It’s almost impossible to put down the Aeneid once you’ve picked it up. Whether you’re starting the epic all over or you’re casually reading a favorite passage at a coffee shop, Virgil exerts a kind of hold over the reader in a way that few other storytellers are able to do. Book VII demonstrates this as well as any part of the book. Aeneas has returned from the Underworld — exiting, perplexingly, through the Ivory Gate — and the second half of the epic now begins. We know of Aeneas’s fate — as many key characters also do — but how it plays out, and the ways in which madness and chaos will spread as allies are both separated and joined, is so utterly absorbing.
Much of the action by individuals in this book has grand and sweeping effects: things spread and then spread further, till everything has changed and forces which were either nascent or non-existent burst forth with real, practical power. The epic is propelled toward war between Trojans and Italians, and ultimately between Aeneas and Turnus.
But despite the violence to come, the first quarter of Book VII reveals and affirms much for Aeneas. After giving nurse Caieta proper burial, Aeneas and company take to the waves in what turns out to be very calm sailing. Neptune has a hand in this. After sighting promising land, Aeneas calls his crew to pull in. The poet stops at this point to invoke the muse Erato — the first of two invocations in book VII. In some of the most famous lines of the Aeneid, the poet proclaims “A greater history opens before my eyes,/A greater task awaits me” (all translations by Robert Fitzgerald).
Thus follows part of King Latinus’s story and his lineage, which includes Saturn, Picus, and Faunus, the latter who is the king’s father. Importantly, Latinus is without heir, since his only son passed away in youth. All of this, we learn, was “by fate.” (It was only after many readings of this and a considerable period of time, that it ever dawned on me that the son’s death is in some ways not unlike the death of Aeneas’s wife, Creusa. The importance of the characters is of course miles apart, but each case shows the starkness of fate: the ultimate task of Aeneas means the loss of many people — sometimes direct and violent, sometimes tangential — but death all the same.)
We see Latinus, aged now and having ruled peacefully over Laurentum for many years, perplexed by two omens which have taken place near a famed laurel tree. The first is a cluster of bees hooked together by their feet; the second is the sight of Lavinia’s hair seemingly aflame. The image of the bees has always seemed odd to me (though it’s vaguely reminiscent of the close of Georgics 4), but the second omen summons to mind quite quickly the occasion of Iulus’ hair in that same kind of state (end of book II). What specific connections Virgil might be trying to show between them, I’m not sure. Latinus, at any rate, at first doesn’t know what to make of these; he calls upon the oracle of Faunus to help. Lying upon the fleeces of the sheep he has sacrificed, he hears the voice of his father: “Propose no Latin alliance for your daughter,/Son of mine; distrust the bridal chamber now prepared.” This realization, this news, Latinus can’t keep to himself. Like so many other occasions in book VII, this an instance of things spreading and taking off — whether it’s information and revelation, emotions, or, quite literally and physically, men going somewhere to carry out a task.
The scene now shifts from Latinus to the Trojans. After putting in on shore and eating a meal, including, at the end, their own platters of bread, Ascanius comments on the rather funny occurrence. This of course prompts Aeneas to recall what his father had said (though it was actually the harpy Celaeno in Book III): you’ll know you’re in the right spot when you eat your own plates. Whatever is behind this seeming slip by Virgil, I do think the fact that Aeneas attributes this to his father makes for a somewhat nice parallel with Latinus having received advice from his own father. In any case, the affirmation that the travel-weary Trojans are finally where they should be, gives way to a scene of gaiety and offerings.
The following morning Aeneas sends men to explore the land, then later on sends legates to speak to Latinus. Aeneas also — himself — marks out territory. As the Trojan legates make their way toward Latinus, we glean the nature of his city. It is replete with grand architecture, a senate house, and sculptures of ancestry; it is anything but an unsettled or undeveloped city, yet of course war will plague the region soon enough. The alliance with the Trojans — very congenially accepted by Latinus upon hearing Ilioneus’s speech (and of course also due to his realization that Aeneas is the man prophesied — is destroyed, viciously, by the continuing wrath of Juno.
When Juno first enters book VII, it follows after much positivity for the Trojans. But as was clear from the outset of the epic, the rage of Juno will be virtually unrelenting. At this point, however, Juno’s game plan has shifted, and the focus now is not so much on eliminating the Trojans, but rather on delaying, drawing out, and inciting as much violence and destruction as she possibly can while Aeneas moves toward his destiny. The figure who aids Juno in this regard is Allecto, daughter of Pluto.
Juno’s wrath, unleashed via Allecto, forms more or less the center of the book. It’s a prime instance of something spreading far and wide, infecting all: in this case madness and fury imbuing the bodies and minds of Amata and Turnus, among many others.
What I think is fun and interesting about this series of actions is, in part, the way in which madness is first put in motion and then further elevated after some event; that is, there is a slight pause, so to speak, in which things might not have become so heightened. Amata is the first example of this and the first infected (though we know of course that she was always against the breakup of a Lavinia-Turnus marriage). Allecto puts the serpent down Amata’s midriff, infecting her, but not fully; the poet says that “She spoke out softly.” She laments to Latinus about what’s transpiring. When, however, Latinus stays firm, then things come full force — “…the poor queen, now enflamed/By prodigies of hell, went wild indeed/And with insane abandon roamed the city.” (The simile shortly hereafter, Amata likened to a spinning top, is, I think, one of the most effective of the book.)
There is a similar two-step process with Turnus. Allecto, this time in the guise of old Calybe (a priestess of Juno), speaks to Turnus at night. Her first speech to him is essentially a call to arms, an urging to take back what is his: to set straight and right what is currently amiss. Turnus’s response — some of the most interesting and thought-provoking of the book — asserts two things. First, that he is aware of this; he is not clueless. Second, that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. He tells her that she is “Sunk in decay and too far gone for truth.” The line is very interesting — and a bit humorous — and might mean a couple of things. But it’s what he says just a couple of lines later that are especially interesting: “Men will make war and peace, as men should do.” What exactly Turnus means by this is also open to different interpretations. (This line is closely echoed in Book IX, by Numanus.) But, practically speaking, it no longer matters, since Allecto then goes into a rage: she “hurled a torch and planted it/below the man’s chest.” The heightened madness — the second step, as I put it earlier — now takes place: “Then driving wild, shouting for arms, for arms/he ransacked house and chamber. Lust of steel/Raged in him, brute insanity of war.”
Allecto’s third act has a slightly different feel that than other two, but still seems to have the same general form. Allecto makes her way to the countryside, where Ascanius and other Trojans are hunting. Here, a calm and servile stag, owned by Pyrrhus (chief herdsman of Latinus), and taken care of by his sons and daughter, is ultimately killed by Ascanius when Allecto’s “Guidance did not fail his hand or let him/Shoot amiss.” The violence done to the stag incites fury in Tyrrhus and others. If this event is the first part of chaos taking over, then the second part — when things become heightened — is Allecto’s sounding a horn to call others: “By that dire trumpet, weaponed and on the run/From every quarter, farmers and foresters/Came together.” Soon after, “…both sides formed for battle.”
Allecto’s three acts, though all different, possess the same underlying pattern. And of course they are also highly effective; indeed Allecto tells Juno as much, and even asks if she (Allecto) should create more havoc. But Juno, now taking over and wanting to “[give] her last touches to the war[,]” dismisses Allecto, and so off she goes to the Valley of Amscanthus.
What follows is basically an unwinding of some of the successes Aeneas and company had at the beginning of the book, namely the alliance. Juno, further inciting the Latins and leaving the king effectively powerless to stop their desire from going to war, disrupts the earlier formed pact. Structurally, the event seems like a bookend to the positivity opening book VII, with the Juno-Allecto series of interventions in between.
The overt action of the book is now over, but two more scenes follow, both satisfying in their own ways. The first involves the gates of war, ultimately pushed open by Juno; the second, echoing Homer, provides a catalogue of leaders, troops, and descriptions of armor. In order to perform this task, the poet calls upon the muses, which makes for the second invocation of the book.
The descriptions of each leader tell us much while also exciting us for what is to come. Indeed this final section of the book carries a perfect momentum: delaying action yet building up a kind of fervor within the reader as the troops themselves passionately muster for war.
The catalogue begins with Mezentius, an exiled king of the Etruscans, and one “Who held the gods in scorn” (a contemptor in the Latin). I don’t know if Virgil specifically intended this, but there is a fittingness to the primacy of Mezentius at the top of the catalogue, since, in an earlier section Latinus describes those who want to go to war as having “sacrilegious blood.” Latinus understands the importance and role of Aeneas. Mezentius, it seems to me, in denying the gods, also denies fate and Aeneas’s destiny.
The quick-footed Camilla rounds out the list — following Turnus — giving us, finally, another female character. Having now received a purview of the Italian personalities and forces, the reader can only keep turning the pages, knowing that Virgil, as always, will continue to delight.
Virgil, and Robert Fitzgerald. The Aeneid. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
Spectatio 