By Meghan Reedy
Since their ‘wedding’ in the cave—when Dido was not moved by rumor or appearances, neque enim specie famave movetur (170)—we have been watching stories about Aeneas’ and Dido’s relationship travel throughout Libya, to Iarbas, and then to Jupiter. Next, we will see Jupiter (who seems irritated by what Iarbas tells him) give a message to Mercury to give to Aeneas, who will try to tell Dido.
After hearing Iarbas’ pointed complaint (audiit Omnipotens, 220), Jupiter wrenches his eyes to the relevant kingdom’s walls, and to the ‘lovers forgetful of the better story,’ oblitos famae melioris amantis (221), and then he immediately calls up Mercury and gives him a message for Aeneas to the effect that Aeneas isn’t doing what he is supposed to be doing, and he’d better get back on task (222–37).
Then, for 27 lines (238–65), we hear details about how Mercury prepared for his journey, and how it was to pass Atlas on the way, and how he touched down. All of a sudden, we are called upon to pay careful attention to how this messenger crosses space, and what that space is like. Watching the way space is handled as a message is carried through it from Jupiter will in turn invite us to look back at how the story traveled through space on its way towards him.
So, how does Mercury cross space?
First, he has to strap golden wings onto his feet, primum pedibus talaria nectit aurea (239–40), which transport him as fast as the wind, quae … rapido pariter cum flamine portant (240–41). Then, he has to pick up his wand, tum virgam capit (242), and with this wand he drives the winds and swims through the clouds, illa fretus agit ventos et turbida tranat nubila (245–46).
So, Mercury requires tools in order to travel from Olympus to earth on his errand: one tool to enable him to fly at all, his winged sandals, and another to help him push the weather in the direction he needs to go. He flies, we are told later, like a bird, avi similis (254).
Compared with how Fama travels back in 175–87, this looks like a cumbersome hassle. Fama doesn’t need to strap wings on because she has feathers herself, sunt corpore plumae (181), and so she simply flies as she pleases between the sky and the earth, volat caeli medio terraequ (184). Moreover, whereas Mercury needs his wand to help him move, Fama expends no effort at all––quite the opposite; rather than using strength, moving provides it, making Fama stronger and bigger the more she moves: mobilitate viget viresque adquirit eundo, parva metu primo, mox sese attollit in auras ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubila condit (175–77).
And what is the space like?
Mostly it is mountainous. As he flies, Mercury sees first the peak and then the sides of Mount Atlas: volans apicem et latera ardua cernit Atlantis (246–47). The mountain has pines and snow at the top and is lashed with wind and rain, piniferum caput et vento pulsatur et imbri, nix umeros infusa tegit (249–50), … and he has a beard bristling with ice, et glacie riget horrida barba (251). Mercury flies down the side of this personified mountain (with its head and its beard), then onward to the sandy shore of Libya, litus harenosum ad Libyae (257).
Again, it seems much easier for Fama altogether. She did not have to navigate her way down that wintery mountainside at all—in fact, she made it to all the major cities of Libya instantly. As soon as the ‘marriage’ in the cave has happened, the very next moment the news is everywhere, extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes (173).
Which prompts a question of a different order, about messengers and messages. In 173, it Fama per urbes, the message and the messenger are uneasily the same. Fama moves messages around, swiftly and broadly, with her umpteen mouths and ears and eyes and tongues (182–83), but fama, rumor, is also the message she moves. Tricky.
What about Mercury in this regard? Unlike Fama/fama, Mercury is only the messenger, and he carries one distinct message from one person (Jupiter) to another (Aeneas). Thus we might also reasonably ask—and expect a slightly different answer to—the question ‘how does Jupiter’s message cross space?’
It turns out that for Jupiter, unlike for Fama who is the message she carries, getting a message out takes some work. There is the logistical matter of him needing Mercury to take the message on his behalf (just as Iarbas did the job of bringing news to him earlier), but Mercury’s encounter with Atlas on his way down from Jupiter also demonstrates how removed Jupiter is from the place where the action he so strongly influences is happening.
It leads one to wonder what Jupiter really saw when he looked down at them after Iarbas told him Dido and Aeneas were together. Or rather, to wonder whether what he saw was what was really happening, or if it was a reflection of what he’d heard. The story Fama told was that they were forgetting their kingdoms and spending all their time this winter on each other (hiemem inter se luxu … fovere regnorum immemores, 193–94), and the brief mention we get of what Jupiter looks at is an echo of that report filtered through his own interests: oblitos famae melioris amantis (221). He sees lovers forgetful of the better fama, the better story––which seems to be the fata, the ‘things told,’ in his conversation with Venus back in Book 1 (fatur: ‘…Cytherea: … hic tibi fabor enim …, 1.256-96).
Lovers forgetful of their kingdoms isn’t what Mercury sees when he gets there, actually. When Mercury touches down, he sees Aeneas hard at work, building a city: ut primum alatis tetigit magalia plantis, Aenean fundantem arces ac tecta novantem conspicit (259-61). Which are we to believe? The report of Fama, which we know is equal parts fact and poison (pariter facta atque infecta, 190), or what Mercury sees with his own eyes?
Of course, from Jupiter’s point of view (which we see now as lofty and distant), whatever Aeneas is doing in Carthage will count as ‘forgetful’ because this isn’t the city Jupiter said Aeneas would build. Carthage isn’t in Jupiter’s story.
Further Reading
Estevez, V.A. ‘Oculos ad moenia torsit: On Aeneid 4.220’ Classical Philology 77 (1982) 22-34
Feeney, D.C. ‘The Taciturnity of Aeneas’ Classical Quarterly 33 (1983) 204-29, reprinted in Oxford Readings in Virgil’s Aeneid, ed. S.J. Harrison (Oxford, 1990) 167-90
Feeney, D. The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical tradition (Oxford, 1991) 241-8
Gibson, R.K. ‘Aeneas as Hospes in Virgil, Aeneid 1 and 4’ Classical Quarterly 49 (1999) 184-202
Hardie, P.R. Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986) 373-81
Hardie, P.R. Rumour and Renown: Representations of Fama in Western Literature (Cambridge, 2012) 78-149
Harrison, E.L. ‘Vergil’s Mercury’ in Vergilian Bimillenary Lectures, ed. A.G. McKay and A. Gordon, Vergilius supplementary volume (College Park, MD, 1985) 1-47
Hejduk, J. ‘Jupiter’s Aeneid: Fama and Imperium’ Classical Antiquity 28 (2009) 279-327 (esp. 292-5)
Horsfall, N. ‘Virgil and the Conquest of Chaos’ Antichthon 15 (1981) 141-50