I tell my students that time in the Aeneid is a spiral, in which situations (a) repeat themselves (b) on a scale of increasing magnitude. E.g., Hercules vs. Cacus --> Aeneas vs. Turnus --> Octavian vs. Mark Antony. In the first iteration, the stakes are small: just some cows. In the last iteration, the stakes are high: nothing less than lordship of the known world.
If this is right, then time has structure (the circle) but also progress (the line). And mostly I am content to leave it at that. What troubles me are the ruined cities, founded by Saturn and Janus, that Evander points out to Aeneas when they are wandering through the area that will become downtown Rome. What is the purpose of these ruined cities (which are mentioned only briefly)? Are they a prophecy of what Rome will come to in the end? In which case there is not going to be much progress after all...
I don't think you have to read it that way: for me (and perhaps for Virgil also) ruins are romantic as well as melancholy, because they connect us with the past. Insofar as they are ruins, they are monitory. "Where is the horse and rider? / Where is the horn that was blowing?" And so on. But ruins are also remnants. And they invite continuation, in a way that the finished monument, intact and imposing, does not.
There is a similar puzzle at the end of Met. XV: will the Golden Age of Augustus really last forever, or will it give way to the Changefulness that Pythagoras has just finished saying (at the beginning of Met. XV) is the abiding principle of the universe?
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org david@virgil.org English Department Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c East Carolina University Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude Fauchet -----------------------------------------------------------------------
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