5—
Creusa
In the ancient tradition, Aeneas is accompanied on his flight by his wife Eurydice.[93]
58 In Virgil, Aeneas loses his wife Creusa[94] during the departure, while they are still
within the city, and learns later from her shade that it was Jupiter's will that she
should not accompany him to distant lands, nor did she have to suffer enslavement
by the enemy either, for the mother of the gods was keeping her there in her native
country (788). The representation on the Tabula Iliaca , taken together with a tradi-
tion recorded by Pausanias, makes it reasonably certain that Virgil's version of the
story had existed in its essential outlines before him.[95] Why he chose it is obvious:
otherwise Creusa would have had to die during the journey, and that would have
produced a doublet of the death of Anchises. As it is, it gives him the opportunity to
create an effective final scene for his Sack of Troy.
Virgil, apparently intentionally, has left us somewhat in the dark about the pre-
cise details of Creusa's disappearance. Aeneas only learns that the Great Mother his
detinet oris (788) [is keeping (her) in this land]; this allows us to deduce that she is
not dead (although the expressions simulacrum , umbra and imago are in fact appro-
priate to and commonly used only of the appearance of the departed, whose real self
59 has perished) but has been removed to a higher and immortal existence – for which
again nota maior imago (773) [in her ghostly form larger than life] is suitable[96] –
which means, no doubt, that she has become one of the attendants of the Mother of
the Gods:[97] Creusa's fate is the fate that Diana intended for Camilla, when she
wanted to take her up to become one of her attendants.[98] Aeneas can infer this, and
so can we; Creusa herself does not mention it, as though she were afraid to reveal a
mystery connected with the worship of Cybele; and certainly from the artistic point
of view there is no need, nor indeed would it be desirable, for the veil of secrecy to
be drawn back completely from miracles of this kind.
But there is one fact that the poet wishes to make clear beyond all doubt: that it
had already been determined in advance, either by fate or by the decision of Jupiter,
that Creusa was not to accompany her husband on his wanderings: non haec sine
numine divom eveniunt , nec te comitem hinc portare Creusam fas aut ille sinit
superi regnator Olympi (777-9) ['what has happened is part of the divine plan. For
the law of right and the supreme ruler of Olympus on high forbid you to carry
Creusa away from Troy']. These are the words of the shade of Creusa; she repeats
60 the idea emphatically so as to allay Aeneas' 'senseless grief'.[99] This grief, she says,
should give way to quiet resignation, exactly the same kind of resignation that
Venus had demanded when she revealed the destruction of Troy as the work of the
gods. At the same time this exonerates Aeneas from any charge of guilt that he
himself or anyone else might bring against him; even if it was his senseless flight
that had resulted in the loss of Creusa, he had only been a tool in the hands of the
gods. He is comforted by the thought that Creusa does not have to suffer as a captive
of the Greeks, but remains in her native land, though removed to a higher existence;
this is of secondary importance but it makes it easier for him to submit to the gods'
will. But now a problem arises. In the previous scenes Virgil has done his utmost to
motivate the loss of Creusa as naturally as possible: she has to be following her
husband (with, it seems to us, an excess of caution) alone and at some distance;
Aeneas, alarmed by his father's warning cry (733), has to turn off the road in his
anxiety to escape the approaching enemy; later, and even when he is telling the story
to Dido, he does not know whether Creusa went the wrong way, or had stopped
(because she had lost sight of her husband and did not know which way to go) or
was so exhausted that she had sat down because she could go no further – whichever
of these she had done, she might easily have fallen into the hands of the enemy. We
ask ourselves why the poet has motivated her disappearance in such a circumstantial
way, when the Magna Mater could have simply taken Creusa to herself.
It might be thought that a satisfactory answer is that Virgil was simply following
the tradition according to which Creusa was in danger of being taken captive, and
was rescued by the Great Mother; there had to be some motivation for that danger. It
is true that Virgil has introduced a new motif, that the separation of Creusa from
Aeneas had been decreed by the gods from the start, and consequently he could have
shaped the narrative in such a way that there was no mention of any danger or of the
events connected with it. But imagine what the scene would have been like in that
61 case. Creusa would have been walking in front of Aeneas (as she is often repre-
sented as doing in the visual arts) and would have suddenly disappeared
[spirited away], rather like Iphigenia at the altar at Aulis, or like a
warrior who is taken away by the hand of a god out of the reach of an enemy spear.
Aeneas, with Anchises on his shoulders, would have stood there dumbfounded and
amazed; a voice from heaven would have explained what had happened, and the
group fleeing from the city would have continued on their way. The whole scene
would have been incomparably duller and poorer in content, not only because
Aeneas would have had no opportunity to show his love for his wife: the meeting
with the shade of Creusa would have been impossible; the position of Aeneas during
her disappearance would have bordered on the ridiculous; the scene would have had
no tension or dramatic movement. Thus it is easy to understand why Virgil adhered
to the traditional version in spite of the fact that he was providing a new reason for
what happened. It is true that Creusa's separation from Aeneas is now determined
by fate, and Aeneas' frantic flight is caused by the gods so as to bring it about; but
the poet has conceived it in such a way that the Great Mother alleviates the harsh-
ness of fate by taking Creusa to herself, out of the hands of her enemies – the danger
is the opportunity for her helpful intervention, exactly as later in Book 9 (77ff.) the
danger with which the Trojan ships are threatened gives her the opportunity to make
use of Jupiter's permission to give them an immortal form. In order to carry out the
new plan, the most important thing was that Creusa should be isolated so that
Aeneas would notice only later that she was missing. Virgil took considerable pains
over the motivation; the only thing which seems improbable is the excess of caution
which we mentioned earlier. Furthermore, Virgil prepares the way for Aeneas'
confusion by the description of how the hero, who a moment before was not afraid
of the thick swarms of the Greek troops, is now startled by every breeze, every
sound, full of anxiety about his son and his father (726-9): in this state, what an
effect his father's cry of alarm must have had on him: nate . . . fuge , nate ; propinquant
(733) [Son, you must run for it. They are drawing near]. The outward situation is
perfectly clear: Anchises believes that he can see enemy troops advancing along the
street towards them: Aeneas cannot go back; therefore he has to turn aside into a
pathless, unfamiliar area. Since Creusa had been behind him, he is not immediately
aware of her disappearance in the confusion of his flight; he does not know why she
is not following him, but there are many possibilities: he lists them: substitit –
erravitne via – resedit (739) [did she stop . . . or stray from the path . . . or just sink
62 down in weariness?]. Finally, it makes perfectly good sense that Aeneas should tell
the earlier part of the story as if he still knew nothing about the revelation that he
received later; that is necessary from an artistic point of view, so that the scenes that
follow will not be deprived of their effect, and it is justified in practice by the
vividness with which the narrator relives the terror of the discovery and his own
despair.
Creusa not only allays Aeneas' worries about what has happened; at the same
time she also predicts the future to him and allows us to understand why Jupiter does
not permit her to follow her husband: after a long journey to the land of Hesperia, he
will find by the bank of the Tiber a new happiness, a new kingdom and a king's
daughter for a wife. This prophecy is extremely suitable as a conclusion for Virgil's
account of the sack of Troy: the reader learns in broad outlines the final result of the
events which have passed before his eyes. There is something very similar in the
poem about Oenone which Quintus introduced into his 10th Book, when Hera tells
her handmaidens all the effects that the death of Paris will entail for Troy (344ff.). A
conclusion of this kind was an artistic necessity as long as Virgil was composing his
Sack of Troy as a separate poem, intended to stand alone. As soon as this separate
poem was incorporated into the larger context of the epic, there was no longer a
need for any prophecy at this point, or at least no more than the prospect of a regia
coniunx [royal bride] awaiting Aeneas in a distant land. Indeed, when Virgil later
decided that Aeneas was to learn only gradually and step by step the destination of
his travels, the precise references that Creusa had made to Hesperia and the Tiber
created a contradiction and ought to have been deleted. This would not have affected
the essential message of Creusa's speech.