CLAS 301B
March 6, 2025

Odysseus & Diomedes stealing Rhesus's horses (Apulian, ca. 360 BCE)

Paper #1 (due tomorrow, March 7 @11:59pm in D2L) *Topics* (Please submit as MSW document)



Aeneid 9: Italian attack against Trojan camp in Aeneas's absence; Nisus & Euryalus ("there was no warrior more handsome—a boy / whose unshaved chin showed puberty's first fuzz. / They shared one mind, one heart", 9.181-3) – eroticized death & devotion (Aeneid's love story?)

• adaptation of successful night raid of Odysseus & Diomedes (Iliad 10) to get horses of Rhesus
  
  
• mission to alert Aeneas, Ascanius's prize Dido's "antique bowl" (9.265-6) – Nisus on human agency, "Do gods inflame our hearts / Euryalus, or do our fierce desires become / our gods?" (9.184-6)
  
  
  Roman, Nisus & Euryalus(1827)
  
  Aeneid 9.431-49 (Volcens kills Euryalus as Nisus watches)
  But as he spoke, the sword plunged violently
  through Euryalus' ribs, ripping open
  his white chest. He crumpled, dying. Blood
  ran down his lovely body; his neck slumped
  like a purple flower cut down by the plow,
  bending as it dies, like a poppy's drooping
  neck when heavy rain drags down its head.***
  Nisus rushed at them. But among them all,
  he aimed at Volcens only, took time for him alone.
  The soldiers crowded him, jabbing with spears
  to drive him off. He fought on still. His sword
  swung round like lightning till he shoved it into
  Volcens' shouting face. He killed him and died,
  pierced through and through, flinging himself
  on his friend's corpse, finding peace at last in death.
  
  Lucky pair! If my song has any power,
  no day will steal you from time's memory, while
  Aeneas' people settle by the Capitol's
  unmoving stone, and a Roman father rules.
  
  ***cf. Catullus 11.21-4, "And let her not look to return to my love, as before,
  a love that has been cut down by her failings
  just as a flower, in bloom on the edge of a field,
  is grazed and falls as the plow passes by."
  
  
  Spencer Finch, Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning (9/11 Memorial Museum, 2014)
  
  Aeneid 9.447, nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo (lit., "No day will ever remove you from unforgetting time")
  

World Trade Center 9/11 Memorial inscription debate (NYT 4/3/2014)

Sablet, The Death of Pallas (ca. 1790)

Aeneid 10: fighting around Trojan camp, return of Aeneas & allies, aristeia ("excellence") of Pallas; Turnus’s personal pursuit of Pallas, vaunting over body ("I return the Pallas he [Evander] deserves", 10.492)

Aeneid 10.494-9 (death of Pallas)
Bracing his left foot
against the corpse, he ripped away the massive weight
of Pallas' sword-belt, carved to show a wicked crime:
a band of husbands murdered in their bloody beds
on a single night, worked by Clonus
with much gold [50 daughters of Danaus = Danaids (50 sons of Daunus' twin Aegyptus), 10.494-9]


Gigantomachy Scene (Parthenon Frieze, 5th century BCE)

• violent vengeance of Aeneas: (1) human sacrifice (after Achilles) of four youths (10.517ff.); (2) slaughter of suppliant Magus ("spare me for my son and father", 521ff.); (3) taunting of beheaded Tarquitus ("No dear mother / will bury you . . .", 557ff.); (4) slaughter of Liger begging for mercy ("I beg you, by the parents who raised such a son" . . . "Be loyal to your brother. / Die", 595ff.); (5) impious giant Aegeon simile (566ff.)

• duel between Turnus & Aeneas delayed (Juno's phantom); Aeneas's battle with Mezentius ("Right hand . . . you're my only god", 10.772-3; cf. Evander's story about his tyranny, 8.481ff.)
  
  Aeneid 10.789-93 (Lausus comes to aid of wounded Mezentius) 
  But Lausus saw, and groaned
  with deep love for his father, shedding tears.
  Lausus, I won't silence your memory,
  your hard death, or your heroism, if indeed 
  history tells the truth about your exploits. 
  
  
• death of Lausus: Aeneas's humanity restored – hero of pietas ("pitying the boy . . . His own paternal piety came to his mind", 10.821ff.)
  
  
  Girodet-Trioson, The Mourning of Pallas (ca. 1790)
  
  Aeneid 11: return of body of Pallas, guilt of Aeneas, Evander’s call for revenge; Trojan offensive at Latinus's Laurentum (11.446ff.) as mothers & children watch from walls > Camilla
  
  Diana the Huntress (Tunisia, 2nd century CE)
  

• Camilla’s epyllion ("mini-epic") & tragic death: Vergil's creation, Camilla the "Amazon" – powerful warrior (ax & spear, swiftness; place of honor in Italian catalogue, 7.803ff.)
  
  
• story framed by Diana (to Opis): Camilla’s pastoral history – exiled father Metabus, dedication to Diana & boundary-crossing story (11.535ff.)? "Many mothers in the Tuscan towns were keen / to wed her to their sons, in vain. She was happy / with Diana, and nursed an endless love of weapons / and virginity, untouched" (11.581-4)
  
  
• Camilla's aristeia: distracted by Chloreus, priest of Cybele, in red, purple, and gold Phrygian garb spotted by Camilla (Vergil's non-binary, queer epic?)
  
  
• Camilla’s wounding: "Wedged below / her naked breast, it drank deeply of her blood" (11.803-4) & death, "Her head / and neck drooped down in death; her weapons fell. Her soul / fled with a groan of protest to the shades below" (11.829-31)***
  
  ***11.831: vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras (cf. last line of epic, 12.952)
  
  
• Opis avenges Camilla's death (Arruns); Latin married women transgressively inspired by Camilla ("On the walls, trembling mothers strained to rain down / weapons on the Trojans, mimicking Camilla, / spurred by love of country . . .", 11.890ff.)
  
  Aeneid 12: failed single combat between Aeneas & Turnus, battle renewed; settlement of Jupiter & Juno & final combat
  
  Aeneid 12.500-4 (narrator highlights senselessness of – "civil"? – war)
  What god can help me sing of so much horror,
  the great slaughter and slain generals, the men
  whom Turnus, then the Trojan hero, drove over
  the plain? Jupiter, did you want nations fated
  for eternal peace to clash so violently?
  
  
  Achilles & Hector (Attic vase, ca. 490 BCE)
  

• Latinus's city beseiged, both sides watch as Aeneas and Turnus face off; Aeneas (now "Achilles") chases Turnus around city (cf. Iliad 22)
  
  
• final shift to Olympus & divine compromise (Juno & Jupiter): peoples combined, Latin language & dress preserved, Troy expunged, Italian contribution to Roman character stressed vs. "eastern" Trojans (12.808ff.)
  
  
• Juturna dismissed by Fury (owl)
  
  Aeneid 12.876-81 (protesting Jupiter's justice) 
  "I know the deadly drumming
  of your wings. Great Jove's proud commands
  are clear. Is this my virginity's reward?
  Why give me immortality? Why can't I die
  as humans do? Then I could end this crushing grief
  and follow my sad brother to the shades."
  
  
• Turnus wounded (thigh)
  
  Aeneid 12.926-52
  His legs folded, and huge Turnus crumpled
  to the ground. The Rutulians leapt up groaning.
  The hills and forests echoed their cry far and wide.
  Humbly, Turnus raised his eyes, his hands,
  and begged: "I deserve this. I don't ask for mercy:
  use your chance. But if a parent's grief can touch you,
  have pity for old Daunus (you had such a father
  in Anchises) and return me to my people,
  as a corpse if you prefer. You've won,
  the Ausonians have seen me stretch my hands out
  in defeat. Lavinia's yours; give up your hate."
  Fierce Aeneas stood there, armed, his eyes
  roaming restlessly, holding back the death-blow.
  And now more and more, Turnus' words began
  to move him and he hesitated—when high on Turnus'
  shoulder, he saw the fatal sword-belt of young Pallas,
  the strap flashing with its well-known studs—Pallas,
  whom Turnus killed when down, and took that emblem
  of the enemy to wear upon his shoulder.
  Aeneas drank in this reminder of his savage
  grief. Ablaze with rage, awful in anger, he cried,
  "Should I let you slip away, wearing what you
  tore from one I loved? Pallas sacrifices
  you, Pallas punishes your profane blood"—and,
  seething, planted his sword in that hostile heart.
  Turnus' knees buckled with chill. His soul fled
  with a groan of protest to the shades below. [cf. Camilla's death]
  

• mercy vs. revenge? cf. Anchises's instructions to Aeneas ("You, Roman, remember your own arts: to rule / the world with law, impose your ways on peace, / grant the conquered clemency, and crush the proud in war", 6.847ff.)***
  
  ***Augustus, Res Gestae 3.1-2 (ca. 13 CE): "I often undertook civil and foreign wars by sea and land throughout the world, and as a victor I spared all citizens who asked for pardon. The foreign peoples that could safely be pardoned I preferred to save rather than kill."
  
  
  Trajan's Column (detail, 106-113 CE)
  
  
• Aeneas as prototype of Roman imperial hero (Augustus Caesar)?
  
  
• Aeneid as reconstruction text/healing Vergil's post civil-war world? healing cultural trauma in Vergil's post civil-war world?
  

• Vergil's public/optimistic vs. private/skeptical voice?
  
  
  
  "classic" epic duels in film:
  
  Finale of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdK0jaLuJL8
  
  Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRwCPUEND1U
  
  Ben Kenobi vs Darth Vader, Star Wars: Episode IV-A New Hope (1977): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kpHK4YIwY4
  
  Subway fight in The Matrix  (1999): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GSgWzmR_-c
  
  Maximus vs. Tigris in Gladiator (2000): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ToyjG0Du2Y
  
  Jen vs. Shu Lien, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf0reiFb3ks
  
  Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EajaioMj-NA
  
  Dumbledore vs. Voldemort, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBWkAHAjXWo