Even before the Eclogues, Virgil–Tityrus had been used to shifting from small to large scales, fusing microcosm and macrocosm, exchanging miniatures and the gigantic.Footnote 1 With a proverbialFootnote 2 and at the same time programmatic line, Ecl. 1.23 sic paruis componere magna solebam, ‘thus I used to compare small things with great’, he announced the rise not only of an enlarged, augmented – i.e. Augustan – Rome, but also of the new poetics of comparison necessary to make her description possible: it is like ‘cypresses among the bending osiers’ that Rome ‘has reared her head so high among all other cities’ (Ecl. 1.24–5 uerum haec tantum alias caput extulit urbes, / quantum lenta solent inter uiburna cupressi).
Virgil asks for permission to employ such poetics of comparison in the fourth Georgic, after he has already ventured to associate the tiny bees of his narrative with gigantic, and yet Callimachean,Footnote 3 Cyclopes forging weapons:Footnote 4
For some watch over the gathering of food, and under fixed covenant labour in the fields; some, within the confines of their homes, lay down the narcissus’ tears and gluey gum from the tree bark as the first foundation of the comb, then hang aloft clinging wax; others lead out the full-grown young, the nation's hope; others pack purest honey, and swell the cells with liquid nectar. To some it has fallen by lot to be sentries at the gates, and in turn they watch the rains and clouds of the sky, or take the load of incomers, or in martial array they drive the drones, a lazy herd, from the folds. All aglow is the work, and the fragrant honey is sweet with thyme. And as, when the Cyclopes in haste forge bolts from tough ore, some with oxhide bellows make the blasts come and go, others dip the hissing brass in the lake, while Aetna groans under the anvils laid upon her; they, with mighty force, now one, now another, raise their arms in measured cadence, and turn the iron with gripping tongs – even so, if we may compare small things with great, an inborn love of gain spurs on the Attic bees, each after its own office.
As in a diptych which has been separated, both sides of this simile, tenor and vehicle,Footnote 5 surface again through direct self-quotation in the texture of the Aeneid: the bees of G. 4.162–9 reappear almost verbatim in a simile that compares the Carthaginians, hard at work building their city, to a swarm of busy bees working at their hive (Aen. 1.430–6); in symmetrical fashion, the same Cyclopes of the Georgics, self-quoted in Aeneid 8, exit the realm of similes and concretely enter epic narrative in order to build the shield of Aeneas (Aen. 8.449–53).
Bees and Cyclopes bring into the epic the same poetics of comparison highlighted at the beginning of the Eclogues: they set in motion a game of abrupt changes of scale and perspective, from small to great, from great to small. Yet these sudden shifts are only activated by an intratextual memory: the Aeneid passages may appear quite different from what they seemed at first sight, once readers remember their original Georgic context.
Before homing in on the bee simile in Aeneid 1, which is the focus of this paper, it is worth mentioning that a similar technique is used by Virgil in Book 4, when the Trojans leaving Carthage appear similar, in the eyes of Dido, to a column of ants gathering food:
Even as when ants, mindful of winter, plunder a huge heap of corn and store it in their home; over the plain moves a black column, and through the grass they carry the spoil on a narrow track; some strain with their shoulders and heave on the huge grains, some close up the ranks and rebuke delay; all the path is aglow with work.
It may come as a surprise that Virgil employs such miniaturisation in order to convey the strong sense of menace that the Trojans are posing to Dido. Yet, if we turn to look at the intra- and inter-textual connections of the passage, we may notice that these evoke further images, amplifying the scale and adding extra layers of threat to the scene. First, the memory of the Georgics, where ants are described as plundering the harvest (G. 1.185–6), helps in expressing Dido's feelings that the Trojans have already been looting Carthage, as readers know well that their Roman descendants will do.Footnote 6 In addition, Servius tells us that the first half of line 404, it nigrum campis agmen, had been used by Ennius for elephants and by Accius for Indians. The intertext, far from being ‘the classic example of Virgil's disregard for the original application of an Ennian phrase’,Footnote 7 with an ‘almost comic effect’,Footnote 8 dramatises the scene by adding a military colouring to it, and emphasises the danger that the Trojans represent for Dido.Footnote 9 Moreover, if we champion the possibility that Ennius’ phrase was originally applied to Hannibal's elephants,Footnote 10 it suddenly lets the unsettling and traumatic memory of the Second Punic War crash into the fiction of the myth.
As I am going to argue in this paper, an analogous shift is activated in the bee simile of Aeneid 1.430–6,Footnote 11 where the intertextual memory of other epic bees lets the military sphere intrude into the picture, while the explicit self-quotation from Georgics 4 evokes the second half of that Georgic diptych, the simile of the Cyclopes forging weapons. It is my contention that, by means of a kind of ‘transitive relation’ made explicit by the self-quotation, the images of both bees and Cyclopes – one evoked directly, the other by implication – are made extremely relevant to the interpretation of the nature and character of the Carthaginians in this scene. However, while Dido's reaction to the Trojans/ants (Aen. 4.408–11) makes their menacing connotations explicit, no cognizance is taken of the possible danger that these Carthaginians/bees are posing to Aeneas as he is approaching their city.
The choice to let these threatening aspects be implicit and unspoken, I argue, suits particularly well the scene's emphasis on the ironically tragic gap between the hero's limited knowledge of the site and the consciousness of Roman readers, who cannot but be highly suspicious of Carthage in terms of its history.Footnote 12 Virgil's readers, as critics have long recognised, see what Aeneas cannot, yet there is much more to this privileged vision than has thus far been perceived.
1. Aen. 1.418–40: admiranda suspectanda
When Aeneas approaches the site of Carthage, the Tyrians, in their collected effort, are compared to a swarm of bees, in an almost verbatim self-quotation of Georgics 4.162–9:Footnote 13
Meanwhile they sped on the road where the pathway points. And now they were climbing the hill that looms large over the city and looks down on the confronting towers. Aeneas marvels at the massive buildings, mere huts once; marvels at the gates, the din and paved high-roads. Eagerly the Tyrians press on, some to build walls, to rear the citadel, and roll up rocks by hand; some to choose the site for a dwelling and enclose it with a furrow. They choose the laws, the magistrates, and the sacred Senate. Here some are digging harbours, here others lay the deep foundations of a theatre, and hew out of the cliffs enormous columns, high adornments for future stages. Even as bees in early summer, amid flowery fields, ply their task in sunshine, when they lead forth the full-grown young of their race, or pack the fluid honey and strain their cells to bursting with sweet nectar, or receive the burdens of incomers, or in martial array drive from their folds the drones, a lazy herd; all aglow is the work and the fragrant honey is sweet with thyme. ‘Happy they whose walls already rise!’ cries Aeneas, and he lifts his eyes towards the city roofs.
The bee simile, in all its alluring aspects, is highly motivated by the narrative context,Footnote 16 and must initially be read in light of the atmosphere of wonder that the hero's repeated admiration inspires (miratur, 421 and 422). One tertium comparationis, work (431 labor), which is fundamental to the bees in the Georgics (G. 4.184 labor omnibus unus), pushes bees and Tyrians alike to build a ‘wonderful’ society (cf. G. 4.3 admiranda … spectacula rerum).Footnote 17 In the Georgics, the author watched full of admiration as the bees started to work immediately after the building of the hive, nescio qua dulcedine laetae (G. 4.55); it is with the same admiration that Aeneas now watches a people building the walls of their city, happy in their work, with a perfect division of labour. In both cases, admiration emerges from the unsatisfied desires of the spectators: either Virgil's bitter awareness of the impossibility of reproducing such a society in the human world,Footnote 18 or Aeneas’ desire to found a bee society himself, had he the land to do it.Footnote 19
The image is thus closely connected to the desires of a hero whose city has just fallenFootnote 20 and who has been yearning for a long time to build a new one. What Aeneas sees is ‘an activity that he himself should be initiating … in the interest of his people’.Footnote 21 The envy and longing of the hero become explicit when he cries out about his lack of luck (fortuna) in contrast with the Tyrians, in a line that must be read in connection with the first words uttered by Aeneas in the poem, when he considers beati those Trojans who died beneath the walls of their city (cf. 1.437 o fortunati, quorum iam moenia surgunt! and 94–6 o terque quaterque beati, / quis ante ora patrum Troiae sub moenibus altis / contigit oppetere!). These two passages, if read together, unite the two impulses that attract Aeneas either to his devastated past or towards his not yet fulfilled future, and place him in a kind of limbo. It is then perhaps with little surprise that the simile engenders admiration in the hero, and emulous identification with the bee-like city-builders.
The emphasis on Aeneas’ admiration immediately connects this passage to its primary model, the arrival of Odysseus at Scheria (Od. 7.43 θαύμαζεν δ’ Ὀδυσεὺς λιμένας καὶ νῆας ἐΐσας). The parallel with the Homeric model initially reinforces the reassuring connotations of the scene: like the Greek hero, Aeneas has landed among an enlightened civilisation, and will receive the same hospitable treatment that was reserved for his epic predecessor. Yet, even the ‘wonders’ of Scheria were liable to look ominous. Behind their generous and sociable attitude, the Phaeacians ‘do not endure foreigners, nor do they give kindly welcome to him who comes from another land’ (Od. 7.32–3 οὐ γὰρ ξείνους οἵδε μάλ’ ἀνθρώπους ἀνέχονται, | οὐδ’ ἀγαπαζόμενοι φιλέουσ’ ὅς κ’ ἄλλοθεν ἔλθῃ); their arrogance (6.274 ὑπερφίαλοι) draws them close to their negative neighbours, the Cyclopes (9.106 Κυκλώπων … ὑπερφιάλων), to whom they are related through Poseidon, who is Alcinous’ grandfather and Arete's great-grandfather – and the enemy deity of Odysseus.Footnote 22 On the one hand, this civilisation is envisaged as the positive reverse of fictional monsters such as the CyclopesFootnote 23 and historical competitors such as the Phoenicians.Footnote 24 But at the same time the analogies that link them to their opposites work against a stable neutralisation of the dangers that Odysseus has faced: the negation of both Phoenicians and Cyclopes also suggests their erased presence.
Like Scheria, Carthage too is problematic and ambiguous, all the more so because these Tyrians are Phoenicians only disguised as Phaeacians in the poetic fiction. Their ‘national deity’, Juno, is the perfect equivalent of Poseidon, but her connection to Carthage is much more emphasised than Poseidon's relation to Scheria. It has long been noticed how Aeneas’ vision is presented as evidently blurred when he takes the temple erected in honour of Juno, a sort of giant trophaeum for the Achaeans’ victory over the Trojans, as a place where he can dissolve all his fears and hope for salvation (1.450–2 hoc primum in luco noua res oblata timorem / leniit, hic primum Aeneas sperare salutem / ausus et adflictis melius confidere rebus).Footnote 25 Here the hero, as Horsfall puts it, ‘quite fails to observe, as we must do, that the attitude to Troy shown in these pictures is neither friendly nor sympathetic. They illustrate just those qualities which Carthaginians might admire in the victorious Greeks – greed and brutality, for which they themselves had such a fine reputation.’Footnote 26 Clearly enough, there is a bitter and tragic gap between the characters’ knowledge and that of Virgil's readers.
As is already well known, this scene betrays a significant and deliberate assimilation of Carthage and Rome. Just as bees stand allegorically for Rome in the fourth Georgic,Footnote 27 the description of the Tyrians’ activities contains many a Roman hint, either directed to Rome itself or to the re-colonisation of Carthage, finally accomplished by Augustus with the so called Colonia Iulia Concordia Carthago.Footnote 28 In Virgil's Carthage, paved roads (strata uiarum, 422) and theatre(s?)Footnote 29 (427) have replaced the poor Punic huts (magalia, 421) and the city boasts laws, magistrates and even a ‘sacred Senate’ (426) – a peculiarity which has induced more than one editor to reject the line, or to conjecture the occurrence of ‘some early dislocation of the text’.Footnote 30 Just like the temple of Jupiter in Rome, the temple of Juno in Carthage was founded precisely where a head had been dug up – only, not a human head, but that of a horse (Aen. 1.441–5).Footnote 31
These parallels, on the narrative level, emphasise Aeneas’ identification with Dido and her people in their similar condition of exiles, but they also hint, more bitterly, at the historical future inscribed in this past, the one encapsulated in Dido's famously ironical urbem quam statuo, uestra est (1.573). Roman Carthage, whether Augustus’ colony or not, has replaced Punic Carthage according to a destiny that has already been written. But in order to accept this, it is also necessary to take into consideration more than one century of repeated enmity and bloodshed – a period which generated a portrait of Carthaginians very different from the hospitable and peaceful bee-like society that Virgil apparently presents us with here. Aeneas’ interpretative horizons are limited in this scene,Footnote 32 and there is no reason why he should be able to comment on a future that he has no access to. Yet readers have already been warned about the stereotypical fierceness of Carthaginians, which has been set aside only by Jupiter's intervention (Aen. 1.302–3 ponuntque ferocia Poeni / corda uolente deo) and will soon be alerted again to the need to be wary of a site that will give birth to a famously deceitful nation (1.661 domum … ambiguam Tyriosque bilinguis), a city ‘impious’ and ‘haughty’, as Horace calls it (Epod. 7.5–6 superbas inuidae Karthaginis / … arces; Carm. 4.8.17 Karthaginis impiae), breeding ‘inhuman cruelty’ (Livy 21.4.9 inhumana crudelitas, perfidia plus quam Punica …). From Juno's words, it will be clear that Venus has always feared and suspected the site (Verg. Aen. 4.96–7 nec me adeo fallit ueritam te moenia nostra / suspectas habuisse domos Karthaginis altae). Aeneas, however, wrapped as he is in the cloak of mist, cannot see the potential danger:Footnote 33 his mother ‘suspects’ the city, he simply suspicit it – ‘looks up in admiration’ (438 fastigia suspicit urbis).Footnote 34
Thus, if we turn again to Aen. 1.418–40, we may find some hints at the city's sinister connotations. The hill of Carthage ‘towers above the city’ (420 imminet), a verb that can encode a sense of menace, while the towers (420 arces) are called aduersae, meaning, as Conway states, that ‘the mountain, though higher, looks at them in the face’,Footnote 35 but also evoking aggression, echoing the ambiguity of contra at the beginning of the poem (1.13 Karthago, Italiam contra Tiberinaque longe / ostia). Both immineo and aduersus feature in the description of the Carthaginian harbour (1.165–6 horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra. / fronte sub aduersa scopulis pendentibus antrum), a passage which Schiesaro reads as displaying ‘the typical features and colours of loca horrida’ behind its apparently reassuring characterisation.Footnote 36
In addition, an allusion to the deceitfulness of the Carthaginians may be encoded in the phrase manibus subuoluere saxa (424), which has provoked surprise at least since Servius Scholia Danielis.Footnote 37 In Kraggerud's opinion, this is a reminiscence of Sisyphus (6.616 saxum ingens uoluunt alii), which would serve to foreshadow the fall of the city: ‘Wie der Stein, so wird die Burg Karthagos fallen’.Footnote 38 I would add that Sisyphus, known from Homer as ‘the smartest of all men’ (Il. 6.153–4) and famous for his deceitfulness and untrustworthiness, was punished by Zeus for his betrayal (Apollod. 1.9.3). For Lucretius, he is a prime example of political ambition (Lucr. 3.995–1002), and mythology also depicted him as a thief who attacked wayfarers and killed them with a rock (Ov. Ib. 175). It would not be reassuring, for Aeneas and Achates, to evoke such a character in their present condition as travellers.
2. The bees behind the bees
In this context, if we activate the intertextual models of the simile, we notice that even bees partake in the threat posed by the Carthaginians. In fact, just as the horse's head in the following lines (Aen. 1.444–5) explicitly foreshadows the Punic Wars, bees are also a particularly apt symbol for the Carthaginians in view of their martial associations, since in all of Virgil's Greek epic predecessors they are usually found in military contexts.Footnote 39 In the Iliad, bees are an analogue for the Greek army gathered in an assembly after Agamemnon's dreamFootnote 40 (Il. 2.87–93) and for two Lapiths, Polypoites and Leonteus, who protect their gate just as bees protect their hive and offspring from hunters (Il. 12.164–72). In the Argonautica, the Bebrycians, after the death of Amycus, flee in panic like a swarm of bees at the attack of the Argonauts (Arg. 2.130–6). The opposite situation is described in Aeschylus’ Persians, where both bees and Persians are visualised as a strongly cohesive army, fully united under their leader (Pers. 126–32). The only Greek epic bee simile which does not belong to a martial context, that of the Lemnian women in Apollonius (Arg. 1.879–85), is a significant erotic model for the bee simile of Carthage, and one recognisably fraught with perilous connotations, since these women killed all their husbands on the basis that they were guilty of rejecting their ‘legitimate wives’ (Arg. 1.609–19), a charge which parallels quite closely Dido's accusation against Aeneas.Footnote 41
In Latin literature, while we find the connection between bees and military activity in Varro (Rust. 3.16.9, 3.16.30) and Pliny (HN 11.19–20, 26–7),Footnote 42 the most significant passages, for our Carthaginian focus, belong to Livy's third decade, where the bees, rather than a symbol of prosperity, ‘regularly symbolise the hostile forces which are to defeat the Roman command’,Footnote 43 as with the swarms seen in the Roman forum (Livy 24.10.11 secundum apum examen in foro uisum – quod mirabile est, quia rarum) and in the forum of Casinum (Livy 27.23.2 Casini examen apum ingens in foro consedisse). Before the battle of Ticinus, a swarm of bees predicts the forthcoming defeat of the Roman army at the hands of the Carthaginians (Livy 21.46.2 examen apium in arbore praetorio imminente consederat)Footnote 44 and Hannibal's apparent loss of strength after Cannae is also compared, by the ambassadors from the Hirpini and the Samnites, to that of a bee that has spent its sting (Livy 23.42.5 te, ad unum modo ictum uigentem, uelut aculeo emisso torpere).
The last two bee similes of the Aeneid will make the connection between bees and military activities explicit: while the swarm of bees which settles on the laurel tree in the palace of Latinus (Aen. 7.64–7) accordingly anticipates the forthcoming war and future domination of the Trojans,Footnote 45 towards the end of the poem the Latins will be ‘smoked out’ from their walls like bees from their hive (Aen. 12.587–92). In Aeneid 1, however, the only hint at the military sphere is kept in the expression agmine facto (434), which also closely recalls the recent danger run by the Trojans at the furious unleashing of Aeolus’ winds (Aen. 1.82–3 ac uenti uelut agmine facto, / qua data porta, ruunt). The impression that Virgil has deliberately de-militarised his Carthaginian bees may be further confirmed by the omission of two lines from the repeated passage of the Georgics (G. 4.165–6 sunt quibus ad portas cecidit custodia sorti, / inque uicem speculantur aquas et nubila caeli) which refer to the bees’ task of guarding the hive – a mention that would have brought the passage closer to the Homeric bee simile of the Lapiths protecting their gate in Iliad 12.
Thus, in order to distantiate the unwitting character of Aeneas from his more conscious readers, Virgil has created at least two levels of significance for bee imagery: while his intertexts indicate that bees are a symbol of both an enlightened and perfectly organised state and of the military forces that lie at the basis of such perfection, the apparently peaceful bee society of the Carthaginians functions according to the policy of expelling unwanted intruders (435 ignauum fucos pecus a praesepibus arcent),Footnote 46 once its bee citizens have been explicitly lined up in an advancing ‘martial array’.
Before discussing the extra layer of menace that the intratextual memory of the Georgics activates in this scene, it is worth turning again to the Trojans/ants of Aen. 4.402–7. In fact, in my brief discussion of this passage, I have deliberately ignored its connection to the bee simile of Book 1, which is in fact symmetrical with the ants simile in Book 4 much in the same way as the Dido/Diana simile at Aen. 1.498–504 is symmetrical with the Aeneas/Apollo simile at Aen. 4.143–50.Footnote 47
Both bees and ants appear in the middle of their respective books, and they first show the Tyrians from Aeneas’ point of view, then the Trojans from Dido's. Clearly one of their aims is to contrast the naïve character of the hero, and his overall good intentions, with the rage and hatred that devour the queen. Yet it must be added that the military bees of Book 1 seem to lie behind the military ants of Book 4, since most of the terms used in the ants simile belong to the world of bees:Footnote 48 hiemis memores (4.403) had been used for bees at G. 4.156; tectoque reponunt (4.403) at G. 4.157 and Aen. 1.433; grandia (4.405) at G. 4.26; agmina cogunt (4.406) recalls agmine facto at G. 4.167 and Aen. 1.434; castigant moras (4.407) recalls the bees driving away lazy drones at G. 4.168 and Aen. 1.435; opere omnis semita feruet (4.407) echoes feruet opus at G. 4.169 and Aen. 1.436.
It is only through intratextual memory that we can witness the transformation of the Trojans/ants into bees, much in the same way as we could witness their transformation into Hannibal's elephants only by understanding the allusion to the Ennian passage transmitted by Servius. Yet, whereas the shift from ants to elephants may serve to add menace to the scene by introducing the memory of the Punic Wars, the shift from ants to bees anticipates the associations between bees and Trojans that will become explicit in the course of the poem,Footnote 49 while also looking back to the connections between bees and Romans established in the fourth Georgic.Footnote 50
In the bee simile of Book 1, we find a comparable shift from simile to simile activated by the intratextual memory of the bees’ original Georgic context, where they were followed, as we have seen, by a comparison to Cyclopes. The evocation of the Cyclopes simile not only reinforces the military aspects of bees already indicated by Virgil's models, but also brings the image of Dido's Tyrians closer to that of Hannibal's Carthaginians: warmongers and weapon-forgers.
3. The Cyclopes behind the bees
If we accept the idea that the self-quotation from G. 4.162–9 also inevitably recalls the second half of the Georgics diptych, we are confronted with another simile which illustrates the actions of the Tyrians as well as, or perhaps even better than, the bee simile did:
Aeneas marvels at the massive buildings, mere huts once; marvels at the gates, the din and paved high-roads. Eagerly the Tyrians press on, some to build walls, to rear the citadel, and roll up rocks by hand; some to choose the site for a dwelling and enclose it with a furrow. They choose the laws, the magistrates, and the sacred Senate. Here some are digging harbours, here others lay the deep foundations of a theatre, and hew out of the cliffs enormous columns, high adornments for future stages.
[And as, when the Cyclopes in haste forge bolts from tough ore, some with oxhide bellows make the blasts come and go, others dip the hissing brass in the lake, while Aetna groans under the anvils laid upon her; they, with mighty force, now one, now another, raise their arms in measured cadence, and turn the iron with gripping tongs.]
There are many similarities between the Cyclopes forging a shield emblazoned with the city of Rome and the Tyrians/bees forging a city/hive which resembles Rome. The terms moles (421),Footnote 51 alta (427 and 429) and immanis (428) stand in direct opposition to the miniature then offered by the bees, emphasising the shift from a large to a small scale. The verbs insto and ardeo (423, with ardeo evoking fire and Vulcan) both match in meaning the properant of the Georgics, as the strepitus (422) of the Tyrians’ activities pairs well with the stridentia aera of the Cyclopes. Furthermore, both bronze and stridor will return shortly in the description of Juno's temple (Aen. 1.448–9 aerea cui gradibus surgebant limina nexaeque / aere trabes, foribus cardo stridebat aënis ),Footnote 52 whose ecphrasis might have a Naevian precedent in the so-called fragment of the Giants (fr. 19 Morel), a passage which, according to a popular hypothesis,Footnote 53 may have belonged to the description of the temple of Jupiter Olympus at Agrigentum, which displayed both a Gigantomachy and a Capture of Troy (Diod. 13.82.4).Footnote 54
In addition to these similarities, two details are particularly noteworthy. The first is the description of the Tyrians as busy in building (or tracing) the walls of their city (423 ducere muros): a similar iunctura (with moenia instead of muros) is found again only once in the Aeneid, in relation to the walls built by the Cyclopes in the Underworld (Aen. 6.630–1, Cyclopum ducta Footnote 55 caminis / moenia ). Even more striking, in the description of an otherwise anachronistically advanced civilisation, is the representation of Carthaginians as ‘rolling up rocks with their own hands’ (424 manibus subuoluere saxa), a phrase which Kraggerud connected, as we have seen, with the ominous character of Sisyphus.Footnote 56 Rather, this detail closely recalls the activity of the Cyclopes, as at G. 1.473 (G. 1.471–3 quotiens Cyclopum efferuere in agros / uidimus undantem ruptis fornacibus Aetnam, / flammarumque globos liquefactaque uoluere saxa!). The saxa were already almost a byword for the Cyclopes in the aforementioned passage pronounced by Aeneas (Aen. 1.201–2), and are indeed present in almost all Virgilian mentions of the Cyclopes,Footnote 57 referring either to the cliffs of the Aeolian islands (Aen. 1.201; 3.555, 559, 566) or to the white-hot rocks, the lava (Aen. 3.576; 8.417; G. 1.473).
These two different kinds of saxa closely correspond to two different types of Cyclopes: the Homeric ones, monstrous race of one-eyed men who share the wild and secluded life of Polyphemus, and the Hesiodic Cyclopes, demons of the bolt who appear, in Hellenistic poetry, in association with Hephaestus and the volcanic forges at Zeus’ service. These two types of Cyclopes, whose superimposition must be ancient,Footnote 58 are both pertinent to the interpretation of the Carthaginians.
Homeric Cyclopes have already been recognised by Virgilian critics as a major literary model implicitly at work at different stages of the Carthaginian episode. Before Aeneas’ arrival at Carthage, while the storm that drove the hero to the Libyan shores has famously been recognised by Hardie as unleashing the first ‘gigantomachic forces’ of the poem,Footnote 59 the partial modelling of the Carthaginian harbour on that of the Cyclopes at Od. 9.136–40Footnote 60 has been interpreted as indicating the suspicions of a hero who has just landed in an unknown land, ‘caught between the possibility of Phaeacian civilization or savagery’.Footnote 61 The threatening cliffs of the harbour (Aen. 1.162–3 hinc atque hinc uastae rupes geminique minantur / in caelum scopuli) reminded the hero of both the cliffs of Scylla and Charybdis (Aen. 1.200–1 uos et Scyllaeam rabiem penitusque sonantis / accestis scopulos ) and the rocks of the Cyclopes (Aen. 1.201–2 uos et Cyclopia saxa / experti), who appear here for the first time in the poem as explicitly associated with a possible present peril and offered as the example of a danger recently overcome. Shortly afterwards, the primary Homeric model of the welcoming civilisation of the Phaeacians seems to dissolve both the hero's fears and the Cyclopic danger. The Phaeacian model, however, which was not completely devoid of danger even in the Odyssey,Footnote 62 is soon discovered to be nothing but smoke and mirrors, when Polyphemus surfaces again firstly in his similarities with the Virgilian Fama,Footnote 63 and more consistently in the echoes of his curse in the curse of Dido (Aen. 4.621–9).Footnote 64
It is possible that Dido's ‘Cyclopic behaviour’Footnote 65 may serve to bring her closer to the historical avenger that she invokes in the curse. Hannibal, as is well known, lost an eye from an infection after the battle of the Trebia,Footnote 66 and indeed Juvenal refers to him as the ‘one-eyed General’ (Juv. 10.158 ducem … luscum). One fragment of Ennius which contains a Cyclops simile (fr. 319–20 Sk. Cyclopis uenter uelut olim turserat alte / carnibus humanis distentus), attributed by Priscian to Book IX of the Annales, is taken by SkutschFootnote 67 to refer not to Hannibal but to Philip V of Macedon, also represented as a Cyclops in an epigram of Alcaeus of Messene (Anth. Pal. 9.519), who would have transferred to Philip the attributes of his one-eyed ancestors, Antigonus Monophthalmos, also dubbed Κύκλωψ as a second nickname (Ael. VH 12.43), and Philip II.Footnote 68 Yet, even if a reference to Philip V seems more likely, it is worth emphasising the existing connections between one-eyed generals and Cyclopes. Silius’ Hannibal, whom Fucecchi dubs ‘the proper “Giant” of the Punica’,Footnote 69 will be described as a living furnace (Sil. 5.603–6),Footnote 70 and the cloak he gives as a gift to his brother Hasdrubal has a picture of Virgil's PolyphemusFootnote 71 embroidered upon it:
And next is a vast cave, imitated by the needle on purple, the house of the Cyclopes. Here, reclining, Polyphemus swallows down with his death-dealing jaws bodies dripping with gore. Around him lie the broken bones, tossed out from his jaws.
While it is true that Polyphemus may here serve to foreshadow Hasdrubal's defeat at the battle of Metaurus, the picture may also be, in Stephen Harrison's words, ‘an appropriately ironic characterization of Hannibal … one-eyed (cf. 4.751–62), literally thirsting for human blood (1.59–60) and a scorner of the gods (1.58)’.Footnote 72
To sum up, while the intertextual memory of the Homeric Cyclopes indicates that the Trojans may have landed on savage and inhospitable shores, the intratextual memory of the Hesiodic Cyclopes of the Georgics sharpens the characterisation of Carthage as an ominous military power and brings to mind the historical weapon-forging Carthaginians of the Punic Wars, especially those of the Second, led by Hannibal luscus, the one-eyed commander.
If we reunite the two images of bees and Cylopes in their application to Virgil's Carthaginians, we notice that they both share a double characterisation. The bees–Cyclopes simile of the Georgics has been interpreted in the light of a dichotomy between the creative forces of stock farming, symbolised by the bees, and the destructive forces of nature and war, symbolised by the Cyclopes,Footnote 73 but the simile works to bring these two symbols together through their analogies rather than their polarities. Just as the Cyclopes, in their double Homeric–Hesiodic form, belong to both pastoral and martial contexts, the bees of the Georgics not only embody the enlightened pastoral activities of the Augustan renovated Golden Age, but also act as the ‘miniature warriors’Footnote 74 which allegorically represent the recent peril of the civil wars.Footnote 75
This double pastoral–military characterisation is applied to the Carthaginians of Aeneid 1 in order to emphasise the gap between Aeneas’ limited knowledge of Carthage and the readers’ historical memory of the Punic Wars; in other words, the same gap that lies between the time of the fictional narration of myth and the history of Rome which is hidden and allegorised behind that narration. In the course of Book 4, that military history will intrude more and more into the allegory of myth, through Dido's curse up to the imagined destruction of Carthage which overlaps with her death in the finale of the episode (Aen. 4.669–71). And it is by taking with him from Carthage both symbols of bees and Cyclopes that Aeneas will continue his journey towards the history of the foundation of Rome and its augmented – Augustan – form.
4. Roman Conclusions
In a scene which explicitly plays with the themes of the hero's vision and awareness, the bee simile of Aeneid 1 is a fascinating example of how Virgilian self-reference, in a wider ambience of intricate and self-conscious allusivity, requires readers to think (and see) through various different lenses and narrative strata. What we are dealing with in this passage is a specific technique of hiding menacing images and connotations in ‘traces’ of preceding texts: thus, just like the model of the apparently hospitable Scheria, the image of the bees does not, or at least does not only, symbolise the hero's arrival at an amiable and enlightened community. Rather, it echoes the unsettling images of the Achaeans, the Lemnian women, Sisyphus, the Cyclopes, warning readers that Aeneas should be wary when approaching the site.
What remains to be discussed, now that we have recognised the aggressive potential of the Carthaginian bees, is the significance of this aggressivity in view of the relation between bees and Rome. From this point of view, it is easy to see how the Georgics’ allegory of Rome as an enlightened bee state and the Aeneid’s mirroring between Carthage and Rome eventually become two sides of the same coin.
In fact, the allegory of Rome as a bee state is not absent from the world of the Aeneid: in the clearly symmetrical distribution of bee imagery in the Aeneid (we find them in Books 1, 6, 7 and 12, that is, at the beginning and at the end of each half of the poem), Briggs reads Virgil's intent to portray bees as a constructive and positive token of power for the city that Aeneas is going to build. In Book 6, where the souls gathering around the river Lethe are compared to bees (Aen. 6.707–9), ‘the simile assumes that along with the knowledge [of the mysteries of the world], Aeneas also carries with him the harmony of the bee-community’.Footnote 76 In Book 7, in the prophecy in the palace of Latinus (Aen. 7.64–7), ‘the association of the Trojans with a wandering swarm, hinted at in the first simile … takes on the aspect of a concrete symbol’,Footnote 77 whereas in Book 12 (Aen. 12.587–92), where the Latins enclosed in their walls are likened to a swarm of bees, ‘the prophecy of Book 7 has come true’ and ‘the victor in the conflict over Latium will be selected to rule as is the strong king in G. 4.88–102’.Footnote 78 However, there are aspects that complicate Briggs’ teleological reasoning: in the bee simile of Book 6, the political character of bees is all but explictly stated; in Book 7, the bees of the prophecy might as well represent the Latins who are ‘driven out of their settlement by strangers’.Footnote 79 In Book 12, the Latins/bees are smoked out from their home by a pastor, and not by another swarm (Aen. 12.587). What is significant in the bee pattern of the Aeneid is that the military connotations of bees become finally explicit near the end of the poem, in a simile (Aen. 12.587–92), which recognisably draws on Apollonius’ bee simile of Argonautica 2 (Arg. 2.130–6).Footnote 80 This passage, though in ‘painful contrast’ with the peaceful scene of Book 1, creates a connection between Tyrians and Latins as enemies to the Trojans and in acting as ‘a reminder that Carthage suffered a symbolic capture when its queen committed suicide … [it] implicitly foreshadows Amata's death’.Footnote 81
Not only bees, however, have taken up arms during the course of the poem: Aeneas too has undergone a similar militarisation. The hero who, in the first bee simile of the Aeneid, seemed no more than an inscius pastor who watched busy bees in admiration,Footnote 82 has become completely involved in war by the end of the poem.Footnote 83 In the course of this militarisation of the hero, we also find his association with the weapon-forging Cyclopes. Long after the symbolic fall of the city of Carthage, the second half of the Georgics simile reappears in the narrative context of the epic, with the Cyclopes subjugated and forced to build Aeneas’ shield, as if the powers that were once ‘used irresponsibly’ had now become the ‘instrument of a divine providence’:Footnote 84
They with speed all bent to the toil, allotting the labour equally. Bronze and golden ore flow in streams, and wounding steel is molted in the vast furnace. A giant shield they shape, to confront alone all the weapons of the Latins, and weld it sevenfold, circle on circle. Some with panting bellows make the blasts come and go, others dip the hissing brass in the lake, while the cavern groans under the anvils laid upon it; they, with mighty force, now one, now another, raise their arms in measured cadence, and turn the mass with gripping tongs.
At the end of Book 8, after the description of the shield, the spotlight will turn again on Aeneas’ ignorance, as he stares at the shield with admiration (miratur) and takes delight in the image without grasping its meaning (ignarus). Unwittingly, he is about to carry on his shoulders the glory and destiny of posterity:Footnote 85
Such sights on the shield of Vulcan, his mother's gift, he admires, and though unaware of the events, he takes delight in their image, raising up on his shoulder the fame and fortunes of his chidren's children.
Such a militarisation has already been put in motion when he enters the city of Carthage and takes part in first person in the scaenae futurae that the theatre of Queen Dido is going to perform.Footnote 86 As long as Carthage is the specular image of Rome (as Dido is of Aeneas), the same features echoed in the description of the Tyrians will apply to the hero, at least from the point at which he enters the city and mingles with the Carthaginians (Aen. 1.440 per medios miscetque uiris neque cernitur ulli), a passage that emphasises the danger he will pose to the city by echoing those lines of Book 2 when the Trojans will mingle with Greek soldiers ‘in the blindness of the night’ (Aen. 2.396–8 uadimus immixti Danais haud numine nostro / multaque per caecam congressi proelia noctem / conserimus, multos Danaum demittimus Orco).
If it is true that Carthaginians and Achaeans seem to be put on the same side in the temple of Juno or through the Homeric image of bees gathering after Agamemnon's dream, it is also true that Aeneas, like the Greek soldiers, is entering a city in a cloak of mist, and will eventually lead to the death of its leader and to the dissolution of the state. As Van Nortwick puts it, Aeneas, ‘Venus’ deceptive work of art … who enters Troy and destroys it from within’,Footnote 87 eventually performs the role of Carthage's wooden horse.
Briggs, I conclude, is right to reason that the Romans will gain possession from the Carthaginians of the symbol of power that the bees represent, much in the same way as they seize the token of the horse in Egan's analysis of the horse's head,Footnote 88 and as we find Cyclopes resituated in Book 8 in their properly subservient proto-Roman context. But it is reductive, as it was in the case of Carthage, to interpret this ‘plunder’ in light of the optimistic reading of the future city of Rome as a peaceful and enlightened bee state. The meaning of these tokens of power is far from straightforward: they complicate the image of Rome just as they complicate the image of Carthage.Footnote 89 In other words, si parua licet componere magnis, the ambiguity of a single Virgilian simile mirrors the poetic and political complexity of the epic as a whole.
