1—
Helen and Venus
The death of Priam forms the turning-point. It puts an end to the battle for the city,
and it instigates Aeneas' flight. For the first time, Aeneas is seized by shudders of
fear. Up to this point he had been carried along by a wild fury of despair. Now the
fate of the house of Priam and his family seems to him to be an image of what will
happen, or has already happened, to his own household. He immediately looks
around – he has been oblivious to his surroundings during the final grim drama –
and finds himself alone.
This is where the Helen episode (567-88) begins. The lines survive only in
Servius. In my opinion there cannot be the slightest doubt that they are not the work
of Virgil. The facts concerning their transmission and the way that they offend
46 against Virgilian linguistic usage would alone suffice to prove this.[72] There are also
other reasons for doubting them. Two of them were pointed out as early as Servius,
to explain why Varius and Tucca deleted the lines: et turpe est viro forti contra
feminam irasci , et contrarium est Helenam in domo Priami fuisse illi rei , quae in
sexto dicitur , quia in domo inventa est Deiphobi , postquam ex summa arce vocave -
rat Graecos [it is unbecoming for a brave man to be angry with a woman, and,
besides, the presence of Helen in Priam's palace contradicts the statement in Book 6
that she was found in Deiphobus' house after she had summoned the Greeks from
high on the citadel]. Both these reasons are valid although they require modification.
It is not irasci which would dishonour Aeneas; but I am convinced that Virgil could
never have allowed his pious hero to think even for a fleeting moment of killing a
defenceless woman (it is not as if she were Camilla, exulting in battle), above all
when it is a woman who has sought protection at the altar. How could such an idea
be consistent with the deep revulsion with which he has just narrated the violation of
the sanctity of an altar? And this time it is at the altar of Vesta, that is, of the very
goddess who had been entrusted to Aeneas' protection together with the Penates.
Moreover, it is only later that Aeneas learns of Helen's treachery, from Deiphobus
in the Underworld; the events of the past few years might well give him reason to
curse Helen as the cause of the whole war, but would hardly put into his head the
insane notion of killing her. Moreover, the passage obviously contradicts the ac-
count in Book 6 on several points: a Helen who had given the fire-signal to the
Greeks, who had delivered Deiphobus defenceless into their hands, did not need to
fear their revenge. This contradiction, like so many others that occur in the Aeneid ,
might be attributed to the unfinished state of the work; but if my interpretation
above (n. 27) is correct, Virgil had this episode of Book 6 in mind when he was
composing Book 2, so that this explanation is impossible in this case. Moreover, if
Venus' words non tibi Tyndaridis facies invisa Lacaenae etc. (601) [you must not
blame the hated beauty of the Spartan Tyndarid] refer to this intention of Aeneas to
attack Helen, what justification can there be for the following phrase, culpatusve
Paris [nor is Paris to blame], for Aeneas cannot have given him a single thought
during the whole of this scene? Finally a technical argument which, as far as I am
aware, has not been advanced before. The words scilicet haec Spartam incolumis
patriasque Mycenas aspiciet etc. ['So!', thought I, 'shall she unharmed, again see
47 Sparta and Mycenae the land of her birth?'] would be the only soliloquy by Aeneas[73]
in his accounts of adventures in Books 2 and 3. It is obvious what an unnatural and
frigid effect is created by any such soliloquies in a first-person narrative, let alone
lengthy ratiocinations of the kind that occur in this example; they belong to the
world of some mannered late Greek romance. We would have to accept this as a
lapse of taste on Virgil's part if the passage were not open to objections on other
grounds, but, in my view, Virgil would have been at pains to avoid anything of this
kind, perhaps strengthened in his attitude by Homer's example. We should remem-
ber that Odysseus never once represents himself as delivering a soliloquy
throughout the entire course of his adventures.[74] It is conceivable that the ancient
commentators on the Odyssey pointed this out and showed how very different it was
from the extended soliloquies in Odyssey 5 and 6; in that case, Virgil would have
been aware of this contrast and it would have come naturally to him to adhere to the
convention.
In short, I take the spuriousness of these lines to be proven. But I am inclined to
believe that there was in fact a lacuna at the point where they were inserted. For,
even if we are prepared to accept the fact that line 589 is connected by cum for no
good reason, and that the allusion to Helen and Paris by Venus in her speech is not
directly motivated or prepared by anything that has gone before – and that would not
be totally impossible – yet when the goddess takes the hero by the right hand and
restrains him, dextra prehensum continuit (592), we certainly ought to be told what
he is being restrained from; but there is nothing at all about that in the lines of Virgil
that have survived. That Virgil should have written Venus' speech without giving
any explanation of what had led up to it, namely Aeneas' intentions, seems as
incredible to me as it did to Thilo (loc. cit.); in that case we must agree with Thilo's
conclusion, that Virgil did indeed originally write some lines, which are now
missing because he struck them out and did not put anything in their place. What
was in these lines? What decision had Aeneas taken?
In the first place, it can not have been the decision to return to his family. For in
that case Venus' admonition would have been superfluous. The argument that she
might not have known his unspoken intentions is not worth refuting. Moreover the
48 poet has made every effort to establish that it is only because of the goddess that
Aeneas is reminded that he must turn back to look for his family. Not that he is
deficient in love and piety; but we should remember the situation: Aeneas is stand-
ing alone on the roof of the palace; fire and foe all around; it seems impossible to get
through, nor does there seem to be any hope that his forsaken household could have
escaped the twofold raging death. His own escape and the safety of his household
are both expressly attributed to the miraculous intervention of the deity. Since
Aeneas cannot count on this in advance, it is understandable that he has no thoughts
of flight when the reward if he succeeds in getting through – highly improbable in
itself – would be to see the ghastly scene that he has just witnessed enacted even
more horribly in his own house. This explains one part of Venus' exhortation: she
has protected his household so far, she will lead Aeneas himself through unharmed;
he may follow her commands without fear (606ff.). It is completely in character for
Venus, who in Virgil, even in serious moments, is almost always something of a
tease, that she did not go to the heart of the matter immediately, but pretends to be
surprised that Aeneas is in a furious rage instead of worrying about his family
(which is also her family, quo n o s t r i tibi cura recessit [how can your love for us
have passed so far from your thoughts?]); it is as though she wishes to take pleasure
in his astonishment first, before she gives him her comforting assurance.
Neither the goddess' allusion to Helen nor her revelation of the hostile gods has
any direct connection with her exhortation. Both would obviously tend to dissuade
him. Some ancient editor invented the Helen episode in order to motivate the
dissuasion. He was not an uncultured man; not a poet, however, even if he did know
how to imitate Virgil's style if need be; but he was familiar with epic tradition and
poetry; it was the Menelaus and Helen episode in the Iliu Persis that gave him his
idea – Menelaus, too, is prevented by Aphrodite from wreaking vengeance; in
writing the scene he borrowed from the scene in Euripides' Orestes , in which
Pylades incites Orestes to murder Helen.[75] Thus his technique of imitation is very
49 similar to Virgil's own; the whole conception, however, is un-Virgilian, as I have
shown above. Furthermore, it is inconceivable that Aeneas should have considered
taking up the fight again in the hope of achieving a victory. Indeed, the poet has
made his despair clear from the beginning, with all the means at his disposal.
Besides, this would not explain the reference to Helen.
Aeneas has come face to face with death, and there is only one decision that he
can have considered: to go to meet death rather than remain passively waiting for it.
His choice was between the quickest way, putting an end to his own life by his own
hand,[76] and seeking death among the dense ranks of the enemy, perhaps in the hope
of first wreaking his revenge on Neoptolemus for Priam's death. Although the first
alternative would have provided splendid dramatic tension and a good motivation
for the intervention of his divine mother, yet her own words[77] seem to recommend
the latter. We can see why Virgil eventually rejected the idea. It would have de-
veloped into a repetition of what Aeneas had said at the beginning of the battle –
furor iraque mentem praecipitant pulchrumque mori succurrit in armis (316) [fran-
tic in my fury I had no time for decisions; I only remembered that death in battle is
glorious] – and would have infringed a fundamental rule of Virgil's technique, that a
climax should be approached gradually. But the second alternative would provide a
complete explanation for Venus' intervention and her speech. She offers the des-
pairing hero a means of escape by her divine assistance (note that at this stage she
50 says nothing about fleeing from the city), she gives him the opportunity to fulfil the
claims of pietas towards his family; but she does more than this, she shows him that
his furor and ira (594f., cf. 316) [frenzy and anger] are directed not against the
consequences of human action, but against a decree of the gods. That is the meaning
of the lines
non tibi Tyndaridis facies invisa Lacaenae
culpatusve Paris , divom inclementia , divom
has evertit opes sternitque a culmine Troiam .
[you must not blame the hated beauty of the Spartan Tyndarid, or even Paris. It was
the gods who showed no mercy; it is they who are casting Troy down from her
splendour and power]. Her revelation of the hostile gods serves the same purpose,
and is not intended to show, for example, that further resistance is in vain. She
mentions Helen and Paris, not Sinon and Neoptolemus, because Virgil is employing
the well-known convention, of which the tragedians were particularly fond, whereby
one refers back to the first causes of misfortune. In this case he follows the usage of
tragedy very closely[78] In Aeschylus the nuptials of Paris, 'destroyers of friends', are
cursed (Agam . 1156), and in Sophocles Paris is cursed by Ajax's men. But it is
Euripides who is particularly rich in gruesome imprecations and bitter accusations
against Helen as the original cause of the war. Trojans[79] and Greeks[80] alike hate her,
hold her responsible for all their miseries, and wish her to suffer and perish; the
mood in which we have to imagine Aeneas is matched most closely by the words of
the Trojan women ( Hec . 943) as they go into slavery, 'cursing Helen, sister of the
Dioscuri, and the shepherd of Ida, unfortunate Paris; for their wedding has driven us
to miserable exile'. And yet she had been exonerated of all responsibility by the one
who had most reason to curse her. In Homer, Priam spoke these immortal words in
reply to her self-reproaches: 'I do not recognize you as guilty; it is the gods who are
to blame. It is they who sent me the war which has caused so much weeping' ( Iliad
51 3.164). That vexed Euripides; in order to counter this pious yet sacrilegious toler-
ance, he composed the debate between Helen and Hecuba in the Troades , and when
Helen puts the blame on the gods, he makes Hecuba tear her case to pieces with the
utmost scorn. Virgil, of course, knew this scene. His own kind of piety causes him to take
sides, and Aeneas hears from the mouth of his divine mother that Priam had spoken the
truth. But if the gods desire Troy's fall, a pious man should behave with quiet resigna-
tion, not rebellion or despair. Aeneas is brought by Venus to this state of resignation.
It is probably, though in my opinion not absolutely necessarily, to be assumed
that when Venus mentions Helen and Paris it is because Aeneas had blamed them
either in words or in his thoughts. I do not know in what form Virgil gave, or
intended to give these thoughts; a brief exclamation could have been enough, which
need not have been expanded into a soliloquy; or there might have been simply a
description of the emotions which made Aeneas wish to go to his death.