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Multiple-Correspondence Similes in the Aeneid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

David West
David West
Affiliation:
The University, Edinburgh
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Extract

Similes in the Aeneid, like Homeric similes, have commonly been thought of as similes à queue longue, as similes which have one point of comparison with the narrative and a large ornamental development. The purpose of this paper is to show that almost all the similes in the Aeneid contain many details which correspond to details in the surrounding narrative. Correspondences involving explicit details in both simile and narrative I call bilateral correspondences. Sometimes there occurs in a simile a detail for which we should clearly supply in our imagination a corresponding detail for the narrative; similarly we should sometimes imagine a detail for the simile to correspond with some detail in the narrative: these I call unilateral correspondences. Sometimes there occurs a correspondence which does not fit the main comparison: this I call an irrational correspondence. To establish and study these three types of correspondence, we shall take as our sample the second book of the Aeneid and look at every simile in it. Then we shall take some similes from other books and see if this approach helps us to understand the text of the Aeneid.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 59 , November 1969 , pp. 40 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © David West 1969. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 I am very grateful to Professor R. A. B. Mynors, J. Y. Nadeau and R. G. M. Nisbet for helpful criticisms.

2 For other responsive tricola see VIII, 241–5 specus et ingens regia et penitus cauernae answered by sedes et regna superque immane barathrum.

3 There are striking puns between narrative and simile at VII, 703, 704, aeratas aeriam, and on rostris IX, 119.

4 Cf. purpureum, cruor and cruentat in X, 722, 728 and 731; sanguine and cruor XI, 720 and 724; rubor, sanguineo and rubent in XII, 66, 67 and 68; sanguineus and sanguineos in XII, 332 and 340.

5 On this line see Lee, D. J. N., The Similes of the Iliad and the Odyssey Compared (Melbourne, 1964), 39Google Scholar. On the relationship between these two similes see further Heinze, R., Virgils epische Technik (Darmstadt, 1957), 259Google Scholar. On the simile in the Aeneid see G. N. Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer 286.

6 Animis could be a pun in this context (cf. Servius on Aeneid I, 57).

7 But La Cerda, quoted by Henry ad loc., takes on tergo as ‘shield’.

8 This test could often be repeated, for instance in almost all the similes of the second book.