1—
Astonishment, Pity and Fear
The aim of poetry as opposed to other verbal arts is to delight, and 'to shake the
reader up', as we say, although Greek aesthetics used a different metaphor: 'to put
the reader beside himself':
soul] and
467 istotelian theory.[1] In tragedy the main weight falls completely on
since the aestheticians – since Aristotle, and even before his time – did not discrimi-
nate between epic and tragedy, this also held good for the epic. In itself
[to excite, produce an emotional response] did not perhaps have to be bound up with
the idea of violent excitement; serene beauty can also move the spirit very deeply.
But one does not generally think of the word as embracing this possibility: one takes
it to mean what had been established ever since Euripides as the specific effect of
tragedy: the 'emotional, unexpected and surprising', or, as Plutarch once para-
phrased it, 'the upsetting and amazing',[2] or, to let Virgil's friend Horace have a
word, it is the art of one qui pectus inaniter angit , inritat , mulcet , falsis terroribus
implet [who torments my heart with illusions, grates, soothes, and fills with feigned
terrors] (Ep . 2.1.211-12): a definition in which only mulcere [soothing] allows any
small space for the gentler effects which are necessary for variety and recuperation.
That certain basic aspects of Virgil's technique are decisively geared towards this
goal is very obvious. In the present study of his epic technique, almost everything
which we have had to label 'a dramatic touch' serves
attempting to rival the dramatist in arousing excitement, and therefore studies the
secrets of his art. This can be felt most clearly in the structuring of the action: the
striving after energetic forward movement, the strong emphasis on decisive mo-
ments, the stage-like structure of the smaller units, the preference of peripeteia
[reversal] to a calmer, regular course, the struggle after surprising effects, the harsh
light focussed on particular details by means of contrasts and climaxes – these are
468 all characteristic of Virgil, and they are all borrowed from the dramatist's box of
tricks. I do not need to go further with this (and related aspects) again here; but there
is a wider field which does require special attention.
At the centre of his theory of the effect of tragedy, Aristotle placed
and fear, which the poet must arouse in the audience.
regarded as the core of
more and more; it became one of the highest aims of Virgilian epic too. There are
two ways of achieving this aim: either by narrating events which arouse pity, anger,
fear etc. in the audience; or by presenting the characters to us in an emotional state:
the more vividly and visually this is done, the more easily we will identify with the
character and share the depicted emotion, and, although much less intensely,
description not only of the exciting event but also of its effect on the participants:
Virgil preferred this second, surer way.
The most noble tragic emotion, pity, also ranks highest in Virgil. For example, in
Book 1 he is not satisfied with merely emphasizing the piteous aspects of the fate of
Aeneas and the Trojans: episodic material, such as the narrative about Dido (above
p. 107 n. 7), the images in the temple at Carthage (above, p. 312f.) and the dialogue
between Venus and Amor, becomes an extra source of pity. In the Sack of Troy,
emphasis is laid on the piteous aspects of Hector's dream-appearance, the rape of
Cassandra and the death of Priam; with the prodigium at the grave of Polydorus, the
meeting with Andromache, the adventure with the Cyclops, where it would have
been easy to concentrate on different emotions, the poet still appeals primarily to our
pity. The sight of any suffering, such as that of a tortured animal or an invalid in
pain, can awaken similar feelings of suffering in the onlooker; these feelings are
intensified if they are combined with anger at the perpetrator of the suffering. This
association of the
469 by the aestheticians, and turned to advantage in rhetoric.[3] Thus the
someness] of Neoptolemus' coarse cruelty and arrogance is an additional factor
which increases our pity for Priam and Andromache; Sinon's perfidy, Pygmalion's
criminal tryanny are painted in the blackest of colours in order to make us feel the
fate of their victims more bitterly; even Juno's implacable hatred belongs in this
category. At the same time, it may sometimes be merely the common pity of a
tender heart; the whole person feels involved when not only his pity but also his love
and admiration are directed towards the sufferer; it is only then that he really reaches
the point of identifying with him. What led Virgil in the first place to ennoble his
suffering characters in this way was probably his impulse to sympathize fully with
them himself; but it is obvious how close this brings him to the requirement for the
character of the tragic hero which Aristotle abstracted from Attic tragedy. It is this
above all which distinguishes Dido from the suffering heroines of the most recent
examples of pathetic narrative, that she not only appeals to other humans as a human
being, but also, as a great-hearted and powerful yet feminine and gentle princess,
she has won the admiration of the audience before it is time to win their pity. And
Virgil does exactly the same whenever possible, even with figures in episodes: when
we see Priam fall, we are not only touched by the disgraceful end of an old man: we
have seen him face the enemy Sinon with courage, have admired the old man's
heroic spirit, and are finally reminded that this poor unfortunate, whose corpse is not
even granted a resting-place, was once the powerful ruler of Asia. Andromache's
loyalty to her first husband, Palinurus' faithful care of his master, Euryalus' noble
ambition and Nisus' faithful love for his friend, Lausus' sacrifice for his father –
those are all features which make the poet's own creations really worthy of his pity
470 in their suffering: they are also, one may add, the features which have continued to
make these scenes of pathos effective through all the centuries since. Closely related
to what we have just said is Virgil's treatment of the guilt which leads men to
destruction. Hellenistic poetry had wallowed more and more in presenting crimes de
passion , thereby seeking out the unnatural rather than avoiding it, in the belief that
this would add to the pathetic effect. Virgil does allow past crimes to be mentioned,
but he himself does not present them; how far removed is something like Dido's
other cases it is a question of lesser failings: Camilla, Nisus and Euryalus become
the victims of their imprudent desires; the immoderate boldness of Pallas can hardly
count as a failing; and in the case of the stupidity of the Trojans who pull their own
destruction into the city, there can be no talk of tragic guilt. Here mankind faces the
unfathomable decision of Fate, which also makes the innocent suffer; the poet
knows the final purposes served by the fall of Troy and the wanderings of Aeneas:
tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem [such was the cost in heavy toil of
beginning the life of Rome]; and it is just this glimpse of the future which prevents
our justified pity from sinking to the agony of one condemned to watch the un-
necessary and purposeless suffering of his fellow men.
For centuries, the Aeneid has been the paradigm of dramatic style in poetic
narrative. To the question whether Virgil should be regarded as the actual creator of
this style, a definite answer can hardly be given. This much is certain, that among
the surviving monuments of Hellenistic poetry there is not one single poem which
could lay claim to having been Virgil's model in every respect, or even in every
important respect. To be sure, we have been able to draw attention to many minor
points of comparison in Hellenistic literature, both earlier and later; but when Virgil
copies Apollonius in one respect, and in another copies the originals of the Wedding
of Peleus or the Ciris , it only highlights how different his aims are; Apollonius is
totally lacking in the essential element, the dramatic character of the narrative; the
471 later, extremely mannered epyllion, almost perverse in its composition, is the dia-
metrical opposite of the Virgilian epic, which aims at a unified, harmonious effect;
their treatment of the action cannot be compared in any way, since the fragmentary,
arbitrary nature of the epyllion prevents us from speaking of a real story-line. As for
the earlier short narrative poems of Hellenistic times, Virgil clearly did learn from
them, above all in the very polished form of presentation, in the
the narrative, and possibly also in the striving for a unified effect; but for the rest,
once again, their aims are as different as can be: they strive after ingenious enliven-
ment of the detail and a noble restraint in line and colour; his aims are a simple
greatness, strong emotions, tension, excitement – in short, the
[astonishing].
There is another genre of polished narrative which may have come closer to
Virgilian technique than anything mentioned so far: Hellenistic – or, more precisely,
Peripatetic – historiography. Both Virgilian epic and the historiography of Duris and
Phylarchus are really based on one and the same theory: the Aristotelian theory of
tragedy.[4] The character of these histories is shown (even more clearly than by the
surviving fragments) by Polybius in his famous critique of Phylarchus (2.56ff.); he
says that the latter's main aim was to arouse the reader and to produce pity and
anger; it is to this end that each shocking peripeteia [reversal] is presented as vividly
as possible:
aesthetic tendency. However, it will hardly have stopped at the crudely
472 assume that skilful dramatic technique was widely used both to refine and to inten-
sify the effects.[5] From this school of historiographers came the narrative-artists,
masters in their own field, to whom we are indebted for the stories of Camillus and
Coriolanus, and the conquest of Veii, to mention only a few: I do not believe that
ancient narrative includes anything which comes closer in technique to Virgilian
epic. They have the same concentration of interest, the composition of effective
dramatic scenes, powerful peripeteia [reversal], careful psychological motivation,
even the technique of imitation, borrowing the external structure of the action from
ancient poetry or history: I need only remind you of the captured haruspex [sooth -
sayer], who divulges Fate's precondition for victory at Veii, as Helenus did at Troy.[6]
Of the theory itself (the development of which probably stems from Theophrastus),
very little survives;[7] but the theory on which Dionysius bases his criticism of Thu-
cydides comes surprisingly close to what we have deduced to have been Virgil's
artistic principles: we have there the requirement of unity and clearly-organized
action (de Thuc . 5.6), continuity[8] and symmetry (ibid. 13, see above p. 332 n. 4) in
the narrative, the right choice of beginning and ending,[9] pathetic effect,[10] and
appropriate use of direct speech at highpoints of the narrative (17ff.)
473 We know next to nothing about the artistic form of the historical epic of the
Hellenistic period; whether, and to what extent, it made use of the technique de-
veloped by the historiographers, which would have provided Virgil with even closer
models, cannot be established. The little that we are able to deduce about the
(Hellenistic) epic about which most is known, the Messeniaca of Rhianus, makes it
probable that they did not lack excitement and tension and dramatic movement; but
that is not sufficient to tell us anything about their presentation and composition.
Nor does what we know of Ennius' Annales from testimonia and fragments justify
us in supposing that Virgil learnt about epic technique from him as he did about
poetic speech. We can at least say one negative thing, that both the choice of
material and the lay-out in the form of annals allow us to deduce that Ennius
remained completely unaffected by the aesthetic theory which underlies Virgil's
technique of composition.