A few comments (too many!) on Casali's highly impressive article on Aeneas' treason to which LHS referred us.
The idea that Dido attributes 'facta impia' to Aeneas, not herself, seems to have strong support in Italy - Paratore supports it in his edition and names other scholars on both sides. In Britain, there seems to have been a long-running consensus against this idea. Austin is distinctly scornful about it and so was Pease in an earlier genertion. The self-blaming woman seems (suspiciously!) more congenial to us than the woman who is subversive enough to question the male hero's account of his glorious past. I am not wholly convinced by Casali and would prefer an open translation of IV 596 'Infelix Dido, nunc te facta impia tangunt! Tum decuit, cum sceptra dabas' - 'Does it only now strike you, poor Dido, what evil has been done? You should have thought of that when you were so ready to share power.' She may be thinking of herself as well as of Aeneas and she may not be thinking only of hostile stories about Aeneas. Perhaps even his own account of himself no longer strikes her as so impressive. Casali is surely right to say that the Temple scene in Book I is meant to remind us that works of art can be interpreted in different ways. But I would take view of the parallel between 'facta impia tangunt' of IV 596 and the more famous 'mentem mortalia tangunt' of I 462 rather different from Casali's. The idea of 'impact on the mind', found in both scenes, is surely not a matter of knowing that certain things have happened but of being properly impressed and moved by their happening. Aeneas in Book I does not so much note that the Tyrians know about Troy but that their reaction is (he thinks) movingly humane. He likes the ideology which he finds. This must be Dido's version of the ideology taught by Juno. So Venus remarks (I, 671) that she thinks with utter dread of the turn that this Juno-style welcome may take. Juno, I suppose, stands for the Greek system of autonomous cities, held together by common religion and morality. The morality would include faithful marriage and personal restraint. One of the safety-valves of the Greek system was the foundation of colonies which would be outside the influence of the parent city Dido and therefore, if its people are tolerant, a sanctuary for all refugees of good character, regardless of racial background. Dido is a colony-founder and is ready to accept other refugees 'without discrimination'(574). This readiness reflects her personal generosity of spirit. But there's an element of political liberalism as well - Junoism at its best. For her part, Venus has always wished to replace the system of autonomous cities with a system founded on the special status of her favoured city, Troy/Rome. >From IV 321 one suspects that Dido, like some other liberals, can't quite get the mass of her people to cooperate with her project. The Tyrians and Trojans have not got on well. We know that the Tyrians always had 'ferocia corda' towards foreigners (I 302) - Junoism taking a xenophobic form among people who are not so enlightened. It is interesting to ask why Aeneas does not find, in the Temple of Juno, tableaux which were unambiguously hostile to Troy or to himself - 'the Trojans cower behind their walls; Aeneas takes a bribe to hand over the keys'. It seems dramatically likely that the Greeks, thrown into chaos by the death of Agamemnon and unable to organise pursuit of Aeneas, would still spread disinformation. Sinon's memoirs must have spun a remarkable yarn. Perhaps Dido can recognise dodgy propaganda when she sees or hears it. No doubt she has been on the receiving end herself; Pygmalion would have had a lot of explaining to do when she made off with the gold reserves from Tyre and would have spread disinformation of his own. If 'the impact on the mind' in Book I led to ideological sympathy I would think that 'the impact on the mind' in Book IV leads to ideological hostility. In Book I Aeneas thinks that events are interpreted with compassion, as he would wish; in Book IV Dido comes to interpret events with exactly the hostility which he would wish to avoid. The race of Laomedon, she has already perceived, is pervasively treacherous (542). Why is that? Surely because it is 'Venusian' - it believes that its special relationship with the gods gives it a special right to power, beside which all other rights fade away. If you throw it out of one place, it will flee to another, not just to found a Greek-style colony but to renew, from another fortress, its efforts at world power. She is the latest victim of this process, which will just go on and on unless her avenging heir can put a stop to it. Perhaps she underestimates Aeneas' love for her but she is right to think herself the victim of a conspiracy, organised in fact by Venus, the huntress of Book I, who has long marked Dido as her target. This is a very deep ideological and religious enmnity. Dido, seeing herself in a trap, may well understand that she never had to accept Aeneas' account of 'the facts of Troy': there were other accounts of the same facts, as Casali reminds us. Moreover, Aeneas' account was a poem and poets are famous for not always telling the truth. But I think that Casali would have been truer to his own insight about the different interpretations of works of art had he made Dido reinterpret Aeneas' poem, that is see a different meaning in it without challenging its 'facts'. Dido now perceives the preservation of Troy and its religious icons as a sinister threat to the whole civilised world. I certainly don't want to return to the 'British View' of Dido as attributing facta impia only to herself. But I don't think we should lay to much emphasis on 'the facts of Troy' so much as on 'the meaning of Troy'. I think Dido sees herself as entangled in, contributing to and destroyed by a plot to perpetuate the evil religion of the Trojans. - Martin Hughes ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
