The last of the epics to be discussed is the Aeneid, the composition of which probably began in the early twenties of the first century bce and continued until Virgil’s death in 19 BCE. Its opening lines, in asserting an epic theme, also implicitly make two assertions about the origin of Rome: that it goes back to the Trojan Aeneas, and that it was preceded by a particular sequence of events in Italy (1.1-7). The first, concerning Aeneas, reflects an old view, held especially in Etruria, but not for that reason the majority one. In Republican literature, Romulus is the founder of Rome. The Trojan origin of Rome, ultimately a Greek tradition, was useful as a way for Greeks to think about Rome and also for Romans to think about Greece (Ogilvie 1965: 33; Erskine 2001: 36-43). Greeks could believe that Aeneas was a Greek, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus argued in his Roman Antiquities, written at about the same time as the Aeneid. Even the Aborigines whom Aeneas encountered were Greeks (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.11.1 cites Sempronius Tuditanus F 1 P = F 1 B-W and M. Porcius Cato (hereafter Cato) F 6 P = F 1.4 B-W). Romans, for their part, could believe that they, the descendants of Trojans and now conquerors of Greece, had avenged their ancestors. The Aeneid takes this view of the matter (1.283-5), though it may also offer the hope of reconciliation (see Momigliano 1984).
As for the sequence of events following Aeneas’ arrival in Italy, the first is implicit in the phrase ‘‘Lavinian shores,’’ in which the adjective is proleptic (Aen. 1.2-3): the shores will become ‘‘Lavinian’’ because of the city, Lavinium, to be founded by Aeneas. It will be named after his wife, Lavinia, the daughter of the Italian king, Latinus (cf. Liv. (59 bce-17 ce) 1.1.10; Var. (116-27 bce) Ling. 5.144). The marriage - again, it is implicit - will begin a genus Latinum, a ‘‘Latin race’’ (1.6). The ‘‘Alban fathers,’’ i. e. the Alban kings, will be the rulers of this race. Virgil’s concision here omits their beginning, their succession, and the birth of the twins Romulus and Remus from the daughter of Numitor, the last of the Alban kings in the period before the ‘‘walls of Rome’’ (1.7).
Virgil’s recognition of the chronological gap between Aeneas’ arrival in Italy and the founding of Rome reflects a choice among variant traditions. Dionysius says that both the founder and the time of the founding are in great dispute; he finds a welter of variants in Greek historians (Ant. Rom. 1.72). The founder is either Aeneas or one of his sons or his grandson. For example, in the Greek historian Alcimus (fourth century bce), Aeneas was the father of Romulus, he of Alba, and she the mother of Rhomus, who founded Rome (FGrH560 F 4). (For further references, see FGrH, 3rd part, b (Notes), p. 331 nn. 309-11.) The Roman historian Sallust, writing only a few years before Virgil began work on the Aeneid, has a coalition of Aborigines and Trojans led by Aeneas as the founders of Rome (Sall. Cat. 6.1). As for the earlier Roman epic poets, Naevius and Ennius (on whom see chapter 31, by Goldberg), in them Virgil read that Romulus was the grandson of Aeneas and founder ofRome (see Serv. auct. on Aen. 1.273; cf. Hor. Carm. 3.3.31-2; see also Norden 1966: 390).
Within his chosen chronological framework, Virgil had further choices to make, especially as concerned the son of Aeneas as the first of the Alban kings. Was Ascanius the son of Aeneas and Lavinia and thus half-Italian (Liv. 1.1.11)? Or was he the son of Aeneas and Creusa, born in Troy and of pure Trojan blood (Liv. 1.3.1-3)? The double tradition was already troublesome to Cato. In his Origines (begun in 168 bce), he wrote that, after the war with the Italians and the deaths of Latinus and Aeneas, Ascanius held Laurolavinium (another name for Lavinium). Fearing him, Lavinia fled to the hut of a shepherd, and there she bore Silvius. Ascanius then conceded Laurolavinium to her and founded Alba. He died without children and left his rule to his half-brother Silvius, after whom all the subsequent Alban kings were called Silvii. cato adds that Silvius is also called Ascanius, in this way trying to reconcile the purely Trojan and the half-Italian origin of the Alban kings (Serv. ad Aen. 6.760 = Cato F 11 P = F 1.11 B-W; the authenticity of this fragment is debated: see Schroder 1971: 131-2). The late and anonymous Origo Gentis Romanae (Origin of the Roman Race, hereafter OGR) moves the problem into the next generation: the son of Ascanius, called Iulus (i. e., the grandson of Aeneas), and the son of Lavinia, Silvius (i. e., the son of Aeneas), quarreled over the kingship, and Silvius was declared king, ‘‘as is written in the fourth book of the annals of the pontifexes’’ (18.5).
Virgil’s solution was to give different versions in different places. In Jupiter’s great prophecy in Book 1, Ascanius will receive the name Iulus after Aeneas has ruled in Latium for three years (and has died, though Jupiter is silent on this point). After thirty years, Ascanius/Iulus will found Alba Longa (1.261-71). Compare Cato for the earliest attestation of the name change: Ascanius assumes the new name after his defeat of Mezentius, just at the time his first beard (Greek ioulos) was starting to grow (in Serv. ad Aen. 1.267 = F9P = F1.9 B-W). At Alba Longa, the ‘‘race of Hector,’’ i. e. the Trojan race, will reign for three hundred years, until the birth of Romulus and Remus and the founding ofRome (1.272-77). This tradition makes the Julian family, who claimed descent from Iulus (cf. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.70.4 and another writer contemporary with Virgil, Livy 1.3.2), the continuators of a dynasty. In Book 6, however, among the souls awaiting rebirth whom Aeneas sees in the Underworld, it is Silvius, described as the late-born son of
Aeneas and Lavinia, with whom the succession of Alban kings will begin (760-6). The contradiction in this regard between Books 1 and 6, an old chestnut of Virgilian scholarship, reflects the existence of two equally compelling traditions.
Virgil’s desire to honor Julian dynastic claims in his presentation of the early history of Rome can also be seen in his assertion of a striking variant against a demonstrable norm. What is the name of the mother of Romulus and Remus? In his prophecy in Book 1, Jupiter says that three hundred years after lulus has transferred the seat of the kingdom to Alba Longa, Ilia (the daughter of Numitor) will bear twins (267-71). This woman was better known in Virgil’s time as Rhea Silvia (Var. Ling. 5.144, Liv. 1.3.11, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.76.3, OGR 19.4-5). In the Roman epic tradition, Ilia was the name of Aeneas’ daughter (as in Naevius and Ennius). This name makes good sense when Aeneas is still in the picture. Three hundred and three years later, why would Numitor name his daughter Ilia, ‘‘woman of Ilium (Troy)’’ (Schroder 1971: 79)?
Besides the kind of variants discussed so far, which clearly honor Augustus in particular as pulchra Troianus origine Caesar ‘‘a Caesar who is Trojan from a noble line’’ (Aen. 1.286; see Williams 1972 on this line) and thus can be considered deliberate, there are others that seem to be simply an undigested reflex of the contemporary state of a particular story. This second kind of internal variation in the Aeneid would, one surmises, have been removed if Virgil had lived to finish the work. Two examples, both prophecies concerning the founding of Rome, will be discussed.
In the Aeneas legend as received by Virgil, a cryptic prophecy concerning the eating of a table or tables was traditional. Lycophron in his Alexandra (early 2nd c. bce), apparently locating its fulfillment in Etruria, refers to it in fact as ‘‘ancient prophecy’’ (1250-2). Others say that Aeneas got the prophecy from the oracle of Zeus at Dodona (Serv. ad Aen. 3.256 = Var. Antiq. 2, Appendix l Cardauns (Cardauns commentary: 1976: vol. 2, 162); Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.55.4) or from a Sibyl on Mount Ida in the Troad (Dion. Hal. ibid.). Strabo (b. ca. 64 bce) reports that an oracle bade Aeneas remain wherever he ate his table: ‘‘This happened in the Latin land near Lavinium, when a large loaf of bread was set out instead of the table they lacked and was consumed along with the meat upon it’’ (13.1.53). The story was common in Virgil’s time, as Conon (36 bce-17 ce) indicates. He refers to the story that traces the Roman race to Aeneas and makes him the founder of Alba (note the variant) and the oracle concerning the eating of the tables at a sacrifice, and calls it trite (FGrH26 F 1 (45)).
In the Aeneid the Trojans land on an island in the Strophades, kill some cattle, and prepare a meal. They are attacked by the Harpies, whom they drive off. One of them, Celaeno, a prophetess, proclaims what she has learned from Apollo: the Trojans will reach Italy, but they will not found a city until hunger and the wrong they have done the Harpies force them to eat their tables (3.245-57). The eating of the tables is thus an atonement. The setting and source of the prophecy in Virgil are apparently an innovation, except that, as Servius says, Virgil alludes to the Dodona variant by making Celaeno cite Jupiter as her ultimate authority (Serv. ibid.).
The prophecy is fulfilled when the Trojans, having reached the mouth of the Tiber, land and prepare a meal (7.109-34; cf. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.55.2-3). They heap gleanings from the countryside on flat wheat bread. Hunger drives them to eat the bread, and Iulus exclaims: ‘‘We are eating our tables, too’’ (7.116). Aeneas immediately perceives the fulfillment of Celaeno’s prophecy: ‘‘Here is our home, this is our country’’ (7.122). His reaction does not seem to include any sense of atonement. Perhaps the reader is to understand that a dismissive remark by the Trojan seer Helenus has overruled Celaeno (3.394-5).
Aeneas proceeds, however, to attribute the prophecy to Anchises, whom he quotes (7.124-27). Celaeno is forgotten. Traces of the version in which Anchises is the source of the prophecy remain in OGR 11.1. Anchises (who in this version, unlike Virgil’s, is still alive when the Trojans reach Latium) perceives the eating of the flat bread as the fulfillment of a prophecy he had received from Venus: when, having landed on a foreign shore, the Trojans are driven by hunger to eat consecrated bread, that will be the fated place for founding a city. Forthwith, the sow, to be discussed below, leads Aeneas to the exact location of the prospective city. In this version, then, the sow is closely linked to the eating of the tables, as also in Dionysius (Ant. Rom. 1.55.4). OGR cites L. Julius Caesar (cf. Weinstock 1971: 4, 17) and Lutatius Catulus (probably the one described at OCD (1) and RE 7) for this story.
Explanations for the contradiction between Celaeno and Anchises as the source of the prophecy continue to occupy philologists and literary critics (see, for example, Horsfall 2000: 112-13). In the perspective of synchronic variation, it appears that Virgil has left his innovation (Celaeno) awkwardly juxtaposed with current tradition (Anchises).
Another portent, which concerns the sow that Aeneas encounters soon after he reaches the Tiber, shows the same kind of narrative inconsistency. The sow is the protagonist in what was in Virgil’s time one of the best-known episodes in the early history of Rome. The sow could be seen in bas relief on Augustan monuments, the Belvedere Altar (Taylor 1931: 187-90) and the Ara Pacis (Canciani 1981: items 163-5). (These monuments postdate the death of Virgil, and thus the Aeneid, but the thousands who saw them would not have needed this text or any other in order to understand the iconography.) Bronze images of the sow and the piglets stood in Lavinium, where the sow’s body was preserved in brine (Var. Rust. 2.4.18; for the images cf. Lycoph. Alex. 1253-60 quoted above). The variation in her story is in proportion to its great popularity. In most versions, the sow has to do with the founding of Lavinium, though even these vary considerably among themselves. A well-attested version (cf. Dion. Hal. and OGR cited above), and one certainly known to Virgil, is reported as follows in Diodorus Siculus, whose source is Fabius Pictor, the first Roman historian (third to second century bce): ‘‘An oracle came to Aeneas that a four-footed animal would lead him to the founding of a city. When he was about to sacrifice a pregnant sow, white in color, it fled from his hands, and was pursued to a certain hill, having reached which it gave birth to thirty piglets. Aeneas, astonished at the unexpected event and remembering the oracle, tried to settle the place but seeing in his sleep a vision that clearly forbade him and counseled him to found a city after thirty years, such as the number of the litter was, he desisted from his plan’’ (Diod. Sic. 7.5.4-5 = Fabius Pictor F 4 P = FGrHF 2 = F 5 B-W; cf. Var. Ling. 5.144).
The animal that leads the founder to the site of the new city is a folktale motif (Thompson 1955-8: B155.1, B155.2.1-4). An example in Greek myth is the cow that leads Cadmus to the site of Thebes (Eur. Phoen. 638-44, Hellanicus FGrH 4 F 51, Apollod. Bibl. 3.4.1). On the Roman side, a bull (Latin bos, bovis), escaping from an altar on the Alban hill where it is about to be sacrificed, is captured at a place eponymously named Bovillae, the city to which the Julian family traced its roots (schol. Pers. 6.55; cf. Weinstock 1971: 6). This story can perhaps be discerned in Cato (Serv. auct. on Aen. 10.541 = Cato F 55 P = 2.25 B-W). A minor variant of the sow in the Aeneas legend has a cow as protagonist. Conon reports that, when Aeneas reaches the Brousiad (sic) land, the mooing of a cow that he had brought from Mount Ida causes him to sacrifice the cow and found a city. The city is at first called Aeneia and later Aenos. Conon recognizes the tale as a type of foundation story (FGrH 26 F 1 [45]).
An essential component of the story about the sow is her litter of thirty piglets. Different sources assign different meanings to the number thirty. Lycophron wrote:
And he shall found a territory in places of the Boreigonoi [i. e., Aborigines: cf. Strabo 5.3.2 and Liv. 1.1.5], a settled territory beyond the Latins and the Daunians - thirty cities, having
Numbered the offspring of a dark sow that he shall transport from the hills of Ida and Dardanian places, rearer of this number of pigs in her litter. Of this sow and her milk-fed young he will also, in one city, set up an image, having it moulded in bronze. (Alex. 1253-60)
In an alternate tradition, thirty stands for the number of years before the city of Alba Longa will be founded; that is, it signifies, in effect, that Aeneas will not be the founder of this city, despite the implication of Diodorus Siculus (quoted above). Varro writes:
Thirty years hereafter the city Alba is founded; it is named from a white sow; this sow, when it had escaped to Lavinium from the ship of Aeneas, bears thirty young; from this prodigy thirty years after the founding of Lavinium this city is founded called Alba Longa after the color of the sow and the nature of the place. (Var. Ling. 5.144; the prodigy seems to be assumed by Cato F 13 P = F 1.14b B-W, who says that Ascanius founded Alba after thirty years; cf. Schroder 1971: 140-7).
A Greek analogue from the Iliad is Calchas’ numerological interpretation of the portent of the sparrows and the snake witnessed by the Achaeans at Aulis: the eight chicks and the mother sparrow devoured by the snake make a total of nine, which means that in the tenth year the Achaeans will capture Troy (Il. 2.295-330).
How does Virgil accommodate the story about the sow, which was an essential element in accounts of the founding of Rome? In Book 8, Aeneas is encamped at the mouth of the Tiber. He has a vision of the river god Tiberinus, who tells him of a portent that will confirm his vision (8.43-5) and sends him up the Tiber to Pallanteum, to seek its king, Evander, as an ally. The portent will be a white sow lying beneath the holm-oaks on the bank of the river with thirty newborn piglets. Tiberinus also explains the meaning of the portent: after thirty years Ascanius, or lulus, will found Alba (47-8; cf. the prophecy of Jupiter at 1.267-71). Soon after he awakens, Aeneas finds the sow, which he sacrifices to Juno (81-5). As observed above, Virgil breaks the link between the eating of the tables and the sow. In so doing, he is able drastically to reduce the role of the sow: she only confirms Aeneas’ vision, and the truth of what Tiberinus has said.
Tiberinus’ description of the sow (8.43-6) repeats verbatim the prophecy given to Aeneas by Helenus in Buthrotum (a port on the coast of Epirus in northwest Greece) in Book 3.390-2; Helenus, however, gives the sow a different meaning. He says that it will mark the end of Aeneas’ journey: ‘‘This will be the site of a city, this is sure rest from your toils’’ (393). Here ‘‘a city’’ must mean Lavinium, as in the tradition followed by Varro. The prophecy of Helenus, then, is in accordance with the folktale motif (the animal guides the founder of a city), whereas Tiberinus’ prophecy follows the numerological variant, which places significance on the offspring of the sow and, paradoxically, disallows the founding of a city, Alba Longa, by Aeneas.
As in the case of the eating of the tables, this contradiction has given rise to much discussion among scholars ofVirgil. From the perspective of synchronic variation, it can be observed again that Virgil has neglected to reconcile an innovative use of the tradition (Book 8) with a more conservative one (Book 3). The innovation is marked, by the way, by Aeneas’ sacrifice of the sow to Juno, which accommodates the motif to the plot of the Aeneid (8.81-5). On the Ara Pacis, Aeneas is sacrificing the sow to the Penates (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.57.1; cf. Zanker 1988: 203-5), and the setting is probably to be understood as Lavinium, where there were images of the Penates (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.67.4 = Timaeus FGrH 566 F 59), which Roman consuls and praetors were required to visit every year (Var. Ling. 5.144). It is thought that the seated figure of a woman on the Belvedere Altar is Juno; if so, this conception of the sacrifice would correspond to Virgil’s (again Taylor 1931: 187-90), though any viewer would have been able to perceive the legend of the sow without grasping a possible allusion to Virgil.
Of the epics discussed in this chapter, the Aeneid might have seemed least susceptible to analysis in terms of a dynamic relation to synchronic variation in narrative traditions. It became an instant classic and school text. Despite its lack of a final revision (cf. Donat. Vit. Verg. 35), it has a high polish line by line, and, as a whole, a formal perfection. For the legend of the founding of Rome, it is the last word. And yet clear traces of its response to synchronic narrative traditions have appeared. A symptom of this response is internal contradiction, observed also in the SV of the Gilgamesh epic in Tablet 12 and at various points in the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is also the case that, in relation to a welter of contemporary traditions, both Greek and Latin, Trojan Aeneas as the ancestor on Italian soil of the founders of Rome is the affirmation of the truth of a single variant, and, as such, repeats the stance of the oral storyteller, who always, explicitly or implicitly, denies the truth of others’ versions of the same story in order to assert the truth of his own (Edmunds 1990: 14-15; Nagy 1990c: 60-1). Finally, even the Aeneid, like the other epics discussed in this chapter, admits folktales and sets its version against those current among its audience. Virgil’s sow is sacrificed near the mouth of the Tiber. Others’ sows reached Lavinium, and in that city some of Virgil’s readers had seen the supposed remains pickled in brine.
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