CHRYSIPPAN STOICISM ON FATE AND HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY

What was the Stoic doctrine on compatibilism as it is most likely to have been available to Virgil? Chrysippus (c.280–206 b.c.), the third head of the Stoic School, accepted the determinist position of his predecessors Zeno and Cleanthes that ‘fate is a certain natural everlasting ordering of the whole: one set of things follows on and succeeds another, and the interconnection is inviolable’, as Aulus Gellius reports it from the fourth book of Chrysippus’ On Providence.Footnote ⁵ The general Stoic position is put forcefully in Cicero's De diuinatione Footnote ⁶ by Quintus Cicero in defending the Stoic theory of divination: ‘By “fate”, I mean what the Greeks call heimarmenê—an ordering and sequence of causes, since it is the connection of cause to cause which out of itself produces anything. It is everlasting truth, flowing from all eternity. Consequently nothing has happened which was not going to be, and likewise nothing is going to be of which nature does not contain causes working to bring that very thing about. This makes it intelligible that fate should be, not the “fate” of superstition, but that of physics, an everlasting cause of things—why past things happened, why present things are now happening, and why future things will be.’

However, as Cicero puts it in the De fato,Footnote ⁷ Chrysippus, while ‘wanting nothing to happen without antecedent causes’, wished to strike a happy medium (ac mihi quidem uidetur … Chrysippus tamquam arbiter honorarius medium ferire uoluisse) between this determinism and its opposite, the position according to which the motions of the human mind are voluntary and free from fate's control. According to Cicero, Chrysippus did this by hanging on to the concept of fate but rejecting the idea that our actions are therefore subject to necessity. To continue with Cicero's account, he did this by arguing that there are two kinds of causes for every action, those which are ‘complete and primary’, causae perfectae et principales, and those which are ‘auxiliary and proximate’, adiuuantes et proximae.Footnote ⁸ He illustrates the situation by his famous analogies of the cylinder and the spinning-top, which have as their complete and primary causes their rollability and spinnability by virtue of their shape, but need a proximate cause, in the form of a push or a twirl, to set them in their respective motions or actions of rolling or spinning.Footnote ⁹ Cicero goes on to report that, in the case of the human mind and decision-making, Chrysippus argued that an ‘impression’ (uisum, phantasia) presents itself to our mind. That is the proximate, external cause of our action. It is then in the power of our mind (in nostra potestate, eph’ hêmîn) to give or withhold our assent (adsensio, synkatathesis) to act on this impression, simultaneously causing or quashing an ‘impulse’ (adpetitus, hormê) to pursue the goal indicated in the impression. The principal internal cause of the action is our mental disposition (habitus animi, diathesis), which, once activated by our assent, expresses itself in its pursuit of the action. Our actions or non-actions are thus caused, and, as such, fall within fate, but they are not necessitated by factors external to our assent and impulse; and that is where Chrysippus locates human agency. Dorothea Frede gives a judicious analysis:

Earlier in the De fato Cicero says that Chrysippus also made a distinction between a ‘simple’ event and a ‘complex’ event in his criticism of the ‘Lazy Argument’,Footnote ¹¹ which had it that ‘If it is your fate to recover from this illness, you will recover, regardless of whether or not you call the doctor. Likewise, if it is your fate not to recover from this illness, you will not recover, regardless of whether or not you call the doctor. And one or the other is your fate. Therefore it is pointless to call the doctor.’Footnote ¹² Chrysippus’ example of a simple event is ‘“Socrates will die on such and such a day”: his day of dying is fixed, regardless of what he may or may not do. But if a fate is of the form “Oedipus will be born to Laius”, it will not be possible to add “regardless of whether or not he has intercourse with a woman”. For the event is complex and “co-fated”.’Footnote ¹³ In the case of a complex event like purposeful action Chrysippus therefore postulated a nexus, which he called ‘co-fating’.Footnote ¹⁴ Thus, if I am ill, it is fated both whether I shall recover or not and whether I call a doctor or not. However, I am exercising an active choice if I assent to the impression of going to a doctor, and in fact am working with my fate to die or not: my action actually helps define fate. The element of choice involved is brought out clearly by Diogenianus’ paraphrase of the Laius, Jocasta and Oedipus example: ‘And having children was fated together with wanting (βούλεσθαι) to have intercourse with a woman.’Footnote ¹⁵ I need not, therefore, succumb to the ‘Lazy Argument’, and simply let fate take its course, accepting that fate will determine whether I shall recover or not without my consulting a doctor: my action will be causal in my fate. In Cicero's description of Chrysippus’ position, ‘“You will recover, regardless of whether or not you call the doctor” is fallacious. For it is just as much fated for you to call the doctor as for you to recover. <Chrysippus’> term for these cases is … “co-fated”.’ On this view, human will, specifically assent, actually works with fate, the process being described by the very meaning of its Greek word, synkatathesis, ‘a voting for <something> together with <something>.’Footnote ¹⁶ The situation is explicated perhaps more straightforwardly by Diogenianus,Footnote ¹⁷ who, further to the paraphrase just quoted, reports that in the first book of Chrysippus’ On Fate Chrysippus attacked the idea that everything is necessitated by arguing that it eradicates our own self-motivated determination concerning moral praise or censure, and that therefore in the second book of On Fate he held the position that purposeful action and therefore moral responsibility are defensible because the things that originate from us are co-fated (synkatheimartai) along with the government of the world.Footnote ¹⁸ He claims to be quoting examples of Chrysippus’ own, for example that it is ridiculous that someone might say that, if a boxer is fated to emerge from a bout without being hit once, he therefore might as well drop his guard: ‘(f)or many things cannot come about without our wanting them and applying the most intense determination and efforts over them, since it is together with this, he says, that they are fated to come about.’

In the light of Chrysippus’ distinction between primary and proximate causes illustrated by the cylinder and the cone, and whatever the scholarly differences over the confatalia—though the analogy of the boxer, specifically attributed by Cicero to Chrysippus, is all that is needed to illustrate the essential point—, the capacity for purposeful action defended by Chrysippus has enormous bearing on the question of human moral responsibility, and whether our moral choices can be accorded praise or condemnation. As Aulus Gellius puts it, ‘… <Chrysippus> denies that those who, whether through laziness or through wickedness, are harmful and reckless, should be tolerated and given a hearing, if when caught red-handed they take refuge in the necessity of fate, as if it were the shrine of a temple, and say that their worst misdeeds are attributable to fate, and not to their own recklessness.’Footnote ¹⁹ Chrysippus argued that between an impression and our impulse lies the essential link of our assent, and that every human impulse must be a response to a rational impression, and is therefore a ‘rational impulse’ (logikê hormê): a wise person assents only to true or adequate impressions, and his morality is therefore a dimension of his rationality,Footnote ²⁰ or, as the Stoic paradox has it, ‘Only the wise man is good’. Therefore, the faculty of assent is the part of the human soul in which rational responsibility can be located. Moreover, our mental disposition (diathesis), which informs our individual assents, is itself formed by our past correct or inappropriate assents to external impressions, and is subject to fate in that its characteristic qualities are in accord with fate, morality being the distinguishing criterion.Footnote ²¹ Chrysippus held, further, that the concept of what happens because of us (par’ hêmâs gignesthai) is compatible with the Fate Principle, while the concept of something being dependent on us (eph’ hêmîn einai) is a necessary precondition for moral responsibility.Footnote ²² Hence we can control things and we have moral responsibility. And here the analogy of the cylinder on a slope is indeed illustrative: just as you can start a cylinder rolling by giving it a push, but it soon rolls by virtue of its own ‘rollability’, ‘so too the order, rationale and necessity of fate sets in motion the actual types of causes and their beginnings, but the deliberative impulses of our minds and our actual actions are controlled by our own individual will and intellect.’Footnote ²³

With this background, we can understand the full significance of two colourful fragments that illustrate the early Stoic doctrine of Fate. First, there is the analogy of the dog tied to a cart:Footnote ²⁴ if it wants to follow, its action cooperates with Fate, but if it does not want to follow, it will be dragged in any event. Its resistance consists of its irrationality, but also the passions, since irrationality will lead to ‘incognitive’, ‘akataleptic’, impressions that will lead to mistaking indifferents for goods.Footnote ²⁵ ‘Being dragged’ is meant to illustrate how living ‘at variance with reason and Fate’ and being led by the passions causes us pain. Secondly, we have the account of Zeno's response to the slave who attempted to blame Fate when he was being whipped for stealing, ‘I was fated to steal’, to which Zeno replied, ‘And to be flogged’.Footnote ²⁶ As we shall see,Footnote ²⁷ both are crucial for a full understanding of Aeneas’ speech to Dido at Aen. 4.333-61.

Chrysippus’ solution of the problem of accepting determinism and simultaneously insisting on human moral responsibility became an orthodoxy in Stoicism down to Epictetus (a.d. c.55–135), who complemented Chrysippan thought by extending the field of responsibility to include unreflective action and by being the first to make the connection between freedom and what depends on us.Footnote ²⁸ It must be stressed that the Stoics before Epictetus, including Chrysippus, did not conceptualize in terms of freedom the moral responsibility that they argued for.

FATE AND THE HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY OF AENEAS IN AENEID 4

Now that we have established the details of Chrysippan Stoicism on fate and human responsibility, we can proceed to examine whether and, if so, how Virgil elaborates the Stoic philosophical framework in order to accommodate an essential moral responsibility on the part of Aeneas and Dido. I shall argue that Virgil indeed follows Chrysippan Stoic thinking in his presentation of Aeneas and Dido's decision-making in Aeneid 4.Footnote ²⁹

Virgil has left no possible doubt that Aeneas knows by Book Four that he has a central mission in Fate. The knowledge is imparted to him in dreams and oracles and by direct communication with the gods, in increasingly specific detail. On the night before the fall of Troy Hector had advised him in a dream to flee, carrying Troy's Penates for whom he must seek great walls overseas (2.289–95); Creusa has told him that he will come to Hesperia, the locality of the River Tiber, and that a kingdom has been procured for him there (2.776–89); Apollo's oracle bids the Trojans to seek their ancient mother (Aen. 3.96), where domus Aeneae cunctis dominabitur oris | et nati natorum et qui nascentur ab illis (3.97–8);Footnote ³⁰ the Penates have advised him not to settle in Crete but in Hesperia / Italy, and said that they would raise his descendants to the stars and give imperium to a, or the, city (3.154–71); the loathsome Celaeno has conceded that Aeneas will reach Italy and his datam … urbem (3.247–57); Helenus has predicted that he will be sent (mittere) to the territory of Italy, and has enjoined him to ‘bear Troy, mighty in deeds, up to the heavens’ (3.376–462). For his part, Aeneas has shown, even if reluctantly, that he recognizes his mission in his speech to his men after the storm (1.205–6, tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas | ostendunt; illic fas regna resurgere Troiae), in his self-introduction to the ‘huntress’ (1.380, Italiam quaero patriam; 382, data fata secutus) and in his valediction to Helenus (3.493–4, uiuite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta | iam sua: nos alia ex aliis in fata uocamur); and of course in the retelling of his wanderings he has informed Dido of the fact.

By the time that he has reached Dido, however, he has been driven into exile to escape from the destruction of his city, lost his wife, Creusa,Footnote ³¹ left a contingent of his followers in Sicily, lost his father, Anchises (whom he poignantly calls his omnis curae casusque leuamen, 3.709), and, most recently, has been driven by a violent storm to the shores of Libya. At the end of his narration, he calls the loss of Anchises his ‘last trial’ and ‘the turning point’ in his wanderings, the meta of the race-course being where the greatest danger in the arena lies (hic labor extremus, longarum haec meta uiarum, 3.714). The loss of his closest supports makes it natural that Aeneas should be disposed to intimate companionship, and in the event a sexual relationship. Although he does not actually speak in Book Four till after the first appearance of Mercury, his actions reveal the extent to which he has forgotten his duty to Fate. In this regard, just as important as his intercourse with Dido in the cave is his adoption of Phoenician attire when Mercury finds him acting as an architect in Carthage's foundation: atque illi stellatus iaspide fulua | ensis erat Tyrioque ardebat murice laena | demissa ex umeris, diues quae munera Dido | fecerat (4.262–4). This is visible proof of his new inner allegiance, to the neglect of his fate to found Rome.

Accordingly, he earns the rebuke of Jupiter, who judges that Aeneas is neglecting his duty to Fate. When he objects to the fact that Aeneas is ‘dallying in Tyrian Carthage’, fatisque datas non respicit urbes (4.225), the opposition of Carthage and ‘the cities that the Fates have given’ Aeneas is emphatic enough, but it is capped by the assertion that Aeneas is not living up to the expectation that he ‘was the man to rule an Italy pregnant with empire and resounding with war, … and to bring the whole earth beneath the sway of law’ (4.229–31). This appeal to Aeneas’ desire for gloria and laus (4.232–3)Footnote ³² is followed up by the more objective and rational objection that Aeneas is not respecting what is owed to Ascanius, and tarrying among a hostile people while failing his Italian offspring (4.234–7). Mercury's report or paraphrase of Jupiter's command acts as a telling gloss on Jupiter's words: Aeneas is taunted as uxorius (4.265), ‘under a wife's thumb’, which describes the motive for Aeneas’ ‘building the foundations of lofty Carthage and constructing the city to be beautiful’, and for ‘forgetting his kingdom and his own affairs’ (4.266–7), when Ascanius ‘is owed the Italian kingdom and the Roman world’ (4.275–6). It is equally significant that, as we have seen, Mercury comes across Aeneas founding Carthage dressed in Phoenician clothing.

Aeneas’ shock at the first appearance of the god is graphically conveyed first by the physical manifestations of his speechlessness, his bewilderment (amens), his hair standing on end and loss of control over his speech-organs. His mind is divided, taking him in different directions of vacillation (4.296–86). His immediate response is that he ardet abire fuga, dulcisque relinquere terras (4.281), and his ‘burning’ to flee betrays his irrationality. The oxymoron of his ‘burning’ to leave lands that he has come to regard as ‘sweet’ shows that he is far from mentally and emotionally resolute, let alone wholly acquiescent in the Fate that Jupiter reminds him of. This is the Stoic definition of the ‘fluttering’, ptoia, that characterizes passion.Footnote ³³ Yes, Jupiter's commands are rational, and to obey them is rational; and to end an affair with Dido means choosing rational Fate over pleasurable dissipation and the passion of love. But Aeneas is not being rational by any Stoic analysis; rather, he is making decisions quickly and in a state of passion.

This is also Virgil's strategy when Aeneas considers how to approach Dido. His mind is drawn in different directions in his confused state of passion: atque animum nunc huc celerem nunc diuidit illuc | in partisque rapit uarias perque omnia uersat. | … alternanti (4.285–7). In fact, his decision to leave may be good, but the language describing his method of approaching Dido suggests that he is stooping to deception: ambire (4.283),Footnote ³⁴ taciti (4.289), rebus … nouandis (4.290), dissimulent (4.291), mollissima fandi | tempora (4.293–4), rebus dexter modus (4.294). Moreover, his question in reported speech, quo nunc reginam ambire furentem | audeat adfatu? (4.283–4), signifies that fear is at least part of the reason for his passionate response and his ‘fluttering’ over Jupiter's plan for him. Moreover, as ardet abire fuga shows, Aeneas still reacts emotionally, but Fate has supplanted Dido in his affections. Virgil has worked hard to lay out for us the ambiguity—oxymoron, even—of a hero known for pietas who has not grown into his name yet, following a rational Fate as a flawed rational man, destined to found Rome, but enjoying a dalliance in the enemy capital. The passage as a whole owes something to the tension between the Stoic ‘moral progressor’, ὁ προκόπτων, who is still drowning in the passions, and the wise man whose reason is triumphant over them.Footnote ³⁵

Can Aeneas’ change of direction be analysed in Stoic terms? It seems it can, and without any strain. In the various announcements of the Fate that he must pursue, Aeneas has been presented with a uisum or impression, but in Book Four he allows irrational emotion and impulses, stemming naturally and credibly at least in part from his loss of Creusa and from the more recent loss of his father and his attraction to Dido, to prevent him from granting his assent, and he thus has withheld his assent. He neglects his fated duty to found Rome, and instead actively lends his hand to founding a city which Fate does not have in store for him, so he has by doing so accepted the ‘Lazy Argument’: ‘If it is fated that Rome will be founded, I do not need to take any action, and I may remain with my lover in Carthage.’ Moreover, he has withdrawn his assent to his Fate because of what the Stoics would have called an akataleptic or ‘incognitive’ impression,Footnote ³⁶ that of uniting with Dido. He is therefore morally responsible for failing to follow Fate's manifest course, and it is totally justified that he earns the censure of Jupiter: he must run with the cart willingly. When he responds positively to the message of Jupiter about his Fate, his assent to the impression is ‘up to him’ and is conditioned by his natural disposition, or Stoic habitus, to follow Fate, which is part of his trademark pietas, and his impulse is to equip his fleet for departure and persuade Dido of the rightness of his action, or once again to follow the cart willingly. Despite the fact that his plan to wait for the kindest moment to approach Dido is forestalled by her (at regina dolos … | praesensit, 4.296–7), he therefore sets the cylinder or top in motion, so to speak lifts his fists, and thus rejects the ‘Lazy Argument’. The specifically Stoic connection is made explicit by the deployment of the verb sequor and its compounds,Footnote ³⁷ which occur during and after his confrontation with Dido. In his speech to her he makes his apparently qualified statement Italiam non sponte sequor (4.361), the precise significance of which will be discussed presently. It is later said of him that iussa tamen diuum exsequitur (4.396), and he himself volunteers to the dream-image of Mercury his acquiescence in person: sequimur te, sancte deorum, | quisquis es, imperioque iterum paremus ouantes (4.576–7).

By the time of the agôn with Dido, therefore, Aeneas has, even in the midst of his passion and irrationality, assented to Fate, and has recognized that he must move on from Dido. In his speech to her, he remains essentially true to his ultimately Stoic resolve, though with elements of continuing resistance that we shall notice in passing. He shows this before he actually speaks, by maintaining a steadfast gaze, immota tenebat | lumina, because of the commands of Jupiter, Iouis monitis, and by suppressing with a great effort his pain deep within his heart, obnixus curam sub corde premebat (4.331–2), just as he did when reassuring his men after the storm (1.209). He cites the prophecies of Grynean and Lycian Apollo as having ordered (iussere, 4.346) him to capessere, ‘to make for, to go forward to’,Footnote ³⁸ Italy (though it was in fact the Penates who, interpreting the oracle of Delian Apollo, first gave Aeneas the name of Italy, 3.166), so ‘this is my love’ (hic amor), not Dido, and ‘this is my fatherland’ (haec patria, 4.347), not the Troy that he would be refounding if he were allowed by Fate (4.340–4). He also claims that Anchises has been terrifying him in dreams (4.351–3),Footnote ³⁹ that he is conscious of depriving Ascanius of his ‘fated fields’, fatalibus aruis (4.354–5), and that Mercury has delivered Jupiter's mandates in person (4.356–9). At least objectively, therefore, Aeneas continues to be faithful to Fate.

But there is subjective slippage, encapsulated in the unfinished line Italiam non sponte sequor (4.361); and this derives mainly from Aeneas’ attitude to Dido and his personal preference to return to Troy.Footnote ⁴⁰ It is true that Aeneas denies that he has ever formally offered to marry Dido (4.338–9), and he never has.Footnote ⁴¹ Yet, the fact that he has some real feelings for her is, as we have seen, indicated by the concern he shows for her when he realizes he must leave Carthage, regarding her as optima (4.291), and waiting for the right occasion to break the news (4.291–4). Virgil calls him and Dido ‘lovers’, amantis (221), and after the agôn Aeneas is said to long to console Dido (lenire dolentem | solando) and soften her pain multa gemens magnoque animum labefactus amore, ‘with many groans and battered in spirit by his great love’ (395)—and still he fulfils the orders of the gods (396).Footnote ⁴² The initial question after Mercury's appearance, heu quid agat?, can therefore most plausibly be taken to express Aeneas’ fear and grief over having to negotiate the break-up. Aeneas’ emotional involvement, even if it does not extend to a desire to offer marriage, is therefore a real obstacle to his parting from Dido. The oak-simile (4.437–49), as we shall see, confirms this reading conclusively.

Aeneas expresses his personal preference to return to Troy in the clearest terms. Dido has argued that Aeneas should not be contemplating setting sail because it is winter, and asks, ‘… if you were not seeking out other people's fields and an unknown home, and if ancient Troy were still standing, would your fleet be making <even> for Troy over the stormy sea?’ (4.309–13). Aeneas ignores the tendentious argument about the weather, and goes straight to the heart of the matter (4.340–4):

That is, he would indeed choose Troy if he could act ‘under my own auspices’ and sponte mea, ‘in accord with my own volition’; as it is, however, that is not the will of Fate, which, as he goes on to specify, has ordered him in the form of the oracle of Apollo and the Lycian lots to make for Italy; hic amor (not Dido), haec patria est (not Troy; 4.345–7). In answer to Dido's hint of an objection to his ‘seeking out other people's fields’ at line 311, he argues forcefully that, if she, a Phoenician, can be fixed on the prospect of a city in Libya, et nos fas extera quaerere regna, ‘we too may seek a foreign realm’ (4.347–50).

In the concluding line of Aeneas’ speech, Italiam non sponte sequor (4.361), Aeneas is picking up his earlier phrase, sponte mea: left to his own devices, he would be returning to Troy. But he expresses the objective fact in the words Italiam … sequor, acknowledging the subjective personal inclination by non sponte, which has the effect of a concessive clause. ‘Despite my personal feelings,’ Aeneas is saying, ‘I am following Italy.’ That is to say that Aeneas has assented to the phantasia of what Fate has in store for him, and has rejected the phantasia of his non-fated private preference. In particular, as Mark Edwards has persuasively argued in detail, Virgil's very choice of the word sequor here and frequently throughout the Aeneid is a deliberate reminiscence of the specifically Stoic use of verbs ‘to follow’, in particular ἀκολουθεῖν and ἕπομαι.Footnote ⁴³ How much more Stoic a presentation of the mechanics of human responsibility could we want in epic poetry? Again Aeneas’ ultimate acquiescence is couched in immediately recognizable Stoic terminology.

The Stoic complexion and Aeneas’ abiding recalcitrance are echoed later, when Virgil tells us that, although Aeneas wanted to assuage Dido's suffering and was himself shaken by his love for her, multa gemens magnoque animum labefactus amore | iussa tamen diuum exsequitur classemque reuisit (4.395–6). He therefore indeed earns the resumption of his epithet pius (393) in its sense of a man who ‘follows’ Fate. But, again, Aeneas’ decision should not be turned into a triumph of reason. Indeed, he has now made the choice to follow the cart, but not with total willingness. He is still being dragged because he has not entirely rejected assent to the impression of staying in Carthage.Footnote ⁴⁴ To the extent that he experiences any emotional conflict—that is what the dragging of the dog is meant to convey—he feels the pain of the passions. This is the limping progress of the dog trying to follow, but still fighting it. Moreover, he resists the intercessions of Anna, since ‘the fates stand in the way (fata obstant, 4.440), and the god blocks <Aeneas’> ears so that they are calm and untroubled’, placidas (4.437–40). In fact, it was again Stoic doctrine that the wise man may well feel the buffetings of adversity, which includes passions such as Aeneas is experiencing, but, ‘calm and untroubled’, he will resolutely rise above them: nec hoc dico: non sentit illa, sed uincit et alioqui quietus placidusque contra incurrentia attollitur (Sen. Prov. 2.2).Footnote ⁴⁵ Furthermore, as R.D. Williams argues,Footnote ⁴⁶ the final line of the oak-simile, mens immota manet, lacrimae uoluuntur inanes (4.449), ‘summarises the conflict and upshot more poignantly than Aeneas’ own summary Italiam non sponte sequor (361), but to exactly the same effect’.Footnote ⁴⁷ It is also just as Stoic in its analysis.

However, by the time of Mercury's appearance to Aeneas, this time in a dream, Aeneas is certus eundi (4.554); the very fact that he is asleep is an index of his calm and increasing acquiescence in Fate.Footnote ⁴⁸ His address to Mercury, sequimur te, sancte deorum, | quisquis es, imperioque iterum paremus ouantes (4.576–7), is his most positive statement of his resolution so far, and shows that he has largely overcome his crisis: his word sequimur has, as we have seen, a specifically Stoic colour, while ouantes signifies that, in an admittedly emotional way, he has—in his final speech in Book Four—engaged his will in his efforts to fit in with Fate. It is true, once again, that there is a tension between paremus, which implies actual obedience to Fate, and ouantes, which entails an emotional element in his assent: Aeneas is as yet scarcely a Sage, but his assent here is less emotionally charged than when he ardet abire fuga. The statement is the closest Virgil's poetry could be expected to come to denote the workings of Stoic adsensio in a prokoptôn. And yet, the fact is seldom taken into account.Footnote ⁴⁹

When all this evidence is taken together, we can appreciate yet another Stoic complexion to Aeneas’ assent to Fate, in particular in the way Virgil makes him formulate his response to Dido. In short, he is made to follow the Chrysippan analogy of the dog and cart. He has a known destiny, which he knows he must willingly fulfil, and it is to press on to Italy. However, he has succumbed to the ‘Lazy Argument’ to the extent of going native with Dido (though in the event there was never any room for Dido in his long-term future), and he has a simultaneous desire to refound Troy, both of which are contrary to what Fate demands of him. He has had to be reminded forcefully of his fated mission, and has been dragged by the cart like the non-compliant dog, or beaten like the recalcitrant slave. At the very beginning of his speech, he reveals a residuum of resistance, which in fact Stoic thought throws into its real perspective. For example, when he says he will never deny that Dido has deserved all the many things which she could claim she is owed, and that he will never be ashamed to remember her, dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos regit artus (4.333–6), ‘[t]he statement seems cold to the modern reader, but from a Stoic point of view (which Aeneas as a man of God should accept) it is rebellious, it shows failure to subdue personal wishes; Aeneas from this point of view should have regretted the memory of his lapse from duty.’Footnote ⁵⁰ Aeneas’ very departure from hard Stoicism helps us gauge the scale of his vestigial unwillingness and identify him still very much as a prokoptôn. When we survey Aeneas’ progress through Book Four, therefore, the notion seems persuasive that the Chrysippan dog-and-cart doctrine on Fate and human responsibility, together with the ‘Lazy Argument’ with which Chrysippus engaged, has supplied Virgil with the overarching framework.

FATE AND THE HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY OF DIDO IN AENEID 4

The figure and progress of Dido are also amenable to a Stoic analysis, with some surprising twists. She has a natural disposition, which informs her passion for Aeneas. As Venus has told Aeneas, she has had to flee from Tyre, has become estranged from her family and has lost her husband, Sychaeus (1.335–70), and Dido herself in the final words of her welcome to Aeneas can identify with his losses as related by Ilioneus (1.522–58) and register striking fellow-feeling: me quoque per multos similis fortuna labores | iactatam hac demum uoluit consistere terra. | non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco (1.628–30). She therefore already shows significantly sympathetic openness to the plight of fellow-sufferers like Aeneas, and here we can locate her diathesis. This is, however, given further shape and direction by Juno and Venus, and it is something on which Cupid can focus in his guise as Ascanius by ‘beginning gradually to efface Sychaeus’ from her mind (1.719–22). Her personal loneliness and strategic vulnerability, which the Stoics would have said were also part of her diathesis, provide Anna with a key argument when she persuades Dido to give in to her love (4.30–53). We should note the careful phrasing of his dictis incensum animum flammauit amore | spemque dedit dubiae menti soluitque pudorem, ‘with these words she inflamed <Dido's> heart, which had been set alight by love, and gave hope to her wavering mind and loosened the bonds of her conscience’ (4.54–5), which represents the final phase of Dido's giving her assent to what may be called the phantasiai of the goddesses and Cupid.

Moreover, these impressions, together with Dido's incorrect interpretation of Aeneas’ attentions to her (especially in the cave ‘marriage’; coniugium uocat, 4.172), may fairly be categorized as ‘akataleptic’ in the Stoic sense. Dido knows fully that Fate has a mission for Aeneas that has no place in it for her. Ilioneus has told her that the Trojan fleet is sailing for Hesperia / Italy (1.530–4) and has made pointed mention of Aeneas’ justice, pietas and military prowess (1.544–5). In Books Two and Three Aeneas has related the prophecies urging him to Italy and ultimate world-dominion that we have considered earlier. And still she fondly persists in assenting to incognitive impressions. This is especially clear when she makes prayers and sacrifices, performs her gruesome extispicium and seeks the advice of the prophets (4.56–67). We already have our doubts whether the results of her consultation are propitious: heu, uatum ignarae mentes! quid uota furentem, | quid delubra iuuant? est mollis flamma medullas | interea et tacitum uiuit sub pectore uulnus (4.65–7) suggests that she would have proceeded with her intentions anyway. That our doubt is indeed well-founded is subsequently made explicit when, after Dido's pleading with Aeneas proves to be of no avail, and amidst frightening portents (4.452–63, 4.465–73), she recognizes the terrible truth of the prophets’ praedicta: multaque praeterea uatum praedicta priorum | terribili monitu horrificant (4.464–5).Footnote ⁵¹ Dido has therefore withheld her assent to the prophecies of the uates and to what Aeneas has told her is Fate; she therefore has opposed it, irrationally accepting incognitive impressions. Her union with Aeneas is indeed a culpa (4.172), and she is responsible for her decision to commit it. This is, again, a magisterially poetic way of evoking the Stoic mechanism of granting and withholding assent to Fate.

Dido's resistance to Fate is, moreover, expressed at significant junctures in the language of Hellenistic Stoicism's great rival, Epicureanism, and conclusively shows Virgil's interest in the debates concerning Fate within the Hellenistic philosophies in general. This is first observable in Anna's speech of encouragement to give free rein to her love for Aeneas, and thus resist what is fated (4.31–53). She asks her sister whether she is prepared to forgo the joys either of ‘sweet children’, dulcis natos, or of the ‘gifts of Venus’, Veneris … praemia, and whether id cinerem aut manis credis curare sepultos (4.33–4). These lines build on the great passage in Lucretius on the finality of death, where the poet presents the non-Epicurean's sadness that the dead man will never again return home to the kisses of his wife and his dulces … nati, and that he is now bereft of omnia … praemia uitae—and yet, Lucretius responds, the deceased will no longer have any yearning for them (3.894–901). Lucretian phraseology and an Epicurean argument against the fear of death are marshalled against the Stoic compliance with Fate, from which Epicureanism said man was free.Footnote ⁵²

Again, when Dido scornfully repeats Aeneas’ claims that Apollo, the Lycian lots and Mercury have ordered him to move on to Italy (4.376–8), she makes her sarcastic but highly significant comment scilicet is superis labor est, ea cura quietos | sollicitat (4.379–80). There can be no doubt that Virgil is putting into Dido's mouth words with Epicurean resonance and meaning, as has long been noticed, though further significance can still be extracted.Footnote ⁵³ At De rerum natura 6.73–4 Lucretius advises Memmius to understand the true workings of nature and refuse to believe that the gods manipulate it (especially in the sky) … quia tute tibi placida cum pace quietos | constitues magnos irarum uoluere fluctus, activities which are dis indigna … alienaque pacis eorum (6.69), while in reality they lead a life that is free from care, securum agere aeuum (6.58). The adjective quietos alone (at the same metrical sedes), but also Dido's contemptuous ascription of the gods’ alleged labor and cura over human life, which feeds on Lucretius’ securum … aeuum, mark the allusion to Epicurean terminology and belief. Virgil makes Dido cite the same Lucretian passage later. In her curse on Aeneas and the Roman race, she grudgingly comes to admit in three conditional clauses that it might be necessary for Aeneas to reach Italy (si tangere portus | infandum caput ac terris adnare necesse est), and perhaps the Fates demand it (et sic fata Iouis poscunt), and hic terminus haeret (4.612–14), which clearly recalls Lucretius’ phrase alte terminus haerens for the immutable limit of physical possibilities in the Epicurean natural world (6.66). Here Dido at last actually accepts the possibility that Aeneas might indeed have a fated mission (how otherwise could her curse be effective?), and thus acknowledges an at least recognizable Stoic tenet of acquiescence in Fate; but the notion of a fated mission is clothed in defiantly Epicurean terms. The confrontation of Epicurean and Stoic concepts of human responsibility and Fate is expressed all but explicitly when Dido caustically picks up Aeneas’ use of sequor and gives him the bitter and contemptuous command i, sequere Italiam uentis (381). We may detect an Epicurean attack on the Stoic doctrine of duty here. Dido's allusions seem designed to get Aeneas not to proceed with the political mission on which he claims the gods have told him to embark, and pursue a life of Epicurean godlike ataraxia with her in Carthage.Footnote ⁵⁴

Dido's personal—as opposed to verbal—commitment to Epicureanism is however presented as inconsistent: she consults the uates (56–67), she follows up her denial of the gods’ interest in the lives of humans by expressing the hope that he will be shipwrecked calling out her name si quid pia numina possunt (4.381–4), she fears omens (4.450–1), and summons Sol, Juno, Hecate and the Furies (4.607–12). Her inconsistent use of Epicurean terms seems therefore chiefly meant not only to demonstrate how desperately she is clutching at straws but also to mark the rift between her and Aeneas: it is as wide as that between the two great Hellenistic philosophical systems, especially over human responsibility and Fate. Her shift away from Epicurean arguments to prayers to divinities also suggests her admission that the Stoic view of Fate and duty is the reality, while her Epicureanism is just appearance.

Dido thereby not only demonstrates a human responsibility that is perfectly in accord with Chrysippan precept and analysis, but in her desperation she opposes Stoic doctrine with specifically Epicurean terminology and doctrine. Virgil's opposition of Stoic and Epicurean elements throws them into mutually deeper relief and significance. And this opposition introduces an even more radical one in its turn. Aeneas accepts his responsibility to assent to a master plan of Fate, which I hope we can now identify with Stoic heimarmenê, and which embraces the whole universe. Part of Dido's ‘irrationality’ consists of her inconsistent denial that there is any external force that is interested in human affairs, let alone that it might involve any sacrifice in human personal life. When she finally heeds ‘the many predictions of earlier prophets’ (4.464), which must include the prophets whom she had earlier consulted and ignored (4.65–7), and accepts the possibility that Fate and the gods might indeed have Italy and its future in store for Aeneas, it is, tragically, already too late.

Be that as it may, Dido is ‘dragged’ by Fate just as much as Aeneas, in fact even more so. When she realizes that her affair with Aeneas is over and that further communication is useless, she comes to wish for death, terrified by the fates which have prohibited Aeneas from sharing her destiny, fatis exterrita … | mortem uocat (4.450–1). True, she has broken her oath to remain Sychaeus’ widow and not to give her love to another (4.15–29); she acknowledges as much when she tells Aeneas te propter eundem | exstinctus pudor et, qua sola sidera adibam, | fama prior (4.321–3), and later says explicitly non seruata fides cineri promissa Sychaeo (4.552). Her sense of pudor and fama have, she reasons, been compromised. In fact, it is Dido's own characteristic sense of dignity and her sense of justice over her broken oath to Sychaeus—both being part of her natural diathesis—which causes her to choose to commit suicide (4.24–9, 547, 552). But has her culpa really required her self-punishment to the extent of suicide? It is not essential for Aeneas’ resumption of his fated obligations. And here we are led to that most enigmatic couplet explaining why Proserpina could not cut off a lock of Dido's hair to give her entry to Orcus: nam quia nec fato merita nec morte peribat, | sed misera ante diem subitoque accensa furore (4.696–7). We are told that Dido did feel she deserved to die. However, quite extraordinarily given the Stoic tenor of Book Four, she is said to be dying ‘not because of Fate’: Stoicism, even in its Chrysippan form, held that everything was determined by Fate. The opposite of dying ‘neither by Fate nor through a deserved death’ is expressed in the second line of the couplet, according to which Dido is dying ‘unhappy, before her day, and inflamed by her sudden passion’, that is, through her own impassioned choice. I suggest, first, that the narrator's use of nec fato is designed to calibrate the strength of Dido's emotion: the sudden, violent rupture with Stoic doctrine, otherwise so faithfully reproduced in Book Four, is in fact meant precisely to bring out the shocking tragic enormity of her passion. Secondly, as the reader for CQ suggests, ‘since, as we know, nothing lies outside Fate, this is a sort of fairytale ending; Dido has turned into a fable.’ It is the only fitting ending for one who refuses to cast out the passions and prefers to die from them rather than to return to reason.Footnote ⁵⁵

AENEID 4 AND THE STOIC CHAIN OF CAUSALITY

We have already seen the Stoic definition of Fate which Cicero puts into the mouth of his brother, Quintus, in the De diuinatione:Footnote ⁵⁶ ‘an ordering and sequence of causes, since it is the connection of cause to cause which out of itself produces anything. It is everlasting truth, flowing from all eternity. Consequently nothing has happened which was not going to be, and likewise nothing is going to be of which nature does not contain causes working to bring that very thing about. This makes it intelligible that fate should be, not the “fate” of superstition, but that of physics, an everlasting cause of things—why past things happened, why present things are now happening, and why future things will be.’ When due account is taken of the economy of the Dido-episode as a whole, cause gives rise to cause with an interconnectability which fits the Stoic concept of heimarmenê and which strengthens the case for regarding the episode as in a significant sense a homage to the Stoic doctrine on Fate and human responsibility.

The first link in the chain is Juno's love and patronage of Carthage (si qua fata sinant, 1.17) and her opposition to Fate in the form of the race descended from Trojan blood Tyrias olim quae uerteret arces (1.19–20), and because from that blood would arise a people who would be excidio Libyae (1.22). This ‘she had heard’ (audierat, 1.20), and she knows that sic uoluere Parcas (1.22). The situation can easily be construed in Stoic terms: Juno is refusing to give her assent to Fate: hence her sarcastic exclamation quippe uetor fatis (1.39). So the storm is sent against Aeneas’ fleet as a product of Juno's opposition to fate. And the storm causes Aeneas to meet Dido, who is then moved by the process we have already examined to fall in love with a him, again as part of Juno's opposition to Fate, but also as part of Dido's own. The day of the ‘marriage’ ‘was the cause (causa fuit) of death’ (leti), most likely for Dido, and the cause of ‘evils’ (malorum, 4.169–70), the reference of which we shall consider presently. It is also the cause of the meddling of Fama (4.173–98),Footnote ⁵⁷ who in turn stirs up Iarbas (4.196–7). His needling prayer causes Jupiter to look at what Dido and Aeneas are up to, and to move Mercury to ensure that the Rome of Fate will, despite Aeneas’ disobedience, come into being (4.219–78). Of course, Aeneas is moved to return to duty, and he mobilizes his men; and, when he commands them to hide quae rebus sit causa nouandis (4.290), the ‘cause’ will include Jupiter's and Mercury's insistence that Aeneas accomplish his fated mission. In turn, Dido is moved to decide on suicide, and to pronounce her curse on Aeneas, first that on his arrival in Italy (si … necesse est, | et sic fata Iouis poscunt, 4.612–14, which we have seen is a grudging admission that Fate might indeed be at work) he will suffer in his conflict with the native people (4.612–21). Moreover, since we know from the Sibyl's prophecy to Aeneas that he will face bella, horrida bella in Italy (6.86–94), Dido is now ironically aligning her assent with Fate. The second part of her curse, that Carthage and Rome will be implacable enemies (4.622–9), moves the Carthaginian Wars. The Aeneid presents these as fated in Anchises’ review of the notable Romans destined to be born at Book Six, lines 841–6, which cover Roman heroes who took part in all the Carthaginian Wars, Cato the censor, the family of the Gracchi, the elder and younger Scipios, Regulus Serranus and Fabius Cunctator. Again, therefore, Dido is ‘voting together with’ Fate, and is willingly furthering it. What she does not know is that the consequence of the great conflict will be the destruction of Carthage, which Anchises’ Heldenschau also depicts as a matter of Fate. As a further consequence, Dido has seen to the destruction of the city she has founded. She has indeed been ‘dragged’ into acquiescence with Fate. When the authorial comment is made that the cave-union was the ‘first day … of evils (malorum)’, it includes in all likelihood the wars between Carthage and Rome which ended in Carthage's destruction. The causal nexus is in any event clear. Moreover, we have seen how Juno ‘had heard’ that it was fated that Aeneas’ race would ‘destroy Libya’. As the crowning consequence, however, the goddess’ attempt to save her favourite city from Fate is foiled—doubly: not only has she caused the death of her instrument for countering Fate, but also she has caused the ruin of her city in the process. In the Dido and Aeneas episode, therefore, even the queen of the gods can be seen to be ‘dragged’ by Fate, and to help bring it about precisely in the act of implacably desiring to do the opposite.

I conclude that Virgil's engagement with Stoicism in the story of Dido and Aeneas is thoroughgoing, and that viewing the episode with especially Chrysippan Stoicism in mind adds enormously to our appreciation of the poet's mastery in characterization, plot-construction and creativity on the level of theme. What Virgil was trying to do with Fate that required the Stoic position in his engagement with the political landscape is the proper subject of a separate treatment.