throughout the Aeneid, which amounted not so much to aemulatio as to a way of writing which was thoroughly 'Hellenistic' and 'neoteric'. Such a distinction must, however, be placed in the context of how each of the later poets uses Homer; it will emerge that Virgil uses the Argonautica in a more systematic way than Huigi's analysis may suggest.

Apollonius and Virgil share many techniques of Homeric mimesis,¹⁰ although it is misleading to assert that 'Vergil imitates Homer … as a Hellenistic poet would, as Apollonius did.'¹¹ It is misleading in part because of the fundamental difference in the poetic project of the two poets. The Aeneid displays a staggering stylistic and tonal unity which is quite un-Alexandrian in its effect; this is not, of course, to say that the Roman epic is monolithic in either style or subject, but the contrast with, say, the stylistic uariatio of Ovid's Metamorphoses will strike any reader. This overt imposition by the poet of an all-encompassing vision and control, a feature which the Aeneid shares with the Homeric poems and which indeed is part of Virgil's recreation of Homer, has been an important element in modern notions of what constitutes epic, and its absence from the Argonautica is not the least cause of the poor critical reception of that poem. The Argonautica is a constantly experimental text, which rejoices in its stylistic and material unevennesses. Whereas the opening of Virgil's poem announces a 'Roman Homer', the opening of the Argonautica announces that 'this is not Homer',¹² and it is clear that Virgil understood this and used it for his own purposes.

Apollonius' use of Homer, Virgil's use of Apollonius, and Virgil's use of Homer are inter-related studies. While the Argonautica is a voyage through the Homeric texts,¹³ Virgil voyages past and beyond both Greek epics. Whereas Apollonius had paradoxically shown us a world constructed from Homer but crucially 'before Homer', Virgil presents a world already visited and marked by both Homer and Apollonius, and he structures an opposition between his two predecessors which bears a heavy weight of meaning. Nowhere is this prior marking of the world clearer than in Aeneas' account in Aeneid 3 of the Trojans' journey from Troy to Carthage, and a brief look at this narrative sequence will illustrate one way in which Virgil uses the opposition of allusion which he creates.

(i) Aeneid 3 and the 'Idea' of the Argonautica

It is broadly true that in the first half of Aeneid 3 rewriting of the Argonautica is particularly prominent, whereas 'Homer' dominates the second half. The strange encounter with the corpse of Polydorus with which the book opens reworks quite closely elements of the account in Arg. 3 of how Medea gathers sap from the root of the 'Prometheion' plant (3.846-66).¹⁴ I shall return shortly to the importance of the fact that it is to Apollonius whom Virgil turns for the mysterious, the magical, the 'gruesome', but we may note here how what brings safety in the Argonautica (Medea's potion) is rejected in the Aeneid: the new Troy is not to be founded in the style or the aesthetics of the Hellenistic epic—from such a vision Aeneas and his men must flee (3.44).¹⁵ A rather similar conclusion may be drawn from Anchises' misinterpretation of Apollo's instruction to the Trojans to 'seek [their] ancient mother' (3.96). Anchises' speech, in which he interprets this advice to mean that they should make for Crete, draws upon Argos' narrative to the Argonauts of the 'different route' by which to return to Greece (4.256-93).¹⁶ The Argonauts' route has divine approval (4.294-7), but the Trojans travel on the basis of an erroneous reading of the divine voice. Here the Apollonian model is a false trail which defers the telos of the voyage, but a false trail which is finally ended by another Apollonian motif. Stranded in parched and plague-ridden Crete, like the Argonauts in burning Libya,¹⁷ Aeneas and his men are saved by the nocturnal appearance of the Penates to Aeneas, just as the 'heroines' appear to Jason in the mid-day heat.¹⁸ The replacement of Apollonius' local divinities by effigies sacrae diuum Phrygiique penates, with all the nationalist religious resonance they carry and which echoes through the whole poem, is a good illustration of Virgil's different conception of the 'unity' of epic. Apollonius rather looks to variety and fracture.

After leaving Crete the Trojans are overtaken by a storm (which owes much to the black chaos at the end of Arg. 4), and then encounter the Harpies on the islands of the Strophades. Here the Apollonian texture is very obvious and has long been acknowledged;¹⁹ so too the prophecy and advice of Helenus explicitly replays the advice of Phineus to the Argonauts, as well, of course, as its obvious debt to Phineus' model, the Homeric Circe.²⁰ As the voyage continues, motifs and echoes of Apollonius' poem constantly remind us that this is a voyage past and away from an Argonautic landscape,²¹ and a voyage which will nearly come to a disastrous and premature conclusion at the court of Dido, a character who is Virgil's most famous rewriting of Apollonius.

Aeneid 3 thus shows how the Argonautica is important for Virgil, not merely as a source of motifs and as a major Hellenistic text to be echoed as part of the usual process of exploiting and acknowledging one's literary heritage, but also as an 'idea' which represents much more than the import of any particular borrowed passage. In creating his own poetic space, Virgil was both interrupting and going beyond the interplay which Apollonius had set up between his epic and those of Homer. When Virgil came to create something entirely new, the Argonautica was there, as was Catullus 64, as a challenge to Homer, as a text that could be set up as 'other', and used to evoke areas of poetic experimentation and emotion that the Homeric poems (and the heroic 'idea' that 'Homer' embodied)²² either blocked off or could be represented as having done so. Allusion to a specific passage of the Argonautica may thus also direct us more generally, to a different, un-Homeric, aesthetic. It is also worth noting that the obvious importance of the Argonautica for Catullus 64 and the fact that it was translated by the neoteric Varro of Atax suggest that Virgil took over and developed a view of Apollonius' epic which was already current in Roman poetic practice.

This way of using the Argonautica is not, of course, limited to Aeneid 3, but an attempt at an exhaustive treatment is not my intention here. In the next section I shall explore how Virgil uses this poetic technique across a large body of text and in connection with some of his most central concerns. One further small-scale example may, however, clarify the issue. In Aeneid 9 the Trojan ships escape, when threatened with fire, by diving into the depths 'like dolphins' to reemerge as sea-nymphs, for so had Jupiter agreed with the Great Mother at the time the trees were felled to make the fleet (Aen. 9.77-122); in Book 10 the metamorphosed ships reappear to warn Aeneas of the danger (10.215-59). It is well understood that these passages make important use of both the Argonautica and Catullus 64,²³ but Virgil's overall strategy deserves comment in the present context. The striking uniqueness of this fantastic event within the narrative of the Aeneid clearly creates a contrast between the easy saving of the ships and the grim realities of war which loom before the human participants.²⁴ This miraculous 'other' which obeys different laws is portrayed through extensive reminiscence of the Argonautica; Apollonius is here used again to signal the operation of a quite different, almost un-epic, aesthetic.

(ii) Circe, Medea, Dido

It is, of course, a great simplification to suggest, as I have, that Virgil uses Homer and Apollonius as two opposed 'ideas' or ends of an epic spectrum. Virgil, of all poets, does not operate with unproblematic dichotomies or simple moral absolutes. In section (iii) of this chapter I will consider a case where Virgil has in fact 'read' the Argonautica as foreshadowing some of his own central concerns, where, to put it crudely, the Argonautica is treated as more 'same' than 'other'. On the other hand, the oppositional framework which I have described may be helpful in considering briefly the most notorious case of a close textual relation between the two poems. The details of the rewriting of Medea in Dido are generally familiar enough to allow discussion to remain at the level of overall poetic strategy;²⁵ I begin with a famous passage which is in many ways emblematic of the kinds of literary relations with which I am concerned.

At the end of Aeneid I the bard Iopas entertains Dido and her guests with a cosmological song:

tum Bitiae dedit increpitans; ille impiger
  hausit
spumantem pateram et pleno se proluit auro;
post alii proceres. cithara crinitus Iopas
personat aurata, docuit quem maximus Atlas.
hic canit errantem lunam solisque labores,
unde hominum genus et pecudes, unde imber
  et ignes,
Arcturum pluuiasque Hyadas geminosque
  Triones,
quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
hiberni, uel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet;
ingeminant plausu Tyrii, Troesque sequuntur.
nec non et uario noctem sermone trahebat
infelix Dido longumque bibebat amorem,
multa super Priamo rogitans, super Hectore
  multa …
(Aen. 1.738-50)

Virgil has here replaced Demodocus' song of Ares and Aphrodite in Odyssey 8 with a song which, while nodding to rationalising interpretations of Demodocus' song, draws its main poetic inspiration from Lucretius and from the song of the Apollonian Orpheus which calms the quarrel between Idmon and Idas.²⁶ The Argonautic song is a prelude to the journey, the song of Iopas (like the songs of Demodocus) to the narration of a journey just past.²⁷ Orpheus' song is closely tied to its context: the Empedoclean neikos theme clearly refers to the dispute between Idmon and Idas which has just occurred, and in telling of the origins of the present Olympian order Orpheus foreshadows the inevitable retribution which one day will fall upon the blasphemous Idas.²⁸ Iopas' song, on the other hand, framed and set off by the two contrasted references to drinking (vv. 738-9, 749), seems remote from the poetic concerns around it, but the very clear allusion to Idas (cf. Arg. 1.472-4) in the account of Bitias' greedy drinking suggests that the Apollonian context is important in the Aeneid also. In Virgil's narrative, rather than Iopas' song, Dido is falling in love, but it is a love which will lead to 'deadly strife' both between Dido and Aeneas and eventually between Carthage and Rome. The memory of Orpheus' song reinforces the pathos of infelix (v. 749) in foreshadowing the 'separation' which lies ahead; in as much as Dido and Aeneas represent two worlds, this is in one sense truly a cosmic separation, which one day will lead to the creation of the new Roman order. The book that began with a 'Homeric' proem closes with an 'Argonautic' epilogue, thus marking out the ground over which Virgil's epic will be written. The structural framework which I have sketched makes it clear why it is with Dido's court—the site of danger which imperils the whole Roman undertaking—that the 'Argonautic' elements are primarily associated. Before pursuing these threads in Book 4 I wish to pick them up in the opening of Book 7, as Aeneas arrives in Latium, in order to show how this creative reuse of the Argonautica is by no means confined to one particular area of the poem.

Aeneas' arrival in Latium reworks and varies his earlier arrival at Carthage,²⁹ and with it the primary Greek models of that arrival—not only Odysseus' arrivals at the court of Alcinous and then Ithaca³⁰ but also the close of Book 2 of the Argonautica, in which the crew arrives at the Phasis, and the invocation to Erato which opens Book 3. Subsequent events of Aeneid 7 indeed follow quite closely the scheme of the opening scenes of Arg. 3:³¹ to Aietes and Medea correspond Latinus and Lavinia; the ekphrasis of the temple-palace at Aen. 7.170-91 corresponds to that of the fabulous palace of Aietes (3.215-46);³² Latinus' speech of welcome and enquiry follows that of Aietes at 3.304-16, and Ilioneus' reply has important features in common with Argos' speech at 3.320-66.³³ The Apollonian texture hereabouts is very thick, and it will be worth considering in rather more detail one character shared by all three epic poets, namely Medea's aunt Circe.

In order to reach the Tiber, the Trojans sail safely past the domain of Circe which Virgil, like Apollonius, places on the coast of Italy between Rome and Naples. In sailing past Circe with Poseidon/Neptune's help, Virgil is obviously bidding farewell to the world of the Odyssey, in which Poseidon was anything but 'helpful', but it is a particular vision of that world. This Circe is diues, 'rich' (7.11), an epithet which points towards a special view of her.³⁴ The Homeric 'witch' was commonly allegorised in antiquity as the embodiment of that irrational pursuit of pleasure which turns men into animals; in particular, Circe was interpreted as the harlot after whom men lusted, thus reducing themselves to the level of beasts.³⁵ In this interpretation she represents luxury and riches (which men lose in their senseless pursuit of gratification). Virgil points us towards this view of her by the echo in vv. 15-16, hinc exaudiri gemitus iraeque leonum uincla recusantum, of the description of Tartarus at 6.557-8, hinc exaudiri gemitus et saeua sonare uerbera, tum stridor ferri tractaeque catenae; according to a view very widespread in ancient literature,³⁶ excessive indulgence in the world above is punished in the afterlife, and in the Virgilian Tartarus it is precisely the greedy and avaricious who form the largest group (Aen. 6.610-11). This is the moral degradation which pius … Aeneas leaves behind as he heads for a Latium where more primitive and respectable virtues and values are prominent.

It is, of course, Dido who is the 'Circe' in Aeneas' past,³⁷ and the picture of the weaving diues … Solis filia … arguto tenuis percurrens pectine telas (Aen. 7.11-14) seems specifically to echo the description of Aeneas as Mercury finds him in Carthage:

             atque illi stellatus iaspide fulua
ensis erat Tyrioque ardebat murice laena
demissa ex umeris, diues quae munera Dido
fecerat, et tenui telas discreuerat auro.
(Aen. 4.261-4)

The 'moral message' of the Mercury scene as a whole seems particularly clear. The explicit reference to the god's role as psychopompos (4.242-3) directs our attention to Hermes' only such appearance in Homer, at the opening of Odyssey 24: Odysseus had returned, killed the suitors and been reunited with his lawful wife; Aeneas, however, has not reached the 'home' where a regia coniunx awaits him, but is dallying in North Africa with his 'Circe/Calypso'. Mercury's descent to earth (Aen. 4.246-58) reworks Eros' descent in Arg. 3;³⁸ whereas Eros flew down to make Medea fall in love, Mercury descends to separate Aeneas from his 'Medea'.

diues … Dido (4.263) is one of many references to the wealth of Tyre and Carthage,³⁹ and his splendid robe shows that Aeneas has accommodated himself to that wealth. The literary ancestry of the cloak is a rich one also: the 'double cloak of purple' in which the Apollonian Jason visits Hypsipyle is the most immediate forerunner;⁴⁰ Jason's cloak was like the sun (1.725-6), Aeneas' 'burned bright' (ardebat). Hypsipyle and Dido are both hindrances to the fulfilment of heroic missions; Aeneas' cloak, demissa ex umeris,⁴¹ recalls not only Jason's cloak as a whole, but also the depiction on it of Aphrodite with Ares' shield, the clasp of her dress undone to reveal her breast. Like this scene, Aeneas' current behaviour is both delaying the war, the negotium (cf. 4.271), which lies ahead, and also 'adulterous' in that, though Dido considers herself 'married' to Aeneas, it threatens to deny the regia coniunx who awaits in Italy. This paradox, pointed by Mercury's use of uxorius (v.266), marks the inversion of what is proper which Carthage represents, and it is echoes of the Argonautica which characterise the twin dangers of amor and aurum, dangers which Aeneas finally skirts as he sails up the Latin coast in the opening of Book 7⁴²

The choice of Erato (7.37) as the Muse under whose aegis the poet is to tell of horrida bella, … acies actosque animis in funera reges has always posed a critical puzzle. This is the Muse whose name signifies eros and under whose patronage Apollonius told the story of Medea (3.1-5). Many modern interpretations are variants of the view found in Servius that Erato stands for any Muse; we are thus not to think particularly of her association with eros as the proposed match with Lavinia has nothing to do with eros.⁴³ Such a view is, however, based on too modern, perhaps too romantic, a conception of the spheres in which eros operates; public and political marriages are also presided over by this power. Any doubt that we are to think of the Virgilian Erato as specifically 'erotic' ought to be removed by the description of Lavinia as iam matura uiro, iam plenis nubilis annis (7.53). Rather, it is the very contrast between the consuming and destructive loves of Medea and Dido, here negatively evaluated, and the political bond—positively evaluated—which Lavinia represents that is highlighted by the echo of the opening of Argonautica 3. The juxtaposition of Erato to a 'new Iliad' marks the Argonautica as a crucial text by which the poet defines his difference. Just as the opening and closing of Aeneid 1 mapped out an opposition between the two Greek epics which Virgil will use to mark the significance of his own poem, so this close juxtaposition at the start of the second half of the poem renews that creative tension. To what extent the adoption of the Argonautica and, specifically, of the many-layered relationship of Jason and Medea must inevitably destabilise a 'new Iliad' is something to which I shall return briefly at the end of the chapter.

In turning back now to the debt of Dido to Medea, we can see that in the area of the definition and interaction of public and private the Argonautica was a crucial text for Virgil. Already in the Odyssey, Nausicaa had raised the possibility—in claiming to be horrified at it—of her choice of husband being contrary to the wishes and perceived interests of the people of Phaeacia (Od. 6.273-88); it is one of the ironies of that text that Alcinous has no sooner seen Odysseus than he desires him as a son-in-law (Od. 7.311-16). The Odyssey, therefore, both lays the foundation for the later development of the motif through Medea and Dido, and presents a situation where 'political' interest and the personal desires of the princess match. Indeed, when Nausicaa is unable openly to reveal to her father her true motives in wanting to wash her clothes after Athena has planted 'erotic' thoughts in her head, her father sees through her 'deceit' and grants her her wish. In reworking the character and situation of Nausicaa in his presentation of Medea, Apollonius stresses that she acts without her parents' knowledge and consent, a consent which would never be given, and against the interests and desires of the people.⁴⁴ Medea's actions shatter the familial and 'political' solidarity evident on Homer's Phaeacia. The marriage of Jason and Medea on Drepane is, in one sense, a public matter celebrated with due ceremony, but it is conducted at night in an atmosphere of secrecy and deception,⁴⁵ in a scene which highlights the discrepancies between public policy and private position. Moreover, the constant imminence of Euripides' Medea, a play in which Medea is abandoned for pragmatic 'reasons of state' and in which her revenge destroys the royal family, reinforces this disastrous clash of 'private' and 'public'.

Unlike Medea, Dido holds real power in a position of public responsibility: Anna's arguments for giving in to amor are precisely based upon the matter of public, political advantage (4.39-49)—alliance with Aeneas will bring urbs and regnum, the very things that her unsatisfied desire is in fact presently putting at risk (cf. 4.86-9). The potential chasm which may be opened between a princess's personal desires and the good of her father's people, a chasm hinted at in the Odyssey and fully explored in the Argonautica, is here given a new urgency as the 'princess' actually rules her people; it is this fact, no less than the iron rule of fatum, which turns the imminent 'tragedy' of Apollonius' Medea into the present 'tragedy' of Dido.⁴⁶ The 'marriage-scene', in the Argonautica a nuanced mixture of the public and the private, the open and the covert,⁴⁷ becomes in Aeneid 4 an unwitnessed—except by the immortals—act in a storm-tossed cave which one partner at least will be able to deny ever constituted a formal marriage (Aen. 4.338-9). Whereas in the Argonautica the report … spread by Hera on the morning after the wedding brings the citizens of Drepane to admire and witness the marriage as a public spectacle (4.1182-1200), in the Aeneid fama gossips of pariter facta atque infecta (Aen. 4.190); covert malice is what is involved. Here then Virgil has moved a further stage beyond Apollonius and used the Argonautica as a kind of yardstick by which Dido's suffering, and the dangers posed by her, may be measured. Having established an association between the Alexandrian epic and the 'private', the 'non-Homeric', he outdoes it on its own terms in depicting the catastrophe that occurs when the 'private' and the 'public' become inextricably tangled.

(iii) Underworlds

We have so far considered areas of the Aeneid in which Virgil uses the Argonautica in representations of what is dangerous and 'other' to the founding of the Roman state which his poem narrates. He can, however, also impose his vision upon the Greek poem in such a way that it is read as a prior text which authenticates, rather than threatens. Such a case is his use of Apollonian material in the description of Aeneas' visit to the Underworld.

The deaths of Palinurus⁴⁸ at the end of Aeneid 5 and of Misenus in Aeneid 6 are both indebted to Homer's Elpenor, killed when he fell off the roof of Circe's house, and to the paired deaths of Idmon and Tiphys in Argonautica 2. Palinurus, unlike Odysseus (Od. 5.270-81), is unable to prevent sleep overtaking him as he steers Aeneas' ship, and the soporific bough which Sleep shakes over him (5.854-61) clearly derives from the juniper spray with which Medea sprinkles her drugs over the Colchian dragon's eyes (Arg. 4.156-8).⁴⁹ In the Argonautica, the linking of Hypnos with infernal Hecate (4.146-8) creates a powerful ambivalence in the fate of the dragon: modern critics should not be so certain that he is going to wake up.⁵⁰ Be that as it may, it is not remarkable that—like Elpenor—Palinurus was not at first missed, given the calm weather and the fact that everybody else was asleep. The loss of Heracles to the Argonautic expedition⁵¹ also, however, resonates here, and Palinurus' fall from the ship, liquidas … in undas praecipitem ac socios nequiquan saepe uocantem (5.859-60), can hardly fail to recall the disappearance of Hylas as described by both Apollonius and Theocritus.⁵² In the Argonautica it is the steersman Tiphys whose instructions cause the crew to leave Heracles behind; in the Aeneid it is the steersman himself who is abandoned. There is a deep pathos in the contrast between Hylas' mysterious future as lover-husband beneath the waves and the cruel realities of death at sea faced by Palinurus.

In visiting the Underworld, Aeneas will of course take on the true mantle of Heracles, and Virgil has used echoes of the Hylas-episode to bridge the break between books, for the verses which describe the Trojans' preparations upon landing (Aen. 6.5-10) rewrite the fateful Argonautic landing in Mysia on the occasion of Heracles' abandonment (1.1182-8).⁵³ So too, Heracles' search for a tree from which to make a new oar is the immediate forerunner of Aeneas' trip into the forest to acquire the golden bough; the typically Virgilian revolution in tone between 'model' and 'imitation' confirms, rather than denies, the echo.⁵⁴

The concentration of Apollonian material in the introduction to the Virgilian katabasis might be thought surprising in view of the absence of an Underworld scene from the Argonautica. That absence may be ascribed to many causes. Perhaps the whole journey to the land of the Sun was itself too like a katabasis to give the poet room for a special descent; it is, in any event, a familiar conjecture of comparative mythography that the Clashing Rocks represent an entrance to the Underworld,⁵⁵ and the repeated Apollonian motif of 'even if the Argo should sail to Hades' (2.642-3, 3.61) does suggest that at some level the expedition is conceived as an infernal one. The description of the cave entrance to Hades on the Acherousian headland (2.729-51), which Virgil twice reworks,⁵⁶ invites us to expect a descent by the Argonauts, but we do so in vain. The scenes in the wastes of Libya are, as we have seen,⁵⁷ a further substitute for an explicit descent to Hades. If the Argonauts never actually visit the Underworld, Jason at least has considerable contact with Hecate and infernal powers, and it is worth collecting the Apollonian material in Virgil's Underworld in an attempt to discover how Virgil 'read' these elements in the Greek epic.⁵⁸

Medea's drugging of the Colchian dragon (4.149-55) has very clearly influenced Virgil's description of how Cerberus is drugged by the Sibyl with a 'doctored' cake (Aen. 6.417-25).⁵⁹ Moreover, Aeneas' first encounter in the Underworld is with the spirits of those who have died as babies (6.426-9); relevant here is the fact that the Colchian dragon's roar terrifies the protective mothers of new-born babies (Arg. 4.136-8). The juxtaposition of the snake-haired Cerberus to the crying of dead babies creates the same kind of horror as the possibility that the dragon is looking for children to devour. There is a very clear parallelism between Medea's magical protection of Jason and the Sibyl's protection of Aeneas. Both women are priestesses of Hecate,⁶⁰ but whereas Jason follows his guide in fear (4.149), Aeneas shows himself quite equal to the task:

ille ducem haud timidis uadentem passibus aequat.
(Aen. 6.263)

So too there is an obvious correspondence between the golden fleece, hanging on an oak tree in the shady (4.166) grove of Ares, and the golden bough, plucked from an oak tree in the middle of a dark, shady grove (Aen. 6.138-9). As the Argonauts make their escape down the Phasis, the Colchians gather on the riverbank, as numberless as waves or leaves: …

They gathered under arms in their meeting-place, as numberless as the waves of the sea raised high by a winter wind or the leaves in a dense forest which drop to the ground in the leaf-shedding month—who could count them?—like this were the vast hordes who thronged the river-banks, yelling with enthusiasm for the fray. (4.214-19)

Virgil reworked this passage very carefully to describe the ghosts waiting to cross a different river.⁶¹

quam multa in siluis autumni frigore primo
lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab
  alto
quam multae glomerantur aues, ubi frigidus
  annus
trans pontum fugat et terris immittit apricis.
(Aen. 6.309-12)

Where Apollonius has waves and then leaves, Virgil has leaves and then birds, but the correspondences are so close that the later poet clearly wants us to think of this passage of Arg. 4 …; a recently published fragment of an archaic lyric poem in which the number of ghosts in the Underworld was very likely compared to the waves of the sea helps to confirm that Virgil drew inspiration from Apollonius' description of the Col-chians for his Underworld scenes.⁶³

The amount of material from the early part of Arg. 4 which has been reworked in Aeneid 6 makes it not unlikely that Virgil himself read the securing of the Golden Fleece from a dread land ruled over by a terrible child of the sun as a kind of katabasis.⁶⁴ In seeking to understand this reading we can turn back to Homer, as well as forwards to Virgil's own epic.

Like Odysseus (and Aeneas) in the Underworld, Jason draws his sword as the Argonauts leave Colchis, initially to cut the mooring ropes.⁶⁵ The opening words of his speech to the crew as they depart echo Odysseus' words to his crew as they leave Circe's house for the voyage to Hades (4.190, Od. 10.548), and the din of the countless Colchians may remind us of the din made by the ghosts in the Homeric Underworld.⁶⁶ It perhaps does not matter greatly whether we see these echoes as merely emphasising the terror endured by the Argonauts, or as actually inviting us to see these scenes as indeed a katabasis. For what it is worth, in the later Orphic Argonautica the grove of the Fleece lies behind a sanctuary of Artemis-Hecate which can only be approached by an initiate, and the scene in which Orpheus sings the dragon to sleep is preceded by chthonic sacrifice and the appearance of creatures such as Tisiphone and Allecto; that poem at least, therefore, makes explicit that securing the Fleece involves converse with the Underworld.⁶⁷

It has long been observed⁶⁸ that the gleam of the Golden Fleece (4.125-6):

… like a cloud which blushes red in the flaming rays of the rising sun

is reworked in the description of the fiery gleam of the new breast-plate which Vulcan makes for Aeneas:

                   loricam ex aere rigentem
sanguineam, ingentem, qualis cum caerula
  nubes
solis inardescit radiis longeque refulget.
(Aen. 8.621-3)

A number of other echoes also⁶⁹ show that Virgil drew a deliberate parallel between the acquisition of the Fleece and the new armour for Aeneas, and there is clearly more at stake than merely a common ancestry in Thetis' bringing of new arms for Achilles.⁷⁰ All three marvels mark out their heroes as special and give confidence for the future: cf. 4.190 'no longer hold back, my friends …', Aen. 8.613-14 ne mox aut Laurentis, nate, superbos aut acrem dubites in proelia poscere Turnum. The shield of Aeneas is a reprise and confirmation of what the hero saw in the Underworld, and one of the devices which link Book 6 to Book 8 is the shared reworking of Jason's acquisition of the fleece. By associating the Fleece with the non enarrabile textum (8.625) of the shield, Virgil acknowledges the special power of the Fleece to confer the gift of song (Arg. 4.1143). It was important to Virgil to read the quest for the Golden Fleece as a katabasis, because what Aeneas receives in the Underworld—a vision of the future greatness of Rome—is, like the Golden Fleece, a prize which justifies the struggle. When Jason has secured the Fleece he exhorts the crew: 'Now we hold in our hands the fate of our children, our dear homeland, and our venerable parents. Upon our expedition rests the future of Hellas, whether it is to suffer depression or win great glory' (4.202-5). Such an exhortation—whatever its nuances and ironies—fits easily into the nationalist strain of the Aeneid; nothing comparable had occurred in the Odyssey. The fractured suggestions of the Hellenistic epic are now to be integrated to the service of the new order.

(iv) Apollonius and Virgil: An Overview

The purpose of this chapter, and of the various references to the Aeneid scattered through the earlier part of this book, has been merely to sketch what I take to be Virgil's strategy in his incorporation of the Argonautica, and to illustrate that strategy in a small, but exemplificatory, way. What I hope, however, is clear is that, at a deep level, Virgil exploits the Argonautica in more than one way, and that the 'idea' of this Greek poem is an important and significant strain within the array of textual voices that the Aeneid harnesses to its task. The Argonautica is given particular burdens to carry within Virgil's poetic project, and each successive major use of it builds upon the significance of what has gone before and is integrated into larger poetic patterns. The deployment of the Argonautica is in fact a very good example of Virgil's architectonic structures—and of his difference from Apollonius.

It will also, I hope, be clear that the complex relationship between the past and the present which the Argonautica explores and which I have traced in the two previous chapters has an obvious relationship to central features of the Aeneid. In both poems the past is constructed out of the present, though the form of that construction differs widely. The ideology of the Argonautica seems far removed from that of the Aeneid, and yet it now stands revealed as pointing towards the Roman epic in many interesting ways. This is not because of any inherent teleological pattern in the history of ancient epic, but because Virgil deliberately read the Argonautica in a particular way and developed particular aspects of it. The inscription into the Argonautica of what—in an unsatisfactory shorthand—we may call 'the Ptolemaic idea', and perhaps too of the Ptolemies themselves,⁷¹ becomes in Virgil's poem the explicit inscription of Augustus into the epic. The Argonautic voyage which at one level establishes Greek culture through the world⁷² becomes a cultural and imperial progression towards the Augustan age. Virgil's reading of the Argonautica is thus part of the whole history of how Augustan Rome adopted and refashioned the culture and ideology of Ptolemaic Alexandria, a history which remains very far from written.

The Argonautic myth was, in classical times and texts, told for the most diverse reasons and, as we have seen,⁷³ Apollonius himself incorporates different 'readings' of the myth into his poem. Virgil's 'myth of Rome' is constructed in a dialogic way which both allows and indeed invites multiple readings. The similarity may not be fortuitous, regardless of any historical reconstruction of what Virgil may have learned from Apollonius. In adopting and displaying the Argonautica within the Aeneid, Virgil placed near the centre of his work a nuanced and ironised poem which invited readings which could threaten to disturb, if not in fact subvert, the nationalist project upon which he was engaged. Whether or not this is what has happened is, of course, precisely what rends modern criticism of the Aeneid. Here is not the place to pursue the matter, but future work on the relationship of the two poems can surely no longer assume that the incorporation of the Argonautica can be without ideological significance. To do so would be to assume that Virgil's understanding of the Greek poem was simplistic and defective. That, surely, is one assumption too many.

Notes

¹ Rütten 1912 is a much criticised (cf. P. Jahn, BPhW 34 (1914) 171-3; Hügi 1952. 14-15), but very suggestive collection of material; it is certainly more interesting than Conrardy 1904 which is safer and less adventurous. Rütten's brand of Quellenforschung is now unfashionable, but such work was an inevitable and necessary first step; the fact that he was unable or unwilling to separate the gold from the dross does not diminish the value of the gold. Hügi 1952 now properly holds the field, but it is due for replacement; much of what is generally agreed is usefully summarised by Briggs 1981. A breakthrough was promised by the title of W. Clausen's Virgil's Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry (Berkeley/Los Angeles 1987), but no overall view of Virgil's strategy emerges beyond the individual detail, cf. P. Hardie, CP 84 (1989) 354-8. F. Mehmel, Virgil und Apollonios Rhodios, Untersuchungen über die Zeitvorstellung in der antiken epischen Erzählung (Hamburg 1940) is a specialised monograph on one aspect of epic technique. Of smaller-scale work, J. D. M. Preshous, 'Apollonius Rhodius and Virgil', PVS 4 (1965) 1-17, contains a number of perceptive observations, particularly about Aen. 4, and is only marred because Preshous felt compelled to enter the pointless debate about the relative merits of the two poets; Feeney 1986 is an excellent example of a detailed study of one theme. The entry 'Apollonio Rodio' in the Enciclopedia Virgiliana (I 224-6) is desperately inadequate. Comprehensive treatments of this subject by Damien Nelis and Charles Beye are awaited. Through the kindness of Dr Nelis, I was able to see a copy of Nelis 1988, but only after the completion of my own work; where possible, I have added references to this dissertation.

² Presumably both in Greek and in the Latin version of Varro Atacinus; the evidence does not, I think, allow us to go beyond 'presumably', cf. Rütten 1912. 12-15. It is an easy guess that, had Varro's poem survived, we would find passages where Virgil has 'conflated' an echo of Varro's version of Apollonius with one of his own.

³ The extremely influential discussion of Otis 1964, particularly 62ff., almost falls into this category. Otis realised that Apollonius was not trying to be monolithically 'Homeric', and he has many good things to say about discontinuities in the narrative; his analysis is spoiled, however, because an idée fixe about Apollonius' interests and methods led him to almost incredibly banal interpretations (p. 89 on similes and ekphraseis in Arg. is a good example).

⁴ Hügi 1952.3.

⁵ Bloom 1973.7. Bloom's powerful and attractive reading of 'the anxiety of influence' has had a mixed reception in classical studies. It is, I believe, broadly helpful for understanding Alexandrian poetry, provided that it is remembered that Bloom is resolutely modern in his interests and sees this particular 'anxiety' as a specifically modern phenomenon (1973.8,11), while of course acknowledging the still potent 'paternity' of Homer for all western literature (cf. A Map of Misreading (Oxford 1975) 33-5).

⁶ For helpful surveys cf. D. A. Russell, 'De imitatione', in D. A. West and T. Woodman (eds.), Creative Imitation and Latin Literature (Cambridge 1979) 1-16, Greene 1982.54-80.

⁷ For this phrase cf. Greene 1982.17.

⁸ Landmarks are, of course, Heinze 1915 and Knauer 1964. The work of Gian Biagio Conte has been important in forcing classicists to address the theoretical issues.

⁹ Greene 1982.19. Cf. also G. B. Conte, Virgilio. II genere e i suoi confini (Milan 1984) 150-3.

¹⁰ Helpful summary of such techniques in the fifth chapter of Knauer 1964.

¹¹ Clausen 1987. p. x. For an excellent appreciation of what is un-Alexandrian in Virgil's reworking of Homer cf. A. Barchiesi, La traccia del modello (Pisa 1984); more briefly, Hutchinson 1988.328-9.

¹² Cf. above p. 119.

¹³ Cf. above pp. 119-29.

¹⁴ Note especially Aen. 3.26-33 ∼ Arg. 3.856-8 ('dark gore' as the roots are cut), Aen. 3.39-40 ∼ Arg. 3.865-6 (the groans of the victim). Virgil's version exploits Apollonius' comparison of the root to 'new-cut flesh' (3.875, cf. my note ad loc.). An important effect of Virgil's scene is the contrast between Aerieas' horror and Medea's control of such appalling drugs, cf. above pp. 59-60.

¹⁵ The echo of v. 44 in Achaemenides' words at the end of the book (3.639) points to another rejected 'culture'. Just as Odysseus' wanderings confront him with a succession of societies which define by contrast the ideal, settled society of Ithaca, so Aeneid 3 presents a series of potential 'Romes', none of which is to be fulfilled; Carthage is, of course, the most important such site.

¹⁶ I have discussed this in detail in Hunter 1991b.94-9.

¹⁷ Virgil seems to have in mind particularly the simile of Arg. 4.1280-9 ('… like men waiting to be finished off by plague …'); aegra trahebant corpora (3.140-1) may reflect … 4.1289.

¹⁸ Cf. above p. 126.

¹⁹ Cf. Briggs 1981. 973-4 for bibliography.

²⁰ Like Phineus, Helenus is careful only to reveal what the Trojans may know (3.379-80), and his urgent warnings to Aeneas to supplicate Juno (3.433-40) replay Phineus' advice concerning Kypris (Arg. 2.423-4).

²¹ Note that in avoiding Ithaca (3.272-3) the Trojans not only avoid 'the old enemy', but also mark their difference from the Argonauts; Ithaca is not mentioned in the Argonautica, close though it is, because in a literary sense it does not 'exist' before Homer made it famous. So too Aeneas races past Phaeacia (3.291), the scene of a lengthy section of Arg. 4.

²² It will, I hope, be obvious that my present concern is not with an interpretation of the Homeric poems, but with 'Homer' and 'Apollonius' as meaningful ideas which Virgil could play off against each other.

²³ Cf. Hügi 1952.67-9; P. Hardie, 'Ships and ship-names in the Aeneid', in M. Whitby, P. Hardie and M. Whitby (eds.), Homo Viator, Classical Essays for John Bramble (Bristol 1987) 163-71; Nelis 1988.376-8; E. Fantham, 'Nymphas … e nauibus esse: decorum and poetic fiction in Aeneid 9.77-122 and 10.215-59', CP 85 (1990) 102-19.

²⁴ Cf. R. D. Williams in Harrison 1990.35.

²⁵ For the details cf., e.g., Pease's notes on Aen. 4 passim, Hügi 1952.79ff., Briggs 1981.959-69. On the 'Romanisation' of Dido see especially Monti 1981.

²⁶ For the song cf. above pp. 162-3. There is a large bibliography on Iopas' song: see esp. C. Segal, 'The song of Iopas in the Aeneid', Hermes 99 (1971) 336-49; Hardie 1986.52-66; Brown 1990. The debt to the song of Silenus in Eclogue 6 and to Virgil's own poetic prayer at Georg. 2.475-82 means that in one sense Dido and Aeneas are entertained by Virgil himself, an amusing idea that owes not a little to the special place of Orpheus in the Argonautica, and to ancient identifications of Demodocus as Homer.

²⁷ On the cosmic theme as appropriate to epic travelling cf.D. M. Gaunt, 'The creation-theme in epic poetry', Comp. Lit. 29 (1977) 213-20.

²⁸Keraunōi in 1.510 is particularly menacing, cf. Theocr. 22.211.… Cf. further above pp. 162-3.

²⁹ Cf., e.g., Knauer 1964.229-31; Fordyce on 7.194ff.; W. Görler, 'Aeneas' Ankunft in Latium', WJA 2 (1976) 165-79.

³⁰ Cf., e.g., Knauer 1964.227-8.

³¹ Cf Rütten 1912.78-9; Nelis 1988.305-32.

³² The 'realism' of the Virgilian description (cf. Fordyce ad loc.) is in significant contrast to the luxurious fantasy of Aietes' palace.

³³ Ilioneus' denial of a storm reverses both Argos' opening and his own speech to Dido at Aen. 1.535-8; note also 3.333-4 ∼ Aen. 7.217, 3.363-4 ∼ Aen. 7.219-20, 3.352-4 ∼ Aen. 7.234-5.

³⁴diues is normally referred merely to the apparent grandeur of Circe's lifestyle in the Odyssey, cf. Od. 10.210-11, 252-3, 348ff., 365-70; for Ovid's expansion of this motif cf. Met. 14.261-3 (and 2.1ff. for the Palace of the Sun). Two other resonances in the epithet are worth considering: (i) diues, suggesting Plouton, the Greek king of the Underworld. For the chthonic associations of the Virgilian Circe see P. R. Hardie, 'Augustan poets and the mutability of Rome', in A. Powell (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (London 1992) 59-82. (ii) Varro derives diues from diuus (LL 5.92, cf. TLL v 1.1587.33-6), and both Circe and Calypso, whom Virgil conflates with Circe, are commonly called in Homer dia theaōn.

³⁵ Cf. Hor. Epist. 1.2.23-6; Kaiser 1964.200-13. For Circe and riches see esp. Palladas, AP 10.50. The significance of the moralising view of Circe to Aeneid 7 was seen by K. J. Reckford, AJP 82 (1961) 255. In the Circe-episode in Arg. the substitution of 'Empedoclean mixtures' (above pp. 164-5) prevents us from activating the moralising reading of Circe; Apollonius thereby concentrates the moral force of the scene exclusively upon the 'sinful' state of Circe's visitors.

³⁶ See esp. PI. Gorgias 525a, and Lucian's Menippean writings.

³⁷ For Circe and Dido cf. Knauer 1964.209-18; C. Segal, 'Circean temptations: Homer, Vergil, Ovid', TAPA 99 (1968) 419-42, at 428-36.

³⁸ Atlas in Virgil replaces the great eastern mountains of Arg. 3.161-3. For discussion of Virgil's scene cf. J. H. W. Morwood, 'Aeneas and Mount Atlas', JRS 75 (1985) 51-9 (which, however, ignores the use of Apollonius).

³⁹ Programmatically placed is 1.14, and note too Dido's final appearance in the poem, 11.72-5, echoing 4.261-4. For other passages cf. Pease on 4.75 (opes.)

⁴⁰ Cf. above pp. 52-3 for the Homeric model (Od. 19.221ff.). Servius on 4.262 notes that laena est … proprie toga duplex.

⁴¹ Commentators are divided between 'hanging from the shoulders' and 'let down off the shoulders'; choice between these does not affect the presence of the Apollonian echo.

⁴² Cf. the parallel curses of 3.56-7 and 4.412.

⁴³ Cf., e.g., F. Klingner, Virgil: Bucolica Georgica Aeneis (Zurich 1967) 497; I. Mariotti, 'II secondo proemio dell' Eneide', in Letterature comparate, problemi e metodo. Studi in onore di Ettore Paratore (Bologna 1981) 1 459-66; R. F. Thomas, 'From recusatio to commitment: the evolution of the Virgilian programme', Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 5 (1985) 61-73, at 64 n.1 1. For more complex views cf. K. J. Reckford, AJP 82 (1961) 256-7; M. C. J. Putnam, AJP 91 (1970) 417-18; Nelis 1988.299-304. The proposed match (and mutual feelings) between Lavinia and Tumus must also not be left out of account. The invocation is set within the framework of normal Virgilian practice by G. B. Conte, 'Proems in the middle', YCS 29 (1992) 147-59.

⁴⁴ Cf. my note on 3.1236-9.

⁴⁵ Cf. above pp. 70-1, 145.

⁴⁶ It has long been observed that the extensive debt of Arg. 3 to Attic tragedy (cf., e.g., Hunter 1989.18-19) must have been very influential in the shaping of Aen. 4 as a tragedy; the latter theme has a large bibliography, cf., e.g., A. König, Die Aeneis und die griechische Tragödie: Studien zur imitatio-Technik Vergils (diss. Berlin 1970), N. Rudd in Harrison 1990.145-66, F. Muecke, 'Foreshadowing and dramatic irony in the story of Dido', AJP 104 (1983) 134-55. Both Apollonius and Virgil reflect ancient observation (largely, but not wholly, dependent upon Aristotle) of the shared features of epic and tragedy; for a collection of important statements cf. R. B. Rutherford, JHS 102 (1982) 145 n. 3.

⁴⁷ Cf. above pp. 71-4.

⁴⁸ For recent discussion of Palinurus cf. W. S. M. Nicoll, 'The sacrifice of Palinurus', CQ 38 (1988) 459-72; G. Laudizi, 'Palinuro', Maia 40 (1988) 57-73.

⁴⁹ Valerius Flaccus acknowledges Virgil's debt by, in turn, using the sleep of Palinurus in his description of Medea enchanting the dragon (8.68-91), cf. H. Offermann, Hermes 99 (1971) 167-8. Valerius uses the 'sleeping steersman' motif at 3.37ff. (Tiphys at Cyzicus).

⁵⁰ The meaning of akērata (4.157) remains problematic: Livrea's solution, 'which do not bring death', is unconvincing. In Valerius, Medea explicitly foretells the dragon's awakening (8.92-104).

⁵¹ Cf. above pp. 36-41.

⁵² Note 6.859 ∼ Arg. 1.1239; 860 ∼ 1.1240, Theocr. 13.59-60. praecipitem, enjambed at the head of v. 860, echoes the repeated athroos at the head of Theocr. 13.50-1. The evocation of the Apollonian Hylas is also noted by Nelis 1988.168 n. 20. The designation of Aeneas in v. 867 as pater, used absolutely without any accompanying name, in a context where his status as 'father' is not obviously relevant, may be unique. It may, as Dr Neil Wright has suggested to me, look forward to the story of Daedalus and Icarus at the head of the next book, or we may feel the 'ship of state' metaphor resonate: the pater patriae brings the vessel safely to shore. It is, however, noteworthy that both Apollonius and Theocritus play with the similarities and differences in the relationship of Heracles and Hylas to that of a father and son; some versions indeed seem actually to have made them father and son, cf. above p. 37 n. 109.

⁵³ Hügi 1952.127 interestingly linked the opening of Aeneid 6 with Theocr. 22.32-8, a passage with clear Apollonian links.

⁵⁴ Catullus 66.39-40 ∼ Aen. 6.460 is the most famous example of such a revolution.

⁵⁵ Cf., e.g., Meuli 1921.102-4; J. Fontenrose, Python (Berkeley/Los Angeles 1959) 477-87; J. Lindsay, The Clashing Rocks (London 1965) passim; Clark 1979.34-6; Beye 1982.45,113.

⁵⁶ Cf. Aen. 6.237-41 (the cave of the Underworld), 7.563-71 (another Italian entrance to Hades). Relevant also is Arg. 4.599-603, the fiery emanations from the remains of Phaethon.

⁵⁷ Cf. above pp. 30-1.

⁵⁸ For a comprehensive survey cf. Nelis 1988.189-224.

⁵⁹ Cf. Hügi 1952.63-4. Both collapses are followed by swift action from the heroes (4.162, Aen. 6.424-5).

⁶⁰ Cf. the parallel invocations at 4.147-8 and Aen. 6.247. For the Sibyl and Hecate cf. Norden's edition of Aeneid 6 (2nd edn) p. 118; Clark 1979.204-11; H. W. Parke, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity (London/New York 1988) 92-4; further bibliography in Knauer 1964.130 n. 2.

⁶¹ For Virgil's other sources here (including Arg. 4.239-40) cf. Austin ad loc.; G. Thaniel, 'Vergil's leaf- and bird-similes of ghosts', Phoenix 25 (1971) 237-45.…

⁶³POxy. 2622a. 12-15 = Pindar, fr. dub. 346.12-15 Maehler; cf. R. J. Clark, 'Two Virgilian similes and the HERAKLEOUS KATABASIS', Phoenix 24 (1970) 244-55. For ghosts and leaves cf. particularly Bacchylides 5.63-7.

⁶⁴ Note that the effect of the infernal Allecto's blast is described in terms borrowed from the effects of the Colchian dragon's roar (4.129ff., Aen. 7.514ff.).

⁶⁵ Cf. Od. 10.535-6, 11.24, 48-9, Arg. 4.207-8, Aen. 6.260; Hunter 1988.440 n. 22.

⁶⁶ 4.219; Od. 11.42-3, 605, 633.

⁶⁷ For the debt in these scenes to Apollonius cf. Vian on Orph. Arg. 988-1021.

⁶⁸ Cf. Hügi 1952.31; Clausen 1987.156 n. 49.

⁶⁹ Note 4.171-2 ∼ Aen. 8.617, 730; the fact that the new arms are placed under an oak (Aen. 8.616); 4.184 ∼ Aen. 8.619, 730; 4.181, 185-6 ∼ Aen. 8.619; 4.179 ∼ Aen. 8.731.

⁷⁰ In Homer too, a gleaming marvel is brought to a ship as dawn breaks, and the hero's comrades react with fear or wonderment (Il. 19.1, 15 ∼ Arg. 4.183-4).

⁷¹ Cf. above p. 161.

⁷² Cf. above pp. 163-9.

⁷³ Cf. above pp. 137-8.

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