Annotations
After Pandarus locks the Trojans inside the city with Turnus, Turnus kills many Teucrians in a bloody rampage not depicted (722-77). Under the command of Mnestheus and Serestes, the men of Aeneas rally and chase him out of the city (778-89). They chase him to the river (789-90), where they, from their city, attack him with a continual volley of spears, and rocks (791-814) until he is forced to retreat by throwing himself into the water (815-8).
Woodcut illustration from the “Strasbourg Vergil,” edited by Sebastian Brant: Publii Virgilii Maronis Opera cum quinque vulgatis commentariis expolitissimisque figuris atque imaginibus nuper per Sebastianum Brant superadditis (Strasbourg: Johannis Grieninger, 1502), fol. 346v, executed by an anonymous engraver under the direction of Brant.
Sebastian Brant (1458-1521) was a humanist scholar of many competencies. Trained in classics and law at the University of Basel, Brant later lectured in jurisprudence there and practiced law in his native city of Strasbourg. While his satirical poem Das Narrenschiff won him considerable standing as a writer, his role in the transmission of Virgil to the Renaissance was at least as important. In 1502 he and Strasbourg printer Johannes Grüninger produced a major edition of Virgil’s works, along with Donatus’ Life and the commentaries of Servius, Landino, and Calderini, with more than two hundred woodcut illustrations. (Annabel Patterson)