1. W. R. Johnson, in his recent work on the Aeneid (Darkness Visible [Berkeley, 1976], esp.15f.Google Scholar), argues eloquently that effects rather than answers are the key to the poem, thus rising above the optimism-pessimism controversy which has plagued modern commentators on the poem. B. Otis, for example (Vergil: A Study in Civilized Poetry [Oxford, 1964], 390 Google Scholar), sees in Aeneas the ‘elucidation of an ideal which represented Rome's best and true reason for being’. C. P. Segal on the other hand, in a thorough analysis of the Golden Bough and its significance (‘Aeternum Per Saecula Nomen, The Golden Bough and the Tragedy of History’: Part I, Arion 4 [1965], 617–57Google Scholar; Part II, Arion 5 [1966], 34–72 Google Scholar), discovers ‘… the pervasive tragic sense underlying the Aeneid: a sense of the futility of the quest for immortality and of the absolute, inconsolable nature of the loss of individual life’ (Part I, 641). While I would argue that it is through the dynamic interplay, rather than the resolution, of these opposing views that the Aeneid achieves its vitality, I do not wish to imply that certain answers are dispensable. The reader of the Aeneid must insure that his response to the poem is based on an understanding of the belief system within which Vergil worked. I assume, then, as the receptor of the poem, a reader (I am avoiding the distinction between reader and audience in favor of a concentration on the receiving process, although I intend to analyze the distinction in depth elsewhere) who is aware of the basic features of Vergil's Augustanism. On the important distinction between emotional and informed response, see Fish, S. E., Self-Consuming Artifacts (Berkeley, 1972), 406ffGoogle Scholar.

2. Thunder from a clear sky is usually a good omen; see for exampie 9.630f., where Jupiter answers Ascanius' prayer (and cf. Bailey, C., Religion in Virgil [Oxford, 1935], 23 Google Scholar). Yet while the blood-red armor that appears in the sky over Evander's kingdom portends divine armor for Aeneas, it portends as well the death of Pallas for Evander (and even the pivotal role his armor will play after Turnus plunders it).

3. Adam Parry, in a now rather neglected article (‘The Two Voices of Virgil's Aeneid’, Arion 2.4 [1963], 66-80), treats this juxtaposition as one of historical greatness and personal suffering. Boyle, A. J. (‘The Meaning of the Aeneid: A Critical Inquiry’, Part I: ‘Empire and the Individual’, Ramus 1 [1972], 63–90 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Part II: ‘ Homo Immemor: Book VI and its Thematic Ramifications’, Ramus 1 [1972], 113–151 CrossRefGoogle Scholar) emphasizes the gulf between the political ideals and the human realities of the poem. These studies, while they present what seems to me incontrovertible evidence of a fundamental and tragic tension in the Aeneid, neglect the reader's cumulative and unavoidable response to such tension as a formative element in the poem. I argue that the force of the poem lies not in praise or lamentation, nor in the ambiguity they may foster, but in the reader's experience of the dynamic between them in which he becomes involved. On the temporal focus of the poem and its contribution to the tension see Mack, S., Patterns of Time in Vergil (Hamden, 1978 Google Scholar).

4. I concentrate in this paper on those episodes in which children play a major role. Lee, M. Owen, in his recent book, Fathers and Sons in Virgil's Aeneid: Turn Genitor Natum (New York, 1979 Google Scholar), discusses the relationships of fathers and sons in the poem. While his study is intriguing, by limiting it to this exclusively male and strictly biological definition of the parent-child relationship, he has not only missed the force of the more symbolic manifestations of this relationship, but also the importance of Homeric models: he states casually, after detailing the father-son relationships in Homer, that ‘Virgil availed himself of very little of this’ (139). Yet children are used variously as symbols of the future throughout the poem. The scope and handling of these references varies enormously, ranging from conventional naming by genealogy (for example in Book 9, the book of young men's exploits, the lineage of a child who is about to die is traced at 545ff., 58Iff., 672ff., 696ff.) to subtle allusion, as in the description of Daedalus' inability to record the death of Icarus (6.30ff.), or the description of maternal yearning for a child (Dido, 4.328ff.; Andromache mourning the death of Astyanax, 3.486ff.). It is interesting to notice that Vergil has Juno add the promise of pulchra prole (‘lovely off-spring’, 1.75) to her version of Hera's offer to Sleep (Il. 14.267ff.). For both author and audience in Augustus' time the subject of parents and children would have been linked to the problem of imperial succession, a growing difficulty both biological and political. Vergil's awareness of the potency of the child as symbol is apparent in, for example, Ec. 1.1 Iff., where a goat's inability to bear healthy kids is a symbol of the country's blighted hopes, while the need for children to insure and enjoy the country's fertility is touched upon at Ec. 9.50 (and see also Tibullus 1.10.47f.).

5. Nowottny, W., The Language Poets Use (London, 1962), 53 Google Scholar, remarks of the simile that ‘there has to be a similarity between two things sufficient to hold them together and a disparity between them sufficient to make their encounter exciting.’ (For ancient definitions of the simile see Anderson, W. D., ‘Notes on the Simile in Homer and his Successors: I. Homer, Apollonius Rhodius, and Vergil’, CJ 53 [1957], 81–87 Google Scholar; McCall, M., Ancient Rhetorical Theories of Simile and Comparison [Cambridge, Mass., 1969].CrossRefGoogle Scholar) Poets seem not to use as the subject of similes themes which are central to the narrative. Moulton, C. (Similes in the Homeric Poems [Göttingen, 1977]Google Scholar) mentions this principle in a brief aside (118): ‘For example, weather and sea similes, frequent in the Iliad, play a very small part in the Odyssey, where these two elements are important in the narrative.’ See on this principle in Homer Kassel, R., Quomodo Quibus Locis Apud Veteres Scriptores Graecos Infantes Atque Parvuli Pueri Inducantur Describantur Commemorentur (Würzburg, 1954), 8 Google Scholar. See also West, D., ‘Virgilian Multiple Correspondence Similes and their Antecedents’, Philologus 114 (1970), 262–275, esp. 265CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scott, W. C., The Oral Nature of the Homeric Simile (Mnem. Supp. 28, 1974), 7, 81ff., 122ffGoogle Scholar. Of the 116 similes in the Aeneid (Hornsby, R., Patterns of Action in the Aeneid [Iowa, 1970], 7 Google Scholar; see also Wilkins, E. G., ‘A Classification of the Similes in Vergil's Aeneid and Georgics ’, CW 14 [1921] 170–174 Google Scholar, n. 4), only seven deal with children: three of these involve wild animals (2.355ff., 9.59ff. and 9.563ff., the last two both about Turnus); two involve birds (5.213f.; 12.473ff.); one little boys (7.378ff.); one bees (1.430ff.). The description of the virtuous housewife at 8.408ff. is not strictly a simile. Of these, only 7.378ff., comparing Amata to a top driven by children, is an extended reference to children themselves. Vergil may eliminate a reference to or simile about parents and children when the narrative already contains the theme. For example, at Iliad 4.130f., Athene brushes an arrow away from Menelaos ‘as lightly as when a mother/brushes a fly away from her child who is lying in sweet sleep’ (I use R. Lattimore's translation [Chicago, 1951] throughout). At Aeneid 10.331f., alma Venus, Aeneas' mother, deflects an arrow from him, but the simile is not used. Vergil may have avoided similes about parents and children because children and their fate are a central thematic symbol in the narrative of the poem.

6. I will not attempt here to argue that Homer himself was responsible for or aware of the patterns in the Iliad, but only that Vergil, as a careful and informed reader, was aware of them, and responsible for his adaptation.

7. 1.12f. It is interesting to note that in these lines Homer uses patronymics for Achilles and Agamemnon, and invokes Apollo by his parentage. On the possible ‘literary’ nature of such epithets, see Whallon, W., ‘The Homeric Epithets’, YCS 17 (1961), 97–142, esp. 128ff.Google Scholar; Lee (above n.4), 119f.

8. References to parents and children and their mutual need (on which see Kassel [above n.5], 11f. and n.7) are frequent in the Iliad. See for example the snake sign at Aulis recalled by Odysseus at 2.308ff. which, dramatizing the helplessness of the parent and the innocence of the offspring, closely parallels Vergil's description of the death of Laocoön and his sons in Aen. 2. See also Dione's description of what happens to mortals who attack divinities (Il. 5.406ff.), or Andromache's fears for orphaned Astyanax (22.484ff.; compare Od. 4.164ff.). In the Aeneid Andromache's lament is repeated, but there it is not for the orphaned child, but for the bereaved parent (9.481ff.; cf. Amata's lament to Turnus, 12.56ff.); Vergil emphasizes the death of children rather than the failure of protectors. Greene, T., The Descent from Heaven (New Haven, 1963), 47f.Google Scholar, attributes the ‘slender and paradoxical affirmation which makes the Iliad's ending bearable’ to ‘the continuity of genealogy’, and calls the Iliad ‘a great poem of fatherhood’.

9. Patroklos' child-like dependency is sketched in with great subtlety: at 1.307 he appears for the first time, silently accompanying Achilles back to camp; at 9.190f. we see him sitting wordlessly while Achilles plays his lyre. He himself seems to understand clearly the power his dependency gives him over his friend (e.g. 15.401ff., where he plans to persuade Achilles to act). But it is really Achilles who describes the relationship for us, in the similes. Ironically, Chryses' protection of Chryseis, and Thetis' of Achilles, lead ultimately to Achilles' failure to protect Patroklos.

10. This simile seems to be the model for Vergil's description of Juturna in the guise of Metiscus bringing aid to Turnus nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes/pervolat et pen-nis alta atria lustrat hirundo/pabula parva legens nidisque loquacibus escas (‘As when a black swallow flies through the great home of a rich lord, and swoops around the high halls on her wings, gathering little tid-bits of food for the squawking nest’, Aen. 12.473ff.; see also Od. 22.238ff.). For some reason commentators have always wanted to see Vergil's simile as unique (Coffey, M., ‘The Subject Matter of Vergil's Similes’, BICS 8 [1961], 63–75, esp. 67Google Scholar; Conington, J., P. Vergili Maronis Opera, vol. III [London, 1883], ad loc Google Scholar). Both similes focus on the mother bird and on her protective role, but the Homeric simile is used by Achilles to deny his protective responsibility, the Vergilian to describe a situation in which the protective figure must fail, and in fact in the end is driven off by the bitter goddess (dea dira) in the form of a bird (12.861ff.). Theocritus in Idyll 14 uses similes reminiscent of 16.7ff. and 9.323ff. within a few lines (32ff.).

11. This simile is very like the one at Il. 5.297ff., where Aeneas stands over the body of Pandaros, but the theme of the child associated with Patroklos is of course missing from the simile here.

12. This seems to contradict Patroklos' story in Book 23, but it provides a neat parallel for Vergil's emphasis on Aeneas' promise to Evander in the Aeneid, and even to the whole story of Pallas, on which see n. 29 below.

13. The simile at Aeneid 7.378ff., which compares Amata to a top spinning under the lash of inscia impubesque manus (‘a mindless band of youth’), has the same tone as these two similes. Vergil's simile describes the power of Juno working destructively through Allecto, heedless of the eventual consequences for Turnus.

14. See Segal, C. P., The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad (Mnem. Supp. 17, 1971 Google Scholar); he discusses Homer's treatment of a theme that is equally important in the Aeneid. Vergil makes the treatment of the body a central concern in an individual's death. See for example 2.557f., where Priam's body lies unburied on the shore; 4.620, where Dido hopes Aeneas will remain unburied (and Servius ad loc. for various versions); 6.363ff., where Palinurus prays for proper burial; 9.465ff., where the heads of Nisus and Euryalus are fixed on spikes; 10.491ff., where Turnus sends Pallas' body back to Evander; 10.827ff., where Aeneas does the same for Lausus; 10.904ff., where Mezentius begs Aeneas to allow him burial with Lausus. See also Diana's promise about Camilla, and Turnus' final prayer.

15. Phoinix tells, in addition to his own story, that of Meleager. Although Phoinix does not mention it, Meleager died finally by his mother's will. For the many places the story appears, see J. G. Frazer's note 5 on Apollod. 1.8 (Loeb Library ed., London, 1925). Kakridis, J., Homeric Researches (Lund, 1949), 11ff.Google Scholar, discusses the two versions of the story.

16. He was accepted by Peleus ‘even as a father loves his own son/who is a single child’ (Il. 9.481f.; cf. also 16.573ff., another murderous suppliant to Peleus). Moulton (above n.5, 115) notes the similarity between the two stories. At Aen. 10.388ff., Pallas kills a man whose story is similar to Phoinix'. On the Greek source see Servius ad loc.

17. Hermes tells Priam to entreat Achilles ‘in the name of his father, the name of his mother/of the lovely hair, and his child, and so move the spirit within him’ (Il. 24.466f.). This child is biologically Neoptolemos, but emotionally Patroklos — see 19.321ff., where Achilles says that the death of Patroklos hurts him more than if he were to hear of the death of his own father or son.

18. Achilles' weeping for his father shows that he realizes his own mortality, as Thetis has from the beginning. See Il. 1.413ff.: ‘Ah me, my child, your birth was bitterness …’; cf. 18. 54ff., 95ff., 436ff. Thetis' protection of Achilles is really throughout an admission of his mortality. Venus' protection of Aeneas is an attempt to make him look to the immortality of his destiny, to ignore in a way his own mortality. Furthermore, it is not particularly motherly. Indeed, in a number of places (the plot with Cupid in Book 1 and Juno in Book 4, for example), she seems to be working against him. In the council of the gods in Book 10 she is ready to give him up to save Ascanius (46ff.). On Venus' role see further Boyle, op. cit. (above n.3), 70f. and n.37.

19. The phrase ora parentum occurs at 2.681 (the guiding flame on Ascanius' head appears before the sorrowing faces of Aeneas and Creusa); 5.553 (the Trojan youth ride before their elders); 5.576 (the Trojans applaud, recognizing the looks of their ancestors); 6.308 (the dead in Hades include youth buried before the eyes of their parents). In addition, Dr. G. N. Knauer has pointed out to me that Vergil has added the phrase ante ora patrum (‘before the gaze of their fathers’, 1.95) to Aeneas' version of Odysseus' lament at Od. 5.299ff. For other parallels see his useful work, Listen der Homerzitate in der Aeneis (Göttingen, 1964 Google Scholar).

20. See for example Conington (above n. 10) ad loc.

21. Both Euryalus (9.435ff.) and Pallas (11.68ff.) are described in death as flowers cut from their roots, as Latinus' sceptre was once living wood, now cut from the parent tree. This interplay between what is vital and what is dead yet lifelessly beautiful, both Boyle (above n. 3, 136ff.) and Segal (above n. 1, Part I) find symbolized in the Golden Bough, and in the doors worked by Daedalus in Book 6 (Boyle, 118f.; cf Segal, Part I, 644 and Part II, 50f., although I disagree with his interpretation of the contrast between Aeneas and Daedalus). I would argue further that Daedalus' failure both as parental protector and artist prefigures, at the critical point of descent to the Underworld, the failures of both parents and children in the second half of the poem; this failure is balanced at the end of Book 6 by the death of Marcellus. This interchange of beautiful art and tragic reality will be echoed in the shield, the sceptre, and in the simile describing Ascanius, on which see below.

22. See Conington (n. 10 above) on 475 (citing Heyne's suggestion that the stag recalls events at Aulis), and compare 4.169f. — the hunt and storm — ille dies primus leti primusque malorum/causa fuit (‘that day first was the cause of death and evil’).

23. See for example Servius on 600 (and following): Italiae discipline et vita laudatur: quam et Cato in originibus et Varro in gente populi Romani commemorant (‘the life and training of Italy is being praised, which both Cato in the Origines and Varro in the Race of the Roman People make mention of’). Compare e.g. Horace Carm. 3.2; 3.6.

24. Compare the similar description of Turnus as a bull at 12.103ff.

25. Conington (n. 10 above) ad loc, compares this simile to 1.592ff., where ‘the setting’ is prominent in the description of Aeneas, beneath whose beauty also lurks destruction.

26. Although there are three other figures in legend named Euryalus (Kleine Pauly II 450), Vergil seems to have invented his own. See Hyg. Fab. 257; Ovid uses Nisus and Euryalus as a model of friendship, Tr. 1. 5. 25; 1. 9. 33ff.; 5. 4. 26.

27. Vergil has apparently invented the time and circumstances of Lausus' death. One version has Lausus, son of Numitor, killed by his uncle (Ovid, Fasti 4.54f.; Dio. Hal. 1.76.2L), another as son of Mezentius (Dio. Hal. 1.65; Origo 15.1-3). See Basson, W. P., Pivotal Catalogues in the Aeneid (Amsterdam, 1975), 137fGoogle Scholar. and esp. n.97 on the death itself. Conington (above n.10) on 10.789 comments on a parallel with Scipio's defense of his father, Livy 21.47. Ascanius, in a similar situation, can only stand and weep (12.399f.).

28. Camilla appears to be a Vergilian combination of Harpalyce (Hyg. Fab. 193, ed. Rose, who notes an interesting parallel with Lausus — Harpalyce rescues her father) and Penthesilea (see Conington, above n.10, on 7.803). See Basson (above n.27), 152ff., esp. notes, on Camilla and her position in the catalogue in Book 7. It is amazing to me that her placement in the catalogue and in death can still be considered ‘an anti-climax’ (ibid. 155). Williams, R. D., in ‘The Function and Structure of Virgil's Catalogue in Aeneid 7’, CQ n.s. 11 (1961), 146–153 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, sees the catalogue as framed by Mezentius and Turnus, with Camilla as a pendant comparable ‘though with many differences [to] the addition of the passage about Marcellus after the formal conclusion of the pageant … in Book 6’ (149). See Rosenmeyer, T. G., ‘Virgil and Heroism: Aeneid XI’, CJ 55 (1960), 159–164 Google Scholar, who solves the puzzle of Camilla's function by emphasizing her role as a solitary heroine in a grim world. Hyg. Fab. 252 gives (briefly) Camilla's parentage. Servius auctus on 1.317 discusses the similarities between Harpalyce and Camilla.

29. For the versions of the story of Evander and Pallas available to Vergil see Servius on 8.51, who gives two stories of Evander's exile, arrival in Latium, and progeny; either he killed his father with the connivance of his mother, or he killed his mother; as for his children, some say the Palatine is named from Evander's grandfather, or daughter, vel certe a Pallante eius filio illic sepulto, immaturae aetatis; alii afilio Evandri, qui post mortem patris seditione occisus est (‘or perhaps from her son Pallas who was buried there at a young age; others say from the son of Evander, who was killed after the death of his father in a mutiny’). See also Hyg. Fab. 277; Dio. Hal. 1.32f. and 43, who says Pallas, here a half-brother of Latinus, died young; Origo 5; Servius auctus on 8.54; Eustathius 347 (Müller, , Geographi Graeci Minores II [Paris 1862] 227f.Google Scholar); Heyne's Excursus 1 on Book 8. See also Anderson, W. S., ‘Vergil's Second Iliad ’, TAPA 88 (1957), 17–30, esp. 26fGoogle Scholar.

30. Halaesus appears in legend as the founder of Falerii; see Pliny N.H. 3.51; Solinus 2.7; Servius on 7.695; Ovid Fasti 4.73f. He was a companion or bastard of Agamemnon (Servius on 7.723) or a son of Neptune (Servius auctus on 8.285). He is called Agamemnonius at 7.723; the story at 10.417ff. seems to be wholly Vergilian. A fugitive (Ovid Am. 3.13.31f.), he dies, like Nisus and like Lausus, protecting someone else. Like Pallas, Patroklos before his own death kills a son whose father cannot protect him (Il. 16.431ff.).

31. This prayer is like that of Magus, the suppliant Aeneas kills after the death of Pallas (10.524ff.), and echoes that of Palinurus in Hades (6.363ff.). The closest parallel in the Iliad is 22.338ff. (Hector). See also Aen. 10.597f.; Il. 6.46ff. = 10.378ff. = 11.131ff.; 24.465ff.