Aeneid 2: 'Unspeakable, o queen, is the grief you bid me renew!'... 'Perhaps you ask too what was Priam's fate...'

In the second book of the Aeneid, our hero Aeneas recounts the Fall of Troy to Dido. Told in first-person past-tense it presents a horrific vision of war, full of blood-shedding, burning, and crimes against the gods.

The most horrific scene of violence within the Aeneid [ Surely, a case of 'Discuss?' -- Ed. Laocoon, perhaps ? ] occurs in this book, when Pyrrhus [aka Neoptolemus], son of Achilles, kills Priam at an altar. After smashing through the palace doors, 'like a snake which has fed upon poisonous herbs' [471-475], he finds Priam, clad in his armour, cowering in the temple. Pyrrhus commands him to tell his father of 'his degeneracy' [549], and, after dragging Priam through a pool of his own son's blood, proceeds to slit his throat. Priam is reduced from a proud king to a weak, old man in this scene, and horror is created through the ease and casual cruelty with which he is slaughtered. Furthermore, Vergil uses extraordinarily graphic imagery to reinforce within the reader how terrible this whole scene is, with Polites 'vomiting his life’s blood before their [his parents'] eyes [et ora parentum],' and Priam, 'head hacked from the shoulders, a corpse without name' [558].

However, for all the horror in book 2, it also has what is arguably one of the most poignant and beautiful scenes; Aeneas' final talk with Creusa. After realising his wife is lost, Aeneas returns to the burning city to find her. Her ghost comes to him, and informs him of his destiny, which is to find a new land, where he shall have a kingdom, and a new bride [780-784]. Yet, although Aeneas receives closure as to her fate, he is unable to hold her, as she slips beyond him, 'as weightless as the wind, as light as the flight of sleep'. His final ties are severed, and he can now go forth to embrace his destiny, but at what cost? [ ... exile, the wanderings and struggles in Italy, etc. ]

Overall, book 2 is a book of great emotion, with scenes of horror and degradation, yet also scenes of sadness. Aeneas is forced to leave Troy, as it is completely destroyed, and he is made free to marry a new wife, so that he might gain a new one with whom to sire the Romans.

BB

Book 2 was my A Level set-text and what a text it is! Reading Creusa's parting words still brings tears to my eyes and shivers to my spine, even after decades.

'Long exile awaits you and the vast plain of the sea must be ploughed:

and you will come to the land of the Evening Star, 

where the Lydian Thybris [aka Tiber]

flows with its gentle line among rich fields of men;

there happy times and a kingdom and a royal wife have been won for you.

Dispel your tears for Creusa, once your delight.

I will not see the proud seats of the Myrmidones or the Dolopes, 

nor will I go to service for Greek mothers.

I am a Trojan woman and a ward of rich Venus.

Instead, the Great Mother of the gods [Cybele] holds me back within these shores.

And now, farewell! Guard too your love for the son we share.' [780-789]

Then, there is Priam [557-558]: 'There he lies on the shore, a huge trunk, and a head wrenched from its shoulders, and a corpse without a name'. The poet Lucan recalled this description in his telling of the beheading of Pompey the Great on a shore in Egypt in 48 BC [On the Civil War 8.667 ff., 698 ff, and 710 ff.]. The great Vergilian commentator of Late Antiquity, Servius, noted on Aeneid 2.558: Pompei tangit historiam 'He touches upon the history of Pompey'.

The beheading of Pompey the (once) Great -- to please a Julian descendant of Aeneas, is as much the end of the Republic as the sacrilegious execution of Priam is the end of Troy.

PJ