In the genre of war epic, the outbreak of war is a climactic moment: it brings to the surface tensions, conflicts and issues that are crucial to the dynamics of the poem and to the reader’s self-positioning with regard to its characters. Furthermore, while the beginning of war is always an event marked by impending destruction and a diplomatic failure, it is also the most important dynamic moment that drives the narrative forward, as well as a turning point where the epic’s values and ideals appear most fragile and volatile. Because of the narrative significance of the outbreak of war, it is worth examining more closely the function of gender in these crucial moments—especially, how gender plays out in the discussion concerning the justification of war, the control over its outbreak and the finding of the culpable party.
It is characteristic of the Roman epic tradition that readers do not usually find themselves in medias res in the beginning of the poem: instead, the Roman epics tend to explain the background to the action in detail, and stress the gradual culmination of the crisis. The beginning of war is an episode that unleashes action and becomes a climax to the tension that has been building since the first lines. This narrative impetus is at its strongest in the Aeneid and the Thebaid, where the reader must wait for the outbreak of war until the second half of the epics.1 In the Pharsalia and the Punica, the culmination of the crisis comes more swiftly, but it is still grounded in an elaborate discussion of reasons and motifs, and is represented in a dramatic manner.2
Arguably, one of the reasons why the outbreak of war has such an impetus in Roman epic is its inherent connection to the political and ideological discussions of the post-civil war era. The crucial themes that appear in all the Roman imperial epics are, on the one hand, the justification of war and, on the other, the guilt caused by an unjust conflict. The fact that these issues are of importance can be considered a reflection of the Roman political traditions. The definition of bellum iustum and its proper execution were matters of continuous concern in the Roman political system, and they involved both the secular and the religious spheres of life.3 The aggressive and unapologetic expansion of the Empire makes it obvious that the Romans did not justify their wars in a modern way, by characterising them as ‘defensive wars’.4 Nevertheless, the idea that a war must have the blessing of the gods and a cause that was morally right was strongly present in Roman ideology concerning military matters.5 Moreover, the strict procedure of declaring a war was needed to maintain the central administrative control over the outbreak of hostilities.6 During the intense imperial expansion, when large sections of the army were mobilised at the same time, this became all the more important.
From the beginning of the Principate, the princeps was the ultimate decision maker in the process of declaring a war. Technically, the emperor had a duty to consult his consilium, but he was not bound to follow its advice.7 Moreover, individual generals in the provinces and on the frontiers were carefully supervised, and waging war without the emperor’s permission carried a death penalty.8 Endeavours to further centralise power over war and peace reflect the desire to avoid the mistakes of the recent past. The disastrous results of the lack of control over the outbreak of war were bitterly demonstrated during the last century of the Republic. When the Senate lost its authority in questions of war and peace, and the Roman legions turned against each other, a complete travesty of the process of war was witnessed. Civil war was the most unjust war of all; it perverted the natural order and ridiculed the detailed procedure of beginning and executing a military conflict.9 More importantly, as Romans turned against each other, the task of identifying the guilty party and labeling the opponents as treacherous ‘others’ required new rhetorical devices. The fact that the theme of unjust war is constantly raised in the epics of the early Principate should therefore be examined against this background, as a reaction to the chaos of the previous decades.
This discussion is preeminently present in the epics with a historical topic. In the Pharsalia, Lucan paints a vivid picture of Caesar as a ruthless tyrant attacking his patria and abusing the democratic customs of waging war.10 At the same time, however, the Pompeian side is not represented as a faultless embodiment of Roman righteousness11—a matter which severely complicates the dealing of guilt and affects Lucan’s definition of Roman-ness. A different approach to the theme can be found in the Punica, where the guilt of war reflects the classic antithesis between Romans and their enemies. Silius constantly emphasises Hannibal’s breach of fides and Carthaginian treacherousness as the reasons for the war.12 While stressing that the Second Punic War made Rome the caput mundi,13 the poet simultaneously succeeds in implying that this imperial position was a direct consequence of the Romans’ responsibility for defending their values and their allies against the Carthaginians’ bombastic behaviour. There is, therefore, a distinct difference between Lucan’s civil war narrative, which emphasises ambiguity and uncertainty in ascription of guilt, and Silius’ tale of the imperial establishment, which draws a distinct line between Romans and their enemies in the respect of the guilt of war. These examples clearly show how the beginning of war in Roman war epics is a theme loaded with moral overtones that have a crucial role in the construction of Roman identity.
When studying the breakout of war in Roman epic, many scholars have underlined gender difference and the antithesis between the male and female as crucial themes. It is indeed true that the interaction between men and women—whether peaceful or contentious—often has a crucial role in the culmination of a crisis. This might seem somewhat surprising, when we consider the Roman patriarchal gender hierarchy, which in real life left little room for women in the matters of war and peace. In war epic, however, female characters are strikingly active and visible in the outbreak of war. The prominent role of women has sometimes been explained by the poets’ efforts to justify the chain of events that leads to the conflict. John Zarker and Paul Burke, for instance, point toward Amata’s role in the Aeneid as a scapegoat: a character who takes on the culpa belli and eventually, by her death, absolves the narrative of it, paving the way for peace.14 This reading is built on the conception of women as fundamentally non-political characters—from their nature as private beings, it is deduced that women, like divine powers, are not ‘real’ agents in the public sphere of politics and war. Accordingly, the guilt assigned to them is, as a matter of fact, nobody’s guilt. Their actions could be equated with fate or chance, and when the crisis is over, no party is obliged to take responsibility for it.
The problem with this reading appears to be that from the period of civil wars onwards, Roman elite women simply cannot be characterised as domestic beings without political responsibility. Instead, they were active participants in the politics of their husbands, brothers, and children, and—more importantly—they were publicly considered as such. Their actions had a profound influence on the reputation of the men associated with them, and their vices and errors did not go unnoticed by the political adversaries of their family.15 Against this background, it is highly improbable that the poets of the early Principate, or their contemporary audience, would have considered women as easy scapegoats. Certainly, this theory cannot be evoked to bypass their prominent role in the beginning of war.
Another popular explanation for the strong presence of epic women in the outbreak of war is exactly the opposite, and stresses the responsibility and guilt of the female characters. According to Keith, Perkell and Panoussi, in the epic universe the female and the male represent the binary oppositions of nature and civilisation, chthonic and Olympic, destruction and order (and, although these studies do not adopt this terminology, I would add: semiotic and symbolic). This means that the epic female is a destructive force, opposed to the Roman (male) mission of establishing an imperium sine fine.16 While this theory is all-encompassing, it is most often applied precisely to the outbreak of war, which is considered its strongest proof.17
In one sense, one can argue more convincingly for this reading than for the scapegoat theory discussed above, since it acknowledges the conflation of the public and the private spheres that is an integral part of any epic narrative. However, its weakness is that it reduces epic women to nothing but women, and reads them exclusively through the lens of gender.18 While the male characters are examined as having varying motivations for stirring up war, the sole motivation for the women’s conduct seems to derive from their innate feminine nature, which is destined to complicate the teleological drive of the epic and to wreak havoc. The women are depicted as womb-driven hysterics, motivated solely by their bodily drives and by the pulsation of the semiotic chôra—while, at the same time, this interpretation fails to notice that it is in fact their warmongering that drives the teleological narrative forward and makes possible the fulfillment of the epic hero’s quest.
Arguably, it is highly problematic to examine epic women as a unified group: in the surviving imperial epics, women agitate for war and make an impact on its outbreak for multiple reasons, and sometimes oppose each other while doing so. The varied and conflicting female roles in war epic therefore demand a more refined and a less all-encompassing reading than these two discussed above. In this chapter, I will scrutinise the role of females in the beginning of war, focusing on the concepts of guilt and fury. These concepts, I suggest, are closely connected to the interplay between the semiotic and the symbolic in the narrative language of epic, and to the construction of Roman identity in the genre. The examination of their gendered aspects, therefore, will be particularly enlightening when we consider the functions of gender in the construction of ‘the Roman self’, on the basis of the ideology of just and unjust war.
1 Casus belli: War-Bringing Marriages and Ill-Omened Brides
One of the most prominent and archetypal female roles in war-centred epic is that of a victimised cause of a crisis. In this narrative pattern, the woman herself is usually extremely passive, and her fate becomes a matter that triggers violent action in the male protagonist(s) of the story. The topos itself is evidently present in the Graeco-Roman literary tradition, where it is possible to observe two main variants of the theme. In one of these, war is a result of a marriage, or of the dissolving of a marriage; in the other, it follows the death of a woman. I will first discuss the former, demonstrating that it is a narrative structure repeatedly utilised and modified by the Roman epic poets of the early Principate.
In the Greco-Roman literary tradition, the theme of marriages that lead to war can be most clearly observed in the so-called bride rape stories. Paris’ abduction of Helen, followed by an epic war on a massive scale in the Iliad, is one of the most ancient representatives of this tradition, and predictably a model for most of the later variants of the theme. It is an archetypal tale of male vigilantes taking revenge in order to restore the honour of the family or the clan—the narrative is strongly focused on the male agents’ experience, and the voice of the female victim is almost entirely lacking.19 Frequent allusions to this archetypal bride rape tale in Greek literature speak of the continuous need or desire to rewrite the story about an unlawful form of wedlock, reflecting contemporary cultural values and ideas. In addition to Helen’s story (several times retold),20 the bride rape is a prominent theme, for example, in the story about Jason and the Argonauts, where the hero runs away with Medea after stealing the golden fleece from her father Aeëtes.21
In the Roman context, the story about a bride rape followed by a military conflict holds an important place in the city’s legendary history—the rape of the Sabine women was one of the most crucial founding myths of Rome and the Roman people. The cultural importance of the tale was strengthened especially by the works of the Augustan historians Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who made it an important episode for understanding the common past and the ethnic origin of the Roman people.22 As Hemker and Joshel have convincingly demonstrated, the idea of the female body as a space and place for imperial conquest is particularly evident in this story. Not only do the abducted women embody the continuity of the family line and the merge of the Romans and the Sabines; their violent abduction and docile submission also represent the power balance of this union. The Romans’ dominion over the Sabines is naturalised, since it is aligned with the male dominion over the female.23 Accordingly, Keith’s equation of sexual conquest of a female body and political conquest of a foreign territory—which she regards as something that marks Roman literature throughout its course—is particularly evident in this Romanised variant of the Helen myth.24
The lasting fascination of the bride rape theme in ancient literature was doubtless due to the fact that the narrative structure offered an effective way of discussing many fundamental issues and illuminating values of importance to Greek and Roman cultures. The most obvious points of concern in the storyline are the rightful procedure of making and dissolving a marriage pact, the violation of patria potestas, and the role of marital unions in the forming of political alliances. Questions concerning rightful revenge and the justification of war are likewise raised in these tales. Because of this underlying discourse on values, the different versions of this archetypal story can reveal essential differences in Greek and Roman authors’ ideas concerning marriage, gender and war: it is against this background that I will scrutinise the variants of this narrative pattern in Roman war-centred epic.
In Roman epic, one of the best examples where the bride rape storyline figures can be found in book seven of the Aeneid, where the outbreak of war between the Trojans and the Latins is depicted. The book opens with Aeneas’ arrival in Italy, where he is welcomed by Latinus, king of Laurentum. Encouraged by a divine omen, the king is convinced that he should give his daughter Lavinia, the sole heir to the kingdom, to Aeneas in marriage. Unfortunately, there is another suitor in sight: a young Rutulian noble, Turnus, to whom the princess appears to have been informally promised. As a result of these conflicting interests, a war breaks out, involving nearly all the neighbouring peoples.
Book seven in its entirety is devoted to discussing and explaining the background and the beginning of the war. Since the nature of the earlier agreement between Latinus and Turnus is not indisputable, it remains uncertain to whom the princess belongs, who has been betrayed, and who is the actual villain claiming another man’s bride for himself.25 What is clear, however, is the futility of the war and the unlawful execution of its outbreak. The war in the Aeneid is unjust, unnecessary and unholy—a sacrilegium, in fact. The narrator stresses this by calling the conflict arma impia, infandum bellum and lacrimabile bellum, and claims that by giving his blessing to the war, the king broke all the bounds religionis et foederis.26
The Homeric model is made explicit in the speech of the fury Allecto, when she represents the story as a sequel to the Trojan scandal:
hac gener atque socer coeant mercede suorum:/sanguine Troiano et Rutulo dotabere, uirgo,/et Bellona manet te pronuba. nec face tantum/Cisseis praegnas ignis enixa iugalis;/quin idem Veneri partus suus et Paris alter,/funestaeque iterum recidiua in Pergama taedae.
Verg. Aen. 7.317–318
May the father- and son-in-law be united at the cost of their people’s lives: Trojan and Rutulian blood will be your dowry, virgin, and Bellona attends you as your matron of honour. Nor was it only Cisseus’ daughter who was pregnant with a firebrand and gave birth to bridal flames. Indeed, Venus is alike in her child—another Paris and, again, funeral torches for reborn Troy.27
With the help of this internal narrating voice, the poet rewrites the legend of Troy, representing Aeneas in the role of Paris, and Lavinia as the war-bringing bride.28 Notably, some of the responsibility is ascribed to the bride-rapist’s mother too: Cisseus’ daughter who conceived a firebrand is a reference to Hecuba, whom the fury appears to consider partly guilty for the war, for no other reason than that she gave birth to its cause.29 This is by no means an unusual rhetorical device in epic: in Statius’ Thebaid, for instance, Jocasta refers to herself as mater belli, since it is her twin sons who are engaged in the destructive conflict.30 Some epic women, therefore, seem to be condemned to bear the guilt of war merely on the grounds of their biology (and perhaps through their failed performance in the motherly, educational role). Intriguingly, in Virgil’s version of the story, it is Venus herself, the great ancestress of the Roman people, who is mother to the rapist of the bride and therefore the genetrix of the war. This detail further underlines the moral complexity of Virgil’s epic, and the blurring of the line between just and unjust war.
The explicit reference to the Homeric model underlines the gravity of the incipient conflict: the reader of the Aeneid, familiar with the tale of Troy, is supposed to expect a similar ruin. Furthermore, that ruin is clearly embodied in the figure of a passive, war-bringing bride. In the beginning of book seven, Lavinia is depicted as performing a sacrifice, when suddenly something goes awry and a foreboding omen is witnessed:
praeterea, castis adolet dum altaria taedis,/et iuxta genitorem astat Lauinia uirgo,/uisa (nefas) longis comprendere crinibus ignem/atque omnem ornatum flamma crepitante cremari/regalisque accensa comas, accensa coronam/insignem gemmis; tum fumida lumine fuluo/inuolui ac totis Volcanum spargere tectis./id vero horrendum ac uisu mirabile ferri:/namque fore inlustrem fama fatisque canebant/ipsam, sed populo magnum portendere bellum.
Verg. Aen. 7.71–80
Moreover, when he [the king] kindled the altars with pure torches, and the virgin Lavinia was standing by her father, she seemed (oh horror!) to catch the fire in her long hair. All her ornaments were burning in the crackling flame, her royal locks were lit, and lit was her crown, remarkable for its jewels. Then, enveloped in smoke and yellow light, she scattered the fire throughout the whole palace. This truly was said to be something terrible and marvelous to behold: they sang that she herself would be illustrious in fame and fate, but would bring great war to her people.
As Keith points out, uncontrollable fire as the element of destruction is a widely used symbol in ancient literature; moreover, in Roman epic, it is often connected to destruction-bringing women.31 This seems like a natural association, given the nature of fire as something powerful and dangerous if it is not controlled. It is telling that very often in Roman epic, overwhelming emotions are referred to by means of metaphors of fire—this means that it is an element strongly associated with threatening bodily drives and the semiotic chôra, and with epic women who are observed as embodying these. In Aeneid 6, Helen waves blazing torches, inviting the Greeks to Troy to destroy the city.32 In book four, a flaming pyre is a central feature in Dido’s suicide and in her curse that would bring eternal war between her own and Aeneas’ people.33 Keith argues that like Helen and Dido, Lavinia, too, must therefore immediately be understood as bringing doom to her own people.34 And while the fire is simultaneously interpreted as signifying a glorious future for the victim herself—here, one can observe a reference to Aeneid 2, where Ascanius catches fire35—it is nonetheless a future brought about by war and destruction.
It is crucial to notice that Lavinia’s passive role in the conflict does not undermine her central position in the development of the crisis. She does not incite or wage war, just as she does not light the fire that consumes her, but passively catches fire. In the same way, by her mere existence, without herself lifting a finger, she dooms her people to destruction. Perhaps because of her extreme passivity—notably, she does not speak once in the entire epic—Virgil’s Lavinia has often been examined as a prime example of the likening of the woman to the geographical landscape. Syed has argued that the poet deliberately confuses Aeneas’ promised land with the flesh-and-blood-woman to such a degree that it is evident that the two are a unity that can be attained only in combination.36 The territory that Aeneas conquers for his descendants and his marriage that ensures the generational continuum of those descendants are conceptually inseparable. In a similar manner, Keith understands Lavinia as “constitutive of the topography of Italy”: it is her dynastic marriage to Aeneas that ensures the future fertility of the land and the people.37
While it is undeniable that the vague and blurry figure of Lavinia appears as little else than a symbol of her homeland, it seems to me that these readings over-emphasise the imperial nature of the conflict in the Aeneid. It is tempting to read the narrative of the Latin war as yet another version of the rape of the Sabine women, where the sexual conquest of the male over the female is seamlessly in line with the conquest of the (proto-)Romans over their future allies. To my mind, however, these dynamics do not best describe the war in the Aeneid: a war that is more strongly characterised by the rhetoric of civil war than by that of an imperial conflict. Arguably, rather than being a story about Romans’ cultural or political conquest of a new area, the Latin war is a founding myth about their origins—it is a war that merges into one various peoples who are ‘others’ to each other. As Hahn states, none of the peoples in the Aeneid is sufficient on its own to offer a model for the ideal Roman-ness.38 To achieve Romanitas, the Trojan identity must be dissolved and merged with the Latin—and the other Italian peoples too will in time let go of their distinct identities and join this union. This is made clear in the final moments of the epic, when Juno finally gives in to Jupiter’s higher plan, and demands:
cum iam conubiis pacem felicibus (esto)/component, cum iam leges et foedera iungent,/ne vetus indigenas nomen mutare Latinos/neu Troas fieri iubeas Teucrosque vocari/aut vocem mutare viros aut vertere vestem./sit Latium, sint Albani per saecula reges,/sit Romana potens Itala virtute propago:/occidit, occideritque sinas cum nomine Troia.
Verg. Aen. 12.821–828
When they soon make peace with happy wedding ceremonies (so may it be), when they soon come together in laws and treaties, do not order the native Latins to change their old name, nor to become Trojans and be called Teucrians, nor to change their language or alter their clothing. Let Latium be, let there be Alban kings through the ages, and let there be Roman offspring mighty in Italian valour: Troy has fallen, and fallen may it be, along with the name.
She gets her way, as Jupiter promises that
Sermonem Ausonii patrium moresque tenebunt,/utque est nomen erit; commixti corpore tantum/subsident Teucri. morem ritusque sacrorum/adiciam faciamque omnis uno ore Latinos.
Verg. Aen. 12.834–837
Ausonia’s sons will keep their fathers’ speech and customs, and their name will be as it is now. The Teucrians will sink down, only merged in the mass. I will add sacred customs and rites, and make them all Latins of one tongue.
It is therefore clear that while Aeneas wins the war and ‘gets the girl’, it is not his Trojans who conquer Italy in an imperial fashion. The Latin war as an emergence of a new identity has been discussed for instance by Toll, Ando and Bettini, who understand it as a final phase in a process where Aeneas gradually lets go of his Trojan identity and his past.39 I believe that the character of a war-bringing bride is crucial to this process, because it is the one thing that ultimately enables Aeneas to let go of his Trojan past and become oriented towards the Roman future. While Aeneas’ loss of his first wife, Creusa, marks the end of his Trojan-ness and the beginning of his limbo as an exile, the new Italian wife, then, marks the end of his wanderings and signifies his acceptance of a new cultural identity for himself and for his future offspring. This is the reason why the ascription of guilt over the outbreak of war in the Aeneid is not a simple matter. It is an ambiguous and delicate matter because, in its core, this is a story about a war between those who should be united as one—it is, in fact, a backwards civil war narrative. Arguably, this is why Virgil avoids being too specific in his distribution of the blame and instead stresses the final unity of the peoples who together will constitute Romanitas. This ideology is fittingly expressed in the character of a war-bringing bride—for although she brings destruction, she is also the starting point for the new era of concordia and peace. Her flaming hair is simultaneously a good and a bad omen, just as the war that she causes is both destructive and beneficial. The war-bringing woman, as a link that connects peoples, is what ultimately enables the dissolving of ethnic and cultural barriers in the Aeneid.
The epic archetype of a war-bringing bride can be found Statius’ Thebaid too. The Flavian poet, however, modifies the tradition further: in his epic, there are no wrongly claimed brides, nor is the war between Argos and Thebes a direct result of a marriage. Instead, the marriage is represented as a prerequisite for the war. At the beginning of the poem, the Theban prince Polynices wanders in exile lusting for revenge against his brother, until Adrastus, king of Argos, welcomes the exile to his city. Polynices seals his alliance with the king by marrying his daughter, Argia. In the same ceremony, Deipyle, the king’s other daughter, is given as wife to Polynices’ friend and brother-in-arms, Tydeus. All this is, in a sense, preparation for Polynices’ military alliance with Argos, and for his upcoming war against Thebes. Along with the bride, the Theban prince receives the backup necessary for his revenge on his brother.
Although the marriage is not a direct cause for the war in the Thebaid, Statius deliberately connects his epic to the literary tradition about war-bringing brides. When depicting the double wedding at Argos, the poet plays with an imagery that makes clear that what is at hand is an inauspicious union and a foreboding of doom. This threatening atmosphere is explicitly associated with the brides themselves. Every feature of Argia’s and Deipyle’s wedding appearances is a harbinger of war: even their virginal beauty is described as that of Pallas and Diana, “both fierce in weapons, both fierce in face” (utraque telis,/utraque torva genis).40 When describing young brides, language that so obviously recalls war and violence is striking.
Omina dira of war are omnipresent in many other aspects of the wedding ceremony, as well. During the bridal procession to Pallas’ temple, the decorative shield falls off the roof, overwhelming the bridal torches.41 Once again, uncontrollable fire becomes an element associated with ill-omened brides; it implies tumult and revolt against the social order and forebodes the destruction brought by war. Next, from the depths of the temple, a terrifying sound of a war trumpet is heard, as if to foreshadow the future events.42 To complete the ill-omened imagery of the wedding ceremony, Argia is depicted as wearing Harmonia’s necklace, one of the most infamous objects in Greek mythology.43 In the Graeco-Roman tradition, not only was this legendary item closely associated with the tragic fates of Thebes, but its fatality was also strongly personified in the person wearing it.44 Therefore, by having Argia dress up in Harmonia’s necklace, Statius simultaneously marks her as a member of the cursed Theban family line and stigmatises her as the harbinger of doom to her father’s house and to her own people.45 In the Thebaid, Harmonia’s necklace is not a direct reason for anything; rather, it is a symbol of Argia’s fatal position between her husband and father. She is the reason; or rather, the enabler.
With the help of subtle allusions both to the epic tradition and to the mythological canon, Statius therefore depicts Argia as an epic bride of destruction par excellence: she is the link that unites the father and the son-in-law and makes possible the advent of war. This message is underlined in book three, where the princess, now married to Polynices, outgrows the role of a passive trophy bride and adopts a more active role, suitable to a matron. At the end of the book, Argia approaches her father and, relating her husband’s longing for revenge, explicitly begs the king for a war:
—tu solus opem, tu summa medendi/iura tenes; da bella, pater, generique iacentis/aspice res humiles, atque hanc, pater, aspice prolem/exsulis—nescis, pater optime, nescis/quantus amor castae misero nupsisse marito./et nunc maesta quidem grave et illaetabile munus,/ut timeam doleamque, rogo—
Stat. Theb. 3.695–698, 3.704–707
Only you can help, you hold the high power to heal. Give war, father: look at the lowly affairs of your fallen son-in-law and look at this child of an exile.—You do not know, O best of fathers, you do not know the extent of the love of a chaste wife who is wedded to an unhappy husband. And now, heartbroken, I ask indeed for a heavy and joyless favour—to be allowed to fear and grieve.
It is noteworthy that Argia asks not only for permission for Polynices to begin the war, but also for the necessary backup. Her husband is dependent on Argos’ support, and cannot wage his war without Adrastus’ troops. Hence, Argia, as a matter of fact, is begging her father to drive his own people into the midst of warfare—an enormous economic and emotional burden.
When Argia pleads to her father, she faithfully observes all the structures of norms prescribing the behaviour of an obedient daughter. Her speech is respectful and timid, her comportment submissive. Most importantly, Argia’s humble appeal does not compromise the power balance within the patriarchal family—she makes clear that she recognises her father’s superiority, both in regard to herself and in regard to her husband. Accordingly, although the content of Argia’s request might be audacious, its manner could hardly be considered provocative in the eyes of Statius’ contemporary audience. In effect, Argia could be considered a prime example of a woman ‘absorbed’ into the logic of the symbolic order—her ‘warmongering’, while it has an emotional motivation, is structured by the rules of reason and rhetoric. She does not question the hierarchic power structures of the patriarchal family and society, any more than she questions the logic of language in getting her plea across to her father. There is no sign of maenadic fury or violence about her: Argia is a woman who completely submits to the Law of the Father—in all possible senses of that expression.
Statius therefore appears to recall the Virgilian model when he depicts an epic marriage as a matter that, on the one hand, brings about a destructive war and, on the other, enables an exile to pursue a new identity. Just as in the Aeneid, the passive and instrumental role of women in political alliances is strongly emphasised, since the casus belli tradition understands marriage primarily as a link between families and peoples. This is hardly surprising, since marriages as fortifiers of political unions were an all-important phenomenon in Roman political life—the epic tradition concerning ill-omened brides exploits and enforces society’s established gender dynamics, and stresses the female role as a link between the men and as a catalyst for male agency.46 In this narrative structure, women do not pose a threat to the logic according to which the community operates, and they do not give in to the overwhelming and uncontrollable turmoil of their emotions, which might endanger that order. They are channels and mediums, not active agents.
What is, nevertheless, noteworthy are the violence and the destruction that seem to be inscribed into this instrumental role of women: in the universe of Roman epic, all the marriages intended to fortify a political alliance lead to the battlefield. The female role is associated with war, not with peace—instead of fortifiers of beneficial friendships, the brides become ill-omened war-bearers. To some extent, epic women’s ‘failure’ to become peaceful links between the men of their families certainly reflects the anxieties of the Roman civil war period. In the last century BCE, the ideal of a mediating matron wavered, since even the most virtuous of women could not prevent the outbreak of violence. The familial union between Pompey and Caesar that was formed to maintain peace ended at Julia’s death in 54 BCE. A generation later, the disappointment was repeated when Antony’s marriage to Octavia ended in divorce in 32 BCE, thus enabling open hostility between the ex-triumvirs. In Roman literary tradition, these disappointments became iconic events that manifested the fragility of family-based political alliances. This tradition can be clearly observed in Roman epic, where the passive role of women as links between the men of their families is marked by war, death and destruction. In the Pharsalia, Lucan depicts Julia’s death as a direct cause of the civil war. The poet participates in the same discourse as Virgil and Statius when he states that
Nam pignora iuncti/sanguinis et diro ferales omine taedas/abstulit ad manes Parcarum Iulia saeva/intercepta manu. Quod si tibi fata dedissent/maiores in luce moras, tu sola furentem/inde virum poteras atque hinc retinere parentem/armatasque manus excusso iungere ferro,/ut generos soceris mediae iunxere Sabinae./Morte tua discussa fides, bellumque movere/permissum ducibus.
Luc. Phar. 1.111–120
For when Julia was cut off by the cruel hand of fate, she bore with her to the underworld the promise of offspring united by blood and the wedding torches which the terrible omen had turned into funeral torches. If only Fate had granted you a longer life, Julia, only you could then have restrained the fury of your husband on one side and your father on the other. You might have struck down their swords and made them clasp their armed hands, as the Sabine women, stepping between the sons- and the fathers-in-law, joined them together. But loyalty was quashed by your death, and it allowed the generals to pursue war.
Lucan’s version of the story portrays Julia’s death as the final straw that leads to the conflict between the father and the son-in-law.47 The political background of the situation is understated, since the emphasis is put on the breaking of familial loyalty between socer and gener. Lucan’s representation of Julia’s death introduces to Roman epic another variant of a classical casus belli theme: The death of a woman as a cause of war. The topos is closely connected to bride rape stories, especially in its Roman context, where the tales of Lucretia and Verginia are the best representatives of the tradition.48 In both of these legendary stories, the unjust death of a woman marks a milestone in Republican history, and results in a political upheaval that transforms the structures of society. During the early Principate, these stories were a crucial part of the patriotic imagery, that is, the selection of stories that shaped the Romans’ understanding of their shared past. In the tales about Lucretia and Verginia, the victimised female body becomes a tool for the forming of Roman identity and, as Keith points out, the Roman political institutions and defining virtues are established “over her dead body”.49
This is the literary discourse that Lucan participates in when he relates the story of Julia’s death. However, the Neronian poet seasons the tradition with cynical overtones characteristic of his civil war epic. While the deaths of Lucretia and Verginia provoke righteous outrage and bring about the rise of Republicanism, Julia’s death leads, instead, to an unholy familial war and to a dissolving of democratic governance. It would appear that, in Lucan’s view, these elements are just as crucial parts of the shared history and the collective identity of the Romans as are the abovementioned virtues, and just as important to remember. Another step away from the earlier tradition is that in the Pharsalia, the woman’s death is not the ultimate cause of action; rather, it is the final condition for it. In this sense, the Julia passage is more closely linked to the virgo moritura archetype of the Greek tradition.50 However, the differences are as obvious as the similarities. Whereas the sacrificial virgin must die so that the just war can begin, Julia, instead, should have stayed alive to prevent an unjust one. Lucan brilliantly blends the literary models of both Greek and Roman tradition, creating a mytho-historical hybrid that underlines the woman’s inability to fulfil her role as a beneficial link between the male protagonists, and turns her into a symbol for the less flattering characteristics of ‘the Roman spirit’ and the collective past.
The narrator utilises the concept of fides to stress the severity of the situation and the unholy nature of the war in question. Epic fides is a holy bond, the breaking of which stains the breaker with the guilt of war.51 With morte tua discussa fides, Lucan therefore places the quintessential responsibility for the civil war on the death of Julia. Tu sola emphasises Julia’s unique position in the affairs of the family and the state, while the reference to the Sabine women further highlights the wasted opportunities. The Pharsalia implies that Julia could have become a modern Sabine woman—she could have stood between the warring parties and thrown herself between their weapons. However, in the grim reality of civil war, this potential is never actualised. The time of legendary heroines is long past, and the reader of the Pharsalia knows that this time, there will be no saviour-bride and no peace within the family and the state. Julia’s death emphasises the difference between the good old legendary past and the desperate era that the poem depicts. In a characteristically cynical way, Lucan manifests the fragility of the heroic myths: Instead of lamenting the death of an avenged or sacrificed woman, he creates a new Roman myth discussing the lost opportunity for peace. The gender dynamics and expectations of legendary history and Roman historiography are turned upside down, to accentuate the desperation typical of the Pharsalia. Instead of enforcing the social order and promoting the characteristic Roman virtues in men, Julia’s death reveals the shattering of the patriotic identity that is based on these virtues.
The casus belli character, therefore, appears to be crucial to all three poems discussed here. Virgil, Lucan and Statius all utilise the theme in their own ways, depicting either the formation or the deformation of identity through war. In the Aeneid, Aeneas’ marriage to Lavinia frees him from uncertainty and exile and provides him with a new cultural identity. In the Thebaid, the marriage to Argia does the same for Polynices; for both these epic heroes, getting the bride they want offers them the means to unite their past and their present into a comprehensive whole.52 In this equation, the war-bringing bride is not only the locus of male agency, but also a factor that enables the collapse of the old idea of the self—and, potentially, the formation of a new identity. The main difference between the Aeneid and the Thebaid in this respect can be observed in the amount of optimism. Whereas Virgil’s reader is invited to believe that it is possible to achieve unity through war, Statius cherishes no such illusions. In this sense, Argia is a failed Lavinia. The union that she, as an ill-omened bride, symbolises turns out not to be successful but catastrophic, and the war that her marriage brings about engenders not unity but dissolution. Statius, thus, exploits the Virgilian rhetoric concerning the female role as a casus belli, but his way of dealing with the theme is gloomier. The Flavian poet highlights dissolution rather than unity, and stresses the destructive impact that war has on the identity of the individual and the community.
Understandably, the Virgilian hopefulness is lacking in Lucan’s Pharsalia, too, where the war is a civil war, fought between family members. The woman who could have been the uniting link between the factions is removed from the stage before the story even begins. Thus, the self-destructive drive of the civil war appears as an antithesis to a coherent Roman identity. Lucan reverses the Virgilian example of a casus belli theme, since Julia becomes the antonym of Lavinia, and the war, instead of being a glorious foundation myth, ends up as a swan song of the disintegrating Romanitas.
None of these women, however, can be easily categorised as being marginal to the narrative structures of the epic or to its ideological content. They occupy a central position in the story, and by their mere existence they drive the flow of the narrative forward, bringing about its most significant event: the war. It can even be argued that Argia temporarily achieves literary subjectivity, since her carefully constructed and logical plea to her father is likely to make the projected reader relate to her viewpoint and perhaps even identify with her. If there is marginality to be found, it is doubtless related to the instrumental role of the epic casus belli. These women are, in the end, so entirely absorbed into the male ideology of the poem, and reduced to links and tools in the relations between the protagonists, that they disappear into the tapestry of the patriarchy. In their relationship to the symbolic order, there is nothing rebellious or subversive—and this is why they are often overshadowed by other, more radical and transgressive, epic women, whom I will next discuss.
2 Warmongering Furies and Active Agitators
While the casus belli character is most typically utilised to discuss the underlying reasons and motives for war, the warmongering woman, in turn, becomes an embodiment of the emotional turmoil that precedes the conflict. Through her, the pressure and pulsation of the semiotic chôra are released into the narrative: she is precisely the reason why destructiveness and susceptibility to emotions are characteristics that have often been associated with women in epic.53 Moreover, the warmongering woman is also a prime example of a character who is simultaneously both central and marginal—while she succeeds in grabbing the reader’s attention, she is however unlikely to become a point of identification to him. Usually, these kinds of female characters were deliberately represented in a way that was likely to generate feelings of perplexity and strangeness in the projected primary audience of the poems—namely, in the elite Roman citizen male. Not only does these characters’ active agency in political matters blur the line between the public and the private spheres,54 but—most importantly—as women who incite violence and destruction, they challenge the fundamental patriarchal idea that defines the woman’s role as a genetrix: the creative, life-giving force.55
This female archetype is not typical of epic alone; in fact, the war-mongering woman is one of the best-known figures of Roman historiography. Little of Roman historiography dating to the Republican period survives, so it is impossible to know whether the topos was as prominent then as it is, for instance, in the works of Plutarch, Appian, and Dio—without a doubt, the fascination with Cleopatra during the early Principate increased the popularity of the theme. However, the origins of the literary archetype can be detected already in the late Republican sources. In the works of Cicero and Sallust, the few Roman women that crossed the line of appropriate female behaviour and meddled in matters of war are repeatedly turned into exempla of moral decline and of the decay of female pudicitia. Most notably, Fulvia, the wife of Mark Antony, is recurrently criticised for being a dangerous woman with an insatiable lust for power and war.56 It is notable that in Fulvia’s case, her political and military activity was clearly perceived as related to her loose morals and to her frustrated sexual desires.57
It is telling that in Roman historiographic sources, the woman’s bloodlust is often described in highly sexualised terms. The warmongering women are represented as venting their sexual frustration in the matters of war and violence, hence distorting the traditional female role. This sort of rhetoric speaks of two fundamental ideas that underline patriarchy: first of all, the woman is observed as a bodily being, unable to ‘break free’ from the chains of the flesh and to fully enter the temporal scene. Secondly, the different animalistic bodily drives that threaten the logic of symbolic order—death and sex drives in particular—are considered interchangeable, and they often find their most powerful expression through one another.
The archetype of a warmongering woman in Roman historiography is an important literary model and a background for the many dangerous women of Roman epic. In addition to this tradition, Roman epic reflects the traditions of classical mythology, which is particularly apparent in the poets’ fashioning of the furiae. Known as Ἐρῑνύες in Greek literature, these were chthonic deities who occasionally rose on Earth to spread discord among mortals.58 In Virgil’s Aeneid, the most prominent of the Furies is Allecto, “in whose heart lamentable wars, angers, deceits and destructive crimes dwell” (cui tristia bella/iraeque insidiaeque et crimina noxia cordi).59 In Statius’ Thebaid, it is Allecto’s sister Tisiphone who is summoned by Oedipus to sow the seeds of war in Thebes.60 Tisiphone is present in Silius Italicus’ Punica, too, where she drives the people of Saguntum to a violent mass-suicide.61 The Flavian poets’ Tisiphone is clearly modelled on Virgil’s Allecto; the similar appearance and nature of all three strengthen the epic archetype of a furia.62
Rather than being independent goddesses of the chthonic order, furiae in Roman epic appear as embodiments of discord and bloodlust, comparable to personified ideals such as Virtus, Pietas and Fides.63 Indeed, incomprehensible dissonance as an essential part of their being is exactly what distinguishes the Furies from other warmongers of epic. They are ill-bringing and merciless by nature, not because of any—rational or emotional—reasons. For the Furies, any battle will do, because their whole existence is about spreading discord: they personify furor, the destructive and uncontrollable rage that leads to war and violence.64 In the epic universe, furor is perhaps the most recurrent and powerful expression of the Kristevan bodily drives that are charged through the semiotic and that press on the logic of the symbolic order. It is a kind of rage and frenzy that originates outside the mind and reason—its motivation is illogical and bodily. Fittingly, furor often finds its best expression not in words but in the body: it is communicated with Bacchic revelry, with averbal wailing or screaming, or with uncontrollable violence (either against the self or against others). Furor is beyond words and escapes all reason. Simultaneously, however, it is an indispensable motivation and a driving force for epic action—not only does it wreak havoc on cities and peoples, but it also carries the narrative forward and steers the epic towards its telos. Because of its role as simultaneously constructive and destructive, furor can be considered the best expression of the semiotic in the narrative language of epic. Consequently, the Furies, who are personifications of this drive, are the best representatives of the threatening otherness of the chôra. They are the antithesis of the celestial sphere and the Olympian gods; like the semiotic itself, they are necessary, but also feared and despised—in the Aeneid, it is stated that even the chthonic gods loathe them.65
While the epic Furies, therefore, appear as personifications of semiotic furor, it is important to notice that in effect they are but messengers and pawns through which this furor is channelled in the interaction between gods and mortals. It is characteristic of Roman epic that the bloodlust and the warmongering gradually spread from the divine level to the human; in this process, furiae function as the instruments of divine anger. The original plan never comes from them; nor are they capable of carrying out any havoc without the help of mortal men and women. This characteristic of the Furies makes them even more interesting when studied with the Kristevan framework in mind. It seems that these characters—the personifications of the threatening otherness—are actually not others at all but rather abjects: characters that serve the purpose of estranging and alienating (‘pushing out’) the furor that dwells in divine and human hearts. At the very beginning of the Aeneid, the narrator refers to Juno’s ira (a slightly more controlled form of anger), wondering how such a rage can dwell in the minds of gods (tantaene animis caelestibus irae?).66 The question seems significant, all the more so since it remains unanswered: it expresses the narrator’s genuine confusion in the face of the merge between the symbolic and the semiotic, the celestial and the chthonic, the logic of the mind and the drives of the body. Later on in the epic, the Fury Allecto comes to solve this problem, since she becomes the pawn into whom Juno’s anger is located. Allecto works as Juno’s minion who embodies her rage, stirring up bloodlust in mortal hearts. The narrative function of the Fury is to get her hands dirty, so that the queen of gods can keep hers clean.
The same could be said about the mortal warmongers of Roman epic. While in war epic, bloodlust—like almost any impulse or action—usually originates in the divine sphere,67 the rage and the destruction that divine powers initiate is, in the end, always implemented by humans. It is typical of the epic narrative to blur the line between humans and gods by making human characters take on attributes of deities when executing their plans. This is particularly common when the plans and motives in question are destructive in nature. In the Roman war-centred epics, one can find a string of mortal women who become embodiments of chthonic furor to such a point that they almost seem to turn into Furies themselves.68 In this role, they are able to release the pulsation of the semiotic chôra into the society and into the narrative.
Intriguingly, the warmongering women of Roman epic bear striking resemblance to each other—so much so, in fact, that it is justifiable to talk about an epic archetype. They are usually matrons or widows, slightly older (but not necessarily past their child-bearing years), and belong to the ruling elite of society—and these factors mean that they wield a great deal of social power and authority. What makes their role as the instigators of bloodlust all the more complicated is that, as the above-mentioned social status clearly shows, these women have been deeply indoctrinated into the patriarchal society’s values and mechanisms. In Kristeva’s words, they have been “identifying with the values considered to be masculine”, and have hence become “the most passionate servants of the temporal order”.69 This role, however, collapses violently and suddenly in the outburst of the semiotic pressure—the “hysterical symptoms”—that makes the woman forsake the behaviour dictated by social norms, and turns her into a most powerful and dangerous instigator of chaos and destruction.
Perhaps the most classic example of the archetype of a warmongering regina is Dido in the Aeneid.70 While Dido’s past as a refugee and her status as a self-proclaimed queen make her more ‘rebellious’ or ‘subversive’ than many other queens in the epic tradition, she is, at the same time, the best imaginable example of a woman ‘playing a superman’, in order to succeed in the temporal scene. And succeeded she has: until Dido meets Aeneas and falls in love with him, it seems she has been making all the right decisions. Instead of getting into a destructive circle of revenge with her treacherous brother, she has fled with the treasury, prioritising her own future and starting anew in a new land. When the Trojan refugees arrive, she is playing the benevolent ruler, supervising the building of her city and maintaining diplomatic relations with the neighbouring peoples. Dido’s identification with the male role, therefore, seems to serve her rather well—until it does not.
Although Dido’s infatuation with Aeneas is depicted as an extremely corporeal and emotion-driven experience that escapes reason and logic, it is noteworthy that at the very beginning of her story, there actually seem to be rational motives behind her feelings. When Dido’s sister Anna tries to convince the queen to pursue a relationship with the Trojan refugee, she makes use of arguments both personal and political:
o luce magis dilecta sorori,/solane perpetua maerens carpere iuventa,/nec dulcis natos Veneris nec praemia noris?—ne venit in mentem, quorum consederis arvis?/hinc Gaetulae urbes, genus insuperabile bello,/et Numidae infreni cingunt et inhospita Syrtis;/hinc deserta siti regio lateque furentes/Barcaei. quid bella Tyro surgentia dicam/germanique minas …?/dis equidem auspicibus reor et Iunone secunda/hunc cursum Iliacas vento tenuisse carinas./quam tu urbem, soror, hanc cernes, quae surgere regna/coniugio tali! Teucrum comitantibus armis,/Punica se quantis attollet gloria rebus!
Verg. Aen. 4.31–33, 4.39–49
You who are dearer to your sister than the light, are you going to whittle all your youth away, lonely and sad, and not know sweet children or the bounties of Venus?—And do you not recall in whose lands you have settled? On this side Gaetulian cities, a race invincible in war, and the unrestrained Numidians, and the inhospitable Syrtis surround you; on that side an area of dry desert and the Barcaeans, raging far and wide. And what am I to say of the wars rising from Tyre, or of your brother’s threats …? It was with the gods’ favour and Juno’s helping, I believe, that the Trojan ships took their course here with the wind. What a city you will see here, sister, what kingdoms you will see rise, through such a marriage! If we join forces with Teucrian arms, how high will Punic glory, by so many great deeds, rise?
Dido’s sexual and romantic attraction to Aeneas is inseparable from the political factors that underlie her infatuation. But as the story moves forward, all these rational arguments in favour of the marriage are pushed to the background, and Dido is depicted as a lovesick lunatic, completely driven on by her bodily drives, which she can scarcely herself understand, let alone control. Because she is a woman, she is depicted as behaving as women are considered to behave, slaves to the body and to the womb in particular. It is crucial to note that there is another way of telling this story, a way that would grant Dido more subjectivity and construct her as a character that the projected Roman reader could understand and even relate to—but the narrator deliberately avoids this road, and instead of stressing the rational, political side of Dido, lets it fade away, thus representing her as failing in her male role as a monarch.
Close to the end of book four, the reader gets another glimpse of the rational side of Dido’s motivation. When it has become clear that Aeneas is leaving and that there is no hope of changing his mind, Dido seems most bitter about not having conceived a child. She claims that
saltem si qua mihi de te suscepta fuisset/ante fugam suboles, si quis mihi parvulus aula/luderet Aeneas, qui te tamen ore referret,/non equidem omnino capta ac deserta viderer.
Verg. Aen. 4.327–330
At least, if I had conceived a child of yours before your flight—if here in my halls a little Aeneas was playing, whose face, despite everything, would remind me of yours, I would not consider myself completely defeated and abandoned.
Again, while it is clear that a male heir would primarily mean political stability for the state, the poet decides to stress the emotional side of these vain hopes. Through Dido’s secondary, internal narrating voice, Virgil delivers the idea that is one of the building blocks of the patriarchal worldview: namely, that women are primarily defined by their reproductive capability, and have an all-consuming, inborn need to bear children. Instead of stressing Dido’s failure as a monarch—her being unable to secure the dynastic continuity—the poet stresses her failure and inadequacy as a woman, unable to fulfill the purpose of her existence.
Dido, therefore, is put into the classic double-bind: as a woman who identifies with the values considered masculine, she fails to be taken seriously because of her sex, and because of the author’s and the reader’s preconception of her. As a political leader who is not male, and as a woman who is not a mother, she is not a real man, but not a real woman either—and as a result of this impossible position, Dido eventually gives in to her desperation and resorts to the semiotic drives of her body. However, even at the very end, these drives do not completely have a hold on her or surpass the logic of her actions. It is crucial to notice that, while Dido is repeatedly depicted as being in a hysterical state and ‘out of her mind’, her suicide is not, in fact, an act of impulse. Instead, it is a well-planned ritual sacrifice, the purpose of which is to ensure that the gods of the underworld, placated with her own blood, will make Aeneas suffer. Dido’s motivation may therefore be grounded in uncontrollable emotional turmoil, but her actions follow a very clear logical track. What is more, her furor does not render her speechless, or make her “withdraw into her silent body as a hysteric”.71 Before taking her own life, the queen delivers an articulate speech that is the most venomous declaration of war in the whole of Roman epic:
haec precor, hanc uocem extremam cum sanguine fundo./tum uos, o Tyrii, stirpem et genus omne futurum/exercete odiis, cinerique haec mittite nostro/munera. Nullus amor populis nec foedera sunto./exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor/qui face Dardanios ferroque sequare colonos,/nunc, olim, quocumque dabunt se tempore uires./litora litoribus contraria, fluctibus undas/imprecor, arma armis: pugnent ipsique nepotesque.
Verg. Aen. 4.621–629
This I pray, this last speech I pour out with my blood. Then you, oh Tyrians, persecute with hatred his future stock and the entire race to come, and grant my ashes this boon. Let there be no love or treaties between the peoples. Arise from my ashes, some avenger, to pursue the Trojan settlers with fire and sword—now and hereafter, whenever we are given the strength! May coasts with coasts collide, I pray, and waters with waves, arms with arms: let them fight, both themselves and their descendants.
Dido’s speech is a powerful amalgam of a prayer and a curse.72 What is especially dangerous about it is that, besides agitating for instant war, it dooms the entire Roman future to eternal warfare. In addition to the Punic Wars, the queen’s curse foreshadows the Latin war that Aeneas is about to face in the latter part of the Aeneid:
si tangere portus/infandum caput ac terris adnare necesse est,/et sic fata Iovis poscunt, hic terminus haeret:/at bello audacis populi vexatus et armis,/finibus extorris, complexu avulsus Iuli,/auxilium imploret videatque indigna suorum/funera,
Verg. Aen. 4.612–618
If that abominable scoundrel must be allowed to touch the harbour and sail to the shore—if Jove’s destiny demands it, and that is where his goal lies—then at least, harassed in war by the arms of a bold race, exiled from his borders, and torn from Iulus’ embrace, let him beg for help, and witness the inglorious death of his people!
Dido, therefore, has clearly thought her plan through, and she intends its impact to be as far-reaching as possible. Frantic and furious as she is, she does not seem to be completely out of her mind or incapable of rational planning—arguably, her death scene manifests the perfect union of the symbolic and the semiotic. By letting the drives of the chôra flow through her, while still maintaining her reason, she is able to deliver the most impressive speech in the entire epic, a speech that lacks neither bodily motivation nor verbal expression. This does not lift the weight of marginality that the narrative forces upon her: she is unquestionably still the unidentifiable other to the projected Roman male reader. However, in her desperate reaction to this marginality, Dido finds her voice that—ironically—is perhaps the best example in the Aeneid of the formation of the speaking subject in the interplay between the semiotic and the symbolic modalities.
The episode paves the way for the most elaborate web of intertextual allusions in Roman war epic—and for the development of the literary character of a blood-lusting foreign queen, the Absolute Other. In order to understand the development of this archetype and its significance for Roman identity, it is crucial to grasp the historical references in Virgil’s mythical narrative. Dido’s suicide, in addition to providing the legendary past for the Punic Wars, immediately reminds the reader of more recent Roman history: another war, another queen, and another sacrifice made for the Roman mission towards the Empire. The association between Dido and Cleopatra is obvious, and unsurprisingly, it has been widely discussed by previous scholars.73 In this context, the matter is of major importance, because it elucidates the significance of gender in the epic discourse concerning the justification of war.
Virgil’s choice to utilise a legendary past to deal with recent history speaks of his reluctance to make many direct references to the civil wars. In the case of Cleopatra, there are astonishingly few mentions of her in the whole of the Aeneid: when the battle of Actium on Aeneas’ shield is described, the queen is mentioned in ten lines, but her role in the development of the conflict is not discussed at all.74 However, with regard to the position of the Aeneid as the great patriotic epic of the Augustan age, the reader expects Octavian’s triumph over Egypt to be discussed on some level—and the character of Dido offers a solution to this issue.75 It has been argued before that Virgil’s characterisation of Dido as a warmongering Fury is, in effect, designed to assign this role to the Actian Cleopatra.76 Syed, who considers the story of Actium as “a fundamental text for the Western orientalist discourse”, argues that the two queens are amalgamated into a character against which Roman political discourse defines Romanitas.77
This point could be further illuminated by discussing how Lucan deals with the Virgilian model. In the Pharsalia, the poet builds his representation of Cleopatra steadily on the epic tradition, and the allusions to Virgil’s Dido are particularly obvious. In book ten, the poet discusses Caesar’s sojourn in Egypt, harshly scolding his foreign mistress:
Dedecus Aegypti, Latii feralis Erinys,/Romano non casta malo. Quantum inpulit Argos/Iliacasque domos facie Spartana nocenti,/Hesperios auxit tantum Cleopatra furores./Terruit illa suo, si fas, Capitolia sistro/et Romana petit inbelli signa Canopo/Caesare captivo Pharios ductura triumphos;/Leucadioque fuit dubius sub gurgite casus,/an mundum ne nostra quidem matrona teneret./Hoc animi nox illa dedit, quae prima cubili/miscuit incestam ducibus Ptolemaida nostris./Quis tibi vaesani veniam non donet amoris,/Antoni, durum cum Caesaris hauserit ignis/Pectus?
Luc. Phar. 10.59–72
The shame of Egypt, the fatal Fury of Latium, whose unchastity was Rome’s great calamity. As the wicked beauty of the Spartan woman overthrew Argos and Troy, so did Cleopatra stir up the frenzy of Italy. Her rattle shook the Capitol (dare I say it) and with unwarlike Canopus she stood against the Roman standards, hoping to lead Caesar captive in an Egyptian triumph. And by the time of Leucas [the battle of Actium], it was a question of whether the world should be ruled by a woman who was not even one of ours. Her impudence was due to that night which first brought the lewd descendant of the Ptolemies to the bed of a Roman general. Who can refuse to forgive you for your insane love, Antony, when even the hard heart of Caesar took fire?
Lucan’s depiction of Cleopatra as Latii feralis Erinys reflects the narrative, popular among the Augustan authors, that blamed the civil war and its culmination at Actium on the queen.78 Antony’s alliance with Cleopatra gave Octavian a pretext to frame his war as a foreign conflict, instead of declaring war on another Roman commander.79 However, besides alluding to this historiographic tradition, Lucan’s choice of words also immediately calls to mind Dido’s promise to eternally haunt the Romans with war. This means that the poet’s representation of Cleopatra as a Fury set to destroy the Romans is not only a respectful nod to his epic predecessor, but also an effort to establish the Dido-Cleopatra association as a solid part of the Roman epic tradition.
What is more, this association is utilised to construct an archetype that is larger than either Dido or Cleopatra alone: the figure of the Absolute Other, a character against which Roman-ness is defined. ne nostra quidem matrona underlines Cleopatra’s otherness both in terms of gender and in terms of ethnicity and culture. She is a non-man, a non-Roman—and on top of everything, a queen, something that the Roman Republican mindset was traditionally averse to. She is therefore an antithesis of the Roman citizen male, and the very last person who should wield imperial power over the world.
Nevertheless, as is often the case, when one scratches the surface of the Absolute Other, what is revealed is actually an abject other—a character who is estranged and alienated by exaggerating the characteristics that make her different. According to Kristeva, abjection is a way of distancing oneself from the threatening world of animalism, imagined as representatives of sex and murder.80 This is why the death and the sex drives, in particular, can often be observed as the defining elements of the Absolute Other: the locating of these uncomfortable aspects of humanity into ‘the other’ creates an illusory line that distinguishes human from animal, the mind from the body and the symbolic from the semiotic—and establishes a clear hierarchy between the two. Accordingly, abjection, in its very core, is an illusion of control, achieved through a creation of the Other.
In Lucan’s treatment of Cleopatra, this kind of typecasting can be clearly observed. The poet makes use of the meretrix regina archetype, representing the queen as a dangerous seductress who bewitches the Roman generals and uses them to satisfy her bloodlust.81 This is apparent by the way in which the narrator recurrently implies that Caesar, mesmerised by Cleopatra’s allure, was about to give the Empire away. He states that “he preferred to give Pharos as a gift [to her], rather than conquer it for himself” (donare Pharon, dum non sibi vincere mavolt), and blames Cleopatra for being “not content with the crown of her own, or her brother for a husband” (nec sceptris contenta suis nec fratre marito).82 Moreover, the poet further emphasises the connection between Cleopatra’s sexual insatiability and her lust for power, claiming that she “runs from one husband to another, possessing Egypt and providing her services to Rome” (interque maritos/discurrens Aegypton habet Romamque meretur).83
These passages clearly recall Jupiter’s fear that Aeneas, conquered by the charms of the foreign queen, might put the interests of Carthage before his own mission.84 In the Aeneid, the hero comes close to forsaking his destiny; when Aeneas’ heart is softened by Dido’s love, he seems content with the idea of ruling on the twin thrones of Carthage with the queen.85 However, the idea is completely against the Fate, as Jupiter’s messenger Mercury reminds:
tu nunc Karthaginis altae/fundamenta locas pulchramque uxorius urbem/exstruis? heu! regni rerumque oblite tuarum!
Verg. Aen. 4.265–267
Are you now laying the foundations of mighty Carthage and building a beautiful city, under your wife’s heel as you are? Alas! Forgetful of your own kingdom and your own business!
One of Virgil’s most obvious allusions to Cleopatra, this passage reflects the idea spread by Octavian’s party during the civil wars: that Antony, bewitched by the queen, would move the centre of power from Rome to Alexandria.86 Lucan’s rewriting of this story, when he describes Cleopatra’s degrading influence on Caesar, immediately calls to mind the Virgilian model, strengthening the archetype of a dangerous seductress queen who will conquer and destroy Rome—either by means of sex or by means of war.87 The Absolute Other, therefore, appears as a war-bringing Fury in whose person the terrifying sex and death drives are merged. She is the complete opposite to the self and subject of the epic, but at the same time, it is implied that the subject is not immune to her corrupting influence. She constructs Romanitas by being different from the Roman citizen male—but at the same time, the reader gets an uneasy feeling that the citizen male is not safe from turning into her.
This point is of primary importance, since it concerns the gradual unmasking of the Absolute Other as the abject other. It seems, in the tradition of Roman war epic, that ultimately the danger of the Absolute Other lies in her ability to ‘contaminate’ the subject. However, if the subject and the other were so fundamentally different in essence, why would there be a danger of that? Or is the difference only skin-deep—and that is the truly horrifying thing about the other? According to the Kristevan theory, what the subject really fears about the other is the inescapable truth that they are, in fact, the same, or at least used to be at some prior stage of existence. In the passage quoted above, Lucan tells how Cleopatra “stirred up the frenzy of Italy” (Hesperios auxit—Cleopatra furores). Intriguingly, this choice of words makes it seem that the threatening and irrational furor that Cleopatra is blamed for is not only something characteristic of her, but something that resides in the Latin hearts as well, only waiting to be evoked by the Absolute Other.
To top it all, even the direction of this interaction and this contamination is not as clear as it would seem at first sight. There are two specific lines in the passage quoted above that make the reader feel that perhaps the guilt of war should not be seen as external to Roman society, but should instead be internalised. When the poet describes the corrupted personality of the queen, he states that “her impudence was due to that night which first brought the lewd descendant of the Ptolemies to the bed of a Roman general” (hoc animi nox illa dedit, quae prima cubili/miscuit incestam ducibus Ptolemaida nostris).88 The implication seems to be that Cleopatra’s promiscuous and bloodthirsty nature is not an innate characteristic of the queen—on the contrary, it was she who was first corrupted by the Romans.
Thus, Lucan has no inhibitions about revealing the civil war for what it really is. Although he harshly blames Cleopatra for being a man-eating, power-hungry harlot queen who uses Caesar and Antony to wreak havoc on Rome, at the same time it is implied that Caesar is the one who corrupted her in the first place. The foreign woman is not a tool, or a scapegoat, or the origin of destruction, but is equally guilty with the Roman citizen male of bringing about the war. Thus, Lucan paints a picture of civil war as an event that, instead of constructing or strengthening Roman identity in contrast to the other, calls it utterly into question.
This idea of the shared guilt of war is another way in which Lucan makes use of the Virgilian model. It is crucial to note that it is not only Dido’s radical otherness, but also her underlying ‘sameness’ that is reflected in Lucan’s Cleopatra. As Horsfall points out, there are many similarities between Dido and Aeneas in Virgil’s epic—more than the differences, in effect. They are both exiles, recently widowed and striving to start afresh in a new homeland.89 This special relationship between Aeneas and Dido appears to be allegorical of the relationship between Rome and Carthage. As Jacobs notes, the defining characteristic of the relationship between these two Mediterranean powers, before the destruction of Carthage, was not their difference but their similarity: in their military might and imperialistic behaviour, Carthage and Republican Rome appeared as mirror images.90 In a sense, Dido and Aeneas are symbolic of their peoples, who have similar aims and who face similar obstacles, and who therefore understand each other, until their interests clash.
It would be easy to disregard the underlying similarity of Dido and Aeneas by stating that it is something that characterises the beginning of their story, and is designed to anticipate and emphasise its tragic end. However, it can also be speculated whether Dido and Aeneas’ underlying sameness could, in fact, be a way of implying their shared guilt over the future destruction. Undeniably, Dido is the warmonger whose curse condemns Romans and Carthaginians to an eternal enmity. But is it not Aeneas who turns her into such a character? At the beginning of Virgil’s epic, Dido is a considerate and peaceful monarch—by the end of book four, she has turned into a bloodthirsty Fury much like Lucan’s Cleopatra. And this is not only because of her liaison with Aeneas, but also because of the way in which it ends. In book four, Dido explicitly asks Aeneas to delay his departure until her rage has calmed down.91 He does not; instead, he flees in the dead of night, without so much as a farewell.92 As Gruen has suggested, Aeneas causes Dido’s death, and he shares her blame for the clash between their peoples.93
This is particularly crucial with regard to Dido as Cleopatra’s alter ego. By revealing Dido and Aeneas’ underlying sameness, and by implying their shared guilt of war, Virgil initiates a discussion that Lucan continues when he assimilates the characters of Caesar and Cleopatra. It appears that locating the guilt of war in the foreign seductress queen is not as simple as it seems at first sight. In the epics of Virgil and Lucan, the foreign woman certainly is more a warmonger than an innocent scapegoat; however, it is the man who turns her into one. In the end, the construction of common identity on the basis of difference and war guilt seems tricky, because, in a civil war, there are no innocent parties.
Virgil’s Dido, therefore, can be considered a starting point of many discussions of the beginning of war and its justification in the tradition of Roman war epic. Another variant of the theme can be found in Silius Italicus’ Punica, where the poet depicts Dido’s death as one of the underlying motives for the second Punic War.94 In the first book of the poem, Hannibal swears eternal hatred towards Rome at the place of Dido’s death, by her ghost and in front of her statue. In a temple dedicated to Dido’s spirit, the founder of Carthage is depicted with the Trojan sword laid at her feet—the sword with which Virgilian Dido took her own life.95 The poetic effect is powerful; although Dido herself is not physically present, she is the fuel that ignites the conflict.96 It has been argued that Silius uses Dido to emphasise Hannibal’s responsibility for starting the conflict—and indeed, the dramatic scene at the place of Dido’s death stresses the impression of Hannibal as the threatening other, whose motivation is grounded in the emotional sphere, rather than in political reasoning. His decision to break the pact with Rome is depicted as an act of bitterness, fuelled by the fate of his father and by the fate of the queen—by stressing this, Silius constructs cultural identity in contrast to the enemies of Rome, and strengthens an idea of Romans as the righteous and reasonable people who honour their treaties.97
This, however, is not the only way of reading the episode. It is crucial to point out that while Hannibal certainly becomes a warmonger in the Punica—the ultor that Dido calls for in the Aeneid—Dido herself appears more as a pitiable victim than as a blood-thirsty dira. Silius’ Hannibal acts out of the conviction that Dido was wronged by Aeneas’ treacherousness, just as the Carthaginians of his and his father’s generation have been wronged by the treachery of Aeneas’ descendants. Silius’ Hannibal believes Dido’s version of the story—the version that one can find when reading between the lines of the Aeneid, according to which Dido and Aeneas were married and his leaving her was a nefas. Therefore, Dido’s narrative voice from the Aeneid finally gets heard in Silius’ Punica and, in this way, resonates throughout the Roman epic tradition. Unlike most epic women, Dido eventually has someone to hear her out, and someone who relates to her, in another epic and in another day and age. In this web of warmongering and shared guilt, it is difficult to rule who started what in the first place—and this is one of the elements that make the Punica as much of an epic about the civil war as it is an epic about an imperial war. For Silius, too, Dido represents a mirror against which Romanitas can be defined—but much as in the case of Virgil and Lucan, this mirror turns out to be disconcerting, since what it ultimately reflects is the image of the self.
3 Divine Interventions and Semiotic furor: Virgil’s Amata and Turnus
As the case of Dido shows, the warmongering women who defy the binary opposition between female frenzy/male rationality are often the most multifaceted and memorable characters in the Roman war-centred epics. They cannot be easily categorised either as ‘absorbed’ into the male ideology of the poem, or as ‘opposed’ to its teleological drive. While they disrupt the flow of the narrative and shake the temporal order by agitating for chaos and destruction, they simultaneously constitute the dynamic force that drives the story forward, and towards its ultimate goal. Besides Dido, another excellent example of this kind of character is Amata, the queen of Laurentum, who in Aeneid 7 is largely responsible for igniting the war between the Trojans and the Latins. Arguably, Amata has rarely been recognised for the complex character oscillating between reason and emotion that she is—usually, she has been labeled as a textbook example of a ‘transgressive’ epic woman, doomed to be erased from the narrative.98
Amata’s reputation is largely due to her role as the pawn of divine furor. She is the channel through which the Fury Allecto releases her venom into the Laurentian society, and because of this direct connection to the chthonic sphere, we can observe Amata herself taking on some of the characteristics of the Fury. At the beginning of her story, however, there is no sign of destructive drives about her. On the contrary, her position as the queen of Laurentum makes it clear that she is a woman completely capable of adapting to the patriarchal society’s ways of functioning—and has benefitted from them personally. However, in book seven, Amata has to face the limits of her power within the system, since she is bitterly disappointed at her husband’s decision to marry their daughter off to Aeneas. At the beginning of Aeneid 7, we are told that the queen had strongly preferred Turnus, whom she, “driven by wondrous love, was in a hurry to link to her as her son-in-law” (quem regia coniunx/adiungi generem miro properabat amore).99 When Allecto first finds her, she is mulling the matter over in her heart with ardour ‘typical of women’: we are told that “[overcome by] a woman’s passion, she was troubled by cares and angers over the arrival of the Trojans and Turnus’ marriage,” (super adventu Teucrum Turnique hymenaeis/femineae ardentem curaeque iraeque coquebant).100 Accordingly, Amata is a receptive target for the Fury’s meddling: the seed of anger already resides in her heart, and all she needs is a little push for this seed to grow into full-blown furor. This push comes in the form of Allecto’s venomous snakes; the narrator relates how
huic dea caeruleis unum de crinibus anguem/conicit, inque sinum praecordia ad intima subdit,/quo furibunda domum monstro permisceat omnem./ille inter vestis et levia pectora lapsus/volvitur attactu nullo, fallitque furentem/vipeream inspiras animam; fit tortile collo/aurum ingens coluber, fit longae taenia vittae/innectitque comas et membris lubricus errat.
Verg. Aen. 7.364–353
The goddess flings onto her a snake from her dark hair, and thrusts it into her breast, into her innermost heart, so that, driven mad by that monstrous creature, she would go and enmesh the entire house. Slipping between her clothes and her smooth bosom, it finds its way unfelt by the frantic queen, and breathes its viperous breath. The giant snake becomes a twisted gold necklace; it becomes a garland in her long ribbons, it entwines itself in her hair, and slithers over her limbs.
On the one hand, the reader is told that Amata’s anger is already present in her heart before the Fury’s meddling; on the other hand, it appears to penetrate her mind without her even noticing. It seems, therefore, that the difference made by Allecto’s intervention is that it transforms Amata’s anger from reasonable and righteous anger into uncontrollable bodily frenzy. In the passage quoted above, before Allecto’s arrival, Amata’s feelings are described as ira and cura, and the queen herself as ardens—and while ardens, undeniably, carries connotations that hint at the loss of emotional control, these terms can otherwise be seen as referring to powerful emotions that nevertheless still involve thinking and reasoning. It is only after Allecto releases her snake on Amata that this element of reasoning disappears and is replaced by an overwhelming emotion that seems to derive from deep within the body. Notably, this is when furor appears for the first time: the queen is now described as furibunda and furens, terms which clearly manifest her loss of control over her own feelings. On the narrative level, the moment when Allecto’s snake gets to the queen, is therefore the moment when the semiotic pressure on the symbolic language makes its presence known.
Intriguingly, the advent of the semiotic, however, does not mean that all logic would instantly go out of the window. Instead, the poem builds up the suspense by having the two modalities coexist in Amata’s person, before the scale gradually falls in favour of the chôra. Immediately after Allecto’s interference, the queen is shown pleading with her husband:
Ac dum prima lues udo sublapsa veneno/pertemptat sensus atque ossibus implicat ignem,/necdum animus toto percepit pectore flammam,/mollius et solito matrum de more locuta est,/multa super natae lacrimans Phrygiisque hymenaeis:/‘exsulibusne datur ducenda Lauinia Teucris,/o genitor, nec te miseret nataeque tuique?/nec matris miseret, quam primo Aquilone relinquet/perfidus alta petens abducta uirgine praedo?—quid tua sancta fides? Quid cura antiqua tuorum/et consanguineo totiens data dextera Turno?—’
Verg. Aen. 7.354–362, 7.365–366
And while at first the disease, sinking in as liquid poison, thrills her senses and envelops her bones with fire, not yet has her mind absorbed the flame in all her heart. Softly, as is the usual habit of mothers, she spoke, shedding many tears over the marriage of her daughter and the Phrygian: “Is it to the exiled Teucrians that Lavinia is given in marriage, O father? Have you no pity for your daughter and for yourself? Have you no pity for her mother, either, whom with the first north wind the faithless traitor will abandon, steering for the deep with the girl as his booty?—What about your sacred promise? What about your age-old care for your own people, and your right hand so often offered to your kinsman Turnus?”
Although the Fury’s poison is slowly being absorbed into her breast, at this point, the queen is still able to connect to the logic of the symbolic order. She appeals to the king’s familial pity, sheds tears, and stresses her own and her daughter’s suffering. She then proceeds to find logical arguments for her case. Since Latinus is convinced that Lavinia should marry a foreigner, Amata endeavours to assure him that Turnus, being of alien origin, could also be considered a stranger.101 Amata’s appeal—a combination of emotional and rational entreaties—is described as solito matrum de more. The words imply that this manner of speech is not only appropriate for an elite matron, but something that could be expected from one. Like Argia’s plea to her father in Statius’ Thebaid—clearly fashioned on this Virgilian model—Amata’s speech does not question the hierarchy of power within the family, nor does the queen overstep her boundaries in the role that the society assigns to her. She still plays by the logic of language and by the rules of the temporal scene—but underneath the surface, the pressure of the chôra is waiting for its ultimate release.
When her petition has no influence on the king, Amata’s cup boils over. Suddenly, she rejects all conventional patterns of conduct and is overcome by irrational fury. We read:
His ubi nequiquam dictis experta Latinum/contra stare videt, penitusque in viscera lapsum/serpentis furiale malum totamque pererrat,/tum vero infelix, ingentibus excita monstris,/immensam sine more furit lymphata per urbem./ceu quondam torto volitans sub verbere turbo,/quem pueri magno in gyro vacua atria circum/intenti ludo exercent—ille actus habena/curvatis fertur spatiis; stupet inscia supra/impubesque manus mirata volubile buxum;/dant animos plagae: non cursu segnior illo/per medias urbes agitur populosque ferocis.
Verg. Aen. 7.376–384
When, after trying in vain with these words, she sees that Latinus stands against her—when the snake’s frenzied poison has been absorbed deep into her flesh and roams all through her—then, indeed, the wretched one, aroused by great horrors, rages unbridled and demented through the vast city. As sometimes a spinning top, which boys intent on play drive in a big circle around an empty courtyard, turns under the lash—driven by the whip, it speeds on, round after round, and the childish crowd marvels over it ignorantly, awed at the spinning boxwood, and the blows give it life—thus, with her course none the less swift, she is driven through the midst of cities and fierce peoples.
Amata’s complete loss of self-control is a perfect example of a situation where the words fail an epic protagonist and, as a result, she resorts to the semiotic modality of communication. The logic of language and rhetoric was of no use to Amata, so now she rushes around aimlessly, like a spinning top that children play with—the metaphor strengthens the impression that she is possessed by furor and not in control of her actions.102 Furthermore, the queen is referred to as lymphata, and her behaviour as sine more. The latter term in particular makes it clear that Amata’s public display of emotions is something very unsuitable to a royal matron. The narrator stresses the contrast between this episode and Amata’s earlier plea to the king: suddenly, her behaviour has been transformed from solito matrum de more into sine more. The juxtaposition of a respectable queen and a raging lunatic is striking, and its poetic effect powerful.
This contrast, however, is not as clear-cut as it might seem at first sight. As McAuley has perceptively pointed out, while Amata’s behaviour is controversial in view of social norms, she herself does not see it as such: she still appears to believe that her behaviour is in line with her role as a mother.103 When she incites the other matrons of the city to join her in her revels, she does this in the name of their shared motherhood:
Io matres, audite, ubi quaeque Latinae:/si qua piis animis manet infelicis Amatae/gratia, si iuris materni cura remordet,/solvite crinalis vittas, capite orgia mecum.
Verg. Aen. 7.400–403
O mothers of Latium, wherever you are, listen to me! If in your pious minds you still have goodwill for miserable Amata, if concern for the maternal rights stings you, loosen the ribbons from your hair, join the revels with me!
It is noteworthy that in Amata’s own mind, the violation of her maternal authority is the main motivation for her outburst. It is not only her pride and her feelings that have been hurt by Latinus’ inflexibility, but her right as a mother to have a say in her daughter’s marriage. Therefore, even if she is enraged and out of control, she is not spreading havoc and destruction only for the sake of it—in her opinion, she appears to be fighting for the power and authority that are due to her. As McAuley points out, the narrative in book seven is constantly blurring the line between “conscious agency” and “Dionysiac loss of control”, and between what constitutes “aberrant” maternal behaviour and what is inherently maternal behaviour, “i.e. either natural or conventional”.104
McAuley also brilliantly examines Amata as Dido’s textual counterpart in this sense. She argues that Virgil’s two queens are “both culpable and victimised, torn apart by the impersonal forces of fatum and convention”: Dido because she was deceived and robbed of her pudicitia, Amata because her maternal right, sanctioned by custom, has been taken away from her.105 The frantic frenzy of both of Virgil’s queens, therefore, can be read as a reaction to the epic’s attempts to marginalise and dismiss them. Both Dido and Amata are women who, at the beginning of their stories, are doing their best to ‘make it’ in the patriarchal society by playing by its rules and by honouring its inner logic. It is only after they have become bitterly disillusioned with that system, and after they are robbed of whatever little power they thought they were entitled to, that they are seized by furor and respond to the call of the chôra. Their outbursts, therefore, could be considered as prime examples of ‘hysterical symptoms’—that is, psychological anxiety related to the inevitable and continuous marginalisation of women within and by the patriarchal society.
In Amata’s case, these symptoms gradually spiral out of control, because she eventually seems to completely forget the rational motivation that she had for her outrage and merely revels in her madness—or, in Kristeva’s words, “takes her jouissance in an anti-Apollonian, Dionysian orgy”.106 After rushing through the city, she flees into the forests and indulges in Bacchic revelry. By now, the queen seems to be completely out of her mind: at one point, she is represented as devoting her daughter to Bacchus, but only a few lines later, she sings wedding songs for Turnus and Lavinia.107 To make matters worse, the other matrons of the city catch the queen’s frenzy:108
fama volat, furiisque accensas pectore matres/idem omnis simul ardor agit nova quaerere tecta./deseruere domos, ventis dant colla comasque;/ast aliae tremulis ululantibus aethera complent/pampineasque gerunt incinctae pellibus hastas.
Verg. Aen. 7.392–396
Rumour travels fast, and the matrons, their hearts kindled by fury, are all driven on by the same frenzy, to seek new shelters. Their homes abandoned, they bare their neck and hair to the winds. Others fill the air with vigorous howling and, dressed in calf-skins, carry spears wrapped with vine.
The Bacchanalia episode in Aeneid 7 has been repeatedly read as an expression of female opposition to the male-dominated society and as a juxtaposition of civilisation and nature.109 However, some scholars have also observantly stressed another aspect of the episode, pointing out that instead of proper cult practice, Amata’s actions are only simulatio numine Bacchi—imitation, or feigning, of the actual ritual practice.110 This can be read as a reflection of Amata’s distorted maternal role: just as her behaviour has turned from the traditional into sine more, so has the cultic activity of the Laurentian matrons. Moreover, the inappropriate cult practice can be viewed as an insult and a sacrilegium that foreshadows a war that is proclaimed unjustly: a nefas that breaks all bounds religionis et foederis.111
This argument could be strengthened by claiming that it is not only the appropriate cult practice that gets distorted in the episode—simultaneously, the Laurentian matrons’ mass hysteria rewrites the Roman exemplary tradition of the peace-bringing power of female groups. Unlike legendary figures such as Veturia and the Sabine women, who figure prominently in the historiographic works of Virgil’s contemporaries, Virgil’s female groups stir up violence and anarchy. In this sense, the maenadic Laurentian matrons play a role similar to the passive casus belli characters discussed above: they become the travesties of their literary models in legendary history, and they turn the peace-oriented female role into that of a war-bringing Fury.
Rapidly, the women’s violent furor seizes the men who take up arms—the ritual spears of maenadic matrons are thus replaced by actual weapons of war. It is related that
tum quorum attonitae Baccho nemora avia matres/insultant thiasis (neque enim leve nomen Amatae)/undique collecti coeunt Martemque fatigant./ilicet infandum cuncti contra omina bellum,/contra fata deum perverso numine poscunt.
Verg. Aen. 7.580–584
Then those whose womenfolk, frenzied by Bacchus, were wandering around the pathless woods in dancing bands (Amata’s name carries no light weight!), gathered round from every side to make their appeal to Mars. Right away, despite the omens, despite the destinies decreed by the gods (since the the divine will was overthrown) they all cry for unjust war.
Keith has argued that in the Aeneid, the outbreak of the Latin war is a result of the cooperation between female agitators and male executors: the women’s turmoil represents both the prelude to war and a catalyst to it, while the men’s activity is needed, so that the disorder can be actualised in military activity.112 In a sense, this gendered casting of roles holds true, and we can see how it recurs in the works of Virgil’s Flavian successors. Argia’s tears and pleas would be futile if they did not provoke in her father an impulse to act. In the Punica, it is Hannibal who carries out Dido’s curse and brings the war on Romans. The constant cooperation between female and male agents is the lifeblood of epic warfare. Moreover, it is the ultimate factor on which the guilt and the responsibility for the war depend.
Having said this, I would also suggest that the roles at the beginning of epic warfare cannot always be categorised according to the ‘female agitators/male dupes’ idea. Quite often, these roles get fused and confused—especially when it is men who are affected by fury and bloodlust that escape all reason. The beginning of the war in Aeneid 7 is a particularly good example: although the chaos is usually blamed on the Juno-Allecto-Amata triad, it is important to notice that Amata is not the Fury’s only instrument, nor the only one spreading the bloodlust around. After planting the seed of furor in Amata’s mind, Allecto pays a visit to Turnus, exciting him to warlike frenzy.
Intriguingly, whereas Allecto never reveals herself to Amata, but lets her venomous snake glide onto her bosom and do its work, with Turnus she tries a different approach. In her first attempt to incite the youth’s anger, the Fury disguises herself as Juno’s priestess and tries to win him over by reasonable arguments. The different approach seems significant: it is as if the narrative suggested that because Turnus is a man, he can (and must) be reasoned with. Unlike Amata, he operates by the logic of the symbolic order, so that the way to get to his heart is through his mind, not through his body. The binary opposition between male/female and symbolic/semiotic appears as clear as day—that is, until Turnus turns Allecto down (on the grounds of this very distinction!). The youth harshly mocks the old priestess, whom he considers ill-advised in the matters of war. He states that
sed te victa situ verique effecta senectus,/o mater, curis nequiquam exercet, et arma/regum inter falsa vatem formidine ludit./cura tibi divum effigies et templa tueri;/bella viri pacemque gerent quis bella gerenda.
Verg. Aen. 7.440–444
But you, O mother, old age—conquered by decay and barren of truth—distresses in vain, and amidst the wars of kings it mocks the prophet with false fears. Your job is to maintain the gods’ images and temples; war and peace will be made by men, whose business it is to wage war.
The speech is an allusive nod to Hector’s speech to Andromache in Iliad 20, only more aggressively patronising. Ironically, by preaching the gender difference and the strict distinction between the male and the female spheres of life, Turnus proves Allecto wrong in her belief that there is a difference between men and women in the communicative sphere. Her initial assumption that, since he is a man, Turnus could be reasoned with, turns out to be wrong, and consequently, Allecto decides to get to him through the channels of the body, just as she did with the queen. We read that “while the youth was speaking, a sudden tremor seized his body” (at iuveni oranti subitus tremor occupat artus), and the text goes on:
Tum flammea torquens/lumina cunctantem et quaerentem dicere plura/reppulit, et geminos erexit crinibus anguis,/verberaque insonuit—facem iuveni coniecit et atro/lumine fumantis fixit sub pectore taedas./olli somnum ingens rumpit pavor, ossaque et artus/perfundit toto proruptus corpore sudor./arma amens fremit, arma toro tectisque requirit;/saevit amor ferri et scelerata insania belli,/ira super: magno veluti cum flamma sonore/virgea suggeritur costis undantis aëni/exsultantque aestu latices, furit intus aquai/fumidus atque alte spumis exuberat amnis,/nec iam se capit unda, volat vapor ater ad auras.
Verg. Aen. 7.448–451, 7.456–466
Then, rolling her flaming eyes, she pushed him away as he hesitated and tried to say more. And she lifted a couple of snakes from her hair, and cracked her whip—. [S]he threw a torch at the young man, and fixed the firebrand, smoking with murky light, in his breast. A great terror broke his sleep, and his bones and flesh were bathed in sweat, pouring from his entire body. Out of his mind, he cries for arms; he is looking for weapons in his bed and in his dwelling. Love of the sword rages in him, the wicked folly of war and, above all, anger: just as flaming sticks, crackling loudly, when they are piled under the sides of a swelling pot, and the liquids revel in the heat. Inside the steaming water rages, and the flow of foam is bubbling up high; and now the wave can no longer restrain itself, and the dark vapour rises into the air.
Now it is Turnus who, like the epic war-bringing brides, is associated with uncontrollable fire—who in fact has the fire flaming in his very heart. It is remarkable that Allecto’s way of infiltrating Turnus’ mind through his body is more violent than her attack on Amata—perhaps because Turnus puts up more of a fight, or perhaps because the Fury is personally insulted and wants him to feel her power. The results of the intervention, however, are very similar: just like Amata, Turnus is captured by a mad frenzy that escapes all reason and is beyond words.
The striking similarities between the Turnus and the Amata episodes have sometimes been overlooked by those who tend to emphasise the gender difference and the juxtaposition of the male and the female as intrinsic characteristics of war epic. Syed, for instance, views these episodes as antitheses to each other: she argues that while Amata is turbulent and passionate, fertile ground for the Fury’s meddling, Turnus represents ‘manly’ calmness and self-discipline in his efforts to resist Allecto’s influence.113 Syed’s reading is problematic, because she insists on focusing on the beginnings of these episodes (where she can easily find the gender difference), but pays no attention to the way they continue. Admittedly, Turnus does make an effort to resist Allecto’s advances, which Amata never does (nor is she given an opportunity to do so). Nevertheless, even if it takes more effort to excite Turnus to a mad lust for war, in the end, the effect of the Fury’s intrusion is very similar in both victims. Virgil states about Amata that “first the disease, sinking in as liquid poison, thrills her senses and envelops her bones with fire” (prima lues udo sublapsa veneno/pertemptat sensus atque ossibus implicat ignem); about Turnus, he notes that “a great terror broke his sleep, and his bones and flesh were bathed in sweat, pouring from his whole body” (olli somnum ingens rumpit pavor, ossaque et artus/perfundit toto proruptus corpore sudor).114 The similarity of their reactions is also stressed with the help of metaphors: While Amata in her state of frenzy is compared to a spinning top, Turnus is depicted as a cauldron that boils over.115 And while Amata mobilises the Laurentian matrons as instruments of her frenzy, Turnus, in like manner, spreads his fury to the other Rutulian soldiers.116
Moreover, although Turnus needs more persuasion, when he finally yields, he proceeds to the furious mode far more quickly than Amata. While Amata seems to be able for some time to fight off the pressure of the chôra, and at least tries to get through to Latinus peacefully, Turnus immediately jumps out of bed and reaches for a sword. He rushes for action without a further thought, because there are no more thoughts—only emotions, and drives. In fact, Turnus appears to lose himself in the semiotic sphere more quickly and profoundly than Amata does. This does not mean for him a complete renunciation of the symbolic—after all, he is still able to gather his forces and put an army together—but compared to Amata who, even in her disoriented and delusional Bacchic frenzy is still speaking, Turnus is barely able to string together a sentence. After Allecto’s intervention, he no longer engages in direct speech in book seven, and the two indirect speeches that he is shown delivering are short and poorly structured, repeating, with intermittent phrases, commands to his army.117 It seems that the turmoil that is raging inside Turnus truly is beyond words, even more so than is the case with Amata.
I would therefore argue that Turnus can hardly be considered an antithesis to Amata in the process that leads to the Latin War. He is, rather, an alter ego of a sort, a comparative and complementary agent to the queen. They both appear as representatives and leaders of their respective social groups—and therefore, they manifest how every segment of the people is absorbed into the war and swept off by its unstoppable drive. Moreover, these groups have a powerful impact on each other’s actions. The Latin matrons’ joining in Amata’s Bacchic revelry follows immediately after Turnus has incited his own soldiers to war. Consequently, the matrons’ fury excites their own menfolk to take up arms. This domino effect between armed men and maenadic matrons seems to blur the distinction between the male and female roles as either agitators or inciters of war. The chaos that reigns in Latium in Aeneid 7 does not differentiate between male and female agency, but merges everything together into a destructive torrent of war.
Turnus is not the only male warmonger in Roman war epic who can aptly be considered as a male counterpart to the war-bringing queens. The most impressive portrait of such a character can be found in Statius’ Thebaid, where the original cause for the war—long before Argia’s plea—is Oedipus’ hatred of his sons. Turned bitter by his own misery and enraged because of his sons’ lack of empathy, Oedipus is already furens at the very beginning of the epic.118 Feeling deserted by the celestial gods, he addresses the Styx instead, and Tisiphone in particular:
tu saltem debita vindex/huc ades et totos in poenam ordire nepotes./indue quod madidum tabo diadema cruentis/unguibus abripui, votisque instincta paternis/i media in fratres, generis consortia ferro/dissiliant. da, Tartarei regina barathri,/quod cupiam vidisse nefas. nec tarda sequetur/mens iuvenum: modo digna veni, mea pignora nosces.
Stat. Theb. 1.80–87
Do you at least, my fitting champion, come and begin to weave a punishment for all my descendants. Put on your head this gore-soaked diadem that I tore off with my bleeding nails. Roused by a father’s prayers, go between the brothers, shatter the familial partnership with steel. Queen of Tartarus’ abyss, grant the outrage that I desire to see. Nor will the young men’s minds be slow to follow. Only come, you who are worthy, and you shall know them to be my true sons.
As Fantham rightly notes, Oedipus’ curse is parallel to Dido’s curse in book four of the Aeneid—like Dido, the bitter and lonely Theban king imposes enmity between others.119 Moreover, Oedipus’ prayer, where he calls on the Fury to bring war and havoc on Earth, is clearly modelled on Juno’s commands to Allecto in Aeneid 7.120 In the Aeneid, the bloodlust spreads from Juno to Amata and Turnus, and from them to the matrons and the soldiers. In the Thebaid, these three levels are Oedipus, Tisiphone and, finally, Polynices and Eteocles. Statius’ way of making the most of the Virgilian model can be particularly well observed in the episode where Tisiphone does Oedipus’ bidding. We read that
Atque ea Cadmeo praeceps ubi culmine primum/constitit assuetaque infecit nube penates,/protinus attoniti fratrum sub pectore motus,/gentilisque animos subiit furor aegraque laetis/invidia atque parens odii metus—.
Stat. Theb. 1.123–127
And when she first dashed headlong to the Cadmean citadel, where she stood still and poisoned the house with her usual mist, immediately a shock shook the brothers’ hearts, and the family frenzy invaded their minds—and envy, anxious at another’s happiness, and fear, the parent of hatred.
As with Virgil’s Amata, here too it is implied that the furor that takes over the twins is not a strange external fiend, but in fact already resides in their hearts, because of their family’s curse. Like Amata, Polynices and Eteocles are easy targets, vulnerable to the Fury’s meddling—but, one wonders, perhaps only slightly more vulnerable than anyone else would be? As one remembers from Turnus’ futile resistance, while some persons might be more susceptible to the pressure of the chôra than others, nobody in Roman epic is safe from it. From a Kristevan viewpoint, it could be argued that this is simply because the bodily drives of which the epic furor is one are part of each human being, and while they might endanger the character’s textual subjectivity (that is, the reader’s willingness to identify with him/her), they are essential for his or her attaining psychological subjectivity—for becoming and remaining a speaking subject.
Statius therefore rewrites the roles that Virgil depicts at the beginning of the Latin war, and depicts Oedipus as the original warmonger: the one preceding the Fury herself. In the Thebaid, the origin of the destruction is not ira dwelling in divine hearts, but the bitterness and resentment in human hearts. This kind of beginning casts a shadow over Statius’ epic from the very outset. By opening his maior opus with the dramatic disgrace of Oedipus the antihero, and by representing him in a light that makes it impossible for the reader to relate to him, the poet warns the reader of what is to come: that this is an epic of destruction and uncertainty, where nothing is clear and no one is necessarily worthy of epic heroism.
The characters of Turnus and Oedipus demonstrate the fluidity of gender roles connected to the beginning of war in Roman epic. In the light of these episodes, it is not easy to characterise epic women as warmongers and troublemakers, nor the men as self-evidently worthy of narrative subjectivity. In their own manner, Virgil, Lucan and Statius all fuse and confuse the male and female roles at the beginning of war, and show that the guilt of war is anything but a simple or unambiguous issue. In particular, this phenomenon leaves a strong imprint on the civil war rhetoric in their narratives. Instead of imperial wars that define Romanitas in contrast to the other, the wars in Roman war epic mostly appear as civil struggles, caused by a dissolution within the people and the state, and by competing ideas of what Roman-ness is and who should have the power to define it.
In the Aeneid, the war between the Trojans and the Latins marks the middle of the epic; Virgil dedicates the whole of book seven to scrutinising the background of the conflict, before the battle finally breaks out in 7.572–640. In the Thebaid, Statius spends the first six and a half books depicting the Argives’ and the Thebans’ preparations for war. We do not witness the beginning of the battle before the end of book seven, Stat. Theb. 7.564–627.
In both of these poems, the beginning of the war is embodied in the anti-hero of the epic—in the Pharsalia, Caesar, and in the Punica, Hannibal—whose characters and motives are discussed in detail before the breakout of the conflict. In Lucan’s epic, it is Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, in 1.213–227, that dramatically marks the beginning of armed hostilities. In the Punica, Silius depicts Hannibal as single-handedly breaking the peace treaty with Rome, Sil. Pun. 1.296–309.
For some later imperial depictions of the archaic procedure of declaring a war, see, e.g., Liv. 1.32.6–14, 1.24; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.72.4–9. See also Polybius’ account of the procedure in 150 BCE, Polyb. 36.4.
Rosenstein 2007, 228.
In the formal declaration of war, the gods were asked to be judges in the disagreement between Romans and their enemies. Watson argues that the idea of a just cause was not shaken even by a Roman defeat: if the gods had confirmed that the Roman cause was just, and Rome still lost the war, it meant only that the Romans had been unable to execute the gods’ judgement appropriately. Watson 1993, 10–30 (see On. Strat. 4.1–6, 10.25–28; this idea is reflected in Luc. Phar. 1.352–356). Mattingly considers this an important part of the Roman imperial rhetoric as a whole. Mattingly 2011, 18.
The idea that the questions of war and peace should be decided upon in a democratic fashion was an essential part of the Roman political system. Watson 1993, 29; Smith 2006, 281–298. In his overview of the Roman Republican system, Polybius emphasises that matters of war and peace had to be approved by the people. Pol. 6.14.8–12.
Sidebottom 2007, 6–7.
Sidebottom 2007, 6–7, 11, 15.
This is particularly evident in Roman war-centred epic, where civil conflicts are repetitively referred to as nefas, crimen, or scelus. The latter terms refer to the breaking of human laws and orders, while nefas, as the most severe crime of all, denotes a violation of the divine law as well as the secular. For further definition of the concept in Roman literature, in epic in particular, see Ganiban 2007, 11–17, O’Hara 2010, 105–106; McNelis 2007.
For further discussion, see Henderson 1998, 165–211; Leigh 1997, 292–306; Armisen-Marchetti 2003, 251–258; Utard 2010, 180.
See Utard 2010; Martin 2010.
In the very first book of the Punica, the matter comes up seven times; the most descriptive are lines 1.56–59, where the poet states that Ingenio motus avidus fideique sinister/is fuit, exsuperans astu, sed devius aequi./armato nullus divum pudor; improba virtus/et pacis despectus honos. See also 1.10, 1.62, 1.296–297, 1.329–330, 1.539, 1.692–693.
Sil. Pun. 1.1–8.
Zarker 1969, 10, 16–17; Burke 1976, passim.
During the late Republic, elite women’s political activity and influence on their family members emerged as a literary topos (see, e.g., Cic. Att. 2.12.2, Cael. 20.50, 32.78). During the early Principate, this topos was further strengthened, with the exception that now there was one ultimately influential family in the political field of Rome (see, e.g., Suet. Claud. 29.1, 44, Ner. 7.2, Tac. Ann. 12.25.1, 13.5.2–3, 13.6.2). For further discussion, see, e.g., Dixon 1983; Skinner 1983; Hallett 2004. From the end of the second century BCE, elite women also appear to have acted as witnesses in criminal and civil trials (see, e.g., Val. Max. 3.8.6; Val. Max. 8.3; Suet. Iul. 74.2; Ulp. Dig. 28.1.20.6; 3.1.1.5). Fantham, Foley, Kampen, Pomeroy & Shapiro 1994, 273.
See, e.g., Keith 2000, 89–90; Keith 2007, 62–63; Panoussi 2009, 84, 112, 117–118; Perkell 1981, passim.
Thus, e.g., Panoussi 2009, 83–91, 124–132; Mack 1999, passim; Nugent 1999, 251–252; Monti 1981, 95–96.
Thus, for instance, in the Aeneid, where Amata’s inability to restrain her passions has often been interpreted as deriving directly from her feminine nature. See, in particular, Zarker 1969; Burke 1976; Brazouski 1991; Mack 1999, 142–146.
In Homeric epic, Helen’s agency, feelings or thoughts have a very small role; for some passages where these are speculated on, see Hom. Il. 13.625–629 (where Paris is blamed for taking her away by force) and Hom. Od. 23.218–224 (where Helen is suspected to have been under a divine ‘spell’ or ‘trick’).
Euripides’ Helen is the most prolific source for the study of Helen’s textual subjectivity; see also Eur. Tro. 991–1009, where Hecuba accuses Helen for lying about being raped by Paris. For further references, see Aeschyl. Ag. 403–408, 737–749; Eur. Andr. 627–631; Eur. Or. 1625–1642; Aristoph. Lys. 155 f.; Sapph. fr. 16; Hyg. Fab. 92. For references to the story in Roman literature, see Sen. Tro. 861–1008; Verg. Aen. 2.267–587, 6.494–530; Hor. Epod. 17,42; sat. 1,3,107; Ov. Epist 16.17.
Eur. Med. 1–13; Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4.1–103; Val. Flac. Argon. 8.1–173. On Virgil’s association of Lavinia and Medea, see Mack 1999, 133–134.
Liv. 1.9–13, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.30–33, 2.45–46. See also Plut. Rom. 14.
Hemker 1985, 41–46; Joshel 1992, 112–113.
Keith 2000, 40. See also Hemker 1985 (passim) and O’Gorman (1993), who notes that in the Graeco-Roman literary tradition, the founding (and naming) of a city is “an uncompromising act of possession and power”. O’Gorman 1993, 145–146.
In 7.54–57, Turnus is referred to simply as a suitor, although clearly strongly favoured by the bride’s father. The mother, for her part, obviously considers the engagement as decided upon: in 7.365–366, she accuses her husband of breaking fides with Turnus, to whom the daughter had been formally promised (data dextera Turno). Later on, this view seems to be supported by Latinus himself: in 12.25–31, he confesses that vincla omnia rupi;/promissam eripui genero, arma impia sumpsi. Nor is the nature of the king’s pact with Aeneas unambiguous. In 7.249–273, Latinus invites Aeneas to come and meet him, explicitly promising his daughter as a wife to him in marriage. However, Aeneas never appears, since the outbreak of the war prevents him from doing so. Hence, the validity of the pact could be questioned. For further discussion, see Mack 1999, 132–133, 138–139; Horsfall 2000, 82–83.
Verg. Aen. 7.583–584, 7.601–622. 7.583–584, 7.604. DeBrohun 2007, 266–269; Mack 1999, 145. The unjustness of the war is made clear also in the episode where Juno opens the gates of war (7.616–622): the ritual procedure of opening the gates and declaring a war is clearly depicted as gone awry here (Virgil describes the traditional manner in Aen. 7.601–622; for comparison, see Liv. 1.19.1–2; Hor. Carm. 4.15; Aug. RG 13).
All translations are my own, unless otherwise mentioned. I am grateful to Brian McNeil for his many helpful comments and suggestions.
As noted in Mack 1999, 132.
Although there are different versions of Hecuba’s ancestry in the canon of classical mythology, she is sometimes identified in this way. See e.g. Eur. Tro. 921–922; Cic. Div. 1.42; Ps.-Apollod. Bibl. 3.12.5. For further discussion, see McAuley 2015, 263–264. Virgil’s reference, however, has a double meaning, since “Cisseus’s daughter” could be read as a reference to another Cisseus, king of Thrace. This Cisseus allegedly promised his daughter to Archelaus of Argos, in return for military support, but afterwards went back on his word and tried to kill the suitor. In the end, Cisseus ended up being murdered by Archelaus. This version of the myth was depicted in Euripides’ fragmentary tragedy Archelaus.
Stat. Theb. 7.483–484.
Keith 2000, 73. As Mack has noted, this association indicates Virgil’s great debt to Athenian tragedy: in Euripides’ Medea, for instance, fire is a central element in Medea’s destructive rage, and is explicitly present in her gift to Jason’s new bride. Eur. Med. 1186 ff.; Mack 1999, 132.
Verg. Aen. 6.518–519.
Verg. Aen. 5.3–5.
Keith 2000, 73.
This incident takes place in book two, when Aeneas is still planning on staying to fight in the collapsing Troy; the divine, cool fire in Ascanius’ hair is interpreted as a good omen that encourages Aeneas to escape from Troy in search of a new, glorious future. Verg. Aen. 2.679–706.
Syed 2005, 137–139.
Keith 2000, 49–50.
Hahn 1984, passim.
Ando 2002; 139–141, Toll 1997, 43; Bettini 1997, 30–31.
Stat. Theb. 2.237–238. The entire passage 2.230–243.
praemissasque faces, festum nubentibus ignem,/obruit. Stat. Theb. 2.256–260.
Stat. Theb. 2.260–261.
Stat. Theb. 2.265–267.
According to the legend, Vulcanus, in order to avenge Venus’ affair with Mars, forged a cursed necklace and gave it to her daughter Harmonia, the bride of the Theban king Cadmus, as a wedding gift. After having led both Harmonia and her husband to ruin, the necklace passed on to their daughter Semele. She, too, was destroyed after getting involved in the conflict between Jupiter and Juno. Another famous owner was Oedipus’ mother Jocasta, whose love affair with her son was considered to be due to the power of the necklace. For the several variants of the story of the necklace, see Rocchi 1989, 130–134 in particular.
What is special about the necklace in the Thebaid is its direct association with the omens of war. In Statius’ representation of the necklace, the item is associated, not with private suffering, but with a political conflict. As McNelis points out, the object is “not only a harbinger of evil, but also an impetus for war”. McNelis 2007, 53, 55. See also Keith 2000, 96–97.
See, e.g. Plutarch and Cassius Dio on Mark Antony’s marriage to Octavia, Plut. Vit. Ant. 31.2–3, 35, 52.2, 57.4–5; Cass. Dio 50.3.2. On Julia and Pompey, see App. B Civ. 2.19; Plut. Vit. Caes. 23; Vell. Pat. 2.47.2; Liv. Per. 106; Plut. Vit. Pomp. 53. On Octavian’s short-lived marriage to Fulvia’s daughter Clodia Pulchra, see Plut. Vit. Ant. 20.1; Cass. Dio 46.56.3. The significance of a marriage pact in the forming of political alliances becomes evident also in Cicero’s disappointment at Tullia’s marriage to Dolabella, see Cic. Fam. 3.12.3.
In this, the poet follows the narrative tradition of Roman historiography: compare Liv. Per. 106, App. B Civ. 2.19, Plut. Vit. Caes. 23, Vit. Pomp. 53, Vell. Pat. 2.47.2.
On Lucretia, see Liv. 1.57.6–60.3, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.64.4–85.4. On Verginia, Liv. 3.44.1–54.15, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 11.28.1–44.6.
Keith 2000, 103–104; See also Donaldson 1982, 103–118; Hemker 1985, Richlin 1992, Joshel 1992.
In this mythical structure, a ritual death of a sacrificial maiden assures the proper execution of a war. The best-known example is Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigeneia in order to assure the divine protection in the Trojan War. On Iphigeneia, see Eur. IA 1540–1580; Eur. IT; Apollod. 5.3.21 f.; Hyg. fab. 98.261. On Polyxena, e.g., Eur. Hec. 177–437, Eur. Tro. 260–270, 622–629. The story is also referred to in the fragmentary material of Sophocles’ plays. For versions of these stories in Roman literature, see Lucr. 1.80–103; Ov. Met. 12.24–38, 13.182–195, 13.441–480.
In the Punica, for instance, the narrator states about Hannibal: Ingenio motus avidus fideique sinister/is fuit, Sil. Pun. 1.56–57. See also 1.8–11, 1.169–170, 1.296–297 For further discussion, see e.g. Ripoll 1998, 124–125, 277–279, 411–415; Freyburger 1986; Hölkeskamp 2000.
Evans briefly discusses Aeneas’ marriage with Lavinia as a matter that bridges the Trojan and the Latin identities. See Evans 2003, 45–59, 55–59.
For the association between epic women and destructive emotions, see Zarker 1969; Burke 1976; Brazouski 1991; Mack 1999, 142–146; Benario 1970; Monti 1981, 83–96. Syed 2005, passim (esp. 116–135).
Although the complete exclusion of women from public life was not a feature of Roman society and culture, the ways in which it was appropriate for women to behave in public were much more strictly defined than those of men. Roman women always had to take into consideration the requirements of pudicitia, a characteristically female virtue that could have been considered violated by too bold public speaking or, in some cases, by public speaking at all (see Val. Max. 8.3). Significant factors in assessing the women who appeared in the public sphere were, of course, age and social standing. Generally, matrons had more liberty in expressing their opinions and in appearing in public than young, unmarried, girls. For further discussion of this tradition in Roman historiography, see, e.g., Mustakallio 2012.
The idea of the reproductive and nourishing female body’s immanent connection to nature is ancient; its literary expressions can be traced back to the earliest surviving Greek literature. See e.g. Hom. Il. 3.243; Od. 11.301; Hes. Theog. 126 ff., 571 ff. This idea is frequently found in Roman literature, e.g., in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, see 2.589–591, 2.594–599, 5.795–796, 5.805–817. For further discussion of this subject, Keith 2000, 36–64.
Cic. Phil. 2.113, 4.4, 3.4, 5.22, 13.18. As Manuwald states, in the Philippics, Cicero deliberately paints negative portraits of Antony’s followers (Manuwald 2011, 208); it is telling that Fulvia’s activity in the public sphere and her bloodthirsty nature appear as the most degrading things imaginable in a woman.
In addition to the insinuating and offensive depictions by later imperial authors, there is archeological evidence on the matter: sling bullets have been recovered from the site of the siege of Perusia, with inscriptions that represent the bullets as aimed at Fulvia’s clitoris and at the oral and anal openings of Octavian’s body. Vell. Pat. 2.74.3; see Hallett 2006 and 2015, Brennan 2012.
The Furies’ role as agents and agitators of war obviously compromises their virginal pudicitia; hence, the gender ambiguity that apparently was already discussed in Roman Republican epic. Keith, who has studied the representation of women in the Annals of Ennius, notes that the poet uses the word virago to describe a Fury. This word, an amalgamation of vir and virgo is little used in Latin literature; generally, it is to be understood as referring to a woman (or more accurately, a maiden), who has adopted the ultimate male role. Keith 2007, 64. Keith refers to Servius’ definition: uirago dicitur mulier quae uirile implet officium. Serv. Aen. 12.468. See also Isid. Diff. 2.80 (dicta—uirago, uel quod a uiro sumpta sit, uel quod sit masculini uigoris) and Isid. Orig. 11.2.22 (uirago—quae uirum agit, hoc est opera uirilia facit). These examples are given in Keith 2007, 64.
Verg. Aen. 7.325–326. Tisiphone is mentioned twice, once as guarding the prison of the tortured souls, and once as raging in the middle of the battlefield in the Latin war. 6.548–572, 10.758–761 (pallida Tisiphone media inter milia saevit). Megaera appears only once in the Aeneid, in 12.848–868, when she calls Iuturna back from the battlefield.
Stat. Theb. 1.56 ff. Another fury mentioned by name in the Thebaid is Megaera, Tisiphone’s sister, who is repeatedly spoken of, but who does not appear in person. Stat. Theb. 1.477, 1.712, 3.641, 4.636, 11.60.
Sil. Pun. 2.526–707.
For comparisons, see, e.g., Verg. Aen. 7.323–329, 7.445–455., Stat. Theb. 1.88–113. Sil. Pun. 2.543–552. In Lucan’s Pharsalia, the divine agitators of war are considerably fewer than in Virgil’s, Statius’, and Silius’ poems. Still loyal to the Virgilian tradition, Lucan, too, mentions Tisiphone and Megaera (1.577, 6.730).
Panoussi 2009, 143. Mack (1999) has perceptively defined the epic fury not as an avenger but rather as “discord personified”. See also Huskinson, who discusses the paradox of representing male qualities of military strength and prowess in a female form. Huskinson 2000, 8.
Panoussi 2009, 84–85, 89–90.
Verg. Aen. 7.327–328. For further discussion of the nature of the Furies in epic, see, e.g., Panoussi 2009, 89–92; Mack 1999, 143–147; Monti 1981, 89.
Verg. Aen. 1.11. On the concepts of ira, furor, rabies, see Fantham 1997, 198–199, 200–203; Gill 1997, 215–218, 236–241; Wright 1997, 179–184; Delarue 2000, 83–85, 159–160; Ripoll 1998, 328–332, 432–440, 468–520.
Feeney discusses the phenomenon in depth; see Feeney 1991; also Syed 2005, 153–154. It should be noted that despite the constant presence of gods in Roman war epic, the divine origin of human feelings, desires and fears is occasionally questioned by some poets. The best known example is Nisus’ speech in the Aeneid (Verg. Aen. 9.184–185). Lucan is a remarkable exception in the epic tradition, since he generally leaves very little room to gods in the Pharsalia. Von Albrecht 1999, 227–228. See also Baier 2010, passim.
Keith 2000, 67–69; Syed 2005, 183.
Kristeva 1974 (in Moi 1986, 155–156).
Characterised as such, e.g., in Syed 2005, 142–145, 162–176.
Oliver 1993, 108.
On magical, chthonic elements of Dido’s curse, see Tupet 1970.
See, e.g., Benario 1970; Williams 2001; Monti 1981; Horsfall 1990.
Verg. Aen. 8.688, 8.697–698, 8.706–713.
For references to this subject in other poetic works of the same period, see Hor. Carm. 1.37.6–17, Prop. Eleg. 3.11.39–46, 49–51, 57–58. On the much-debated question of poetic freedom and independence in the Augustan era, see Griffin 1984 and Zetzel 1982.
See, e.g., Benario 1970, 2–6; Horsfall 1973–1974, 1–13; Keith 2000, 68–69; Syed 2005, 184–193; Reed 2007, 73–100.
Syed 2005, 177–178, 186, 191.
Farrell & Nelis 2013, 3–4. Besides the episode in Aeneid 8, see Prop. 2.31, 4.6; Hor. Carm. 1.31, 1.37. Lucan’s description of Cleopatra’s bloodlust recalls Propertius’ notion that scilicet incesti meretrix regina Canopi,/una Philippeo sanguine adusta nota,/ausa Iovi nostro latrantem opponere Anubim,/et Tiberim Nili cogere ferre minas,/Romanamque tubam crepitanti pellere sistro,/baridos et contis rostra Liburna sequi,/foedaque Tarpeio conopia tendere saxo,/iura dare et statuas inter et arma Mari./septem urbs alta iugis, toto quae praesidet orbi,/femineas timuit territa Marte minas. Prop. 3.11.39–58.
See, e.g., Williams 2001, 195–196.
Kristeva 1980 (in Oliver 2002, 229–246).
On the concept and its particular association with Cleopatra, see Wyke 2009.
Luc. Phar. 10.81, 10.138.
Luc. Phar. 10.359.
Verg. Aen. 4.259–264.
See Verg. Aen. 4.259–264. Dido’s wish to share her throne with Aeneas is mentioned in Anna’s speech in 4.47–49: “quam tu urbem, soror, hanc cernes, quae surgere regna/coniugio tali! Teucrum comitantibus armis,/Punica se quantis attollet gloria rebus!”.
Cass. Dio 50.5.3–50.6.1; for further discussion, see Williams 2001, 195–196. According to Williams, Antony was considered “more conquered by, than conqueror of, the Orient”—not a victor who made Egypt a part of the Roman Empire, but a mere tool in Cleopatra’s pursuit for the dominion of the world. On Cleopatra’s alleged influence on Antony, see also Plut. Vit. Ant. 25.1, 60.1.
Lucan stresses the link between Cleopatra and Virgil’s Dido through various allusions and references to the Aeneid. The scene where Cleopatra is shown feasting with Caesar is strikingly similar to the banquet given by Dido to Aeneas. The choice of words when describing the splendour of the feast and the appearance of the queen explicitly recalls the Virgilian narrative. Compare Luc. Phar. 10.107–171 with Verg. Aen. 1.637–642, 1.697–708. The allusion is underlined further, when Cleopatra is represented as clothed in the “fabric of Sidon” (Candida Sidonio perlucent pectora filo, Luc. Phar. 10.141); sidonia is an attribute that Virgil uses to describe the Carthaginian queen throughout his epic. Verg. Aen. 1.446, 4.137; the parallel passage concerning Dido’s dress can be found in 4.682.
Luc. Phar. 10.68–69.
Horsfall 1973–1974, 6. Dido herself points this out in Verg. Aen. 1.628–630.
Jacobs 2010, 123–139. See also Gruen 2011, 134–135; Pyy & van der Keur 2019.
Verg. Aen. 4.429–434.
Verg. Aen. 4.554–583.
Gruen 2011, 135. This also seems to be implied in the episode where Dido and Aeneas yield to their desire and spend the night in the cave on their hunting trip; it is stated that ille dies primus leti primusque malorum/causa fuit. Verg. Aen. 4.169–170.
Reed 2007, 73–100.
Sil. Pun. 1.81–122. ante pedes ensis Phrygius iacet (1.91). Hannibal’s oath strongly associates Dido’s spirit or shade with a native war goddess, which strengthens the link between the queen, the war and the patriotic imagery: hanc mentem iuro nostri per numina Martis,/per manes, regina, tuos. Sil. Pun. 1.118–119.
As Keith points out, Hannibal is strongly associated with ‘feminine warmongering’ throughout the epic. He is both the instrument of Juno’s rage and Dido’s rightful avenger, and this characterises him as the executor of the forces majeures against the Romans. Keith 2000, 91–92.
The issue over the guilt of war in the second Punic War was not an unambiguous matter, as we see in the differing opinions of Roman authors who discuss the topic. On the one hand, we are told that Carthage repeatedly breached a treaty with Rome after the first Punic War (see e.g. Plut. Vit. Cat. Mai. 26–27); on the other, Polybios claims that the main cause of the second Punic War was the seizure of Sardinia by the Romans (see Polyb. 3.10.3–5, 3.15.10, 3.30.4). In most contemporary studies, the prevalent conception is that by attacking Saguntum, Hannibal did not technically violate any treaty with Rome. Dominik 2003, 477. For further discussion of this subject, see Gruen 2011, 122–132.
Zarker 1969; Burke 1976; Brazouski 1991; Nugent 1999; Mack 1999, 142–146.
Verg. Aen. 7.56–57.
Verg. Aen. 7.344–345.
Verg. Aen. 7.367–372.
Verg. Aen. 7.378–382.
McAuley 2015, 78.
McAuley 2015, 78–79.
McAuley 2015, 81.
Kristeva 1974 (in Moi 1986, 154).
Verg. Aen. 7.385–391, 7.397–400.
As Zarker observes, in Roman epic, matrons as a collective group tend to represent ‘the public opinion’. Zarker 1969, 10; Zarker 1978, 22. The issue has also been addressed by Quinn, who considers Virgil’s epic matrons an important internal audience and a reflection of the Euripidean chorus in the Troades. Quinn 1968, 282, 348.
See e.g. Brazouski 1991, 133–134; Panoussi 2009, 123; Hardie 2012, 87, 100–101. In Roman thinking, the Bacchanals were closely associated with the threatening empowerment of women and with a distortion of the respectable role of a matron. The secretive nature of the cult, the general ignorance about the ritual practice and the lack of official state control made the Senate hostile to the movement, and the cult was suppressed in 186 BCE. Liv. 39.9; CIL I(2) 581. For further discussion, see, e.g., Hänninen 1998, 115–123. With regard to the Bacchanalia episode in Aeneid 7, scholarly interest has usually focused on the symbolic value of the episode; for some thoughts on the ritual appropriateness of the rite, see Tupet 1970, 229–248; Panoussi 2009, 118–120.
In the Metamorphoses, Ovid clearly recalls Amata’s simulatio when he depicts Procne’s maenadic rage: concita per silvas turba comitante suarum/terribilis Procne furiisque asitata doloris,/Bacche, tuas simulat—. Ov. Met. 6.594–596.
See, e.g., Verg. Aen. 7.386 (maius adorta nefas maioremque orsa furorem).
Keith 2000, 74.
Syed 2005, 117–122.
Verg. Aen. 7.354–355; 7.458–459.
Verg. Aen. 7.462–466.
Verg. Aen. 7.467–476.
Verg. Aen. 7.467–470, 7.577–579.
Stat. Theb. 1.73.
Fantham 1997, 200.
Hershkowitz 1998, 274.