The Aeneid by Robert Fagles Virgil, Bernard Knox Page A
Authors: Robert Fagles Virgil, Bernard Knox
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Remus, “twin boys at her dugs . . . suckling” (8.744), and newly built Rome and the Circus games there at which the Romans carried off the Sabine women to marry them—the so-called Rape of the Sabines—and the reconciliation with the Sabine tribe afterward. There was Mettus, king of Alba Longa, who broke his word to Tullus, third king of Rome, who tore him apart as punishment. Then Lars Porsenna, the Etruscan commanding the Romans to take back their banished king, Tarquin, and attacking the city from across the Tiber. But Cocles (better known to English-speaking readers by his other name, Horatius) tears the bridge down and swims to safety, as does the maiden Cloelia, who has been taken as a hostage. Next Manlius, who when the Gauls invaded Rome by night in 390 B.C. was awakened by the cackling of the sacred geese and saved the Capitol. And Vulcan forged the Salii, the dancing priests of Mars and the “chaste matrons . . . [who] led the sacred marches through the city” (8.779-80). And “far apart . . . he forged the homes of hell” with the great criminal Catiline “dangling from a beetling crag” and “the virtuous souls, with Cato giving laws” (8.783-85). This is not Cato the Censor but his great-grandson, the Cato who, defeated by Julius Caesar at Utica in Africa, committed suicide rather than live under Caesar’s dictatorship, after reading Plato’s Phaedo.
But the rest of the shield is devoted to the decisive victory of Augustus at Actium, the naval defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, their suicides, and the great triumph of Augustus, master of the Roman world, at Rome. The Roman fleet, led by Augustus on one flank and Agrippa on the other, faces and defeats Antony, and Cleopatra, “that outrage, that Egyptian wife!” (8.808), who eventually leads the flight of the Eastern fleet—“pale / with imminent death” (8.831-32), commits suicide, accompanied by Antony’s, in Alexandria. And lastly the vision of Augustus’ great triumph in Rome. Augustus The battle of Actium is shown to the Roman reader as the victory of Italy and the West over the barbarous tribes of the East.
leading on
the riches of the Orient, troops of every stripe—
. . . all the might of the East
(8.803-6)
reviews the gifts brought on by the nations of the earth . . .
as the vanquished people move in a long slow file,
their dress, their arms as motley as their tongues.
(8.844-47)
In the Aeneid Virgil combines mythological epic with themes from Roman history. But there is one field of Roman history where Virgil’s material is mythological rather than historical, and that is his account of the Etruscans. In Book 8 (575ff.) he describes them as “Lydian people . . . / brilliant in war” (8.565-66), who inhabit the city of Agylla (now called Cervetri). They have recently expelled their king, Mezentius, for his oppression and atrocities, and he has found refuge with Turnus, “his old friend” (8.580). The Etruscans are eager to fight against him and his allies, but they have been told by “an aged prophet” that they must “choose leaders from overseas” (8.585-92). They are the perfect ally for Aeneas; after his meeting with their leader, Tarchon, they sail down the river with Aeneas’ ships to relieve the beleaguered camp and fight with him to the end.
This has little to do with history. About the only detail that may be authentic is the adjective Lydian, since Lydia in Asia Minor was thought to be the original home of the Etruscans, a belief mentioned by Herodotus. Their language, recorded in a script based on the Greek alphabet, still defies attempts to decipher it; the buildings of their many cities, from the Arno to the Tiber and farther south, have vanished. But we know them from the large tombs, built below ground in the rock, where the bones of their upper classes rested, with frescoes painted on the walls, and from their treasures, bronze metalwork and imported painted Greek vases from the great periods of the
But the rest of the shield is devoted to the decisive victory of Augustus at Actium, the naval defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, their suicides, and the great triumph of Augustus, master of the Roman world, at Rome. The Roman fleet, led by Augustus on one flank and Agrippa on the other, faces and defeats Antony, and Cleopatra, “that outrage, that Egyptian wife!” (8.808), who eventually leads the flight of the Eastern fleet—“pale / with imminent death” (8.831-32), commits suicide, accompanied by Antony’s, in Alexandria. And lastly the vision of Augustus’ great triumph in Rome. Augustus The battle of Actium is shown to the Roman reader as the victory of Italy and the West over the barbarous tribes of the East.
leading on
the riches of the Orient, troops of every stripe—
. . . all the might of the East
(8.803-6)
reviews the gifts brought on by the nations of the earth . . .
as the vanquished people move in a long slow file,
their dress, their arms as motley as their tongues.
(8.844-47)
In the Aeneid Virgil combines mythological epic with themes from Roman history. But there is one field of Roman history where Virgil’s material is mythological rather than historical, and that is his account of the Etruscans. In Book 8 (575ff.) he describes them as “Lydian people . . . / brilliant in war” (8.565-66), who inhabit the city of Agylla (now called Cervetri). They have recently expelled their king, Mezentius, for his oppression and atrocities, and he has found refuge with Turnus, “his old friend” (8.580). The Etruscans are eager to fight against him and his allies, but they have been told by “an aged prophet” that they must “choose leaders from overseas” (8.585-92). They are the perfect ally for Aeneas; after his meeting with their leader, Tarchon, they sail down the river with Aeneas’ ships to relieve the beleaguered camp and fight with him to the end.
This has little to do with history. About the only detail that may be authentic is the adjective Lydian, since Lydia in Asia Minor was thought to be the original home of the Etruscans, a belief mentioned by Herodotus. Their language, recorded in a script based on the Greek alphabet, still defies attempts to decipher it; the buildings of their many cities, from the Arno to the Tiber and farther south, have vanished. But we know them from the large tombs, built below ground in the rock, where the bones of their upper classes rested, with frescoes painted on the walls, and from their treasures, bronze metalwork and imported painted Greek vases from the great periods of the
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