Troy, Italy, and the Underworld (original) (raw)
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Troy, Italy, and the Underworld (Lucan, 9, 964–999)
2012
one of the protagonists of Lucan's Pharsalia, disappears from the scene for a long time after the Battle of Pharsalus. He reappears at the end of Book 9, when he pays a visit to the ruined city of Troy. The function and the source of this historically unsupported scene are both worth examining. Earlier research disclosed as the literary source of the Troy scene the episode in Aeneid Book 8, when Evander shows Aeneas the future site of Rome. While fully accepting that, I would like to present another possible source that might have as much effect on the constructing of Lucan's Troy as the Evander-scene: the katabasis in Book 6 of the Aeneid. Definite parallelisms can be identified between the two scenes on both motivic and textual levels. Furthermore, the connection between these three scenes can be proved on the level of content, since by examining them together the real purpose of the Troy scene can be decoded: Lucan predicts Rome's destruction in this episode.
A. Ziosi, Unreal cities. Troy is not Troy and Carthage is Destroyed, «Maia» 75, 2-3/2023, 339-357
MAIA, 2023
The analysis of the allusions to Ennius’ and Euripides’ Trojan tragedies in Aeneid II (often via the brief and already “tragic” Ilioupersis of Lucr. 1.471-477) provides us with an altogether surprising image of Virgil’s Troy. The all-important fire imagery, ultimately deriving from Euripides’ Trojan trilogy, creates, as it were, a counterpoint of sustained metaphors that enriches our vision of Troy in the Aeneid and provides a new coherent and properly “dramatic” meaning for the entire account of Virgil’s Ilioupersis and, moreover, for the symbolic correspondences between Book 2 and Book 4. L’analisi delle allusioni alle tragedie troiane di Ennio e di Euripide nel secondo libro dell’Eneide (spesso con la mediazione della breve e già "tragica" Ilioupersis di Lucr. 1.471-477) ci restituisce un’immagine davvero sorprendente della città di Troia in Virgilio. Il fondamentale corredo di immagini che raffigurano il fuoco (che deriva in ultima analisi dalla trilogia troiana di Euripide) crea, per così dire, un contrappunto di metafore ricorrenti che arricchisce la nostra visione di Troia nell'Eneide e conferisce un nuovo significato coerente e propriamente "drammatico" all'intero racconto dell'Ilioupersis di Virgilio e, inoltre, alle corrispondenze simboliche tra il libro II e il libro IV.
Future City in the Heroic Past: Rome, Romans, and Roman Landscapes in Aeneid 6–8
Urban Dreams and Realities in Antiquity, 2014
Arma virumque canō? "Arms and the Man I sing …"1 So Vergil begins his epic tale of Aeneas, who overcomes tremendous obstacles to find and establish a new home for his wandering band of Trojan refugees. Were it metrically possible, Vergil could have begun with "Cities and the Man I sing," for Aeneas' quest for a new home involves encounters with cities of all types: ancient and new, great and small, real and unreal. These include Dido's Carthaginian boomtown (1.419-494), Helenus' humble neo-Troy (3.349-353) and Latinus' lofty citadel (7.149-192).2 Of course, central to his quest is the destiny of Rome, whose future greatness-empire without limit (1.277-278)-Jupiter prophesies to Venus as recompense for the destruction of her beloved Troy, but whose foundation ultimately depends on Aeneas' success at establishing a foothold in Italy (1.257-296). Although Rome's (notional/traditional) foundation will occur several centuries after Aeneas's final victory, Vergil has his hero interact with the future city in several ways, including two well-known passages. In the first (8.95-369) he tours Evander's Pallanteum, the physical site of future Rome, taking delight in his surroundings and learning local lore (8.310-312, 359), yet he fails to perceive that this
(Also: Heldenschau). From the Intro: “Arms and the Man I sing…” So Vergil begins his epic tale of Aeneas, who overcomes tremendous obstacles to find and establish a new home for his wandering band of Trojan refugees. Were it metrically possible, Vergil could have begun with “Cities and the Man I sing,” for Aeneas’ quest for a new home involves encounters with cities of all types: ancient and new, great and small, real and unreal. These include Dido’s Carthaginian boomtown (1.419–494), Helenus’ humble neo-Troy (3.349–353) and Latinus’ lofty citadel (7.149–192). Of course, central to his quest is the destiny of Rome, whose future greatness—empire without limit (1.277–278)—Jupiter prophesies to Venus as recompense for the destruction of her beloved Troy, but whose foundation ultimately depends on Aeneas’ success at establishing a foothold in Italy (1.257–296). Although Rome’s notional/traditional foundation will occur several centuries after Aeneas’s final victory, Vergil has his hero interact with the future city in several ways, including two well-known passages. In the first (8.95–369) he tours Evander’s Pallanteum, the physical site of future Rome, taking delight in his surroundings and learning local lore (8.310–312, 359), yet fails to perceive that this place will become the imperial metropolis. In the other (8.625–731), he examines a creation of Vulcan, a shield engraved with vignettes of Rome’s future history from Romulus to Augustus triumphant, the action-packed imagery of which Aeneas also fails to comprehend (8.730). Of course, references to Rome (and its culture) are not restricted to Jupiter’s prophecy and the iconic events in Aeneid 8: James Morwood cogently argues that, elsewhere in the Aeneid, Vergil’s descriptions of, or allusions to, structures built or rebuilt by Augustus give Rome a strong presence throughout the poem. The present essay expands upon his concept in significant ways to argue that Augustan Rome—its history, its aristocratic culture, and the city itself—is completely present, albeit in palimpsestic form, in Aeneid 6–8. Overview: “Rome in the Underworld” demonstrates that Vergil’s description of Elysian topography, combined with Anchises’ censorial activities in Aeneid 6, characterize this section of the Underworld as a ‘premortal’ version of Rome’s underlying landscape in which important religious and political activities take place simultaneously. “A Didactic City-Walk” examines the visual inspiration for the Parade of Heroes (also Aeneid 6), and how Vergil’s descriptions and groupings of Rome’s future leaders allow his audience to visualize Anchises leading Aeneas through key commemorative zones in Rome’s (future) historic center, areas heavily populated by statues of great men in Vergil’s day. It concludes with an examination of the simultaneously chiastic and linear structure of themes, activities, people and topography through which Anchises, Aeneas and the Sibyl ‘travel’ on their journey of discovery. “Palimpsestic Rome” explores the features of Latinus’ city (Aeneid 7), the terrain of Evander’s Pallanteum (Aeneid 8) and the cityscapes engraved on Aeneas’ shield (Aeneid 8) which, when (re)integrated with the ‘premortal’ Rome of Aeneid 6, comprise a comprehensive vision of Augustan Rome, its aristocratic culture, and its future-perfect history.
Illuminating Darkness: Virgilian Ambiguity and Lucan's Underworld
Proceedings of the Virgil Society, 2023
Lucan's Bellum Civile (henceforth BC) has long been assumed to stand in striking opposition to Virgil's Aeneid. The BC's opening lines appear to adopt a competitive-even combativestance relative to Virgil's epic undertaking: Lucan's declaration to sing of bella plus quam civilia (Lucan 1.1) goes beyond the Aeneid's theme of arma virumque (Virgil, Aen. 1.1), while his description of his epic project as inmensum opus (Luc. 1.68) outstrips even the "greater" series of events-the war in Italy-which Virgil frames as his maius opus (Aen. 7.44-5) in the Aeneid's latter books. Lucan's proem, with its visceral imagery of Roman self-harm and language of criminality (Luc. 1.1-7), seems to establish a decidedly destructive trajectory for the poem, a marked diversion from the theme of (extremely) hard-won progress towards Roman greatness which Virgil lays out (Aen. 1.1-7). Yet even as his poem's furor blossoms like a fresh bloodstain and Lucan presents us with harrowing descriptions of the Roman world in ruins (Luc. 1.24-39, 7.397-406), with laments on the triumph of Caesarian tyranny (Luc. 7.385-459), and with morbid images of the bodies of nations mouldering on the plains of Pharsalus (Luc. 7.617-43), 1 we should not-and cannot-take a wholeheartedly 'pessimistic' approach to the question of the BC's engagement with Virgil's epic. 2 After all, this question depends entirely upon our conception of Virgil and his ambivalence. 3 To * I would like to thank the Virgil Society for the valuable comments and discussion which helped me to develop my talk into this article. Since some of these ideas were developed within my doctoral thesis, special thanks are owed to my supervisor Bruce Gibson, and to my examiners Colin Adams, Rhiannon Ash, and Alison Sharrock. I would also like to thank Julene Abad del Vecchio for her supportive discussions, and Talitha Kearey for helping me to track down some important items of bibliography. 1 Fantham (2010) 209-11. For an overview of tensions of remembering and forgetting, speech and silence, and civil war, see Thorne (2011). 2 On broader questions of Lucanian optimism and pessimism, particularly regarding the outcome(s) of civil war and Nero's reign, see Sanderson (2020) 190-223, 231-6; and Sanderson (forthcoming), respectively. 3 Casali (2011) 85.
The fiction of History: recalling the past and imagining the future with Caesar at Troy
2010
This essay considers the nature of historical discourse through a consideration of the historical narrative of Lucan’s Pharsalia. The focus is on the manner in which Lucan depicts history as capable of being fictionalised, especially through the operation of political power. The discourses of history make a historical account, but those discourses are not, in Lucan's view, true, but are fictionalised. The key study comes from Caesar at Troy, when Lucan explores the idea of a site (and history) which cannot be understood, but which nevertheless can be employed in a representation of the past. yet, Lucan also alludes to a ‘true history’, which is unrepresentable in his account of Pharsalus, and beyond the scope of the human mind. Lucan’s true history can be read against Benjamin and Tacitus. Lucan offers a framework of history that has the potential to be post-Roman (in that it envisages a world in which there is no Rome), and one in which escapes the frames of cultural memory, bo...
Commune sepulcrum: The 'Catullan' Memory of Troy in Vergil's Aeneid
Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis, 2019
In Roman literature, Troy appears as a locus memoriae on several occasions. As a locus memoriae is an image of a location's past state, it inevitably recalls that past state's absence in the present. Troy as a literary locus memoriae recalls its own present absence, that it is only a ruin, or-according to Lucan-even less than a ruin. In this context, a literary phenomenon, i. e. the depiction of Troy being the equivalent of the absence of/or the grief for the loss of something or somebody can later be traced in the Roman poetry. Catullus, mourning his brother's death at Troy, calls the city the common grave (commune sepulcrum) of Asia and Europe in his carmen 68. Regarding Troy, several complex allusions can be noticed in Vergil's Aeneid recalling both Catullus 68 and 101, the two poems that are in both thematic and intertextual connection with each other. The purpose of the present study is to examine-by means of analysing the above mentioned intertexts-what kind of special locus memoriae Troy becomes in the Aeneid. This will be of crucial importance to observe the way Troy later appears in Lucan's Bellum Civile.
The Trojan Origins of Rome and Florence in Dante's Commedia
2009
Dante mentions Troy and the Trojans throughout the Commedia. This is due to his predilection for the Virgilian epic about the genealogical origins of the Roman people and empire, which, according to the Orosian vision of history drawn on also in the Monarchia, prepared the ground for the coming of Christ and the affirmation of his Church under Constantine. The presence of the figure of Virgil as a major character in Dante’s work is also closely connected to the medieval understanding of the author of the Fourth Eclogue as a prophet of Christianity. In this essay I will outline the different values and meanings given to the double heritage of Troy and the Trojan Aeneas in the Italian civilisation of the later Middle Ages. Troy is described as both the root and the anti-model of Rome. Dante emphasizes how the myth of national origin handed on in oral tradition should be the vital paideia of every child living in a time of demure and sober peace as that of ancient Florence described by his ancestor Cacciaguida in Paradiso 15 (97-135). On the other hand, Troy itself cannot be taken as model for a virtuous city, being ‘proud’ and therefore destined to be burnt down, as Virgil remembers at his first encounter with Dante in Inferno 1 (75). We find confirmation of this concept in the Aeneid, where ‘debellare superbos’ (‘tame the proud’, 6.853) is recognized as a principal duty of the Roman people. Another object of enquiry will be the figure of the “just / son of Anchises” (“quel giusto / figliuol d’Anchise”, Inf. 1.73-74), as Dante’s Virgil calls him, the Trojan Aeneas, who already in the Aeneid is chosen as the progenitor of the Romans for his personal qualities as the virtuous hero defending the fundamental Roman values of fides and pietas, and for his role as vector of the logos of history that allows the interpretation of the end of Troy as the beginning of Rome, or more generally the explanation of death as prelude to rebirth. In the Commedia Aeneas is identified with the Roman eagle - figura of Jupiter’s divine bird - leaving its nest on the mount of Troy to start its fatal flight through the history of humankind (Par. 6.1-9). Finally, on the basis of these reflections, I will try to discuss the meaning of Dante’s idea of the Trojan origin of both Rome and Florence in the context of the tormented politics of his age.