In ancient literature and religion, Hercules—in common with many other deities—is frequently associated with particular trees or types of tree. There are tales connecting him with the wild olive,Footnote 1 laurelFootnote 2 and oak,Footnote 3 but his most prominent and frequent arboreal link is with the poplar (populus Alcidae gratissima, ‘the poplar is most delightful to Hercules’, Verg. Ecl. 7.61),Footnote 4 an association mentioned twice in the Hercules-heavy first half of Aeneid Book 8 (276, 286).Footnote 5 The festival of Hercules celebrated by Evander and his people takes place just outside the city within a ‘great grove’ (Aen. 8.103–4) of unspecified species, in an area surrounded by less defined expanses of trees. Trees crowd the banks of the Tiber, leaning out for wonder as Aeneas’ fleet passes by (Aen. 8.91–2) and soon uariisque teguntur | arboribus, uiridisque secant placido aequore siluas (‘[the Trojans] are covered by different trees and cut their way through green woods on the calm water’, Aen. 8.95–6); looking up through the sacrificial smoke on the altars, Pallas and his friends are initially frightened ut celsas uidere rates atque inter opacum | adlabi nemus (‘as they saw the tall ships glide towards them through the dark grove’, Aen. 8.107–8). When Evander later shows Aeneas around, the emphasis on trees recurs, with the huge grove destined to become Romulus’ Asylum (Aen. 8.342), and the bramble- and god-haunted woods of the Capitol (Aen. 8.347–54). Later, Aeneas and his men camp in a vast grove of Silvanus, as Venus approaches to bring her son his new shield (Aen. 8.597–607).
This catalogue of woods and trees serves to emphasize the importance of the wooded landscape in general and of poplars in particular both to this part of the Aeneid and to its temporary hero Hercules. The point of this note, however, is to explore a rock, not a tree; but it is a rock with arboreal pretentions.
Within Evander's tale of Hercules and Cacus, there is an interesting prominence of bare rocks and stone, which frequently seems to take on the dominance more often afforded to woods in the surrounding narrative.Footnote 6 The hillside in which Cacus’ cave is located is emphatically rocky: iam primum saxis suspensam hanc aspice rupem, | disiectae procul ut moles desertaque montis | stat domus et scopuli ingentem traxere ruinam (‘first look at that crag hanging from the stone cliff, how the boulders are scattered wide about, the house on the mountain stands deserted and the cliffs have toppled down in vast ruin’, Aen. 8.190–2). It is soon explained that the fractured, ruined quality of the scene is not that of just any age-worn mountainside but a result of Hercules’ exploits. There is a poignant—if not unsettling—resemblance to the crumbling walls of Troy torn apart by the gods, disiectas moles auulsaque saxis | saxa (‘the scattered boulders and stones torn from stones’, Aen. 2.608–9), but also to the city's fall as seen through simile in the toppling of an ancient manna-ash: uulneribus donec paulatim euicta supremum | congemuit traxitque iugis auulsa ruinam (‘until, gradually conquered by its wounds, it groaned its last and, torn up, stretched out its ruin on the hillside’, Aen. 2.630–1).Footnote 7 The ruin of the mountainside evokes not just other scattered stones but perhaps also a fallen tree; this hint, I argue, will soon be strengthened.
Up on the mountainside, Cacus’ cave itself is inaccessam (Aen. 8.195), impenetrable to the sun's rays, echoing Virgil's original coinage of the adjective to describe Circe's inaccessible groves (Aen. 7.11): a faint arboreal connection is made again. Cacus drags Hercules’ cattle backwards in his attempt to avoid detection, and hides them saxo … opaco (Aen. 8.211, ‘inside the dark rock’), a dark cave now taking the place of dark woods.Footnote 8 Woodland makes a brief actual reappearance as Hercules’ stolen cattle bellow, filling the groves with their noise (Aen. 8.215–16, echoed by the people's enthusiastic response to the hymn to Hercules at 8.305), but the setting soon becomes high and rocky once more as Hercules and his club climb the mountain to reach the cave into which Cacus swiftly retreats. The monster, making use of his father Vulcan's arts, has a great rock suspended by chains which he now releases in order to block the entrance. Having tried various attacks on the saxea … limina (‘stone entrance’, Aen. 8.231–2) without success, Hercules finds an outcrop of stone (Aen. 8.233–40):
There stood a sharp flint outcrop, its stone sides sheer all round, rising up from the ridge of the cave, incredibly high to look at, a welcome home for the nests of ill-omened birds. It was leaning down from the ridge towards the river on its left, so bracing against it on its right side he shook the pinnacle and tearing it up by its deepest roots loosened it, then suddenly pushed it; at this push the great sky thundered and the banks leapt apart and the terrified river flowed backwards.
The ecphrastic nod in the opening stabat Footnote 9 allows the rock a certain narratological as well as narrative prominence, putting the reader in mind of other descriptive pauses for awesome sights.Footnote 10 The outcrop's height and, especially, its usefulness as a nesting site seem particularly arboreal,Footnote 11 with a link to the numinous underworld trees implied through the birds’ description as dirae.Footnote 12 The connection between Cacus’ cave and the underworld will be made more strongly through the simile of Aen. 8.243–6,Footnote 13 but the hint here of a kind of petrified reflection of underworld flora is suggestive. The tree link recurs and gains texture as Hercules topples the rock, which is imis | auulsam … radicibus (‘torn up from its deepest roots’, Aen. 8.237–8).Footnote 14 The great stone falls like the falling Troy-tree (auulsa, above), or still more like the toppling Entellus who keels over, ut quondam caua concidit aut Erymantho | aut Ida in magna radicibus eruta pinus (‘as once on Erymanthus or Ida a hollow pine tree fell, plucked out from the roots’, Aen. 5.448–9).
The fall of this tree-like rock thus hints at the Homeric warrior-falls-like-tree simile but at one remove.Footnote 15 Notably, Cacus himself receives no epic simile on his death, vainly belching fire as Hercules throttles him (Aen. 8.259–61), perhaps in a move to deny him a simile's potential for pathos and humanization.Footnote 16 It may be, further, that the toppling of a tree-like rock rather than of an actual tree also enables Hercules to retain his credentials as a tree-hugger, not a tree-cutter.Footnote 17 Naturally, it remains open for readers to decide whether they feel any more comfortable about overweening violence brought against rocks which seem a bit like trees than they do about violence towards actual trees,Footnote 18 but a straightforward episode of tree violation is at least avoided.Footnote 19 At any rate, with the close of this episode, suggestive rock-woods and rock-tree give way to the understated but actual lucus in which the Ara Maxima is established (Aen. 8.271–2), and Evander wreathes his brows with Hercules’ own white poplar leaves, marking both the hero-god's triumph and the reinstatement of trees and woods as dominant features of the landscape now free of the fire-breathing, rock-dwelling monster.
