By Meghan Reedy
Aeneas (Vergil) takes time to tell the story of Priam’s last moments, suspecting that Dido (that we) might want to know: forsitan et Priami fuerint quae fata requiras (506). Just as he prepared us carefully for his own leap into the chaotic violence of that night (250–317), so too Aeneas here prepares us carefully for Priam’s death: after announcing it here in 506, he spends almost 50 lines working up to the moment Priam is killed, in 553.
This scene begins with a retelling of the capture of Troy. However, whereas in 250–67 it was told from outside, from a bird’s eye view, this time it is told from deep inside––from the perspective of Priam himself, vidit (507). What Priam saw is what we already know (city captured, overrun by enemies), but Priam is the city’s political center, looking out from its physical center, and when he sees how the enemy have come all the way in, he sees too that both his city and his life are at an end.
Priam sees that he must die, and so he puts his armor on, but as he grabs his arms to go to his death, he is utterly pitiable: he is very old, senior; his weapons are long unused, arma diu… desueta; his arms tremble with age, trementibus aevo … umeris; his sword is useless, inutile ferrum (509–10). This is an ‘arming scene,’ the sort of scene which Homer used effectively for sending people like Achilles into battle, and which still features in any action film. The buckling on of protective gear, the stomping of boots on hard, dusty ground or into splashing mud, the checking and testing of swords/knives/guns/rocket-launchers/web-shooters/laser-eyes/whatever––all of this usually emphasizes and glamorizes how strong the soldier/warrior/contestant is. Not so this time. This scene with Priam is a parody of an arming scene, and it exposes ever more clearly this king’s pathetic lack of strength.
It is his wife, Hecuba, who puts this into words. She is sitting at the huge central altar, in the very center of the center of the city, exposed to the naked axis of the sky, aedibus in mediis nudoque sub aetheris axe ingens ara fuit … hic Hecuba (512–15), and she says, ‘what are you doing, and where are you rushing off to?’; she addresses him as ‘pathetic/miserable/pitiful spouse,’ miserrime coniunx, (519–20). She talks him down and makes room for him to sit with her, sic ore effata recepit ad sese et sacra longaevum in sede locavit (524–25). Thus, the first way we see Priam’s extreme old age, his physical frailty, is gently filtered through his affectionate interaction with his wife, Hecuba.
The second and more extensive way we see it is harshly refracted through his despairing, angry, and violent interaction with Achilles’ son, Pyrrhus/Neoptolemus.
We are commanded to look at Polites’ and Pyrrhus’ entrance, ecce (526)––and the first thing we see is that Pyrrhus is berserk, caught up in and committed to bloody slaughter, elapsus Pyrrhi de caede Polites (526); the second is that he is chasing Polites, one of Priam’s sons, Polites uno natorum Priami (527). The third is that the two men move, running and bloody, from the periphery to the center: in 507–8 Priam saw the violence coming … now it is here. Moreover, when Polites arrives, the emphasis is on his proximity not to the physical center of Troy, the altar, but to the city’s political center and the center of his own family––his parents: ante oculos … et ora parentum, he is in front of their eyes and their faces (531). Here, at the center of the center of the center, is where Pyrrhus kills him.
Now, as Hecuba put into words the weakness of Priam, so Priam, surrounded by and on the brink of death, in media iam morte (533), puts into words the immorality and the weakness of character of Pyrrhus, Achilles’ son.
Even in the midst of a war, Priam maintains, fathers should not be forced to witness their sons’ deaths directly like this (538–39). He puts this first criticism sarcastically in terms of piety and divinity, obligations and reparations (di … pietas … grates dignas et praemia … debita, 537–38).
Next, he compares Pyrrhus’ egregious act (he calls it a scelus, 535) with Pyrrhus’ father Achilles’ behavior: Achilles respected the father-son bond by returning Hector’s body to Priam for burial; Pyrrhus has blatantly disrespected the father-son bond by killing Polites right in front of him (540–43). Pyrrhus, Priam says, ought to be ashamed of himself.
Priam speaks forcefully, and as we saw, Pyrrhus’ entry was already bloody. We have been prepared to see Pyrrhus as Priam does. Surprisingly, Pyrrhus too accepts Priam’s interpretation of his behavior. When he replies, he defiantly owns the accusation that he is not like his father: illi mea tristia facta degeneremque Neoptolemum narrare memento (558–59) he says. Priam is right, his father is right; he Pyrrhus, Neoptolemus, is a degenerate, degenerem Neoptolemum.
He kills Priam directly following this interchange, and when he does so it is as if he is demonstrating just how immoral he is: Pyrrhus drags Priam onto the city’s main altar to do it (550–51). Here we see again the physical weakness that was so pitifully highlighted earlier and so tenderly handled by Hecuba; Priam is trembling, trementem (550), as Pyrrhus drags him onto the altar. Another awfulness in this moment is the way he keeps slipping in his own son’s blood, multo lapsantem sanguine nati (551). Then, Pyrrhus kills Priam in a terrible inversion of the priestly action (552–53), and so the righteously indignant old king is killed by the vicious, godless young soldier. Still, I am afraid it is worse than this.
Priam measures his indignation and his judgement of Pyrrhus by Achilles, citing the way that he and Achilles managed to find a respectful, positive dialogue in the wake of Achilles’ killing of Priam’s son Hector. However, this comparison is terribly unfair to Pyrrhus, and sadly untrue of himself. Consider:
When Hector was killed by Achilles in Book 22 of the Iliad, it was on the battlefield, a place set aside for killing people, where death could be expected and legitimized. Priam was not there when it happened.
Thereafter, Achilles kept the body of Hector for several days––horribly mutilating it, taking out his anger on it. While Priam is frenzied with grief in the closing scene of Book 22, wanting to run straight out the gate to Achilles––he is prevented from doing so; he must wait, and calms down. In between Achilles’ killing of Hector and Priam’s visit to retrieve Hector’s body, both men have time to spend their violent first reactions and prepare for the meeting. Achilles, throughout Book 23, formally mourns and buries Patroclus, whose death at Hector’s hand drove Achilles’ to pursue Hector so viciously. Moreover, early in Book 24 the goddess Thetis intervenes to persuade Achilles to accept Priam’s request. For his part, Priam waits, and plans his approach carefully. He too prays to Zeus for mercy and is led on his way to Achilles’ tent––and given advice––by Hermes himself.
However, in this situation, there is no distinction between ‘battlefield’ and ‘citadel’. Where could Priam’s son run to but home? When Pyrrhus chases him down and kills him––as Achilles chased down Hector––where else can that killing happen but in front of Priam? Thus, there can be no space at all between Polites’ killer and Polites’––no physical space between Priam and his son’s death, or between Pyrrhus and his killing, and no space of time between that death and the moment when Priam must confront his son’s killer, when Pyrrhus confronts his victim’s father. There is no legitimate place for killing, and neither man can step back, consider, or collect himself. No gods step in to help them.
Then too, after Hector’s death, Priam was so careful to keep Achilles’ sense of honor intact. He left his own fortified walls and went as a suppliant to Achilles’ stronghold; he went there alone and powerless; he went at night so that others would be less likely to see the interaction; he took a cartload of valuable goods to offer him as ransom. Now, he does the opposite: he stands in the center of his palace, where everyone is awake and active, whatever the time; he offers Pyrrhus nothing; he insults Pyrrhus to his face; he tries to kill him. Therefore, what Priam wants is impossible: he wants Pyrrhus not to have killed Polites… he wants his world not to be collapsed. He wants more from Pyrrhus than he asked of Achilles.
Thus, while the old man sees that Pyrrhus’ actions are indeed not Achilles’, he fails to notice that he himself is not what he once was––neither the wise Priam who approached Achilles so skillfully, nor the arrogant young Priam who could taunt an enemy and then strike him down. This Priam’s hollow taunting only goads Pyrrhus and makes a bad situation horrible.
This is a bleak scene. The violence Priam saw moving from the periphery into the center has engulfed him too.
So the center shifts.
After witnessing Priam’s death, Aeneas begins to really see what is happening: at me tum primum saevus circumstetit horror. Obstipui … (559–60)––and he sees that where he is standing, next to the dead king in the middle of the burning palace, is no longer central for him. He remembers his own family (561–63), whom he left when he charged off to help save Troy. He looks around him at his men – quae sit me circum copia lustro – and they are finished; they are doing what Priam did, flinging themselves at death, corpora saltu at terram misere aut ignibus aegra dedere (564–65).
Thus, the world is inverted over the course of this night. Aeneas began the night at the very edge of things, asleep in his secluded house (303); now he stands at the center … only the center is now just an edge, all loss and carnage, while the edge is now his center.
Further Reading
Bowie, A.M. ‘The death of Priam: allegory and history in the Aeneid’ Classical Quarterly 40 (1990) 470-81
Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources Two volumes (Baltimore, 1993) 649-57
Kenney, E.J. ‘Iudicium transferendi: Virgil Aeneid 2.469-505 and its antecedents’ in Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, eds. D. West and A.J. Woodman (Cambridge, 1979) 103-20
Ross, D.O. ‘Images of fallen Troy in the Aeneid in Style and Traditions: Studies in Honor of Wendell Clausen, eds. P. Knox and C. Foss (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1998) 121-9