#94-96
Dardanidae duri, quae vos a stirpe parentum
prima tulit tellus, eadem vos ubere laeto
accipiet reduces. Antiquam exquirite matrem.
The Trojans were originally from Italy then? How so?
I think there was a shadowy legend that Dardanus, the founder of the Trojan royal house, originally came from Italy.
Dardanus founds Troy after leaving Italy. There is a bit more on this in 167-8. “hinc dardanus ortus /Iasiusque pater, genus a quo principe nostrum”
Dardanus and Iasius, sons of Electra and Corythus set out to found a settlement abroad. There are variations on the story but Dardanus eventually founds Troy. (its in Servius if you have the energy to read it: “Dardanus et Iasius fratres fuerunt Iovis et Electrae filii: sed Dardanus de Iove, Iasius de Corytho procreatus est, a cuius nomine et mons et oppidum nomen accepit. postea Iasium dicitur Dardanus occidisse. hi tamen fratres cum ex Etruria proposuissent sedes exteras petere, profecti. et Dardanus quidem contracta in Troia iuventute Dardaniam urbem condidit, a qua Troianorum origo crevit. Iasius autem Samothraciam cepit et ibi liberum locum imperio tenuit. alii dicunt utrumque ex Corytho, Iovis filio, procreatos et sicut dictum est relicta Italia profectos. sed Iasium Samothraciam imperio tenuisse, Dardanum vero in Phrygiam pervenisse ibique auxilio fuisse Teucro, Scamandri filio, qui tum finitimas gentes bello subigebat, filiamque eius duxisse in matrimonium, et post mortem soceri regnum adeptum Dardaniam Troianam regionem ab suo nomine appellasse. Graeci et Varro humanarum rerum Dardanum non ex Italia, sed de Arcadia, urbe Pheneo, oriundum dicunt; alii Cretensem; alii circa Troiam et Idam natum. sane per patris appellationem cognationem .”
Interesting. And very convenient of course, since it gives a basis to the Trojan claim on a piece of land in Italy.
Dardanidae duri, quae vos a stirpe parentum
prima tulit tellus, eadem vos ubere laeto
accipiet reduces. Antiquam exquirite matrem.
Blatant tosh (just like Ascanius/Iulus), but it serves nationalistic purposes to have the Trojans originate in (of all places) Italy! As you point out Bart, it gives the Trojans a claim on the land they’re invading. Also, it gives their ancestry—hence ultimately the Romans’ ancestry—an antiquity to match that of the Greeks. And it makes Aeneas’ journey a nostos, a return home, just like Odysseus’, which it will replay in so many other ways too.
Vergil’s attitude towards the Greeks seems contradictory: on the one hand he relies heavily on the Greek epical tradition, on the other the Greeks are the fiercest enemy of the Trojans and thus of Rome. Greek treacherousness for instance compares negatively with Trojan hospitality and pity in the Sinon episode. Pyrrhus is a villain. Ajax Oileus commits sacrilege. Remarkable too how Odysseus of all people is singled out as cruel, harsh etcetera. -the Trojans even curse Ithaca while sailing past it for nursing him-, Odysseus whose adventures are echoed in so many ways in the Aeneid as mwh writes.
Of course Vergil is constrained by the fact that Aeneas is a Trojan, so not very likely to be a hellenophile, but even so: is there real antagonism towards the Greeks here?
Roman attitudes to the Greeks were contradictory and complex. Horace’s "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio. " seems to sum it up.
Cicero also never disappoints.
Quum omnium artium, quæ ad rectam vivendi viam pertinerent, ratio et disciplina studio sapientiæ, quæ philosophia dicitur, contineretur, hoc mihi Latinis litteris inlustrandum putavi, non quia philosophia Græcis et litteris et doctoribus percipi non posset, sed meum semper judicium fuit omnia nostros aut invenisse per se sapientius quam Græcos aut accepta ab illis fecisse meliora, quæ quidem digna statuissent, in quibus elaborarent.
The very beginning of the Tusculunæ Disputationes.
Book 3, what can I say? It’s kind of a deception after the first two. It’s not just that Vergil eases the tension somewhat -that’s okay after the intensity of book 2-, it’s that I get the impression Vergil doesn’t exactly know what he wants. There’s a halfhearted attempt at an imitation of the Odyssey -the harpies, sailing past Scylla & Charybdis, saving Achaemenides from the Island of the Cyclops-, but he leaves it there. And those episodes -taking up only a minor portion of the book- are by far the most interesting. Especially the encounter with Aecaemenides is a nice touch, making a physical connection with Odysseus and his nostos. It also demonstrates again the moral superiority of the Trojans over the Greeks (they take pity after all on their former enemy).
The rest of the book is mainly made up of Aeneas going from prophecy to prophecy, each prophecy being a bit more to the point. To me this doens’t really generate any dramatic tension, but of course maybe his Roman audience felt different about this. I even feel Vergil’s hexameters are a bit flat here, less inspired than in the previous books.
And then there’s Aeneas meeting Andromache: there’s pathos, certainly, but somehow it feels out of tone with the rest of the book.
In conclusion, I’m glad to have finished book 3, onwards to book 4.
You’re not alone in finding bk.3 a bit of a slog. It’s the most hellenistic of all the books of the Aeneid, it seems to me, in its pervasive interplay with Odysseus’ “wanderings” in the Odyssey. Such intimate and recondite intertextuality is not to most people’s taste (though it is to mine). We have to remember that Vergil and his readers were steeped in Homer and Homeric criticism and in the aesthetic of the hellenistic scholar-poets. It’s in their company that Vergil belongs.