The Aeneid: “their bows went under like a school of dolphins”

Nisus and Euryalus by Jean-Baptiste Roman.

1/ As I have heard from other people, the Aeneid has two halves: the first half is modelled after the Odyssey, as Aeneas flees from Troy and wanders for seven years searching for a new home (breaking a woman’s heart on the way); the second half is modelled after the Iliad, as Aeneas follows orders from the gods and sets up a new kingdom in Italy and has wars with local people.

As Aeneas settles in Latium, King Latinus happily accepts him because of oracles that he should marry his daughter Lavinia to a stranger/ foreigner. But Juno (the Roman equivalent of Hera) is not happy—that Troy has been destroyed is not enough, that the Trojans have wandered for seven years without a home is not enough—she hates them—she causes discord between Latinus and his wife Amata, then wakes up resentment and anger in Turnus, the main suitor of Lavinia. 

“With this she hurled a torch and planted it 

Below the man’s chest, smoking with hellish light. 

Enormous terror woke him, a cold sweat 

Broke out all over him and soaked his body 

Then driven wild, shouting for arms, for arms 

He ransacked house and chamber. Lust of steel 

Raged in him, brute insanity of war, 

And wrath above all, as when fiery sticks 

Are piled with a loud crackling by the side 

Of a caldron boiling, and the water heaves 

And seethes inside the vessel, steaming up 

With foam, and bubbling higher, till the surface 

Holds no more, and vapor mounts to heaven.

So, then, in violation of the peace, 

He told the captains of his troops to march 

On King Latinus…” 

(Book 7) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

I bet Shakespeare loved that passage. 

2/ In my blog posts about Homer, I pointed out that there were a lot more epic similes (Homeric similes) in the Iliad than in the Odyssey. In the Aeneid, there are also more epic similes in the Iliad half than in the Odyssey half. 

“[…] And they all thronged, 

Outshouting one another, round the palace. 

Latinus, though, like a seacliff stood fast, 

Like a seacliff that when the great sea comes

To shatter on it, and the waves like hounds

Give tongue on every side, holds grandly on, 

Though reefs and foaming rocks thunder offshore

And seaweed flung against it streams away.” 

(ibid.) 

Like Homer, Virgil compares the fighters to animals: 

“Now Turnus furiously this way and that 

Rode round the walls and looked for a way in 

Where there was none. As a wolf on the prowl 

Round a full sheepfold howls at crevices

Enduring wind and rain at dead of night, 

While nestled safe under the ewes the lambs 

Keep up their bleating; he, beside himself, 

Tormented by accumulated hunger, 

Jaws athirst for blood, in all his fury

Cannot reach them, rend them…” 

(Book 9) 

Here Turnus is compared to a bird (hawk or eagle, I guess), and then a wolf again: 

“And taking hold 

Of the man hanging there he tore him down 

With a big chunk of wall—as when the bird 

Who bears Jove’s bolt takes wing, lugging a hare 

Or snowy swan aloft in crooked talons, 

Or when Mars’ wolf steals from the fold a lamb 

Whose mother, bleating, seeks it…” 

(ibid.) 

Euryalus, a young Trojan, is compared to a lion, which is one of the most common images in the Iliad.  

“… Think of an unfed lion

Havocking crowded sheepfolds, being driven 

Mad by hunger: how with his jaws he rends 

And mauls the soft flock dumb with fear, and growls 

And feeds with bloody maw.” 

(ibid.) 

You get the idea. The quote in the headline also comes from Book 9. 

Pity that I can only read the Aeneid in translation—it’s probably so good to read in Latin. 

3/ Another thing Virgil has learnt from Homer is that he tries to add life to the warriors—their deaths are not just abstract losses. In Book 9, for example, he gets us to spend time with Nisus and Euryalus, to know them and see their friendship. When they die:  

“The attackers’ heads, indeed—a ghastly sight—

They fixed on spears, and lifted, and bore out 

In taunting parade: Euryalus and Nisus.”

(ibid.) 

It’s an awful image—we feel the sorrows of Trojans: 

“They stood in sorrow, moved by those grim heads 

Impaled and dripping gore—heads too well known 

To their unhappy fellows…” 

(ibid.) 

Virgil also adds a scene of Euryalus’s mother wailing as she sees her son brutally killed, beheaded, and unburied. It’s heart-rending. 

However, generally speaking, I still think Homer is better: in the Iliad, every death matters, every one that dies is an individual. All the fighting and killing in the Iliad were gruelling and tough to read after a while, but Homer got me to care about the characters, especially the Trojans, and got me to like Hektor and take an interest in Akhilleus—Virgil doesn’t really have me interested in the characters and their war. 

I’m going to refrain from commenting on Aeneas till I’ve finished reading the whole poem.