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HAROLD-AS-AENEAS? THE INFLUENCE OF THE AENEID ON A RESCUE SCENE IN THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2020

Nikki K. Rollason  and
Michael J. Lewis
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Extract

A scene in the Bayeux Tapestry (c. 1072–7 ce) shows Earl Harold ‘Godwinson’ of Wessex (c. 1022–66), future king of the English (r. 1066), rescuing two Normans from drowning in the quicksand of the River Couesnon as they cross into Brittany on military campaign (see figure 1; Bayeux Tapestry Scene 17). Harold (Bayeux Tapestry Figure 152) is depicted standing more or less upright, upon embroidered lines that represent the waters of the Couesnon. As is typical for the representation of Anglo-Saxons in this, the earlier part of the embroidery, he has a ‘pudding-bowl’ haircut and is moustached. These features distinguish Harold from the Normans he saves, who have the backs of their heads shaven and are without facial hair. Harold carries one of the men ‘piggyback’ and drags the other, who has almost fallen on his back, up by his right hand. The Latin inscription above this scene is brief, but nonetheless tells us most of what we need to know to understand the imagery beneath: hIC VVILLEM DVX ET EXERCITVS EIVS VENERVNT AD MONTE[M] MIChAELIS ET hIC TRANSIERVNT FLVMEN COSNONIS. hIC hARLOLD DVX TRAhEBAT EOS DE ARENA (‘Here Duke William and his army came to Mont St Michel, and here they crossed the River Couesnon. Here Duke Harold pulled them out of the sand’).

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Research Article
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Greece & Rome , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , October 2020 , pp. 203 - 229
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2020

A scene in the Bayeux Tapestry (c. 1072–7 ce) shows Earl Harold ‘Godwinson’ of Wessex (c. 1022–66), future king of the English (r. 1066), rescuing two Normans from drowning in the quicksand of the River Couesnon as they cross into Brittany on military campaign (see figure 1; Bayeux Tapestry Scene 17Footnote 1). Harold (Bayeux Tapestry Figure 152Footnote 2) is depicted standing more or less upright, upon embroidered lines that represent the waters of the Couesnon. As is typical for the representation of Anglo-Saxons in this, the earlier part of the embroidery, he has a ‘pudding-bowl’ haircut and is moustached.Footnote 3 These features distinguish Harold from the Normans he saves, who have the backs of their heads shaven and are without facial hair. Harold carries one of the men ‘piggyback’ and drags the other, who has almost fallen on his back, up by his right hand. The Latin inscription above this scene is brief, but nonetheless tells us most of what we need to know to understand the imagery beneath: hIC VVILLEM DVX ET EXERCITVS EIVS VENERVNT AD MONTE[M] MIChAELIS ET hIC TRANSIERVNT FLVMEN COSNONIS. hIC hARLOLD DVX TRAhEBAT EOS DE ARENA (‘Here Duke William and his army came to Mont St Michel, and here they crossed the River Couesnon. Here Duke Harold pulled them out of the sand’).Footnote 4

Figure 1.

Earl Harold of Wessex rescues two Normans from the quicksand of the River Couesnon. Detail from the Bayeux Tapestry, eleventh century (with special permission from the City of Bayeux).

This is an intriguing scene, showing Harold aiding Normans in an heroic act,Footnote 5 an act that is not mentioned by any other extant contemporary account.Footnote 6 However, this article will argue that it is of interest for an additional reason: namely that it appears to parallel one of the most well-known scenes of Virgil's Aeneid, in which Aeneas flees the city of Troy carrying his father, Anchises, on his back, while pulling his son Ascanius/Iulus by the hand:

‘ergo age, care pater, cervici imponere nostrae;
ipse subibo umeris, nec me labor iste gravabit
…mihi parvus Iulus sit comes…’
haec fatus latos umeros subiectaque colla
veste super fulvique insternor pelle leonis,
succedoque oneri; dextrae se parvus Iulus
implicuit sequiturque patrem non passibus aequis… (Virg. Aen. 2.707–11, 721–4)Footnote 7

These are some of the most famous lines of the epic, as they encapsulate one of its main themes – Aeneas’ pietas to the gods, his homeland, and his family – a theme which also paralleled the political and social concerns of the emperor Augustus. The popularity of Virgil's epic was immediate and this continued into the early medieval and medieval periods; whereas Homer was little known in the medieval West, the Aeneid formed a crucial part of the learning curriculum, particularly in major ecclesiastical centres on both sides of the English Channel into the tenth and eleventh centuries and beyond.Footnote 8 This is also the environment in which it is most likely that the Bayeux Tapestry was made.Footnote 9

It is against this background of cultural influences on the Tapestry, which include not only classical texts in Anglo-Saxon and Norman education, but also a tradition in these societies of illustrating manuscripts of such texts, that the following discussion will examine the interrelationship of the two scenes. It will consider that, by visually echoing lines from the Aeneid, the rescue scene (and others where the Aeneid's influence can be discerned) plays on, and with, the knowledge of the Aeneid that viewers brought with them to the Tapestry – thus consequently stressing the epic as a source for its design. In particular, it will be argued that the knowledge of Aeneas’ character, embodied in the lines above and the poem as a whole, would have informed responses to Harold in the embroidery. Furthermore, these responses to Harold-as-Aeneas would have likely been positive as a result, only changing (perhaps) when the characterization of Aeneas as a traitor to Troy, found in Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, overtook Virgil's version in medieval culture, sometime after the immediate events of the Norman Conquest. The rescue scene, therefore, plays an important role in creating and reinforcing a pious and courageous depiction of Harold which is reflected elsewhere within the textile, and as a result adds especial consequence to the interpretation (by some) that the Bayeux Tapestry is a work of art supporting a Norman world-view of the Conquest of England.Footnote 10

In order to do this, the discussion will first briefly set the rescue scene within the wider context of the Bayeux Tapestry, before moving on to consider knowledge of the Aeneid within Anglo-Saxon and Norman society. It will then examine scenes from the embroidery which have been earlier identified as containing references to the epic by previous modern scholarship, in order to emphasize that the scene of Harold saving the Normans from the Couesnon is not an isolated echo within the work. Discussion of the rescue scene itself and its implications for the depiction of Harold within the Tapestry will follow. As a final point, the concluding section will reflect on the effect that Dares and Dictys’ popular depiction of Aeneas as a traitor to Troy may have had on the Tapestry's characterization of Harold-as-Aeneas for viewers of the work.Footnote 11

Setting the scene

It will be useful to begin the discussion by setting the rescue of the Normans by Harold within the wider context of the Bayeux Tapestry's narrative, particularly the Breton campaign. This is because both Harold's actions within the scene and the events of this campaign more generally have resounding implications for the Norman Conquest and the characterization of Harold within the Tapestry, and therefore the influence of the Aeneid on the depiction of the rescue has wide-ranging significance. Furthermore, as will be argued below, the narrative of the Breton war resonates with other echoes from the Aeneid beyond the rescue scene.

The rescue is part of a long sequence in the embroidery where an army of Duke William of Normandy (c. 1028–87) makes its way into Brittany to deal with Count Conan II of Rennes. The Bayeux Tapestry begins its depiction of the Breton campaign (from Scene 16) with William (presumably Figure 143) and his army, riding out from the ducal palace at Rouen.Footnote 12 Here, the Norman duke had been entertaining an unexpected guest, Earl Harold of Wessex, who, having apparently become shipwrecked or blown off course,Footnote 13 ended up in the lands of Count Guy of Ponthieu, where he was subsequently apprehended. It is not certain whether Harold had intended this Channel crossing or not, and (if so) whether he was seeking to travel to Normandy anyway. Contemporary chroniclers variably record that Harold might have journeyed abroad to retrieve family members given as hostage as part of a treaty that was no longer current, or that he was there to confirm William as successor to Edward ‘the Confessor’. However, by 1064, the likely date of the Breton war, it is almost certain that Edgar ‘the Ætheling’, grandson of King Edmund ‘Ironside’ (r. 1016) and great-grandson of King Æthelred II (r. 978–1016), was viewed by King Edward and his closest followers as his heir – a choice much more palatable to the English aristocracy. Whatever his intentions, within the Bayeux Tapestry narrative Harold is shown landing in Ponthieu and the result was that Guy (a vassal of the Norman duke) handed him over to William: the Virgilian echoes in the scene of Harold's crossing to Normandy will be discussed in due course.

Upon leaving William's palace at Rouen to campaign against Count Conan, the Norman army (with Harold) is shown riding past Mont-Saint-Michel, which was an important monastic foundation in Normandy during this period and on the frontier with Brittany.Footnote 14 The army then embark on their crossing of the Couesnon. Men on horseback, beneath Mont-Saint-Michel, cautiously enter the waters. There disaster strikes. Not only is the water deep, but the quicksand causes horses and men to be lost; in the Tapestry a horse is shown falling forwards and its rider is unseated (Figure 150). It is immediately after this that Harold is depicted undertaking his feat of epic bravery: with great strength he drags two Normans out of the quicksand. After this, the Norman army attempts to engage Conan at Dol (Scene 18). When Conan manages to flee the town by sliding down a rope,Footnote 15 they pursue him past Rennes, finally engaging the enemy troops at Dinan (Scene 19), where Conan surrenders (Scene 20). The Breton campaign, which according to the Bayeux Tapestry William won comprehensively,Footnote 16 ends with the Norman Duke conferring arms upon Harold (Scene 21): hIC WILLELM DEDIT HAROLDO ARMA (‘Here William gave arms to Harold’). Soon after, in the scene next but one (23), which is of fundamental importance in the Tapestry's account, is VBI hAROLD SACRAMENTVM FECIT VVILLELMO DVCI (‘Where Harold swore a sacred oath to Duke William’). Although the exact nature of this oath is unknown, and much debated, it is generally thought that Harold thereby promised to help William become King of the English upon the death of Edward ‘the Confessor’.

The Bayeux Tapestry dedicates almost 10 per cent (6.38 metres) of its 68.28-metre length to the Breton war: an astonishing amount of needlework, given that William's campaign into Brittany might be regarded a sideshow in its broader narrative of the Norman Conquest. However, the importance of the campaign in the context of the embroidery is that it shows Harold's involvement in a war headed by Duke William, and that, as a result of his actions, which include the rescue of two Norman soldiers from the quicksand, Harold is ‘granted arms’ and also ‘swore a sacred oath to William’.Footnote 17 It has been claimed that this ‘gift or arms…put the English Earl in a position of vassalage’.Footnote 18 Others have suggested that the implications of his fealty were less binding,Footnote 19 arguing that instead ‘the context points rather to a recognition by William of the military prowess displayed by Harold during the Breton expedition’.Footnote 20 Whatever the exact nature of these events, and whether or not Harold felt any obligation to them afterwards, this promise was to become a fundamental part of the Norman claim to the English throne by 1066. A version of this was also accepted to some extent by chroniclers more sympathetic to the ‘English view’, namely that Harold was coerced into supporting William's bid to be king.

As Edward dies (Scene 27) he appears to proclaim Harold as protector of the kingdom, closely following the account in the Vita Ædwardi Regis (which was probably commissioned by Queen Edith, Harold Godwinson's sister and the widow of Edward): ‘Edward said a few words of comfort to Edith, who was at his feet. After which, he stretched forth his hand towards Harold to entrust him with Edith and the kingdom.’Footnote 21 Directly following this (Scene 29), Harold is shown being elected king by the council of nobles, known as the Witan, and then he is crowned (Scene 30). The Tapestry's inscription over this scene is unambiguous: hIC RESIDET hAROLD REX ANGLORVM (‘Here sits [enthroned] Harold, King of the English’) – Harold therefore appears in the Tapestry as the legitimate king. His coronation prompts Duke William's preparation for the invasion of England (Scenes 35–40). Once the Norman fleet has crossed the Channel, William and his men enjoy a feast (Scene 43), before the narrative moves to the Battle of Hastings itself, in which Harold appears to have a ‘double-death’: he is slashed in the thigh by a mounted knight after seeming to receive the ‘famous’ arrow in his eye (Scene 57).Footnote 22 Both these scenes will be explored further below.

The Aeneid, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Normans

As will be discussed in the next section, modern scholars have previously suggested that the Bayeux Tapestry appears to reference Virgil's Aeneid in several scenes, a feature paralleled in other contemporaneous texts. This is perhaps unsurprising when we consider that knowledge of the Aeneid was part of the cultural environment of Anglo-Saxon and Norman society; the popularity of the epic was immediate in the Roman period and it remained a school text after the end of the Western Roman Empire into the tenth and eleventh centuries and beyond.Footnote 23 As well as late antique Church Fathers, such as Augustine, and Christian authors, including Prudentius, medieval schooling encompassed classical works by Cicero, Ovid, Horace, Juvenal, and, of course, Virgil. Latin language knowledge created a commonality of culture among the educated elite with the expectation that it would enable those who learnt it to better serve both State and Church.Footnote 24 Surprisingly, in light of this, there are few surviving manuscripts of Virgil's text from Anglo-Saxon England, and much of what survives is extant only in fragments.Footnote 25 However, rather than suggesting that Virgil was relatively unknown to the clergy who were the main consumers of Latin texts, the fragmentary nature and low survival rates instead indicate that the Virgil manuscripts were ‘so heavily used that they eventually fell apart’.Footnote 26 Indeed, extant book lists from Anglo-Saxon libraries suggest that copies of the Aeneid were widely distributed in England,Footnote 27 and, although small in number, existing Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of Virgil outnumber those of other classical authors.Footnote 28

The influence of the Aeneid has also been detected implicitly and explicitly in literature from or commissioned by those in Anglo-Saxon England, indicating that some at least knew the text well enough to directly reference it or subconsciously echo it in their writing.Footnote 29 Its influence on Bede, Aldhelm, Alcuin, and the writer of Beowulf is well attested.Footnote 30 This knowledge did not necessarily come directly from Virgil's epic: the Aeneas story could have been known by members of the clergy and the lay elite through verbal transmission and/or commentaries on the text, particularly that by Servius which was known in Anglo-Saxon educated circles.Footnote 31 Whatever the means, it is clear that by the Norman Conquest the Aeneid was present in the cultural consciousness of the educated Anglo-Saxon clergy and elite.

Furthermore, it appears that the original Roman concerns of the Aeneid – to create a foundation myth and to defend and comment upon the political ambitions of prominent members of the elite – would have been well understood by contemporary audiences both within and outside Anglo-Saxon England. Trojan heroes had been claimed as ancestors of the Merovingian Frankish, Carolingian, and Welsh ruling dynasties. Following these, Norman ancestry had recently been traced back to the Trojan Antenor by Dudo of Saint-Quentin in his Historia Normannorum (History of the Normans, written in 996–1015).Footnote 32 The influence of the Aeneid as the paradigm of a founding narrative can be seen in this choice of the Normans’ ancestor, who may have been selected based on his appearance in Virgil's narrative;Footnote 33 Antenor is mentioned by Venus in Aen. 1.240–9 as escaping the fall of Troy to eventually found Padua, and Dudo quotes part of these lines from the epic in his text.Footnote 34 Homer was unknown to western Europe until Latin translations of the Iliad appeared in the fourteenth century. Familiarity with Troy and the Trojan heroes therefore came via direct or indirect knowledge of texts by Virgil, the Ilias Latina, and, at a slightly later date, Dares Phyrgius and Dictys Cretensis (both discussed further below), as well as through references in other popular classical authors who were studied, such as Cicero and Ovid.Footnote 35 This Trojan ancestry was then further developed during the reign of William ‘the Conqueror’ by William of Jumièges in the Gesta Normannorum Ducum (Deeds of the Norman Dukes, written 1050s–1070s),Footnote 36 who dedicated this work to the Norman duke (and king) and appears to have known the Dares and Dictys version of Antenor as a traitor to Troy;Footnote 37 the significance of this to the reading of Harold-as-Aeneas in the Bayeux Tapestry will be discussed in the final section of the article. Asserting descent from a Trojan hero claimed the majesty of Rome and the gravitas of antiquity for those to whom it was applied, which was particularly useful for the Normans (from Norse-men), who were newcomers to more southerly parts of Europe.Footnote 38

The Aeneid and the Aeneas story were not only employed to provide genealogical distinction within, and a foundation myth for, the courts of the late eleventh century, but were also utilized to comment upon contemporary politics and political players. Allusions to the Aeneid appear to function in this way in the Encomium Emmae Reginae (commissioned in the early 1040s) within the context of an Anglo-Danish court by Queen Emma, widow of both Æthelred II ‘the Unready’ and Cnut ‘the Great’. They also appear in the Vita Ædwardi Regis (dating from around the mid-1060s), made for Emma's daughter-in-law, Queen Edith. Although both works are considered to have been written by Flemish monks, they show ‘the remarkable control the laity could exert over classical learning. The Trojan foundation of Rome…became a tool for negotiating the way intermarriage and conquests made the ruling dynasties of Normandy, Denmark, Wales and Wessex rivals in the English court.’Footnote 39 Both works contain multiple references to Aeneas and the Aeneid. Footnote 40 For example, in the Encomium Emmae Reginae, a text designed to protect Emma's interests within a factionalized court, her late husband Cnut is depicted as ‘a second Aeneas, destined to found an enduring empire’.Footnote 41 Additionally, Emma's father-in-law, Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ (960–1014), who directed the Danish conquest of England but died before this was achieved, is fittingly cast as Anchises through, among other things, verbal references to the Aeneid boat race in Book 5 which marks the anniversary of Anchises’ death.Footnote 42 In the Vita Ædwardi Regis, Aeneid references form part of a text similarly designed to protect its patron, this time amid the succession crisis precipitated by the childlessness of King Edward and Edith's marriage. Allusions to the epic glorify Edward by constructing him as both Aeneas and Octavian in his ownership of a golden ship with purple sails, evoking Octavian's fleet on the Shield of Aeneas (Vita Ædwardi Regis, 20–1; Aen. 8.671–84),Footnote 43 while enemies are undermined and belittled with Virgilian insults and parallels.Footnote 44 Thus, significantly, the Aeneid was being employed to tell the tale of both the royal court in England and other members from Harold's own family just prior to the commissioning of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Yet the Anglo-Danish and Anglo-Saxon courts were not the only employers of the Aeneas story as a ‘powerful political discourse’ in the eleventh century.Footnote 45 For William of Poitiers, for example, Aeneas and episodes from the Aeneid serve to highlight the brilliance of William the Conqueror in comparison within the Gesta Guillelmi (the Deeds of William, written c. 1074–7).Footnote 46 Poitiers suggests that poets like Virgil would praise Duke William as the equal of Aeneas (and Achilles) (Gesta Guillelmi, 134–7 [ii.22]),Footnote 47 while allusions to the Aeneid accompany Duke William's sea journey to England and mid-Channel feast (Gesta Guillelmi, 112–3 [ii.7]; Aen. 1.82–222; 7.107–47) and are designed to contrast Aeneas’ experience with William's voyage, which is calm and consequently divinely favoured.Footnote 48 Furthermore, when Poitiers relates William's contemplation of engaging in single combat with Harold, the author casts the English earl as Turnus to William's Aeneas (Gesta Guillelmi 122–3 [ii.12, 13]; 134–7 [ii.22]; Aen. 12.707–952).Footnote 49 It is of significance that some of these references to the Aeneid in William of Poitiers’ work have parallel echoes in the Bayeux Tapestry: the feast held by the Normans on arrival in England in the Tapestry (Scene 43) parallels the feast held by Aeneas and his follows upon reaching Italy (Aen. 7.107–47), while the wounding of Turnus (Aen. 12.950) and/or the wounding of Aeneas in the thigh (Aen. 12.746–8) is detectable in the Tapestry scene depicting the death of Harold (Scene 57).Footnote 50 These will be discussed further below. That Aeneid allusions also appear in the Encomium Emmae Reginae and the Vita Ædwardi Regis suggests at the very least a common cultural milieu; it is clear, therefore, that the Aeneas story was familiar to those on both sides of the Channel, including to Harold's own family. It is thus within this historical and intellectual context, ripe with Aeneid allusions, that we also find the designer of the Bayeux Tapestry playing with the Aeneas story.

Aeneas in the Bayeux Tapestry

Modern scholars have previously recognized parallels to the Aeneid in several scenes in the Bayeux Tapestry. Sandy Heslop has provided a number of examples, arguing that these are intentional parallels which present the viewer with additional information about the narrative.Footnote 51 Some of his suggestions are explored and expanded upon below, as they emphasize that the rescue scene is not isolated in its allusion to the Aeneid within the Tapestry.

The scene which has primarily drawn attention from scholars regarding Aeneid allusions is that depicting Harold's journey across the Channel (Scene 4–6; see figure 2), partly because its inscription is unusual in being one of only two rhetorical flourishes employed in the Tapestry inscriptions: ET VELIS VENTO PLENIS VENIT IN TERRA VVIDONIS COMITIS (‘and with the wind full in his sails [Harold] came to the land of Count Guy’).Footnote 52 As Gale Owen-Crocker has noted, there is a ‘pleasing alliteration’ of velus and ventus which gave rise to variations of velis vento plenis becoming a favourite among classical authors. Similar wording can be identified in Horace, Lucan, Lucretius, and Virgil, as well as in later writings, such as Beowulf and work by Bede.Footnote 53 She concludes, without further comment, that Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.176–7 is the closest verbal parallel: Et quoniam magno feror aequore plenaque ventis / vela dedi: nihil est toto, quod perstet, in orbe (‘And since I am carried upon the great sea and have surrendered full sails to the winds: there is nothing in all the world which endures’). However, Ovid was another well-known classical author in the medieval period, and if this was the source of inspiration for the Tapestry designer then it is perhaps notable within the context of the embroidery's portrayal of Harold that these lines come from the long speech about change, essentially a meta-Metamorphosis, by Pythagoras to Numa. This is not only because Numa was considered a wise and pious king, responsible for encouraging religious practice among the early Romans,Footnote 54 and as we will see, piety is a trait which is attached particularly to Harold in the Bayeux Tapestry. It is also curious because Pythagoras’ speech ends with a reference to the prophecy of Helenus about Rome's founding from the Aeneid,Footnote 55 and a variation of velis vento (omitting plenis) occurs within the Aeneid during this episode (Aen. 3.473–2: interea classem velis aptare iubebat / Anchises, fieret vento mora ne qua ferentis [‘Meanwhile Anchises ordered us to fit out the ships with sails, so that the favouring wind would meet no delay’]). Regarding the Tapestry, the potential allusion's significance is that the favouring wind that Anchises is preparing for will speed him to his death, while also setting in motion the journey towards the foundation of the Roman Empire, and this may have been considered an apt parallel to Harold by the Tapestry designer.

Figure 2.

‘With the wind full in his sails’, Earl Harold of Wessex crosses the English Channel by ship. Detail from the Bayeux Tapestry, eleventh century (with special permission from the City of Bayeux).

Yet this is not the only time that a variation of velis vento plenis can be found in the Aeneid; indeed, the parallel between the Tapestry inscription and Aen. 5.281 (vela facit tamen et plenis subit ostia velis [‘nevertheless, he hoists the sail and under full sail makes it to harbour’]) was noticed by Bernard Bachrach and has been further expanded upon by Heslop.Footnote 56 Heslop drew a connection between Sergetus’ reckless and disastrous manoeuvre during Book 5's boat race and Harold's actions in landing himself in Guy of Ponthieu's hands: ‘The reference is thus to one who made a foolish decision and ended up a laughing stock. With the benefit of hindsight, it was an apposite comparison to make with Harold's action [in ending up at the wrong place].’Footnote 57 The point is strengthened further, however, if we consider something that Heslop does not comment upon: that just prior to this Virgil had emphasized Sergestus’ connection to the Sergian family, who counted Catiline as a recent (to Virgil) member (Aen. 5.121). Sergestus’ impetuous actions drive himself and his crew onto the rocks in a way that foreshadows the behaviour of his descendant,Footnote 58 but for the viewers of the Bayeux Tapestry this would also foreshadow Harold's deeds, suggesting that he was not simply a fool, but a man whose poor decisions would inevitably lead to self-destruction.

Additionally, this Tapestry scene has allusions to the Aeneid more generally, if we take the inscription to suggest that Harold was heading for Normandy but was blown off course, as William of Malmesbury (c. 1090–c. 1142) recounts.Footnote 59 Viewers of the Bayeux Tapestry may have recalled a similar circumstance affecting Aeneas and the remaining Trojans in Book 1, when the goddess Juno, angered that some Trojans still survive, orders Aeolus, god of the winds, to send a storm to destroy their ships, driving them off course (Aen. 1.34–123).

It is perhaps overmuch to suggest that the narrative in these early sections, which include the rescue scene, follows Aeneid 1 (and 4) closely. However, there are broad parallels between both Harold's and Aeneas’ stories in the early parts of the Tapestry and the epic, beyond landing in an unintended destination, and these seem to cast Harold as Aeneas or place Harold in familiar Aeneid situations but as a ‘reverse’ or ‘negative’ Aeneas. The latter instance is suggested by Tapestry Scene 9. Both Aeneas and Harold approach a ruler (Dido/Guy of Poitiers) as a supplicant and as the result of difficulties, but, whereas Aeneas’ identity as the son of a goddess and as a noble prince of Troy is enhanced as he steps out of a divinely conjured cloud to the awe of Dido (Aen. 1.586–95), Harold in contrast arrives as a prisoner, carrying his sword – the identity marker of his noble, masculine, and military status – sheathed in its belt, effectively impotent.

More commonly, however, the Tapestry depicts Harold as Aeneas; the rescue scene is one specific instance, and will be discussed in detail below, but we might also consider more generally that both Harold and Aeneas can be (and were) viewed as oath-breakers, even though their texts, the Tapestry and the Aeneid, seem to suggest otherwise: as indicated previously, the nature of Harold's oath in Scene 23 is not certain, while Aeneas defends himself to Dido upon his departure by claiming that he made no marriage contract with her (Aen. 4.337–9).Footnote 60 Furthermore, as will be returned to in due course, both Harold and Aeneas seem to be driven by a destiny over which they have no control. For Harold this is strongly implied by his accidental landing in Ponthieu (Scenes 4–5), which seems to reflect Aeneas’ claim Italiam non sponte sequor (‘It is not by my wish that I make for Italy’, Aen. 4.361) that is echoed throughout the events in the Aeneid. Additionally, the Tapestry's depiction of a comet (Scenes 32–3) further emphasizes Harold's inability to escape his fate and his similarities with Aeneas, as it has been considered a parallel to the Shield of Aeneas and Aen. 1.712 in its prophesying of future events,Footnote 61 events which are set in motion by the actions of the narratives’ protagonists. The early part of the Tapestry, therefore, appears to allude to the early books of the Aeneid, placing Harold in the Aeneas role.

Similarly, echoes to later parts of the Aeneid appear in later parts of the Bayeux Tapestry: Harold's death scene (57) again suggested an Aeneid allusion to Heslop, who argued that the wound Harold receives in the thigh references that given to Turnus (Aen. 12.919–26).Footnote 62 However, the parallels are not exact: Harold is struck by a sword in the Bayeux Tapestry,Footnote 63 not a spear (telum) – which is the weapon that wounds Turnus.Footnote 64 It is attractive to contemplate that Harold, who seems to have been cast as Aeneas in the early part of the Tapestry, has now taken on the role of Turnus at his death – especially when we consider that William of Poitiers similarly makes this connection to Turnus in order to denigrate Harold. However, it is perhaps significant that Aeneas is also wounded in the thigh in the fighting just prior to his killing of Turnus (Aen. 12.746–8). Again, the parallels are not exact (Aeneas is struck by an arrow and of course does not die), but Harold may be appearing as a ‘reverse’ Aeneas here, just as he did in the earlier sections of the Tapestry, indicating that the designer still views Harold as Aeneas, even to the last.

A further Aeneid reference in the Bayeux Tapestry was identified by Heslop in the scene depicting a Norman feast, over which Odo presides and which takes place after Duke William's army have landed in England (Scene 43; Aen. 7.107–47).Footnote 65 It may be that this is the Tapestry's version of the mid-Channel feast of which William of Poitiers talks and which the latter intersperses with Aeneid references (Gesta Guillelmi, 112–13 [ii.7]; Aen. 1.82–222, 7.107–47; see above).Footnote 66 If this is the case, it is noteworthy that both the Tapestry and William of Poitiers allude to the feast which signifies that Aeneas has at last reached his destined land, one that will eventually give birth to a mighty empire. The significance for both Tapestry and Poitiers seems clear, and it appears that, in the embroidery, Duke William or perhaps Odo (as the central figure in the scene) has displaced Harold as Aeneas.

Anglo-Saxon manuscript illumination, classical texts, and other possible artistic influences on the rescue scene in the Bayeux Tapestry

However, this feast scene also has strong visual parallels to the manuscript illustration of the Last Supper in a late sixth-century Italian illuminated gospel book (known to be in the library of St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury by the eleventh century) thought to have been brought to England by St Augustine himself in c. 597, or thereafter.Footnote 67 Indeed, the extent to which the Bayeux Tapestry designer borrows from illuminations produced or known from manuscripts kept at Canterbury, especially of late Anglo-Saxon artistry, is well documented.Footnote 68 In brief, the style of the Tapestry – though accounting for the differences in creating a design in embroidery versus vellum – matches well with what we find in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the late tenth and early to mid-eleventh century. Frances Wormald highlighted the fact that parts of the Tapestry's design ‘retains a great deal of the spirit of English drawing’, including ‘extraordinary vigour of facial expression’.Footnote 69 Notable in this respect is the Harley 603 Psalter (made at Canterbury, Christ Church from c. 1010, with later additionsFootnote 70), which is a copy of the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter (produced at Hautvillers Abbey, near Rheims, c. 820–35Footnote 71), and was to have a profound impact on Anglo-Saxon art thereafter.Footnote 72 Similar influences can be found across an array of late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, not only those produced in Canterbury, but further afield also, including in France, where there was a ‘close dependence of Norman illumination upon English eleventh-century manuscript decoration’.Footnote 73 The Tapestry designer was particularly influenced by the imagery of the Old English Hexateuch (probably made at St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury in the second quarter of the eleventh centuryFootnote 74), and numerous parallels between the Bayeux Tapestry and the Hexateuch have been identified.Footnote 75

There are no parallels in the Old English Hexateuch for the scene where Harold rescues two Normans from the sands of the Couesnon. However, possible models have been identified for the border of this scene (17) where two fish are fighting over an eel from an illustrated Aratea – a Greek astronomical poem translated into Latin by Cicero.Footnote 76 It is possible that other aspects of this scene of Harold's bravery were borrowed from manuscripts that are now lost; we know that what survives of Anglo-Saxon manuscript art is only a small percentage of what once existed.Footnote 77 The Anglo-Saxon manuscript illustration cycle of the Psychomachia by Prudentius has also been identified as influential to the imagery of the Bayeux Tapestry in a number of ways.Footnote 78 This includes the horse shown falling forwards with its rider unseated (Figure 150) immediately prior to the rescue scene, which has some similarities with the illustration of Superbia falling into a pit with her horse in the British Library manuscript Cotton Cleopatra C.viii (fol. 16r).Footnote 79 The suggestion that this refers back to an earlier horse of Harold's and thus foreshadows the Battle of Hastings, which includes a horse in a similar position, is interesting.Footnote 80 However, it is difficult to accept that the falling horse immediately prior to the rescue scene indicates that the latter should be read alongside another, earlier, border image (of a horse dragging a plough underneath the scene [10], where William learns of Harold's capture), as signifying that ‘Harold [in rescuing the Normans] is sowing the seeds of the relationship with William’ or that here Harold's action is ‘likened to that of a horse who both carries and pulls’.Footnote 81 Regardless of the exact influences from illuminated manuscripts on the rescue scene, there is a clear tradition of illuminating Latin texts from the classical and late antique world during the eleventh and twelfth centuries and these images were used by the Bayeux Tapestry designer for artistic inspiration.

Images from Latin texts were therefore a direct and indirect influence on the Tapestry; however, some scholars have also proposed that Roman artworks were not unknown to its designer. The columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, which similarly commemorate contemporary military campaigns, have been suggested as the source for a number of the scenes, such as that depicting shipbuilding (Scene 37) and one of a woman fleeing a house with her child (Scene 47), along with several more.Footnote 82 Included with these is the rescue scene, which has been connected to one on Trajan's column showing Dacian soldiers drowning.Footnote 83 However, here no Dacian soldier is being carried ‘piggyback’, and as such it is missing a crucial element of the Bayeux Tapestry rescue scene – indeed it is partly this element which makes its parallel with the Aeneid so compelling, as will be discussed below. Even if the Tapestry designer visited Rome to see this monument, which is by no means certain or even likely, the positioning of this scene almost halfway up the column would have made it difficult to view.Footnote 84 The suggestion that instead these images might have been transmitted into Anglo-Saxon art indirectly is difficult to confirm either way, but, as has been noted above and will be discussed below, there are more clear-cut forerunners to the Tapestry imagery here.Footnote 85

Harold-as-Aeneas: the rescue scene

For the rescue scene, we have suggested throughout that the inspiration is the Aeneid and it seems likely that the visual composition of the figures is a reference to the text of Aen. 2.707–24 rather than to a surviving piece of Roman artwork. This is because of the positioning of the Norman on Harold's back. Although in earlier Greco-Roman art Anchises was depicted on Aeneas’ back, in similar manner to the Norman in the Bayeux Tapestry,Footnote 86 after the first century ce he is instead represented as sitting on the left shoulder of Aeneas, as if he was in a chair.Footnote 87 This appears to be in imitation of the composition of figures which made up the statue group in the Forum of Augustus. Images of Aeneas and Anchises fleeing Troy were present in Greek and Roman art before Virgil – for example, on Greek archaic vases and coins of the Roman Republic – but it was Virgil's version of the story, which now included Ascanius, that became the ultimate source for artistic representations of this group from the first century ce and beyond.Footnote 88 This was largely thanks to the emperor Augustus, whose forum, dedicated at Rome in 2 bce, included a prominent statue group of Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius. The presence of Ascanius strongly suggests that Virgil's text was the main inspiration for this work, as this son of Aeneas was rarely included in earlier depictions.Footnote 89 While the original sculpture no longer survives, the number of copies from the first century ce onwards in different media, such as reliefs, frescoes, gems, and terracotta statues, attest to both what it looked like and its popularity.Footnote 90 Moreover, these copies were not simply (or only) bought and/or commissioned to show that the owner was a follower of art trends or loyal to the Augustan regime;Footnote 91 they also developed a deeper significance. By the Flavian period, seventy years later, the Aeneas group was being utilized on the tombstones of men and women to honour the deceased along with the dedicator of the grave, ‘[assimilating] the moral content of this originally political image…to express pietas’.Footnote 92

Virgil's lines, then, become ‘the text for perhaps the most famous single image associated with the Aeneid’.Footnote 93 However, these lines also indicate that Anchises is carried on Aeneas’ neck and shoulders (ergo age, care pater, cervici imponere nostrae; / ipse subibo umeris; Aen. 2.707–8), and this is similar to how the rescued Norman in the Bayeux Tapestry is positioned. Importantly, the scene is additionally not referencing pre-Virgilian artistic representations of the Aeneas group, as these rarely (if at all) depicted Ascanius; indeed, Ascanius’ prominent position within the Aeneid, as Aeneas’ only son, appears to have been Virgil's invention – he is not mentioned by Homer, for example.Footnote 94 Furthermore, as noted above, it seems unlikely that the designer of the Bayeux Tapestry would have had knowledge of these earlier artworks.

These lines were a favourite with Roman artists and consumers of art because they vividly capture the idea of Aeneas as pius Aeneas, a hero who is religiously pious, as well as one who knows his duty to his homeland and family. Considering that Aeneas is a hero, indeed the hero of the Aeneid, it is striking that Harold is the one who gets to ‘play’ Aeneas on the Bayeux Tapestry. If the Tapestry is a pro-Norman work, as some have suggested,Footnote 95 the visual reference to these lines in the embroidery's depiction of Harold rescuing the Normans is perhaps unexpected. Although Harold is acting the hero within this scene, for any Normans viewing the Tapestry, his overall actions in its narrative and especially in the wider historical context embody instead the exact opposite qualities of those which the original Aeneid lines imply. This is because, according to the Norman sources, Harold is a perjurer, who has impiously broken a sworn oath, gone against the wishes of his kinsman Edward ‘the Confessor’ in proclaiming himself king, and plunged his homeland into war as a result. Taking this view, the visual identification of Harold here with pius Aeneas would make his later oath-breaking all the more remarkable (perhaps even comedic?) for Norman audiences, as the distance between the two characters could not be greater. We might rather expect Duke William to be cast in the Aeneas role, especially as contemporary texts written about the Norman Conquest (such as that of William of Poitiers) praise William through allusions to Aeneas and the Aeneas story, as noted above.Footnote 96 After all, Aeneas is not only a hero, but a founding ancestor of a great empire.

However, although she does not make the connection, Emily Winkler's identification of Aeneas as a man buffeted by fate,Footnote 97 compared to the portrayal of William ‘the Conqueror’ as ‘a hero…with greater control of his situation and destiny’ because of his Christian-God-approved (and therefore superior) enterprise in William of Poitiers’ work, may hold the key to this mystery. In the Bayeux Tapestry, Harold seldom appears to be in control of his fortune.Footnote 98 His presence in Duke William's retinue (leading to the scene of the rescue) is a result of a series of unfortunate events, beginning with being accidentally being blown off course or wrecked on the coast of Ponthieu. As noted earlier, he could therefore be understood by contemporary viewers as Aeneas in this section of the Bayeux Tapestry, in the epic hero's role as a man driven by, rather than in control of, the winds of divine fate. This characterization is signalled initially by the Virgilian inscription in Scenes 4–5 (velis vento plenis – very apt in light of future events), reinforced by Harold-as-Aeneas in the rescue scene, and then further confirmed by the foreshadowing of doom heralded by the comet and ‘phantom fleet’ which frame Harold's coronation scene.Footnote 99

Such a portrayal does not, however, need to imply that the Bayeux Tapestry is pro-Norman and, indeed, it is probably not so.Footnote 100 It is striking how much of the Tapestry focuses on Harold, rather than William – which would be the expectation if its narrative was unambiguously pro-Norman.Footnote 101 Instead the Tapestry presents Harold as a flawed figure, but one who is generally courageous and, significantly, pious. Furthermore, the comparisons to Aeneas, created by allusions to Virgil's epic in the Tapestry, add further depth to this characterization. Indeed, the Bayeux Tapestry seems to emphasize Harold's piety, rather than his perjury: in Scene 3, for example, the English earl is shown visiting Bosham church with a companion, presumably to pray before he embarks for Normandy. Furthermore, no other character in the Bayeux Tapestry is as pious as Harold; Duke William, perhaps surprisingly, is ‘never seen at church or at prayer or in any posture of piety’, despite other sources indicating that he sought papal approval before moving against Harold.Footnote 102 Additionally, in contrast to contemporary Norman sources, the embroidery recognizes Harold as a legitimate king with its unambiguous inscription above the scene of his coronation (Scene 30): hIC RESIDET hAROLD REX ANGLORVM (‘Here sits [enthroned] Harold, King of the English’). The Tapestry inscription, moreover, continues to call Harold rex throughout, even in his death scene.Footnote 103 As Pierre Bouet and François Neveux have commented:

if this were not the case [that the Tapestry considers Harold as a legitimate king], then it would have been easy for the patron or the designer of the Tapestry to add to the inscription the words ‘perirus’, ‘periuratus’, ‘uesanus’, ‘sceleratus’, ‘iniustus’, every single time Harold was depicted – the terms that we find in the Norman chronicles after 1070.Footnote 104

The rescue scene further reinforces this characterization of pious Harold, while adding another layer to the depiction of Harold-as-Aeneas present in the Bayeux Tapestry within the various scenes discussed above. Those of the clergy and lay elite (and possibly others) who viewed the Bayeux Tapestry would have known the Aeneid and other classical texts through their education and work or leisure, whether English or Norman. When they looked at the Tapestry they would have brought their knowledge of the epic and the Aeneas story to the work, viewing it within this context (as well as others).Footnote 105 The inclusion of the rescue scene, not mentioned by any other contemporary source and with its allusion to Aeneas at his most pious, suggests that Harold would have been understood as a similarly pious and courageous figure – if somewhat unfortunate.

Harold as Aeneas the traitor

It makes it all the more intriguing, then, that for medieval viewers of the Bayeux Tapestry from the late eleventh or early twelfth century, but perhaps as early as the 1050s ce for the Normans, this scene may have taken on another meaning which was perhaps not intended by the original designer, but nevertheless suited the characterization of Harold as an oath-breaker and traitor found in the contemporary Norman accounts. During this period, two Latin texts about the Trojan War became very popular and widely circulated: the de excidio Troiae by Dares Phyrgius and the Ephemeris de bello Troiano by Dictys Cretensis.Footnote 106 Although they were probably written in about the first century ce in Greek, they were transmitted to the medieval world via Latin translations made around the fourth century (for Dares’ work) and the sixth century (for Dictys’). Both texts claimed, however, to be ‘eye-witness’ accounts from participants in the Trojan War (Dares on the Trojan side, Dictys on the Greek), and as a result gained a ‘success out of all proportion to their literary merit, not only during the Middle Ages, but even beyond’, as Hugo Buchthal notes.Footnote 107 In contrast to Virgil's Aeneid, which was recognized as a fabula, a fictional narrative, within this period,Footnote 108 the texts of Dares and Dictys were believed to be historically accurate because of these claims, and were often included in manuscripts with Virgil's text, in order to present another, ‘factual’ view of the Trojan War.Footnote 109

These texts were designed to refute much of Homer's account of the Trojan WarFootnote 110 but, as Homer was mostly unknown in western Europe during the early medieval period, their significance for Harold-as-Aeneas in the Bayeux Tapestry lies in their presentation of Aeneas. In direct opposition to Virgil's Aeneid, Dares and Dictys present the epic hero as a traitor who, along with Antenor, conspires with the Greeks to ensure the defeat of Troy.Footnote 111 Thus, unlike Virgil's Aeneas, who goes back to defend his city and only leaves Troy on divine orders, the Aeneas of Dares and Dictys is a coward whose flight from the city is a result of his own treachery. Although it appears that these versions were not in circulation in England before the end of the eleventh century,Footnote 112 on the Continent their diffusion was limited but broad geographically.Footnote 113 This alternative legend was therefore perhaps known to the Normans by the 1050s, but at least by the late 1070s; the unequivocal treachery of Antenor in William of Jumièges’ Gesta Normannorum Ducum suggests that this is so, as this characterization of Antenor is found primarily in the Dares’ and Dictys’ narratives, and does not appear in the Aeneid (as noted above).Footnote 114

Although knowledge of the Aeneid lines would still have been necessary for understanding the allusion in the Bayeux Tapestry scene, as neither Dares nor Dictys have corresponding verbal imagery, awareness of this ‘counter-tradition’ to the Aeneid Footnote 115 would have added a further layer to the representation of Harold-as-Aeneas in the rescue scene. This additional understanding did not present a disjunction between pius Aeneas and the perjurer Harold, but instead could have been read straightforwardly as Harold in the role of Aeneas, the betrayer of his homeland. The Tapestry then (even if unintentionally) accommodates a changing Anglo-Saxon and Norman world-view of the circumstances and events that led to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.

Conclusion

The depiction of Harold rescuing two Normans during the Breton campaign is one of several possible allusions to the Aeneid in the Bayeux Tapestry. Although he is presented in this scene as heroic, the visual reference to lines of Virgil's Aeneid, which portray Aeneas at peak pietas, signals that there is more to be understood here. The imagery of the rescue scene, combined with the inscription velis vento plenis (Scenes 4–5), implies that Harold was to be understood as an Aeneas-figure, courageous and apparently pious but at the mercy of divine forces greater than himself. By depicting Harold as Aeneas, the Tapestry sets up a narrative tension between the expectation created by this characterization – that Harold's destiny is to found a mighty dynasty in a society made up of an amalgamation of different peoples – and the outcome of the Battle of Hastings. For Norman and Anglo-Saxon viewers, their education in classical texts would allow them to ‘read’ the Tapestry through their knowledge of the Aeneid and the Aeneas story. Here, however, the readings diverge. For the Normans, Harold's oath-breaking and treachery make it clear that Harold will not be the originator of this dynasty; he is not the pius Aeneas of Virgil and has therefore forfeited his claim to this mantle. For them, and for future medieval viewers of the Bayeux Tapestry, Harold may have been Virgil's Aeneas, but he was also an Aeneas who was overlaid with the narratives of Dares Phyrgius (and Dictys Cretensis) that showed the hero as a traitor to Troy. For the Anglo-Saxons, however, and those who did not know of this alternative portrayal, the presence of Harold-as-Aeneas accommodates and resonates with their accounts of the Conquest. By emphasizing the piety and courage of Harold, it shows him to be a tragic but heroic figure – pius Harold.

Footnotes

The authors would like to thank David Bates, Liesbeth van Houts, Gale Owen-Crocker, and the anonymous reviewer of this article for their time and helpful comments, as well as Helen Lovatt for bibliographic suggestions regarding the works of Dares and Dictys, and Ivana Petrovic for guiding us through the review and submission process. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are our own.

References

1 The numbering of the Bayeux Tapestry scenes follows that on the embroidery itself (see Wilson, D. M., The Bayeux Tapestry [London, 1985], 1–74Google Scholar, for a full-colour facsimile, though the scene numbers are not given).

2 The numbering of figures in the Bayeux Tapestry follows Lewis, M. J., The Archaeological Authority of the Bayeux Tapestry (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar, 267 ff; see also Lewis, M. J., Owen-Crocker, G. R., and Terkla, D. (eds.), The Bayeux Tapestry. New Approaches (Oxford, 2011)Google Scholar, 165 ff.

3 Lewis, M. J., ‘Identity and Status in the Bayeux Tapestry: The Iconographic and Artefactual Evidence’, Anglo-Norman Studies 29 (2007), 101Google Scholar.

4 The Tapestry designer gives Harold the comital title dux, instead of the Old English form, eorl.

5 G. Beech, Was the Bayeux Tapestry Made in France? The Case for St. Florent of Saumur (New York, 2005), 69.

6 Such as William of Poitiers in his Gesta Guillelmi (‘The Deeds of William’, completed c. 1077), leading modern scholars to debate its historical reality: see Lucien Musset, La Tapisserie de Bayeux (Paris, 1989), 261, who considers it historical reality; Simone Bertrand, The Bayeux Tapestry (Rennes, 1978), 15, who believes that the Tapestry ‘“pays homage” to Harold's chivalresque gesture’. In contrast, R. H. C. Davis, ‘William of Poitiers and His History of William the Conqueror’, in R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hardrill (eds.), The Writing of History in the Middle Ages. Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford, 1981), 82, dismisses it as nothing but ‘a piece of Herculean folklore’ (note the classicizing reference).

Regarding the Breton war more generally, not only does the Tapestry's story differ from that of the other main account of this war, as told by William of Poitiers, but its outcome is more favourable to Duke William, in that his defeat of Count Conan is humiliating and comprehensive. Beech (n. 5), 62, 122, notes that, while later historians (such as Orderic Vitalis, 1075–1142/3, and William of Malmesbury, c. 1090–c. 1142) mention the Breton campaign, their ‘brief allusions’ are based upon William of Poitiers’ account. D. Bates, William the Conqueror (New Haven, CT, and London, 2018), 200, adds Wace (c. 1100–74) to the mix of those near-contemporary sources that mention this war. See also L. Musset, The Bayeux Tapestry (Woodbridge, 2005), 18; R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (eds.), Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers (Oxford, 1998).

7 ‘Come then, dear father, place yourself upon my neck; my own shoulders will support you, the task will not weigh me down…Let little Iulus be my comrade…’ So, saying this, once I had thrown garments on my broad shoulders and neck, and covered them with a tawny lion's pelt, I stooped to the burden; little Iulus interweaves his hands and follows his father with unequal steps…’ Aeneid translations throughout adapted from H. Rushton Fairclough (ed. and trans.), Virgil. Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid. Books 1–6, rev. G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library 63 (Cambridge, MA, 1916).

8 P. G. Walsh, ‘Virgil and Medieval Epic’, in R. A. Cardwell and J. Hamilton (eds.), Virgil in a Cultural Tradition. Essays to Celebrate the Bimillenium (Nottingham, 1986), 52, 60; C. Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England. Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer (Cambridge, 1995), 12, 33; T. Webber, ‘Textual Communities (Latin)’, in J. Crick and E. van Houts (eds.), A Social History of England, 900–1200 (Cambridge, 2011), 335–6; E. Tyler, ‘Trojans in Anglo-Saxon England: Precedent without Descent’, Review of English Studies, n.s. 64.283 (2013), 8.

9 The Bayeux Tapestry was most likely created soon after the events it depicts, perhaps between 1072 and 1077, upon the request of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and half-brother of Duke William: see R. Gameson (ed.), The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry (Woodbridge, 1997), 161; M. J. Lewis, The Real World of the Bayeux Tapestry (Stroud, 2008), 191.

10 For example, W. Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry (Munich and New York, 1994), 58.

11 For suggested viewers of the Tapestry – Anglo-Saxon, Norman, or an emerging ‘Anglo-Norman’ aristocracy – see e.g. S. A. Brown, ‘Cognate Imagery: The Bear, Harold and the Bayeux Tapestry’, in G. R. Owen-Crocker (ed.), King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry (Woodbridge 2005), 150–1; T. A. Heslop, ‘Regarding the Spectators of the Bayeux Tapestry: Bishop Odo and His Circle’, Art History 32.2 (2009), 223–49.

12 P. Bouet and F. Neveux, La Tapisserie de Bayeux. Révélations et mystères d'une broderie du Moyen Âge (Rennes, 2013), 31. See also F. Neveux, ‘L'expédition de Guillaume le Bâtard en Bretagne (vers 1064)’, in J. Quaghebeur and S. Soleil (eds.), Le pouvoir et la foi au Moyen Age en Bretagne et dans l'Europe de l'Ouest (Rennes, 2010), 617–37; K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, ‘L'expédition de Guillaume, duc de Normandie, et du comte Harold en Bretagne (1064): le témoignage de la tapisserie de Bayeux et des chroniqueurs anglo-normands’, Mémoires de la Société d'Histoire et d'Archéologie de Bretagne 40 (2013), 203–24.

13 C. H. Gibbs-Smith, The Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1973), 11. However, for another view, see G. R. Owen-Crocker, ‘The Embroidered Word: Text in the Bayeux Tapestry’, in R. Netherton and G. R. Owen-Crocker (eds.), Medieval Dress and Textiles 2 (2006), 55.

14 Its Romanesque abbey was built upon the orders of Duke Richard II of Normandy (r. 966–1026). Some scholars have suggested that the depiction of Mont-Saint-Michel in the Tapestry shows that the designer of the embroidery ‘knew the abbey well’ (Beech [n. 5], 69; Musset 2005 [n. 6], 130), but the church is clearly stylized, and does not relate well to what we know about how the abbey appeared in the mid eleventh-century from the archaeological evidence (Lewis [n. 2], 28–9; T. Rowley, An Archaeological Study of the Bayeux Tapestry. The Landscapes, Buildings and Places [Barnsley, 2016], 63–70). By 1064 there was at Mont-Saint-Michel a Breton monk named Scolland, who was to become the future Abbot of St Augustine's, Canterbury (1072–87), and therefore could have been involved with the production of the Bayeux Tapestry itself (H. Clarke, ‘The Identity of the Designer of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Anglo-Norman Studies 35 [2013], 120–39; E. C. Pastan and S. D. White, with K. Gilbert, The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contents. A Reassessment [Woodbridge, 2014], 121–5).

15 William of Poitiers says that Conan was besieging Dol; therefore he should not be shown coming down from the castle itself as the Bayeux Tapestry has it (R. Gameson, ‘The Origin, Art and Message of the Bayeux Tapestry’, in Gameson [n. 9], 204). Other identifications have been made (see Beech [n. 5], 71). The inspiration for this scene is almost certainly an illustration in the Old English Hexateuch. In this illumination, the fleeing man is an Israelite spy escaping from Jericho, so it would fit also that the man on the rope is fleeing, and therefore it is Conan (Grape [n. 10], 111).

16 William of Poitiers suggests that ‘the Duke of Normandy had gained a limited victory’ over Conan (Beech [n. 5], 73).

17 Musset 2005 (n. 6), 130, 142, 150–2. It is worth noting that William of Poitiers places ‘the oath’ at Bonneville-sur-Torques, before the Breton expedition, whereas the Tapestry shows it at Bayeux and taking place after (N. P. Brooks and H. E. Walker, ‘The Authority and Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Anglo-Norman Studies 1 (1979), 28; Lewis (n. 9), 28.

18 Wilson (n. 1), 180.

19 Gibbs-Smith (n. 13), 11; M. Pagès I Paretas, El Tapís de Bayeux, Eina Política (Barcelona, 2015), 158.

20 Musset 2005 (n. 6), 142.

21 Vita Ædwardi Regis ii.II (translation from F. Barlow [ed. and trans.], The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster [Oxford, 1992], 119). This text contains references to the Aeneid, for which see further below.

22 See Brooks and Walker (n. 17), 81–91, for a discussion of Harold's death scene in the Tapestry. See also Heslop (n. 11), 239, for a reading of Harold's death against the Aeneid (considered below) and the phrase ‘double-death’.

23 P. G. Walsh, ‘Virgil and Medieval Epic’, in Cardwell and Hamilton (n. 8), 52, 60; C. Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England. Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer (Cambridge, 1995), 12, 33; Tyler (n. 8), 8.

24 See discussions by J. Zoilkowski, ‘Latin and Vernacular Literature’, and D. Luscombe, ‘Thought and Learning’, both in D. Luscombe and J. Riley Smith (eds.), The New Cambridge Medieval History. Vol IV, c. 1024–c. 1198, Part I (Cambridge, 2004), 658–92 and 461–98 respectively.

25 G. R. Wieland, ‘A Survey of Latin Manuscripts’, in G. Owen-Crocker (ed.), Working with Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (Exeter, 2009), 146 (table 4), 148.

26 Ibid., 115, 148; see also Baswell (n. 23), 30.

27 Baswell (n. 23), 31.

28 Wieland (n. 25), 146 (table 4).

29 Baswell (n. 23), 32; Wieland (n. 25), 148; Tyler (n. 8), passim.

30 Walsh (n. 23), 52, 60; Baswell (n. 23), 12, 33; Tyler (n. 8), 8.

31 Baswell (n. 23), 31–2, 36–7; Tyler (n. 8), 4–9.

32 Tyler (n. 8), 1–3. She notes, however, that the Anglo-Saxons did not claim a Trojan ancestor in order to make a deliberate political statement of exceptionality. See also R. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing, 1: The Classical Tradition from Einhard to Geoffrey of Monmouth’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. 20 (1970), 243–63; M. Coumert, Origines des peoples. Les récits du Haut Moyen Âge occidental (550–850) (Paris, 2007).

33 On the influence of the Aeneid, see P. Bouet, ‘Dudon de S. Quentin et Virgile’, Recueil d’études en hommage à Musset, Cahiers des Annales de Normandie 23 (Caen, 1990), 215–36; E. van Houts ‘Historical Writing’, in C. Harper-Bill and E. van Houts, A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2002), 104.

The choice of Antenor by Dudo seems to have puzzled some modern scholars, such as Tyler (n. 8), 3, because later works of antiquity, particularly that by Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis (discussed below), develop the Iliad's Antenor, a royal advisor sympathetic to peace, into a traitor who betrayed Troy to the Greeks. However, these late antique works, although extremely popular in the medieval period, do not seem to have been circulated widely until the mid to later part of the eleventh century, as Tyler herself notes (ibid., 8), in reference to English circulation. The choice of Antenor is therefore less problematic in Dudo's work, although this does little to explain the decision of William of Jumièges to emphasize Antenor's treachery. William's narrative does, however, suggest that the works of Dares and/or Dictys appear to have been known on the Continent by the 1070s, or perhaps even by the 1050s or 1060s, if van Houts is correct to date the revisions of Dudo's work in the Gesta Normannorum Ducum to these decades (E. M. C. van Houts, The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigini, vol. 1 [Oxford, 1992], xxxii–xxxv). See further below.

34 ‘And so the Daci called themselves Danai, or Danes, and boast that they are descended from Antenor; who when, in former times the lands of Troy were laid waste, “slipped away through the middle of the Greeks” and “penetrated” the confines “of Illyria” with his own men.’ Dudo, Historia Normannorum, 1.3. Translation from E. Christiansen (ed. and trans.), Dudo of Quentin, History of the Normans. Translation with Introduction and Notes (Woodbridge, 1998), 16 (with n. 77). Cf. Aen. 1.242–3: Antenor potuit, mediis elapsus Achivis, / Illyricos penetrare sinus… (‘Antenor could slip away from the Achaean host, and enter the Illyrian gulf…’).

35 See H. Buchthal, Historia Troiana. Studies in the History of Medieval Secular Illustration (London and Leiden, 1971), 1.

36 Van Houts 1992 (n. 33), xxxii–xxxv. See also van Houts 2002 (n. 33), 105.

37 Iactant enim Troianos ex sua stirpe processisse, Antenoremque ab urbis exterminio cum duobus milibus militum et quingentis uiris ob proditionem illius ab eo perpetratam euasisse… (‘[The Goths] also boast that the Trojans were of their stock, and that Antenor, when forced to flee by his betrayal after the fall of Troy, escaped with two thousand soldiers and five hundred men…’). William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum i.3(4), translation from van Houts 1992 (n. 33), 14–16. See also Buchthal (n. 35), 3; Tyler (n. 8), 3.

38 The first Norman duke was Rollo (c. 860–c. 930), a Viking, though he never used the comital title dux.

39 Tyler (n. 8), 10–11. See also van Houts 2002 (n. 33), 108–9.

40 Tyler (n. 8), 10–20.

41 Ibid., 12.

42 Encomium, 12–15 (Virgil, Aen. 5.114–24); Encomium, 18–21 (Virgil, Aen. 8.608–731). Both cited in Tyler (n. 8), 12.

43 Tyler (n. 8), 14.

44 E.g. the Trojan identity of the Welsh King Gruffydd, enemy of Edward and ally of rivals of the Godwin family, is undermined with Dido's insult to Aeneas that he is no Dardan (Vita Ædwardi Regis, 87–7; Aen. 4.365–7; Tyler [n. 8], 16). Gruffydd is further belittled by Virgilian parallels: he is ‘unequal to the fight’ (impar congressu, recalling the death of Troilus, the son of the Trojan King Priam, at the hands of the Greek hero Achilles) (Vita Ædwardi Regis, 86–7; Aen. 1.475; Tyler [n. 8], 16), and afraid to fight in hand-to-hand combat (conferre manum, a phrase connected to Turnus in the final book of the Aeneid) (Vita Ædwardi Regis, 86–7; Aen. 12.345, 12.480, 12.678; Tyler [n. 8], 16). Tyler suggests that ‘the humiliating portrait of the Welsh king may also have been a response to Anglo-Norman relations. The shared Welsh and Norman legends of Trojan descent raise the possibility that the denigration of the Welsh was aimed, however obliquely, at the Normans…The seemingly misplaced anxiety about the Trojan origins of the defeated Welsh may suggest that the old enemy is, at least in part, a stand-in for the real and new enemy, the Normans’ (Tyler [n. 8], 18–19).

45 Tyler (n. 8), 15.

46 E. Winkler, ‘The Norman Conquest of the Classical Past: William of Poitiers, Language and History’, Journal of Medieval History, 42.4 (2016), 456–78, but esp. 468–72. Winkler identifies Caesar and Theseus as other comparative figures for Duke William. For the dates of the Gesta Guillelmi, see van Houts 1992 (n. 33), xxxiv n. 65.

47 Winkler (n. 46), 463.

48 Ibid., 469–70 and see further below.

49 Ibid., 470–1. It is interesting to note that the Welsh King Gruffydd is figured as Turnus within the context of single combat in the Vita Ædwardi Regis (see n. 44), as Harold is in the Gesta Guillelmi 134–7 (ii.22).

50 Heslop (n. 11), 237–41, identifies these scenes as containing Aeneid allusions, but, as discussed below, other Aeneid episodes could be (and are) suggested for them. Furthermore, Heslop does not make the connection between the Tapestry and Wiliam of Poitiers’ choice of references.

51 Heslop (n. 11), 237–41. Prior to Heslop, C. R. Dodwell recognized an allusion to the classical device of foreshadowing, exemplified by the Shield of Aeneas and Aen. 1.712 (Dido's doom), in the Tapestry scene depicting Halley's comet and the ghostly ships in the border under the enthroned Harold (C. R. Dodwell, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and French Secular Epic’, in Gameson [n. 9], 59 n. 74).

52 Owen-Crocker (n. 13), 54–6. Owen-Crocker identifies the other in the inscription for Scene 51, which paraphrases William's speech to his army. She notes a classical reference here to Cicero (56).

53 Ibid., 54 nn. 42–3. Seneca Q Nat. 5.10.1 can also be added to this list.

54 See Livy 1.18–21.

55 Ovid Met. 15.418–52; the reference to Aeneas and Helenus is at 450.

56 B. S. Bachrach, ‘Some Observations on the Bayeux Tapestry’, Cithara 27 (1987), 19–20; Heslop (n. 11), 248 n. 60.

57 Heslop (n. 11), 238.

58 J. Griffin (ed.), Virgil, The Aeneid, Translated by C. Day Lewis (Oxford 1986), 417.

59 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum 228.3–4. The passive verbs in the Ovid Met. 15.176–7 parallel discussed above (feror, dedi) also potentially support this reading of the Tapestry's inscription, as they imply that Pythagoras is not in control of his journey. However, for an alternative view, see Owen-Crocker (n. 13), 55.

60 The Tapestry's Ælfgyva scene (15) could also possibility contain an allusion to the Aeneid (Aen. 4.160–219), which we intend to discuss elsewhere.

61 Dodwell (n. 51), 59 n. 74.

62 Heslop (n. 11), 239.

63 If it is him: see discussion in Brooks and Walker (n. 17), 32–4.

64 Turnus is dispatched with a sword to the chest in the final lines of the poem (Aen. 12.950).

65 Heslop (n. 11), 240.

66 Winkler (n. 46), 469.

67 Brooks and Walker (n. 17), 14–17; Heslop (n. 11), 228.

68 F. Wormald, ‘Style and Design’, in F. Stenton (ed.), The Bayeux Tapestry. A Comprehensive Survey (London, 1957), 25–36; C. Hart, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and Schools of Illumination at Canterbury’, Anglo-Norman Studies 22 (2000), 117–67; Lewis (n. 2), 8–12.

69 Wormald (n. 68), 31.

70 British Library, MS Harley 603.

71 Utrecht, Universiteits Bibliothek 32.

72 W. Noel, ‘The Utrecht Psalter in England: Continuity and Experiment’, in K. van der Horst, W. Noel, and W. C. M. Wüstefeld (eds.), The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art. Picturing the Psalms of David (MS't Goy, 1996), 121 ff.; see also, in the same volume, 233–53.

73 Wormald (n. 68), 31–3.

74 British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B.iv.

75 The Hexateuch, as its name suggests, is an illustrated Anglo-Saxon translation of the first six books of the Bible. It has over 550 contemporary illustrations, all by the same artist, but many are unfinished. Cyril Hart highlighted the uniqueness of this collection of drawings, but also the fact that its artist was indebted to the influence of the Utrecht and Harley Psalters. He also believed that the Hexateuch ‘was used directly’ by the designer of the Bayeux Tapestry and ‘probably more extensively than any other single source’. See Hart (n. 68), 123.

76 Hart (n. 68), 155, 158. Hart parallels them with a similar drawing in British Library, MS Harley 2506 (copied at Fleury-sur-Loire by an English artist), probably from a ninth-century Lotharingian manuscript (British Library, MS Harley 647); MS Harley 2506 reached Canterbury by the late tenth century, where it influenced other manuscripts, including British Library, MS Tiberius B.v, of the early eleventh century. Given that the pair of fish is the zodiacal symbol for Pisces, it has been suggested that this implies that the Breton campaign took place in late February or early March (Musset 2005 [n. 6], 134), though it is probable that the war was later in 1064. The watery context is certainly fitting for what is shown above, and some commentators have argued that ‘these creatures seem deliberately chosen’ and are ‘arranged using the moralizing traits and values assigned by the bestiary tradition’: J. Frederick, ‘Slippery as an Eel: Harold's Ambiguous Heroics in the Bayeux Tapestry’, in Lewis, Owen-Crocker, and Terkla (n. 2), 122–3. The eels, for example, have been associated with duplicity – a trait that might be linked to Harold – though there is ambiguity here in the Tapestry as they are not clearly connected with him.

77 M. J. Lewis, ‘La Tapisserie de Bayeux et l'art anglo saxon’, in S. Lemagnen, S. A. Brown, and G. Owen-Crocker (eds.), L'Invention de la Tapisserie de Bayeux (Rouen, 2018), 237–41.

78 S. Larratt Keefer, ‘Body Language: A Graphic Commentary by the Horses of the Bayeux Tapestry’, in Owen-Crocker (n. 11), 98–9 nn. 26, 32, with bibliography.

79 Ibid., 98–9.

80 Ibid., 97–8.

81 As posited by ibid.

82 O. K. Werckmeister, ‘The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser. 17 (1976), 535–95.

83 Column Scene 31. Numbering follows the divisions set out by C. Cichorius, Die Reliefs der Traianssäule, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1896–1900); see also R. B. Ulrich, ‘Trajan's Column in Rome’, 2017, <http://www.trajans-column.org/?page_id=107>, accessed 28 February 2019.

84 As Brooks and Walker (n. 17), 67–8, highlighted. Indeed, they find ‘the parallels [between the Tapestry and column] tenuous in the extreme’. See also D. Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1986), 95–7.

85 Bernstein (n. 84), 95–7.

86 See e.g. Aeneas and Anchises on the denarius of L. L. Regulus, Rome, dated to 42 bce (P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus [Ann Arbor, MI, 1988], 35, 202–3, fig. 27b).

87 See e.g. the wall painting from Pompeii (ibid., 201–2, fig. 156a) and the fresco of ‘dog-faced’ Aeneas from Stabiae, a parody of the Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius group (ibid., 209, fig. 162).

88 N. Horsfall, ‘Some Problems in the Aeneas Legend’, CQ, 29.2 (1979) 376, 383–8; Zanker (n. 86), 202–3; P. Hardie, The Last Trojan Hero. A Cultural History of Virgil's Aeneid (London, 2014), 198; O. Hekster, Emperors and Ancestors. Roman Rulers and the Constraints of Tradition (Oxford, 2015), 242–4.

89 Zanker (n. 86), 202–3.

90 Ibid.

91 Hekster (n. 88), 247.

92 Zanker (n. 86), 210, 278.

93 Hardie (n. 88), 78.

94 Zanker (n. 86), 202–3; A. Rogerson, Virgil's Ascanius. Imagining the Future in the Aeneid (Cambridge, 2017), chap. 2, passim.

95 See Grape (n. 10), passim.

96 Winkler (n. 46), passim.

97 Ibid., 470.

98 Heslop (n. 11), 233.

99 Although these ‘ghostly’ ships in the Bayeux Tapestry are normally interpreted as a premonition of the Norman invasion fleet, an alternative view is that they could be Harold's navy stationed to defend the south coast (see D. Hill, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry: The Case of the Phantom Fleet’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 80.1 [1998], 23–31).

100 P. Bouet and F. Neveux, ‘Edward the Confessor's Succession According to the Bayeux Tapestry’, in Lewis, Owen-Crocker, and Terkla (n. 2), 59–65.

101 As others have noted: see e.g. Wormald (n. 68), 25–36; H. E. J. Cowdrey ‘King Harold and the Bayeux Tapestry’, in Owen-Crocker (n. 11), 1–18, although Cowdrey stresses that the Tapestry presents a less favourable view of Harold as well.

102 Dodwell (n. 51), 47.

103 Cowdrey (n. 100), 8–9. He offers the suggestion that this is the correct title to use for William because he has not yet been crowned king in the Tapestry narrative, however, he also notes that the retention of rex for Harold indicates that the Tapestry holds him in respect.

104 Bouet and Neveux (n. 100), 65.

105 See also Heslop (n. 11), 242–3, for the ‘cultural baggage’ the Anglo-Saxons would have brought to viewing the Bayeux Tapestry and the Old English Hexateuch.

106 Cf. Tyler (n. 8), 8, whose later dating does not appear to take into account William of Jumièges’ depiction of Antenor as a traitor, not found in the Aeneid (see further below).

107 Buchthal (n. 35), 1. See also Spence, S., ‘Felix Casus: The Dares and Dictys Legends of Aeneas’, in Farell, J. and Putnam, M. C. J. (eds.) A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and Its Tradition (London, 2010), 135–6Google Scholar.

108 Tyler (n. 8), 9; Baswell (n. 23), 19.

109 Baswell (n. 23), 18–19.

110 Spence (n. 107), 135.

111 Dares Phyrgius, de excidio Troiae, 5.17; Dictys Cretensis, Ephemeris de bello Troiano, 41; Baswell (n. 23), 18–19; Spence (n. 107), 137. For a comprehensive discussion of the presence of the ‘un-hero Aeneas’ in Greek and Roman works, see Reinhold, M., ‘The Unhero Aeneas’, C&M 27 (1966), 195–207Google Scholar. Reinhold treats Dares and Dictys at 201–7, noting that Dares Phrygius’ version was more popular than Dictys’ in the western part of the medieval West, likely because of the propensity to claim Trojan ancestors (204).

112 Tyler (n. 8), 8.

113 Spence (n. 107), 140.

114 See van Houts 1992 (n. 33), xxxii–xxxv, for the dating of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum. William of Poitiers does not seem to have known this traitorous version of Aeneas, however, as he compares Duke William to the hero in order to praise him, as noted above.

115 See Baswell (n. 23), 18, for the term.

Figure 0

Figure 1. Earl Harold of Wessex rescues two Normans from the quicksand of the River Couesnon. Detail from the Bayeux Tapestry, eleventh century (with special permission from the City of Bayeux).

Figure 1

Figure 2. ‘With the wind full in his sails’, Earl Harold of Wessex crosses the English Channel by ship. Detail from the Bayeux Tapestry, eleventh century (with special permission from the City of Bayeux).