Adspirate canenti: The Muses in Virgil’s Aeneid
From Firenze University Press Journal: Prometheus
Lee Fratantuono, Ohio Wesleyan University
Virgil employs the Muses (especially Calliope and Erato) as key figures in the divine apparatus of his epic Aeneid. Careful consideration of the references to the Muses in his poem illustrates his concern with exploring the relationship of Aeneas’ Troy and Lavinia’s Italy.
The Virgilian employment of the Muses in his epic Aeneidhas been called “purely conventional”.
The present study will consider closely every appearance of these patronesses of song in the poem, with a view to demonstrating how Virgil’s attention to the Muses presents a significant aspect of his use of divine machinery in the explication of his larger themes about the import of his epic, in particular its concern with the relationship of Aeneas’ Troy to Turnus’ Italy in the establishment of the future Rome.
The “Muse” is the first divine being mentioned in Virgil’s poem, as the narrator calls on her to recall the causes of the anger of Juno that spelled such trouble and strife for Aeneas:
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laesoquidve dolens regina deum tot volvere casusinsignem pietate virum, tot adire laboresimpulerit. Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?(1.8–11)
This famous passage from the proem of the epicis the subject of the celebrated “Virgil Mosaic” foundin Sousse, Tunisia and now housed in the Bardo Museum in Tunis.Virgil is seated between two Muses, the scroll on his lap inscribed with verse 8 and the first word of verse 9.
The muse on the left is reading from her own scroll, while the one on the right is holding a tragic mask. The second muse is thus confidently identified as Melpomene; the other has been labeled either Calliope –the muse of epic –or Clio, the muse of history.
The passage inscribed on the Virgil mosaic is the first of half a dozen in-vocations of the Muses in the Aeneid. The association of the goddesses with memory is alluded to in the imperative memora. A singular muse is employed, as in the first verses of both the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer.
The muse is specifically invoked to recall the causes of the anger of Juno, the principal motivation of the plot of the epic–the anger that will not be fully put to rest until the reconciliation of Juno with Jupiter in the poem’s last book.
That anger relates inter aliato the goddess’ wrath regarding Troy from the time of the judgment of Paris as well as the abduction of Ganymede. The Muse’s song is to be focused on the causes of the wrath of Juno toward the Trojans. That divine wrath will be put to rest by the end of the poem (arguably transferred to Aeneas, whose furious act of vengeance provides a coda for the epic).
One can see why the historical Muse Clio has been associated with the opening of the epic: the proem calls for a historical account of why Juno is threatened by Aeneas’ Trojan exiles.It is noteworthy that this signal passage from near the very opening of the epic is the only references to Muses in the first, Odyssean half of the poem9.The remaining five invocations of the Muses come in the poet’s books of war, with two in Book VII, two in Book IX, and one in Book X. In addition, there are two references to the Muses that come outside of the language of poetic invocation; these passages occur in Books IX and X.10The muse of Book VII is named: Erato –the muse of love –will in some sense preside over the start of the second half of the epic:
Nunc age, qui reges, Erato, quae tempora rerum,quis Latio antiquo fuerit status, advena classemcum primum Ausoniis exercitus appulit oris,expediam et primae revocabo exordia pugnae.Tu vatem, tu, diva, mone …(7.37–41)
The new invocation to the muse is more striking and involved than the first. The muse is now named, and the anaphora in combination with the change of imperative (memora now replaced by mone) contributes to a sense of increased urgency.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13128/prometheus-9225
Read Full Text: https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/prometheus/article/view/9225
