By Meghan Reedy
Before quoting Sinon’s speech in its entirety, Aeneas alerts us that we are about to learn about the treachery: accipe nunc Danaum insidias et crimine ab uno disce omnis (65–66), and afterwards, 130 lines later, he lets us know that the treachery has happened, and what it has done: Talibus insidiis periurique arte Sinonis credita res (195–96). The chief effect here is that ‘the thing was believed,’ credita res. Much later, in 309–10, after the Greeks have been let out of the horse in the night and set fires in the city and begun to kill its inhabitants, Aeneas lets us know that the results of this believing are at last made plain: tum uero manifesta fides, Danaumque patescunt insidiae. Thus, this one long speech, by this one otherwise unknown, unremarkable Greek, a speech punctuated by just one brief interchange with the Trojan king, Priam, turns out to be extraordinarily important, extraordinarily powerful. Aeneas highlights this power in 196–98:
captique dolis lacrimisque coactis
quos neque Tydides nec Larisaeus Achilles,
non anni domuere decem, non mille carinae.
Neither powerful warriors, like Diomedes and Achilles, nor the attrition of a ten-year seige, nor a navy of a thousand ships could accomplish what this one speaker achieved.
Gosh. What is it, then, that Sinon said?
Sinon speaks for a long time and says a lot of things—but if we watch the Trojans closely, we will see that what mattered most, what tipped the scale, wasn’t what he said.
Aeneas takes pains as he goes along to keep us apprised of how the Trojans are responding to Sinon’s talk—and it is here that we find some clues as to why Sinon is so dangerous, and his lies so effective. After Sinon’s ‘introductory plea,’ Aeneas says this (73–75):
quo gemitu conversi animi compressus et omnis
impetus. hortamur fari quo sanguine cretus
quidue ferat; memoret quae sit fiducia capto.
There are three things (at least) to notice here:
First of all, the Trojans are won over right away, conversi animi, and abandon their whole prior agenda, compressus et omnis impetus, which had been to harrass and kill Sinon—and, crucially, what wins them over is quo gemitu, this groan. Sinon has not yet given them any real information about himself; they have responded, rather, to the wordless emotion that underpins his first utterance, which indeed begins with the evocative non-word heu.
Second, the Trojans beg to hear more from Sinon: hortamur fari … (74), and they ask for three particular things: that he say who he is and what information he brings, and that he should call to mind what confidence, fiducia, there is for a captive.
Third, the last thing they ask for is strange: memoret quae sit fiducia capto. We might understand it as a version of ‘tell us why we shouldn’t kill you?’ ––as is suggested in the notes. But the new verb memoret is interesting here, and fiducia capto is an interesting pair of words, under these circumstances especially. While memoro can be a synonym for dicere or fari, it can also be a synonym for memini or cogitare; it is ambiguous the way ‘call to mind’ is ambiguous: call to whose mind? One’s own, or that of one’s audience? Then too, what is the appropriate level of confidence for a captive? Again, this is ambiguous. It might be an invitation to Sinon to explain his value to the Trojans, but under the circumstances––and in combination with the similarly bivalent verb memoro – it might mean something else. How confident is a captive, typically? Indeed, this is something that Sinon, who has deliberately been captured and thus is pretending to be a captive must keep in mind—particularly because he is endeavoring to use his time in Trojan captivity for his own very bold ends.
Therefore, it emerges that (a) it might not really be words, lies, that are the most important aspect of Sinon’s performance, since the Trojans were substantially brought on board right at the beginning by a groan, and (b) the Trojans asked Sinon to keep speaking—and may, unwittingly, have reminded him explicitly to calibrate his behavior so that he would be a convincing, even compelling, captive.
This surprising power dynamic continues as the interaction proceeds. In line 101, Sinon stops talking, creating a moment of suspense. Indeed, he emphasizes the moment by reminding the Trojans (as they asked him to) of what he expects as a captive: to be lumped in with all Greeks and killed, si omnis uno ordine habetis Achivos, … sumite poenas (102–3). Sinon abdicates all power, and, again, it is the Trojans who are active – Aeneas says that they were burning to know, to find out why, ardemus scitari et quaerere causas (105).
In 106–7, Aeneas again interjects, reminding us of Sinon’s grand criminality and ‘Pelasgian skill’ (scelerorum tantorum artisque Pelasgae, 106), and he names what he considers its essence: prosequitur pauitans et ficto pectore fatur (107). He spoke ‘trembling’ and with a ‘made-up heart’. Aeneas is not highlighting false words here but rather false feeling.
Sinon’s next response to the Trojans’ inquiries, in which he has narrated his reasons for fleeing from the Greeks, closes with a direct appeal for pity (142–44):
per si qua est quae restet adhuc mortlibus usquam
intmerata fides, oro, miserere laborum
tantorum, miserere animi non digna ferentis.
In the next 9 lines, Aeneas describes again the Trojans’ response, this time including a brief speech to Sinon by the Trojan king Priam. He starts with a summary: His lacrimis vitam damus et miserescimus ultro (145). In important ways, this line is a recapitulation, a formalization, of the response the Trojans felt from the beginning. Back in line 73, their impetus to kill him left in response to his groan of despair; now, in return for the explicit evidence of his grief––tears––they formally give him his life, and they pity him ultro––of their own accord. It is the Trojans, once again, who take the initiative, and it is through their king, Priam, that their initiative is enacted. Priam says to Sinon, ‘…noster eris’ (149), and thus too Priam asks, in a quick series of sub-questions, the fatal question: what does the horse mean?
Naturally, Sinon answers. His answer is suitably complex, and it both explains the horse’s suspicious size (a Greek effort to prevent the Trojans from gaining benefit from it) and emphasizes the importance of the Trojans’ own efforts with regard to it. It is a skillful piece of rhetoric––but at its close it is also stunningly blunt: ‘if you take this huge Greek-built thing into your city, you’ll win win win!’ Is it not obviously a trick, to anyone really listening?
The Trojans, however, having been taken in by the feeling, are not really listening to the words, and so ‘this thing was believed’: talibus insidiis periurique arte Sinonis credita res (195). Which thing? This really obviously fake prophecy. By now, the passive voice in credita res is striking: while Aeneas has been sure to tell us that Sinon put himself deliberately in a position to be captured, and that he is skilled in the Greek art of lying, nonetheless, it was Trojan shepherds who dragged him in from the hills; it was Trojans who asked him––ordered him––to say who he was and what news he brought. Trojans reminded him of the importance of considering his role as captive and how it might be put to good use; Trojans of their own accord pitied him; the Trojan king himself said ‘whoever you are you will be one of us’; the Trojan king said, ‘tell me what the horse means,’ just as it is Trojans who later will pull their own walls down and drag the huge thing into the city center.
This use of credita res is one instance in which Aeneas tries to put a little bit of distance between the Trojans and their city’s downfall. He tries again to create distance between the Trojans and their central role in bringing their own city down when he claims the Trojans didn’t know about Sinon’s kind of ‘lying’: ignari scelerum tantorum artisque Pelasgae (106). Is he implying that if they had known about it, it wouldn’t have worked? Laocoon, at least, did know––he clearly said not to trust the horse, equo ne credite, and that he feared Greeks, even when bearing gifts, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis (48–49).
In the end, however, these little touches are not enough. The way Aeneas tells it, tragically, the Trojans take the lead at every turn; they did it themselves.
Further Reading
Frangoulidis, S.A. ‘Duplicity and gift-offerings in Vergil’s Aeneid 1 and 2’ Vergilius 38 (1992) 26-37
Hardie, P.R. ‘The sacrifice of Iphigeneia: an example of ‘distribution’ of a Lucretian theme in Virgil’ Classical Quarterly 34 (1984) 406-12
Hexter, R. ‘What was the Trojan horse made of?: interpreting Vergil’s Aeneid’ The Yale Journal of Criticism 3 (1990) 109-31
Jones, J.W. ‘Trojan legend: who is Sinon?’ Classical Journal 61 (1965) 122-8
Lynch, J.P. ‘Laocoön and Sinon: Virgil, Aeneid 2.40-198’ Greece and Rome 27 (1980) 170-9
Molyneiux, J.H. ‘Sinon’s narrative in Aeneid II’ Latomus 45 (1986) 873-7
Tracy, S.V. ‘Laocoon’s guilt’ American Journal of Philology 108 (1987) 451-4