Book 12 — NOTES ON ÆNEÏS, BOOK XII.

Note I.

Amata, ever partial to the cause of Turnus, had just before desired him, with all manner of earnestness, not to engage his rival in single fight; which was his present resolution. Virgil, though (in favour of his hero) he never tells us directly that Lavinia preferred Turnus to Æneas, yet has insinuated this preference twice before. For mark, in the seventh Æneïd, she left her father, (who had promised her to Æneas without asking her consent,) and followed her mother into the woods, with a troop of Bacchanals, where Amata sung the marriage-song, in the name of Turnus; which, if she had disliked, she might have opposed. Then, in the eleventh Æneïd, when her mother went to the temple of Pallas, to invoke her aid against Æneas, whom she calls by no better name than Phrygius prædo, Lavinia sits by her in the same chair or litter, juxtaque comes Lavinia virgo,—oculos dejecta decoros. What greater sign of love, than fear and concernment for the lover? In the lines which I have quoted, she not only sheds tears, but changes colour. She had been bred up with Turnus; and Æneas was wholly a stranger to her. Turnus, in probability, was her first love, and favoured by her mother, who had the ascendant over her father. But I am much deceived, if (besides what I have said) there be not a secret satire against the sex, which is lurking under this description of Virgil, who seldom speaks well of women—better indeed of Camilla, than any other—for he commends her beauty and valour—because he would concern the reader for her death. But valour is no very proper praise for woman-kind; and beauty is common to the sex. He says also somewhat of Andromache, but transiently: and his Venus is a better mother than a wife; for she owns to Vulcan she had a son by another man. The rest are Junos, Dianas, Didos, Amatas, two mad prophetesses, three Harpies on earth, and as many Furies under ground. This fable of Lavinia includes a secret moral; that women, in their choice of husbands, prefer the younger of their suitors to the elder; are insensible of merit, fond of handsomeness, and, generally speaking, rather hurried away by their appetite, than governed by their reason.

Note II.

The poet had said, in the preceding lines, that Mnestheus, Serestus, and Asylas, led on the Trojans, the Tuscans, and the Arcadians: but none of the printed copies, which I have seen, mention any leader of the Rutulians and Latins, but Messapus the son of Neptune. Ruæus takes notice of this passage, and seems to wonder at it; but gives no reason, why Messapus is alone without a coadjutor.

The four verses of Virgil run thus:

I doubt not but the third line was originally thus:

for the two names of Asylas and Atinas are so like, that one might easily be mistaken for the other by the transcribers. And to fortify this opinion, we find afterward, in the relation of Saces to Turnus, that Atinas is joined with Messapus:

In general I observe, not only in this Æneïd, but in all the six last Books, that Æneas is never seen on horseback, and but once before, as I remember, in the fourth, where he hunts with Dido. The reason of this, if I guess aright, was a secret compliment which the poet made to his countrymen the Romans, the strength of whose armies consisted most in foot, which, I think, were all Romans and Italians. But their wings or squadrons were made up of their allies, who were foreigners.

Note III.

The words in the original are these:

Pro Latio obtestor, pro majestate tuorum.

Virgil very artfully uses here the word majestas, which the Romans loved so well, that they appropriated it to themselves—Majestas populi Romani. This title, applied to kings, is very modern; and that is all I will say of it at present, though the word requires a larger note. In the word tuorum, is included the sense of my translation, Your father's land, because Saturn, the father of Jove, had governed that part of Italy, after his expulsion from Crete. But that on which I most insist, is the address of the poet, in this speech of Juno. Virgil was sufficiently sensible, as I have said in the preface, that whatever the common opinion was, concerning the descent of the Romans from the Trojans, yet the ancient customs, rites, laws, and habits of those Trojans were wholly lost, and perhaps also that they had never been: and, for this reason, he introduces Juno in this place, requesting of Jupiter that no memory might remain of Troy (the town she hated), that the people hereafter should not be called Trojans, nor retain any thing which belonged to their predecessors. And why might not this also be concerted betwixt our author and his friend Horace, to hinder Augustus from re-building Troy, and removing thither the seat of empire, a design so unpleasing to the Romans? But of this I am not positive, because I have not consulted Dacier, and the rest of the critics, to ascertain the time in which Horace writ the ode relating to that subject.

Note IV.

The father of these (not here mentioned) was Acheron: the names of the three were Alecto, Megæra, and Tisiphone. They were called Furies in hell, on earth Harpies, and in heaven Diræ. Two of these assisted at the throne of Jupiter, and were employed by him to punish the wickedness of mankind. These two must be Megæra and Tisiphone—not Alecto; for Juno expressly commands her to return to hell, from whence she came; and gives this reason:

Probably this Dira, unnamed by the poet in this place, might be Tisiphone; for, though we find her in hell, in the Sixth Æneïd, employed in the punishment of the damned,

yet afterwards she is on earth in the tenth Æneïd, and amidst the battle,

which I guess to be Tisiphone, the rather, by the etymology of her name, which is compounded of τιω ulciscor, and φονος coedes; part of her errand being to affright Turnus with the stings of a guilty conscience, and denounce vengeance against him for breaking the first treaty, by refusing to yield Lavinia to Æneas, to whom she was promised by her father—and, consequently, for being the author of an unjust war; and also for violating the second treaty, by declining the single combat, which he had stipulated with his rival, and called the gods to witness before their altars. As for the names of the Harpies, (so called on earth,) Hesiod tells us they were Iris, Aëllo, and Ocypete. Virgil calls one of them Celæno: this, I doubt not, was Alecto, whom Virgil calls, in the Third Æneïd, Furiarum maxima, and in the sixth again by the same name—Furiarum maxima juxta accubat. That she was the chief of the Furies, appears by her description in the Seventh Æneïd; to which, for haste, I refer the reader.