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Since a problematic passage in Virgil's Aeneid (10.366–7) shows the same influence of Sallust (Cat. 58–60) as do the dozen lines preceding and following, it should not be deleted, as has been suggested.

In ancient literature and religion, Hercules—in common with many other deities—is frequently associated with particular trees or types of tree. There are tales connecting him with the wild olive, laurel and oak, but his most prominent and frequent arboreal link is with the poplar (populus Alcidae gratissima, ‘the poplar is most delightful to Hercules’, Verg. Ecl. 7.61), an association mentioned twice in the Hercules-heavy first half of Aeneid Book 8 (276, 286). The festival of Hercules celebrated by Evander and his people takes place just outside the city within a ‘great grove’ (Aen. 8.103–4) of unspecified species, in an area surrounded by less defined expanses of trees. Trees crowd the banks of the Tiber, leaning out for wonder as Aeneas’ fleet passes by (Aen. 8.91–2) and soon uariisque teguntur | arboribus, uiridisque secant placido aequore siluas (‘[the Trojans] are covered by different trees and cut their way through green woods on the calm water’, Aen. 8.95–6); looking up through the sacrificial smoke on the altars, Pallas and his friends are initially frightened ut celsas uidere rates atque inter opacum | adlabi nemus (‘as they saw the tall ships glide towards them through the dark grove’, Aen. 8.107–8). When Evander later shows Aeneas around, the emphasis on trees recurs, with the huge grove destined to become Romulus’ Asylum (Aen. 8.342), and the bramble- and god-haunted woods of the Capitol (Aen. 8.347–54). Later, Aeneas and his men camp in a vast grove of Silvanus, as Venus approaches to bring her son his new shield (Aen. 8.597–607).

The fifth scene represented on the Shield of Aeneas describes Porsenna's siege of Rome and the resistance of the Romans, with the two classic exempla of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia (Verg. Aen. 8.646–51):nec non Tarquinium eiectum Porsenna iubebataccipere ingentique urbem obsidione premebat;Aeneadae in ferrum pro libertate ruebant.illum indignanti similem similemque minantiaspiceres, pontem auderet quia uellere Cocles 650et fluuium uinclis innaret Cloelia ruptis.According to Roman mainstream tradition, at the beginning of the Republic, Porsenna, an Etruscan king of Clusium, tried to reinstate the exiled Tarquinius Superbus by besieging Rome, but the heroism of Romans such as Horatius Cocles, C. Mucius Scaevola and Cloelia impressed him so much that he decided to give up the siege and make peace with his enemies. He then sent his army against the Latins and was finally defeated at the battle of Aricia by the joint forces of the Latin League and their allies from Cumae. However, there circulated also less flattering versions of the story: Tacitus (Hist. 3.72, Porsenna dedita urbe) hints at the fact that the Romans had in fact surrendered to Porsenna, and Pliny refers to a humiliating treaty imposed on them by the Etruscan king (HN 34.139).

Very shortly before the end of Book 11 of the Aeneid, Turnus, hearing of Camilla's death, is forced to abandon his ambush in order to fall back to the city. Just after he leaves the wooded gorge, Aeneas passes through it unscathed with his company. Both then head toward the city walls. Virgil marks this near miss of the two commanders by an acrostic (Aen. 11.901–7):ille furens (et saeua Iouis sic numina pellunt)deserit obsessos collis, nemora aspera linquit.uix e conspectu exierat campumque tenebat,cum pater Aeneas saltus ingressus apertosexsuperatque iugum siluaque euadit opaca.sic ambo ad muros rapidi totoque ferunturagmine nec longis inter se passibus absunt.

In the fourth book of the Aeneid Virgil presents the epic's titular hero as fated to found Rome, initially neglecting and ultimately reassuming his mission, all the while being accorded praise or blame for his progress. In this article I shall re-examine Virgil's use of the specifically Chrysippan Stoic doctrine of Fate and human responsibility in Aeneid 4, with a focus on three key points: the role of assent in creating a compatibility of Fate and human responsibility; the ‘Lazy Argument’, the position that Chrysippus combatted, that if things are fated they will happen without any effort on my part; and the Stoic conception of Fate as a chain of causes that includes human assents. I shall argue that Virgil's impeccable, almost obsessive, scholarship results in a detailed homage to Chrysippan Stoic doctrine that actually alludes to its finer points. I restrict my comments to Book Four on the grounds that the Dido-episode tests to the limit Aeneas’ resolve to ‘follow … Italy’ (361), even if non sponte, and that the juxtaposition with Dido sheds added light on the picture. I hope thereby to contribute to a topic of research that deserves renewed investigation using the discoveries in Hellenistic philosophy over the last two generations.

In Book 10 of the Aeneid, Virgil presents an epic catalogue of Etruscan allies who return under Aeneas' command to the beleaguered Trojan camp (10.166–214), including the forces from Liguria. The account of the Ligurians initially conforms to the general pattern of the catalogue, as Virgil briefly introduces and describes the two leaders. But the description of Cupauo's swan-feather crest leads to a digression about the paternal origins of the avian symbol. Cupauo's father Cycnus, stricken with grief for his beloved Phaethon, was transformed from a mournful singer into the swan that bears his name (10.185–93): non ego te, Ligurum ductor fortissime bello,transierim, Cinyre, et paucis comitate Cupauo,cuius olorinae surgunt de uertice pennae(crimen, Amor, uestrum) formaeque insigne paternae.namque ferunt luctu Cycnum Phaethontis amati,populeas inter frondes umbramque sororum 190dum canit et maestum Musa solatur amorem,canentem molli pluma duxisse senectamlinquentem terras et sidera uoce sequentem. Virgil not only places the Ligurians in a central position within the catalogue, but also devotes more verses to them than to any other contingent, including his own Mantuans (10.198–206). At the very heart of this prominent passage lies the embedded tale of Cycnus, the erotic and sorrowful centrepiece of Virgil's Etruscan catalogue.

uirginibus Tyriis mos est gestare pharetram,purpureoque alte suras uincire cothurno.It is customary for us Tyrian girls to carry a quiverand to lace our calves up high in red boots.(Verg. Aen. 1.336–7) With these words a disguised Venus explains the accessories of her costume to Aeneas and Achates shortly after the Trojan landing in North Africa. Even detailed commentaries on this passage overlook an important feature: the lines contain a reference to Julius Caesar, who claimed descent from Venus and made a political point of wearing red boots during his dictatorship. This allusion to Caesar connects in significant ways to adjoining passages of the first book of the Aeneid.

At the beginning of Aeneid 12, a truce is agreed so that Aeneas and Turnus can fight each other in single combat (12.161-215). But this truce is violated through the instigation of Turnus’ sister Juturna (222–56), who in turn has been instigated by Juno (134–60). The Italian Tolumnius casts a spear that kills an Etruscan warrior (257–82). Aeneas pleads for calm and the maintenance of the truce, but he in turn is wounded by an arrow (311–23). Turnus, seeing the Trojans in disarray, rushes into battle, and a general engagement ensues (324–82). So Turnus, even if he did not instigate the breach, does nothing to heal it, and for that reason alone (in the eyes of some commentators) is a criminal, who deserves his ultimate death at the hands of Aeneas.

Intense scrutiny can raise chimaeras, and Virgil is the most scrutinized of Roman poets, but he may have engineered coincidences in line number (‘stichometric allusions’) between certain of his verses and their Greek models. A handful of potential examples have now accumulated. Scholars have detected Virgilian citations of Homer, Callimachus and Aratus in this manner, as well as intratextual allusions by both Virgil and Ovid, and references to Virgil's works by later Roman poets using the same technique. (For present purposes I disregard the separate, though related, phenomenon of corresponding numbers of lines in parallel passages: G. Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer (Göttingen, 1964) suggests several examples of such correspondences between Homer and Virgil, especially in speeches. Another purely formal mode of allusion faintly present in Roman poetry is homophonic translation (the technique which Louis Zukofsky's 1969 translations of Catullus pursue in extenso); thus Virgil's fagus, beech, corresponds with Theocritus' phagos, oak.) If genuine, the phenomenon lacks any consistent method or regular pattern (and the degree of plausibility varies); if genuine, it is very rare, even if accidents in textual transmission could have obscured some examples; if genuine, it probably originated in the Hellenistic period, although such a case has yet to be made. Virgil presently seems the earliest and most copious practitioner of stichometric allusion. A previously undetected example in the Aeneid is proposed below.

The context of Dido's monologue makes it likely that the facta impia are Aeneas', not hers, and probably refer to ancient traditions about Aeneas' escape from Troy (e.g. Lycophron, Alex. 1261ff.) that differ from the version he recounts in Aeneid 2.

Aeneas' stopover at Actium has struck most readers as an Augustan interlude in the odyssey of Aeneid 3. The scene is conspicuous among the other episodes in the trip for its brevity and for the fact that it does not advance the action toward the Trojan exiles' Italian goal. Instead the accent falls on prefiguring actions of Aeneas' distinguished descendant, Octavian, after he achieved victory over Antony at the same site in 31 B.C. Where the future Augustus dedicated spoils from the battle to Actian Apollo and instituted a festival called the Actian Games, the Trojans celebrate athletic games at Actium and their leader affixes an enemy trophy to the temple of Apollo there. This last act, however, Aeneas' dedicatio, points allusively to the mythical past as well as to the Augustan future. To appreciate the full force of that complex reference, which enriches the thematics of the entire scene, hinges on our recognition of a mythological figure whose identity has been long in doubt. The narrator Aeneas reports that he hung up on Apollo's shrine ‘the bronze shield worn by great Abas’ (3.286 ‘aere cavo clipeum, magni gestamen Abantis’). Who is this Abas, and why is his mention here significant?

This has all the appearance of being a straightforward, even conventional, transition. Indeed, the conceit of Night′s chariot is common and has a history stretching back at least as far as the beginning of the fifth century B.C. Night is elsewhere described by Virgil as umida, the epithet reflecting the traditional view that Night, like Dawn (cf. Theocr. 2.148), arises from and sinks back into the stream of Ocean. In fact, the chariot of Night had been referred to as recently as lines 721 and 738 of this book, in the latter instance with the epithet umida applied to Night. What is new and interesting in our passage is the ‘meta caeli’ round which Night′s chariot turns. The effect of this novelty is to make of Night′s vehicle a racing chariot, as it is the chariots in the Circus that must negotiate a meta. The programmatic reasons for Virgil′s having done this in Book 5 are obvious. Earlier in the book Virgil had described the games held in honour of the anniversary of Anchises′ death. The first and most elaborately portrayed event in these games had been the boat-race, which is plainly modelled on the chariot-race in Iliad 23, the first and most elaborately portrayed event in the funeral games for Patroclus. Just as Achilles had required the competing chariots to race once around a distant turning-post, so Aeneas requires the competing ships to race once around a rock out at sea, which rock is three times called a meta (5.129, 159, 171). A simile comparing the sailors and their ships to charioteers and their teams (5.144–7) makes the connection explicit.

At 876ff. Octavia's partisans lament the ruinous intervention of the Roman mob in support of the heroine's legitimate claims against Poppaea. A series of paradigmatic figures illustrates the sentence ‘o funestus multis populi dirusque fauor’: the two Gracchi, first, then Livius Drusus, thetribunus plebisof 91 B.C., stabbed to death in his house in the year of his tribunate. The gallery of historical characters suits the Roman atmosphere of the play, the fallen heroes of Republican times are presented as noble and disinterested figures, struck by disaster and evil fortune. This is the description of Livius' fate (887–90; text and colometry given as in Zwierlein's OCT)

In the following two passages we read Apollo's epiphany to (respectively) the Trojan leader Aeneas and Callimachus

The true relation between these scenes and historic fact is more mysterious and less simple. The metamorphosis takes place on a higher plane. Historic events and the poet's inner experience are stripped of everything accidental and actual. They are removed from time and transported into the large and distant land of Myth. There, on a higher plane of life, they are developed in symbolic and poetic shapes having a right to an existence of their own. The fact, therefore, that the subjection of the storm is described in a simile for a moment highlighting a very important sphere of the poem (namely that of the historical world) is more decisive than a possible allusion to the younger Cato.

In his vigorous analysis of Dido's soliloquy J. Henry confronts the problem of line 543: ‘How comes it that, having just decided that she will not go with the Trojans, that they would not even receive her if she went, she so immediately inquires shall she go with them, alone or accompanied?’ He suggests that the words introduce ‘a new category of objections’; hitherto the issue has been between herself and the Trojans, but now she reflects that the Trojans are not the only people she has to deal with. To go alone is but to run away from her own people, and she cannot in the circumstances of their recent arrival at Carthage ask them to sail with her. ‘Even more impossible to leave Carthage than to go with Aeneas.’

The magnificence of Augustan Rome is the indispensable setting for Ovid the urbane love poet,rusticitasis the one unforgivable sin. Yet in Ovid'sperpetuum carmencities are for the most part invisible, at best incidental backdrops; the countryside, present in many vividly drawn landscapes, constantly thrusts itself on our attention, a place where mysterious powers menace the individual's identity. This neglect of the city makes a striking, and deliberate, contrast with theAeneid, a ktistic epic whose meaning is governed by constant reference forward to the ‘altae moenia Romae’. Ovid, whose main epic time-scale does include the foundation of Rome, devotes five words to the making of those walls. The one major exception to this indifference to the central theme of Virgilian epic is the Theban episode inMetamorphoses3.1–4.603. The story of Cadmus and his family forms a self-contained unit within the flux of Ovid's epic of transformation. It tells of aktisisthat goes wrong: Cadmus obeys Apollo's injunction to found a city (3.13 ‘moenia fac condas’), but in the end the exile who had founded a new home is driven into a second exile: ‘exit | conditor urbe sua’ (4.565f.).

As Aeneas begins his story of Troy's fall he wonders if in relating it even her enemies, such as the Myrmidons or Dolopes or the soldiers of Ulysses, could refrain from tears (Aen. 2.6–8). The reference to a weeping soldier of Ulysses is a subtle allusion to Vergil's Homeric model, but why are the Myrmidons and Dolopes mentioned? The usual explanation that these were the soldiers of Neoptolemus, who plays a central role in Aeneas' account of Troy's fall, is not entirely satisfactory.In Homer the Myrmidons inhabit Phthia (cf. Il. 2.683–4) and are thus naturally linked with Achilles and Patroclus, but the Dolopes seem to play no role at all in the fighting. Their name occurs only once in the Iliad (as the people ruled by Phoenix) and not at all in the Odyssey.

Catullus' cunning dinner invitation to Fabullus continues to generate a rich variety of interpretations of its memorable central image, the promised gift of a certain unguentum Veneris (13.12). Three Latomus articles, by Littman, Hallett, and Case, have explored possible origins of and uses for that mysterious substance, suggesting, for example, that it might even contain female secretions with powerful aphrodisiac properties, or some other unmentionable sexual lubricant.

Early in Aeneid 3 Aeneas visits Delos and approaches the temple of Apollo with a request for advice on the destination for which the refugees should head. There is an immediate response to his questions (Verg. Aen. 3.90–2):uix ea fatus eram: tremere omnia uisa repente,liminaque laurusque dei, totusque mouerimons circum et mugire adytis cortina reclusis.

It appears to have gone unnoticed that the simile used by Vergil at Aeneid 5.458–60 was appropriated by him from Apollonius Rhodius.

R. G. Austin's translation of these famous imprecations of Dido's seems to me perfectly representative, ‘and then do you, my Tyrians, hound with hate and hate again all his stock and all his race to be’. I see no strong arguments against such an interpretation of this sentence, but I think that an alternative—and very different—understanding of these words is likely.

On his way to convey Jupiter's rebuke to Aeneas, Mercury passes by his maternal grandfather Atlas, a mountain vividly personified as an old man with snowy beard/frozen rivers running down his chin (4.249–51). Here he pauses, then flings himself into the waves (4.253–4)

The idea of structural analysis of the Aeneid has been attacked recently by some who believe that too complicated mathematics are involved in line totals involving a golden mean. The object of the present article is to investigate whether simpler numerical effects are discernible in the poem, and whether these effects were deliberately inserted by Virgil.The significant numbers to be examined in this connexion are 3, 7, 12, and 30. The first three of these are among the ritualistic numbers whose use in the Aeneid was discussed by C. P. Clark, while 30 is among other things part of the series 3, 30, 300 (total 333) which we encounter in Aen. I. 261–96.