By Meghan Reedy
Reading or hearing or watching a story is a little bit like snorkeling: you put your face into the water, and as long as you keep it there you can see all the fish swimming about. You enter the fishes’ world and expect the fish to act according to the underwater rules of fishes – of these particular fishes in this particular reef that you’re watching, amid the problems and perils and excitements that these particular waters bring.
But every now and then, something happens that makes you lift your head up and look at the fishes’ world from the outside; you look at the surface of the water, look at the larger contours of the coastline and the continental shelf.
The ‘Helen episode’ is an excellent place for us to look, find our bearings, and make sure we can get back to the beach. Page’s note on the text of ‘the Helen Episode’ encapsulates a representative range of the issues scholars wrestle with regarding this passage. His note reads as follows:
‘Lines 567-588 are found in very few good MSS., and are said by Servius to have been written by Vergil but omitted by Varius and Tucca, his literary executors, when editing the Aeneid after his death. It is an objection to them that a different account is given of Helen’s action (vi. 511–527), where she is described as guiding the Greeks, but in an unfinished and unrevised poem, in which incidents are borrowed from many sources, such discrepancies are natural. The question of style depends much on individual judgment, but Fox (quoted by Henry 2.277) justly says, “If the lines are spurious they are the happiest imitation of Vergil I ever saw.” Moreover in the speech of Venus (594) seems a clear reference to 575, and 601 to the description of Helen, and to be difficult of explanation if this passage be struck out,’ (Page).
But what does all that mean, and what difference does it make?
The first part of the note is what pulls us up:
‘Lines 567–588 are found in very few good MSS. (manuscripts), and are said by Servius to have been written by Vergil but omitted by Varius and Tucca, his literary executors, when editing the Aeneid after his death.’
The vast majority of the notes included in this commentary, as in most commentaries, focus attention on tricky grammatical structures, or odd meanings of words, or especially intricate layers of meaning. However, this note focuses our attention instead on whether or not the text of the passage we are about to read even belongs here. Therefore, even before we get to the short, disconcerting answer––which is that the Helen Episode in fact doesn’t belong here––we are being told that as we read this episode, we should be careful to wonder whether this part really fits.
Like all ancient texts, the text of Vergil’s Aeneid was transmitted in handwritten manuscripts, copied and re-copied by hand. There are thus very many opportunities for errors small and large to find their way into the text, not unlike the errors introduced in the whisper-passing game ‘telephone’. The business of textual critics (like Goold, Murgia, and Rowell, in the ‘Further Reading’ below) is to track down how the texts we read got here – and all the evidence they find indicates strongly that this passage is a forgery, written after Virgil’s death.
But what kind of evidence can show such a thing? Given that manuscripts are copied from prior manuscripts, hunting down the oldest manuscripts can be helpful. In this case, even though Virgil’s texts were all copied unusually frequently, none of the oldest manuscripts of the Aeneid contain this text at all. Another help that scholars use in the case of Vergil’s work is quotations of his text made by ancient scholars of Latin language and literature (usually referred to as ‘grammarians’). Regarding the whole of Aeneid Book 2, George Goold has counted up which lines are and aren’t quoted by at least one of these scholars, and what he found is this: ‘For the portion under scrutiny it emerges that … the largest unattested [unquoted] portion is of three lines (607–9), the largest doubly unattested portion of six (604–6). Except, of course, for the Helen Episode,’ (Goold, 163–65). Not a single one of these ancient scholars, who quoted or commented on virtually every line of Vergil, mentions lines 567–588.
These two things together––that the lines appear neither in the oldest manuscripts nor in the comments of the ancient grammarians––very strongly suggest that Vergil did not write this passage. It shouldn’t be here. Which is to say, cut it out and read around it.
But, you may well ask, if it shouldn’t be here why is it here? The remainder of Page’s note suggests a variety of answers to this question.
When Page touches on Servius’ report about Varius and Tucca, he is passing along a mechanical answer, so to speak. Servius was a scholar and teacher in the 4th Century CE who wrote commentaries on all of Vergil’s work––and because he included mention of these lines and this story about Varius and Tucca as justification, he became the mechanism by which subsequent texts started to include the forged lines. Servius claims a certain authority, and it seems to have been easy to believe that Servius was telling the truth, even though what he says is often problematic, even though the likelihood of this passage being Vergil’s is vanishingly small for all sorts of reasons, even though only Varius did the editing, and even though he seemed unwilling to omit much of anything. Indeed, it seems that Page is inclined to believe Servius.
Thus, the first-tier answer to the question of why the Helen Episode is there is that someone who seems like an authority said it should be.
However, there is more. Noticing and exploring how a given text works, how its elements come together, what the layers of a poet’s meaning might be––this sort of thing is the business of literary critics, and they too sometimes spot problems in a text. Literary critics (like Austin, Egan, Harrison, and Reckford in the ‘Further Reading’ below) all notice elements in this episode that are problematic––narrative inconsistencies, syntactical problems, turns of phrase that don’t sound like Vergil. However, they also try to work around the difficulties by finding ways in which the Helen episode can be thought of as fitting in. Page himself does the same.
He raises three issues:
He notes but forgives these lines’ inconsistency with Vergil’s other mention of Helen: ‘It is an objection to them that a different account is given of Helen’s action (vi. 511–527), where she is described as guiding the Greeks, but in an unfinished and unrevised poem, in which incidents are borrowed from many sources, such discrepancies are natural.’
(Yet, the discrepancy is substantial: in Book 2 she is tucked up in the citadel, hiding; in Book 6 she is providing active assistance to the invading Greeks, helping them out of the horse and getting them torches.)
He mentions style: ‘The question of style depends much on individual judgment, but Fox (quoted by Henry 2.277) justly says, “If the lines are spurious they are the happiest imitation of Vergil I ever saw.”’
(Yet, many aspects of Latin style have been carefully quantified. Goold (155–56) cites Austin’s substantial list of the instances of non-Vergilian Latin style––but among them is one which you can search out for yourself: ‘repetitive vocabulary and expression.’ How many words and constructions repeat in this Episode? How many repeat in the 20 lines before it, or after it?)
Lastly, Page points out two elements in the surrounding lines that seem to anchor the passage in its local context: ‘Moreover in the speech of Venus (594) seems a clear reference to 575, and 601 to the description of Helen, and to be difficult of explanation if this passage be struck out.’
(Even though the reference is fleeting and embedded in more significant concerns more appropriate to the scale of Venus’ intervention here.)
In short, the passage is also still here because people seem to like it here. The Helen Episode is a late addition, a forgery––a concrete pseudo-boulder stuck in among the rocks and coral––but the fishes swim around it so beautifully; it fits in so well, so perhaps it’s okay there even if the texture is a little off. Besides, now that so many people have seen it there, how can you really fully remove it? How do you un-read Helen, even if you should?
Further Reading
Egan, R.B. ‘A reading of the Helen-Venus episode in Aeneid 2’ Echos du monde classique 40 (1996) 379-95
Goold, G.P. ‘Servius and the Helen Episode’ Harvard Studies in classical Philology 74 (1970) 101-68
Harrison, E.L. ‘Divine action in Aeneid, book two’ Phoenix 24 (1970) 320-32, reprinted in Oxford Readings in Vergil’s Aeneid, ed S.J. Harrison (Oxford, 1990) 46-59
Murgia, C. ‘More on the Helen episode’ Classical Antiquity 4 (1971) 203-17
Murgia, C. ‘The date of the Helen episode’ Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 101 (2003) 405-26
Reckford, K.J. ‘Helen in Aeneid II and VI’ Arethusa 14 (1981) 85-99
Rowell, H.T. ‘The ancient evidence of the Helen episode in Aeneid II’ in the Classical Tradition: Literary and Historical Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan, ed. L. Wallach (Ithaca, NY, 1966) 210-21