Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-2dmjx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T04:18:37.531Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

AN ACROSTIC IN AENEID 11.902–6

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2020

Paul K. Hosle
Paul K. Hosle*
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
*
phosle@uchicago.edu
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Very shortly before the end of Book 11 of the Aeneid, Turnus, hearing of Camilla's death, is forced to abandon his ambush in order to fall back to the city. Just after he leaves the wooded gorge, Aeneas passes through it unscathed with his company. Both then head toward the city walls. Virgil marks this near miss of the two commanders by an acrostic (Aen. 11.901–7):

      ille furens (et saeua Iouis sic numina pellunt)
      deserit obsessos collis, nemora aspera linquit.
      uix e conspectu exierat campumque tenebat,
      cum pater Aeneas saltus ingressus apertos
      exsuperatque iugum siluaque euadit opaca.
      sic ambo ad muros rapidi totoque feruntur
      agmine nec longis inter se passibus absunt.

Information

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 908 - 910
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association.

Very shortly before the end of Book 11 of the Aeneid, Turnus, hearing of Camilla's death, is forced to abandon his ambush in order to fall back to the city. Just after he leaves the wooded gorge, Aeneas passes through it unscathed with his company. Both then head toward the city walls. Virgil marks this near miss of the two commanders by an acrostic (Aen. 11.901–7):Footnote 1

ille furens (et saeua Iouis sic numina pellunt)
deserit obsessos collis, nemora aspera linquit.
uix e conspectu exierat campumque tenebat,
cum pater Aeneas saltus ingressus apertos
exsuperatque iugum siluaque euadit opaca.
sic ambo ad muros rapidi totoque feruntur
agmine nec longis inter se passibus absunt.

The first letters of verses 11.902–6 spell out duces, a word whose thematic importance for the Aeneid can hardly be understated.Footnote 2 As far as I can see, this acrostic has not been given scholarly treatment since it was first relegated by Isidore Hilberg to his massive dossier of what he deemed to be accidental acrostics.Footnote 3 This would appear, however, to be a very promising candidate for a further deliberate acrostic. The most convincing acrostics are often accompanied by the word in the immediate context.Footnote 4 This is not the case here, but the general harmony of the suggested acrostic with the context should be clear.Footnote 5 Not only do we find here both Turnus and Aeneas in their capacity as leaders, Virgil has gone out of his way to emphasize them (cf. 901 ille; 904 pater Aeneas; 906 ambo) over their respective armies.Footnote 6 One who is not yet satisfied by these observations might object that acrostics have a tendency to occur alongside subtle metapoetic signals that alert the reader to them.Footnote 7 Our passage is not lacking in these. The phrase e conspectu (903) may already be a warning that there is something that escapes the eye; or, if we take uix e conspectu together, it is thereby indicated that there is something ‘hardly out of sight’, emphasizing the fact that the acrostic lies just under our noses. I tentatively suggest that another such hint is provided by the reference to silua … opaca (905). Words roughly synonymous with opaca, such as latebrosus, have been noticed elsewhere as markers of cryptic messages in the text.Footnote 8 And when we consider the metaliterary force of silua as referring to poetic material,Footnote 9 the signalling of something hidden in these verses becomes only more apparent. Furthermore, can it really be mere coincidence that Turnus should forsake his hiding place at precisely the point (902) where Virgil prepares his own? To sum up on a more general note, it is difficult to imagine a better place to have a concealed duces acrostic than in a passage which thematizes one leader waiting in ambush for another and then in turn only just failing to see him.

Footnotes

I am grateful to the editor and to the anonymous reviewer of CQ for their comments on this note.

References

1 The Latin text is Geymonat, M. (ed.), P. Vergili Maronis opera (Rome, 2008 2)Google Scholar.

2 We need only recall the self-epitaph traditionally attributed to Virgil (VSD 36): Mantua me genuit; Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc | Parthenope. cecini pascua, rura, duces.

3 Hilberg, I., ‘Ist die Ilias Latina von einem Italicus verfasst oder einem Italicus gewidmet?’, WS 21 (1899), 264–305Google Scholar, at 298. The acrostic is not mentioned in e.g. Katz, J.T., ‘The Muse at play: an introduction’, in Kwapisz, J., Petrain, D. and Szymański, M. (edd.), The Muse at Play. Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry (Berlin, 2013), 1–30Google Scholar, Robinson, M., ‘Looking edgeways. Pursuing acrostics in Ovid and Virgil’, CQ 69 (2019), 290–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or Robinson, M., ‘Arms and a mouse: approaching acrostics in Ovid and Vergil’, MD 82 (2019), 23–73Google Scholar.

4 I have in mind especially Aratus’ famous ΛΕΠΤΗ gamma-acrostic (Phaen. 783–7), where the word appears both vertically and horizontally: see Jacques, J.-M., ‘Sur un acrostiche d'Aratos (Phén., 783–787)’, REA 62 (1960), 48–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Virgil, there is the well-known MARS acrostic in Aen. 7.601–4, where 7.603 includes the word Martem: see Fowler, D.P., ‘An acrostic in Vergil (Aeneid 7. 601–4)?’, CQ 33 (1983), 298CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But see also Grishin, A.A., ‘Ludus in undis: an acrostic in Eclogue 9’, HSPh 104 (2008), 237–40Google Scholar, for the VNDIS acrostic in Ecl. 9.34–8; verse 39 has the question quis est nam ludus in undis?, thus confirming the acrostic.

5 For a case of a Virgilian acrostic which corresponds not to a specific word but, none the less, to the theme of a passage, see e.g. Danielewicz, J., ‘Further Hellenistic acrostics: Aratus and others’, Mnemosyne 58 (2005), 321–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 324. The acrostic is INANIS (Ecl. 8.42–7), and it answers the remark nunc scio, quid sit amor (8.43).

6 Note that the grammatical subjects of the clauses are Turnus, Aeneas, or both. The armies are only explicitly mentioned in the ablatival phrase totoque … agmine (906–7).

7 Cf. e.g. Feeney, D. and Nelis, D., ‘Two Virgilian acrostics: certissima signa?’, CQ 55 (2005), 644–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where such signalling is discussed.

8 Cf. Carter, M.A.S., ‘Vergilium vestigare: Aeneid 12.587–8’, CQ 52 (2002), 615–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 616.

9 See especially Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 1998), 11–14Google Scholar, on Aeneid Book 6, Keith, A.M., ‘Slender verse: Roman elegy and ancient rhetorical theory’, Mnemosyne 52 (1999), 41–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 48, on Horace, and Petrain, D., ‘Hylas and Silva: etymological wordplay in Propertius 1.20’, HSPh 100 (2000), 409–21Google Scholar, on Propertius. It is true that silua more properly has the metaliterary sense of poetic source material, but its looser, more general use is also attested: Keith (this note), 48.