By Meghan Reedy
The doubtful text of the Helen episode disrupts our interaction with the story from the outside, as it were––now Venus’ appearance to Aeneas in 589–623 disrupts it from within, even though the text here is again certain. Now, Aeneas is going to take us through the story and out the other side.
Aeneas first of all underlines his own certainty that he himself saw the goddess Venus; he says he saw her more clearly than he has ever seen anything, non ante oculis tam clara (589); in fact she is so bright that she glows in the dark, pura per noctem in luce refulsit (590). He explains how Venus, his mother, allowed him to see even more clearly than this: she strips from his eyes the cloud that prevents mortals from seeing immortal things, omnem quae nunc obducta tuenti mortalis hebetat visus tibi et umida circum caligat, nubem eripiam (604–6). Thus, even as he works to convince us that he saw what he saw, we are also reminded that we ordinary mortals cannot see it. We cannot verify his vision for ourselves, but are pressed to trust him.
What he gleans from Venus is that everything he thinks is happening at Troy (which is also, so far, everything we think is happening at Troy) is not what is really happening. Really, Neptune is shaking down the walls and tearing the city off its foundations, Neptunus muros … fundamenta … quatit totamque a sedibus urbem eruit (610–12). Really, Juno is ripping out the gates and calling up her navy, hic Iuno … (612–14). Really, Athena has taken the citadel, summas arcas Tritonia, respice, Pallas insedit (615–16), and Jupiter himself is what is powering the Greeks’ drive and strength, ipse pater Danais animos viresque secundas sufficit (616–17), and sending in gods against the Trojan soldiers, ipse deos in Dardana suscitat arma (617). The implication of this for Aeneas––that whatever he might try to do on Troy’s behalf will be utterly useless––is so clear that the very next thing she says is, ‘leave; stop this work you’re doing,’ eripe, nate, fugam finemque impone labori (619). Then she promises him safe passage, nusquam abero et tutum patrio te limine sistam (620).
Ack! What are we to make of this? The walls and the gates and the citadel––each one here shown to have been taken by a divinity––are all things we have seen handled and navigated by people. Through the trick of the horse and Sinon’s persuasion, which were described in painstaking detail over 250 lines (13–267), the walls were overcome and the gates were taken down by the Trojans themselves … weren’t they? In 234, Aeneas said, dividimus muros et moenia pandimus urbis, we split the walls and opened up the defenses of the city. Now that the Greeks are out of the horse, there are fires and fighting––and it was people, the way Aeneas told it, who took the citadel. It was Pyrrhus, Neoptolemus, who killed the king on the altar, deep inside the citadel … wasn’t it? Aeneas saw him do it: implicuitque comam laeva dextraque coruscum extulit ac lateri capulo tenus abdidit ensem (552–53). Furthermore, he took this to be the end not only of Priam but of Troy as a whole: haec finis Priami fatorum, hic exitus illum sorte tulit Troiam incensam et prolapsa videntem Pergama (554–56). Venus, however, has just recast all of this as the work of Neptune, Juno and Athena, with Zeus, ipse pater, driving everyone on.
What does she mean that all this activity is really the gods at work? What is it that Aeneas sees in 622–23, apparent dirae facies inimicaque Troiae numina magna deum? One thing he sees is that no matter what he does, he cannot hope to overcome the concerted efforts of Neptune, Juno, Athena and Jupiter. When Venus says, ‘Get out now! Stop what you’re doing!’ she is giving him the only plausible advice possible against such odds. (This advice also, incidentally, responds to the mass despair Aeneas sees in 566–67 and not to the petty bloodlust of the spurious Helen Episode).
In one sense, then, the scene Venus shows Aeneas has impact en masse; the overall picture of overwhelming odds startles him out of his stupor and allows him to see that his only honorable course of action is escape.
However, Venus does more than just show Aeneas he can’t beat these odds––she shows him that his very notion of reality is false. When she tells Aeneas that what he has always seen and thought was happening is not what is really happening, she is telling him too that his actions are also unreal; they are only superficial, mortal actions that can have no real impact on what is really happening. Therefore, not only are the odds in this particular instance revealed to be overwhelming, but his own agency is also called into question, as is the agency of all the people whose actions we have been following so closely this whole time. Laocoon, who saw what was happening and was killed by sea-dragons? There was nothing he could have done differently. Priam, who invited Sinon and the wooden horse inside? Nothing he could have done. Pyrrhus dragging Priam horribly to the altar to kill him? Nothing else he could have done. Aeneas, awoken in the night by the noise? Nothing he could have done to prevent this city’s fall.
This is humbling and true, on the one hand, but it delivers a sinister freedom on the other.
It is humbling and true that each person is small in the great scheme of things, and that the unfolding of large-scale events has a chaotic and inexorable momentum such that some people––small people like Sinon––sometimes determine the trajectory of thousands of lives, a whole city, the future of a continent, while other people––even big people like Aeneas––can do nothing but run. It is also true that we mortals have great difficulty seeing the massive, underlying patterns as they happen, let alone acting in ways that influence them.
Venus’ revelation to Aeneas allows the rare pleasure of knowing the pattern and watching surface. Here is the sinister freedom: we are freed to feel a poignant, melancholy as we watch Sinon reel the Trojans in. We are freed to feel the vicious tragedy of Pyrrhus’ killing of Polites and then Priam, freed to relish recoiling from all that blood without necessarily troubling over the moral implications, or the possible aftermath (How will Pyrrhus behave with his own son? How will he treat his wife?). How can we hold Pyrrhus responsible if it was Jupiter who was fueling his behavior and we know that?
And what of Aeneas? Aeneas too, in the light of what Venus has just said, will act out his little actions but have no control over them. He will find his harrowing way home through the fighting and the pillaging, and we know that he will get there safely because Venus said she would see to it (tutum patrio te limine sistam, 620). We can watch Aeneas’ trauma the way we might watch a toddler’s daring on the jungle gym—with sympathetic attention but no real concern because while her mother is nearby, it might be tricky, but it won’t really be dangerous.
Further Reading
Egan, R.B. ‘A reading of the Helen-Venus episode in Aeneid 2’ Echos du monde classique 40 (1996) 379-95
Feeney, D. The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical tradition (Oxford, 1991) 180-7
Greenwood, M.A. ‘Venus intervenes: Five episodes in the Aeneid’ Liverpool Classical Monthly 14 (1989) 132-6
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
Johnson, W.R. ‘Dis aliter visum: self-telling and theodicy in Aeneid 2’ in Reading Vergil’s Aeneid: An Interpretive Guide, ed. C. Perkell (Norman, OK, 1999) 50-63
Reckford, K.J. ‘Helen in Aeneid II and VI’ Arethusa 14 (1981) 85-99