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THE BRONZE OF JUNO’S CARTHAGINIAN TEMPLE (VERG. AEN. 1.448–9): AN ALLUSION TO HES. OP. 150–1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2026

Marco Gay
Marco Gay*
Affiliation:
Université de Fribourg
*
marco.gay@unifr.ch
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Abstract

Building on Servius’ note on Aen. 1.448, this article argues that Virgil’s lines emphasizing the bronze details of Juno’s temple in Carthage (Aen. 1.448–9) allude to Hes. Op. 150–1, which belong to the description of the Bronze Race in Hesiod’s ‘Myth of the Races’. Because in Hesiod’s Works and Days the Bronze Race stands out for its violence, this allusion stirs a sense of lingering threat, setting the stage for the upcoming ekphrasis portraying the massacre of the Trojans (1.453–93) and counterbalancing Carthage’s Golden-Age traits. In this way, it contributes to Virgil’s ambiguous presentation of Rome’s most famous enemy and plays into the broader question of the ‘epochal’ setting of the Trojans’ arrival in Italy.

Keywords

AeneidCarthageHesiod‘Myth of the Races’intertextualityServiusVirgilWorks and Days

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 75 , Issue 2 , December 2025 , pp. 782 - 791
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© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

In Book 1 of the Aeneid, made invisible by the mist which Venus has thrown over them, Aeneas and Achates venture into Carthage, a city-in-the-making bristling with construction activity (1.411–40). At its centre, surrounded by unfinished buildings, is a wood enclosing a temple sacred to Juno, which the Carthaginians erected where, following her instructions, they unearthed a horse head (1.441–9). In a long ekphrasis, Virgil describes the murals on its walls—but the text does not specify the images’ location—portraying episodes taken from the Trojan War, which Aeneas, now more hopeful, stops to admire (Aen. 1.450–93).Footnote 1 Although the murals are the temple’s feature that has attracted most scholarly attention, when introducing it for the first time Virgil emphasizes another detail, namely the bronze used in its construction (Verg. Aen. 1.448–9; transl. D. West):

aerea cui gradibus surgebant limina nexaequeFootnote 2
aere trabes, foribus cardo stridebat aënis.

It was a raised temple, and at the top of its steps the threshold was of bronze, the beams were jointed with bronze and the bronze doors grated as they turned in their sockets.

Notwithstanding the triple anaphora aerea (adjective)–aere (noun)–aenis (adjective), scholars have generally overlooked these lines, explaining the stress on bronze as a device to foreshadow Carthage’s future prosperity.Footnote 3 Virgil’s description of Juno’s temple with its bronze details is usually thought to be based on that of Alcinous’ palace in the Odyssey (7.86–97), with which it shares the same narrative function.Footnote 4 Yet not only is bronze just one of the several alloys and metals that decorate Alcinous’ palace, but no two lines in the Homeric passage contain a triple anaphora comparable to that of Aen. 1.448–9.Footnote 5 Although, on a structural level, Juno’s temple in the Aeneid plays the same role as Alcinous’ palace in the Odyssey, Od. 7.86–97 offers no direct model for Aen. 1.448–9. It is noteworthy, therefore, that the Servian commentary on the Aeneid preserves an insight that invites us to leave Homer aside and take Hesiod into account: this suggestion, I hope to show, deserves to be taken seriously.Footnote 6

Servius—the author of the most ancient extant commentary on Virgil’s poems—devotes several notes to the explanation of Aen. 1.448–9.Footnote 7 Among them, stands out the note on aerea:

AEREA uel quod aes magis ueteres in usu habebant, uel quod religioni apta est haec materies, denique flamen Dialis aereis cultris tondebatur: aut quia uocalius ceteris metallis, aut quia medici aere quaedam uulnera curant, aut dicit quia ueteres magis aere usi sunt aut certe aerea saecula significantur: nam ut Hesiodus dicit, tempore quo haec gesta sunt aereum saeculum fuit.Footnote 8

OF BRONZE either because the ancients used bronze more or because this material is appropriate for religious matters—accordingly, the Flamen Dialis was shaved with bronze razors—or because it is more resounding than other materials or because healers treat some wounds with bronze, or he says so because the ancients used bronze more or, surely, he means the Bronze Age: for, as Hesiod says, the time when these events took place was the Bronze Age.

After formulating the hypothesis that the temple has bronze components because it is a material suitable for religious purposes, Servius explains its use as reflecting the epoch during which Aeneas’ adventures took place, that is, the Bronze Age. As a source he cites Hesiod, who, however, in the Works and Days ascribes the fall of Troy to the epoch of the Heroic Race (Op. 164–5), which in the ‘Myth of the Races’ (109–201) comes after the Bronze Race (143–55).Footnote 9 Although this wrong reference proves that Servius neither had direct knowledge of Hesiod’s poem nor had access to reliable sources about it, the mention of the Bronze Age is not inexplicable.Footnote 10 In fact, recent studies have argued that the Hesiodic passage to which this note refers is Op. 150–1, which belongs indeed to the account of the Bronze Race.Footnote 11 Two main arguments support this claim.Footnote 12 First, the Bronze Race stands out in Hesiod’s sequence of generations because it is the only one to be clearly named after the metal it uses the most: according to the Works and Days, even houses are made of bronze at the time of the Bronze Race, hence its association with construction activity in Servius’ note.Footnote 13 Second, there is a striking rhetorical similarity between Verg. Aen. 1.448–9 and Hes. Op. 150–1 (transl. M.L. West):

τῶν δ᾽ ἦν χάλκεα μὲν τεύχεα, χάλκεοι δέ τε οἶκοι,
χαλκῷ δ᾽ εἰργάζοντο· μέλας δ᾽ οὐκ ἔσκε σίδηρος.

They had bronze armour, bronze houses, and with bronze they laboured, as dark iron was not available.

To underscore the use of bronze for architectural purposes, Verg. Aen. 1.448–9 and Hes. Op. 150–1 share the same triple anaphora of nouns and adjectives meaning ‘bronze’ (χάλκεα, adjective–χάλκεοι, adjective–χαλκῷ, noun); furthermore, both resort to a sequence of three short coordinated clauses.Footnote 14 Although it might seem unlikely that Servius could associate Virgil’s description of the Carthaginian temple with Hesiod’s Bronze Race without having read the Works and Days, this apparent problem can be solved by considering the mode of formation of his commentary, which collects traditional exegetical material sometimes faithfully, while often modifying, supplementing, or adding original remarks to it.Footnote 15 It is possible to formulate two hypotheses about the origin of Servius’ association of Aen. 1.448–9 with the Bronze Age. Servius or his sources might have known that Hesiod’s sequence of generations included the Bronze Race; therefore, coming across the triple repetition aerea–aere–aenis, they ascribed Aeneas’ adventures to the Bronze Age. Alternatively, earlier exegetes might have noticed the formal affinity between Aen. 1.448–9 and Op. 150–1 when the Works and Days were still read in some form, and Servius (or his sources), not having access to it but knowing indirectly about Hesiod’s sequence of generations, re-elaborated their predecessors’ formal remark by attributing a deeper meaning to it, that is, by considering it a source about the Hesiodic ‘chronology’ of Aeneas’ adventures.Footnote 16

Given the rhetorical (triple repetition of ‘bronze’, as noun or adjective, in three brief coordinated clauses) and thematic affinities between the two passages (on the practical-architectural applications of bronze), the second hypothesis is more likely. The note Serv. on Aen. 1.448, therefore, testifies to the ancient recognition of Aen. 1.448–9 as an imitation of Op. 150–1, which deserves careful consideration. In fact, the similarities between the two passages suggest that Virgil may actually have in mind these Hesiodic lines when zooming in on the bronze features of Juno’s temple. From a formal point of view, Op. 150–1 provides a much closer model for Aen. 1.448–9 than the description of Alcinous’ palace at Od. 7.86–97, where, as has been said, there are no two adjacent verses featuring a triple anaphora of ‘bronze’ in three coordinated clauses. While Alcinous’ palace can be considered the ‘macroscopic’ model for the narrative function of Juno’s temple in the Aeneid, Op. 150–1 is the ‘microscopic’ one for the rhetorical arrangement of Aen. 1.448–9. The two models, therefore, are not mutually exclusive, but they coexist in the background of Virgil’s depiction of Juno’s temple in the Aeneid. In fact, scholars have remarked that the bronze features of Alcinous’ palace in the Odyssey bring to mind Hesiod’s account of the Bronze Race, which might explain Virgil’s simultaneous allusions to Homer and Hesiod in this passage.Footnote 17

What adds to the likelihood of an allusion to Op. 150–1 and, thus, to the description of the Bronze Race is that it would be particularly fitting at this point of the Aeneid. On a broad interpretative level, the Trojans’ actions after landing at Carthage (Aen. 1.174–215: lighting fire from flint, cooking grain, hunting, etc.) evoke an early stage of development in human civilization, thus playing into a crucial theme in Virgil’s poetic production, namely that of the ‘history of humankind’, which is tightly intertwined with Hesiod’s ‘Myth of the Races’.Footnote 18 Most notably, as remarked by Thomas, Aen. 1.174–9 echoes G. 1.133–5, where the dangers and scarcity of resources following the transition from Saturn’s Golden Age to Jupiter’s reign are said to lead to the discovery of fire among other forms of cultural progress.Footnote 19 The concern with the ‘history of humankind’ that permeates this section of the poem contributes to setting the readers’ expectations, preparing the ground for more punctual allusions to Hesiod’s literary production. In fact, the description of the storm, which, at the beginning of the Aeneid, casts the Trojans on the shores of North Africa, is rife with Hesiodic elements that re-emerge immediately before Aeneas’ arrival at Juno’s temple, in the simile comparing construction activity in Carthage to a bustling beehive (Aen. 1.430–6).Footnote 20 These lines are almost a self-quotation from G. 4.162–9, which precede the comparison between the bees’ industriousness and that of the Cyclopes engaged in metalwork (4.170–5), a representation based on the Hellenistic re-elaboration of their Hesiodic portrayal as the creatures who fashioned Zeus’s thunderbolt (Theog. 139–41).Footnote 21 While, at first sight, the bee simile frames Carthage as an orderly community living in a sort of Golden Age, the allusion to the Georgics—and, thus, to the Cyclopes, whom Virgil associates with the forging of metals—obliquely foreshadows its future military power, which will eventually lead to the clash with Rome.Footnote 22 Thus, the Golden-Age imagery evoked by the bee simile at Aen. 1.430–6 prepares the ground for the upcoming allusion to Hesiod’s Bronze Age, whose unremitting violence, in turn, reinforces the unsettling ambiguity of the bee simile.

The Trojans’ arrival at Carthage is portrayed in an ambiguous light since the very beginning, when its safe harbour is described as displaying the features of a locus horridus, and the same sense of unease marks Aeneas’ visit to Juno’s temple.Footnote 23 Virgil narrates that, after seeing the episodes of the Trojan War illustrated on it, Aeneas feels relieved, for they prove to him that the Carthaginians are aware of what Troy has endured (1.450–63).Footnote 24 Yet the facts that the temple is sacred to Juno, the divine antagonist of the Trojans, and that the scenes on it, all portraying the Greeks having the upper hand, move Aeneas to tears give an ominous inkling of how the Carthaginian episode is going to unravel—confirmed, of course, by historical hindsight.Footnote 25 To a reader who, knowing Hesiod’s Works and Days, detects Virgil’s allusion to the Bronze Race, the triple repetition aerea–aere–aenis bolsters this sense of lingering threat. In fact, according to Hesiod, the Bronze Race is much worse than the preceding two (Golden and Silver) because it only cares about war, to the point that it disappeared into Hades as its members, exceedingly strong and violent, killed each other (152–5).Footnote 26 The allusion to Op. 150–1, therefore, aptly paves the way to an ekphrasis describing the sorrowful scenes of bloodshed and massacre between two cognate peoples, the Greeks and the Trojans, depicted on Juno’s temple, which portray the deaths of many heroes (Aen. 1.466–93).Footnote 27 Because bronze gives the name to a fiery human generation in Hesiod’s Works and Days, Virgil evokes it in his description of Juno’s temple to stir a sense of menace. The reasons behind this choice become even clearer if we consider that post-Hesiodic elaborations of the ‘Myth of the Races’ often describe the Bronze Age/Race—and not the Silver one—as the first to make use of violence, thereby strengthening its association with war.Footnote 28 The ominous poetic implications of bronze, moreover, are amplified by the fact that it is the material of which weapons are made in the Homeric poems and, thus, in the Heroic Age at large. So, for instance, when Aeneas describes Pyrrhus as ‘shining with bronze light’ (luce coruscus aëna, Aen. 2.470) on the threshold of Priam’s palace during the last night of Troy, he is setting the tone for the heinous murders he is about to commit.Footnote 29 In similar fashion, the bronze of Juno’s temple sets the stage for a gloomy ekphrasis and, more broadly, for the tragic development of the Carthaginian episode.

The allusion to Op. 150–1 has broader implications in the poem’s architecture, which extend beyond the interpretation of Juno’s temple in Book 1 of the Aeneid. As already mentioned, by evoking Hesiod’s Bronze Race, Aen. 1.448–9 taps into the theme of the ‘history of humankind’. This theme acquires special prominence at the end of the poem’s first hexad, when in the ‘Parade of Heroes’ Anchises anticipates that Octavian will restore to Latium the Golden Age that was under Saturn (6.791–7), and at the beginning of the second hexad, when the Trojans finally reach Latium.Footnote 30 Immediately after the ‘proem’ that opens the Iliadic half of the Aeneid (7.37–45), the external narrator introduces Latinus, describing him as the king of a peaceful nation (7.45–6) and tracing his lineage back to Saturn (7.47–9); accordingly, a statue of Saturn is found in Picus’ palace among the effigies that portray his ancestors (7.180).Footnote 31 A few lines below, Latinus describes his Latins as ‘Saturn’s people’ (Saturni gens), who are just because of their piety towards the god, without need for laws (7.203–4).Footnote 32 Absence of war, natural inclination to rightfulness, and recurring mentions of Saturn contribute to framing Latium as still living in a sort of Golden Age at the time of Aeneas’ arrival, but this impression is undermined by a variety of details—for example the military training before Latinus’ city (7.162–5), the statues of those who were wounded in war (7.182), the spolia dedicated in the palace (7.183–6)—and promptly contradicted at 7.421–34, as we learn that Turnus won Lavinia’s hand by fighting as Latinus’ ally.Footnote 33 This inconsistent presentation of Latium, which is portrayed now as peaceful and now as warlike, reflects two concurring traditions about its early history.Footnote 34 In Book 8, in fact, Evander openly disproves Latinus, subscribing to the ‘negative’ version according to which Latium, at the time of Aeneas’ arrival, had already lost its Golden-Age features (8.314–36). In Evander’s opinion, after Saturn organized the indigenous population into a well-ordered society—a process that entailed establishing laws, in contrast with Latinus’ statement—Latium entered a trajectory of decline leading from the Golden Age (8.324–5 aurea … saecula) to a baser epoch marked by greed and violence, which is comparable to the Iron Race of the Hesiodic myth (8.326 deterior … ac decolor aetas).Footnote 35 The allusion to Hesiod’s Bronze Race at the beginning of the Aeneid, when the Trojans arrive in Carthage, underscores the importance of epochal succession in the rest of the poem, notably at the end of the first and the beginning of the second hexad. The Trojans’ landing in Latium, which from a structural point of view is symmetrical to their landing at Carthage, and the war that ensues either cause (if Latium was still peaceful) or confirm (if it was not) its transition to a more corrupt Age.Footnote 36

To sum up: Servius’ note on Aen. 1.448 testifies to the association between Aen. 1.448–9 and Op. 150–1 in ancient criticism. Two kinds of observations, ‘formal’ and ‘poetic’, confirm this insight, suggesting that Virgil’s description of Juno’s Carthaginian temple alludes to Hesiod’s Bronze Race. First, Aen. 1.448–9 and Op. 150–1 share the same triple anaphora of ‘bronze’ ensconced in three coordinated clauses alternating nominal and adjectival forms.Footnote 37 Second, the allusion to Hesiod’s Bronze Race, which stands out for its fieriness, prepares the ground for the ekphrasis describing the murals on Juno’s temple, which illustrate the violent downfall of Troy. Thus, it creates a stark contrast with the Golden-Age imagery evoked by the bee simile a few lines above, playing into Virgil’s ambiguous depiction of Carthage as a temporarily safe refuge that is fated to turn hostile. Recognizing the allusion to the ‘Myth of the Races’, moreover, adds a layer of depth to our appreciation of the role played by epochal imagery in the description of the Trojans’ arrival at Carthage and in the Aeneid at large. While making a case for considering Op. 150–1 the model behind Aen. 1.448–9, these remarks do not preclude the interpretation of Juno’s temple as a narrative counterpart for Alcinous’ palace in the Odyssey: the ‘macroscopic’ Odyssean model and the ‘microscopic’ Hesiodic allusion coexist in this passage.

Not only do the Hesiodic and Homeric passages share a certain affinity, but a wider network of intertextual relations is at play in Aeneas’ landing at Carthage. While Odysseus’ arrival at Scheria serves as a primary model for Book 1 of the Aeneid, Virgil’s handling of the Carthaginian episode is greatly indebted to the description of Jason’s arrival in Colchis in Apollonius’ Argonautica.Footnote 38 Notably, while having the same narrative function as Alcinous’ palace, Juno’s temple is reminiscent of Aeetes’ palace in the Argonautica (3.215–48), and thus takes the form of a two-tier allusion, since already Apollonius looked at the same Homeric model.Footnote 39 The role played by Aeetes’ palace in Virgil’s description of Juno’s temple further supports the identification of an allusion to Hesiod’s Bronze Race at Verg. Aen. 1.448–9, since Carthage’s association with Apollonius’ Colchis and its cruel tyrant concurs in stirring a sense of unease.Footnote 40 Furthermore, Aeetes’ palace displays bronze details that allude to those of Alcinous’ palace, and simultaneously associate Aeetes’ cruelty with the savagery of Hesiod’s Bronze Race.Footnote 41 By modelling Aen. 1.448–9 after Op. 150–1, Virgil therefore activates a broader plot of intertextual links that binds together Homer’s Odyssey, Hesiod’s Works and Days, and Apollonius’ Argonautica, which, in turn, had already alluded to both Homer and Hesiod. To this net of Greek allusions, it is possible to add a Latin text which, closer in time to the Aeneid, also evokes Hesiod’s Bronze Race, namely Horace’s Epode 16. Especially reminiscent of Op. 150–1 are lines 64–5 of Horace’s poem:

ut inquinauit aere tempus aureum,
aere, dehinc ferro durauit saecula …
when he [Jupiter] contaminated the Golden Age with bronze,
with bronze, then with iron he hardened the generations …

At the end of a poem rich in epochal imagery, Horace traces a sequence of three ages: first is the Golden Age, then bronze and iron follow. Hor. Epod. 16.64–5 features a ‘failed’ triple anaphora, unachieved because of a single letter (aere–aureum instead of aereum–aere). While alluding to Hesiod’s description of the Bronze Race in Aen. 1.448–9, Virgil evokes—and somewhat rectifies—Horace’s incomplete triple repetition, which seems to have been inspired by the same Hesiodic model.Footnote 42 The intertextual relation with Hor. Epod. 16.64–5, two lines unambiguously concerned with the ‘Myth of the Races’, provides an additional key to decode Virgil’s allusion to the same myth at Aen. 1.448–9. The similarity between Epod. 16.64–5 and Aen. 1.448–9 facilitates the identification of Op. 150–1 as a model for the latter.

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Damien Nelis and Roger Rees for their feedback on a first draft of this article. The final version has benefitted greatly from the comments of CQ’s anonymous reviewers.

References

1 Not only the images’ location but also whether they are engraved or simply painted is left unspecified. Some scholars call them ‘murals’, others prefer ‘reliefs’; see S. Lowenstam, ‘The pictures on Juno’s temple in the Aeneid’, CW 87 (1993), 37–49, at 37 n. 3. On ekphrasis in the Aeneid, see M.C.J. Putnam, Virgil’s Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid (New Haven and London, 1998). For a fuller list of bibliographic references, see R.T. Ganiban, Vergil Aeneid Books 1–6 (Newburyport, MA, 2012), 200.

2 Quotations from the Aeneid follow Conte’s edition: G.B. Conte (ed.), Publius Vergilius Maro: Aeneis (Berlin and Boston, 20192). On nexaeque or nixaque, see R.G. Austin, Aeneidos Liber Primus (Oxford, 1971), ad loc., who favours the former. Based on the comparison with Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.217–18, D. Nelis, Vergil’s Aeneid and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (Leeds, 2001), 81 n. 57 leans cautiously towards the latter.

3 See G. Stégen, Le livre I de l’Énéide: Texte latin avec un plan détaillé et un commentaire critique et explicatif (Namur, 1975), ad loc.; Austin (n. 2), ad loc. notes the ‘richness and glitter’ evoked by Virgil’s stress on bronze. On Virgil’s use of triple repetition with reference to colours and metals in the Aeneid, see J. Wills, Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion (Oxford, 1996), 286–7. aereus and aheneus/ahenus/aeneus/aenus are equivalent: ‘aereus recentior vox idem valet atque aeneus’ (Bickel, s.v. ahēnus, -a, -um, in TLL 1.1444.50–1446.14, at 1444.68). Cf. A. Ernout and A. Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (Paris, 20014), s.v. aes, aeris.

4 Cf. the beginning of Book 7 of the Odyssey. In both cases, after shipwreck in a foreign land, the hero (Odysseus/Aeneas) meets his patron goddess (Athena/Venus), disguised as a young woman, who informs him about the nearest city (the Phaeacians’ home/Carthage) and throws a mist around him; when the hero reaches the city, a marvellous building captures his attention (Alcinous’ palace/Juno’s temple). Like Juno’s temple, Alcinous’ palace has a bronze threshold (Od. 7.89; see the footnote below). For a discussion of the parallels between the two episodes, see G.N. Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer (Göttingen, 19792), 158–63.

5 See the mix of bronze, gold, silver and blue enamel at Od. 7.86–91 χάλκεοι μὲν γὰρ τοῖχοι ἐληλέδατ᾽ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα, | ἐς μυχὸν ἐξ οὐδοῦ, περὶ δὲ θριγκὸς κυάνοιο· | χρύσειαι δὲ θύραι πυκινὸν δόμον ἐντὸς ἔεργον· | σταθμοὶ δ᾽ ἀργύρεοι ἐν χαλκέῳ ἕστασαν οὐδῷ, | ἀργύρεον δ᾽ ἐφ᾽ ὑπερθύριον, χρυσέη δὲ κορώνη. | χρύσειοι δ᾽ ἑκάτερθε καὶ ἀργύρεοι κύνες ἦσαν (‘walls of bronze ran this way and that, from the entrance to the further end, and these were topped with a frieze of cyanus. Golden doors closed the palace in, and silver posts rose above the threshold; the lintel was of silver, the door-handle was of gold. Each side of the door were golden and silver watchdogs’, transl. W. Shewring). Cf. Menelaus’ palace and its flashing bronze, at which Telemachus marvels (Od. 4.71–5). In the Homeric poems, Zeus too resides in a bronze-floored palace (Il. 1.426, 14.173, 21.438, 21.505; Od. 8.321). On bronze in Homeric poetry and the awe it causes, see G. Nagy, ‘Just to look at all the shining bronze here, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven: seeing bronze in the ancient Greek world’, Classical Inquiries (2016) (http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:Classical_Inquiries). R.D. Williams, The Aeneid of Virgil: Books 1–6 (London and Toronto, 1972), ad loc.; R.A.B. Mynors (ed.), P. Vergili Maronis opera (Oxford, 1969), ad loc.; Conte (n. 2), ad loc. compares Aen. 1.448 to Od. 7.89.

6 Hesiod’s influence on Virgil has been explored thoroughly with reference to the Georgics, which already in antiquity was thought to be modelled after the Works and Days (see e.g. Serv. on G. praef. 3.128.1–4 Thilo). The presence of Hesiod in the Aeneid and the Eclogues is not equally studied. D. Sider, ‘Vergil’s Aeneid and Hesiod’s Theogony’, Vergilius 34 (1988), 15–24 discusses the relationship between Hesiod’s Theogony and Virgil’s Aeneid. Wide-ranging reflections on Virgil’s reception of Hesiodic poetry are found in A. La Penna, ‘Esiodo nella cultura e nella poesia di Virgilio’, in Hésiode et son influence (Fondation Hardt: Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique 7) (Geneva, 1962), 215–52. On the knowledge and reception of Hesiod at Rome, see G. Rosati, ‘The Latin reception of Hesiod’, in F. Montanari, A. Rengakos, Ch. Tsagalis (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Hesiod (Leiden and Boston, 2009), 343–74 and H. Van Noorden, Playing Hesiod: The ‘Myth of the Races’ in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 2015), 204–304.

7 Four ‘authentic’ Servian lemmata (aerea, foribus, cardo, stridebat aenis) and one Servius Danielis lemma (nexaeque aere trabes).

8 To make the reading easier, I follow the typographic conventions of the Thilo–Hagen edition: the ‘authentic’ Servian notes are in roman type, the Servius Danielis additions in italics.

9 In Hesiod’s Works and Days, the sequence of Races includes Golden (109–26), Silver (127–42), Bronze (143–55), Heroic (156–73) and Iron Races (174–201). The bibliography on this passage is immense. For select works, see M.L. West, Hesiod: Works and Days (Oxford, 1978), 177 and G.W. Most, Hesiod: Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia (Cambridge, MA and London, 20182), lxxvii–lxxxiv. Although the Servian commentary does not mention Hesiod’s Works and Days as a source, the five races of the Hesiodic myth are at the root of the two fivefold accounts of human decline it provides, one consisting of five generations (on Aen. 8.314: gods, demigods, heroes, good humans, wicked humans) and the other of five metallic ages (on Aen. 12.87: gold, silver, bronze, orichalcum, iron). Servius references Hesiod’s Theogony as a source for the former and Lucretius’ De rerum natura for the latter, but neither work provides a clear sequence of five races/metallic ages: ultimately, both are modelled after the five generations of the Works and Days. By comparing the sequences in Serv. on Aen. 8.314 and Serv. on Aen. 12.87, we find that the Heroic Age, third in the series of generations, corresponds to the Bronze Age, third in the series of metallic epochs. In fact, while Serv. on Aen. 1.448 ascribes Aeneas’ adventures to the Bronze Age, elsewhere Servius refers to the Heroic Age, e.g. in the notes that speak of mos heroum (on Aen. 1.378 and 2.721) and tempus heroicum (on Aen. 1.184, 1.213; Serv. Dan. 10.526, 12.397). It is noteworthy that the etymology of heros at Serv. on Aen. 1.196 is admittedly taken from Hesiod (Op. 159–60). See M. Gay, ‘L’Eneide, l’età del bronzo, l’età degli eroi: un’interpretazione di Serv. ad Aen. 8,314 e 12,87’, SIFC 19 (2021), 221–41. On the sequence of metallic epochs, see M.L. Delvigo, Servio e la poesia della scienza (Pisa and Rome, 2011), 38–41.

10 On Servius’ ‘second-hand’ knowledge of Hesiod’s poems, see D. Vallat and M. Béjuis-Vallat (edd.), Servius: Commentaire sur l’Énéide de Virgile, Livre I. Donat: Vie de Virgile, Introduction aux Bucoliques (Paris, 2023), ad loc.

11 A. Baudou and S. Clément-Tarantino, Servius: À l’école de Virgile (Lille, 2015), ad loc.; Gay (n. 9), 227–9; Vallat and Béjuis-Vallat (n. 10), ad loc. point out Servius’ ‘indirect’ allusion to Hes. Op. 150–1.

12 Cf. Gay (n. 9), 228.

13 Unlike for the Bronze Race, Hesiod does not link explicitly the names of the Golden, Silver and Iron Races to the materials they use. Cf. G.W. Most, ‘Hesiod’s myth of the five (or three or four) races’, PCPhS 43 (1997), 104–27, at 110.

14 Verg. Aen. 1.448–9 aerea … limina; nexaeque | aere trabes; foribus … aenis; Hes. Op. 150–1 χάλκεα μὲν τεύχεα; χάλκεοι … οἶκοι; χαλκῷ δ᾽ εἰργάζοντο. Based on the interpretation of Juno’s temple as modelled after Alcinous’ palace, Wills (n. 3), 286–7 explains the triple repetition at Aen. 1.448–9 as reproducing the triple repetitions of ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ and the simple repetition of ‘bronze’ at Od. 7.86–91 (see n. 5 above), but Hes. Op. 150–1 provides a closer model.

15 On the mode of formation of Servius’ commentary, see D. Fowler (rev. by S. Casali and F. Stok), ‘The Virgil commentary of Servius’, in F. Mac Góráin and C. Martindale (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge, 20192), 88–94; D. Vallat, ‘Conflits d’autorité: Virgile, Donat, Servius’, Eruditio Antiqua 7 (2015), 5–30, at 5–11; D. Vallat, ‘Les métamorphoses d’un commentaire: «Servius» et Virgile’, Rursus 9 (2016), paragraphs 2–7. On Virgilian exegesis in antiquity, see S. Timpanaro, Virgilianisti antichi e tradizione indiretta (Florence, 2001) and F. Stok, ‘Commenting on Virgil, from Aelius Donatus to Servius’, Dead Sea Discoveries 19 (2012), 464–84.

16 Cf. Gay (n. 9), 228.

17 West (n. 9), 189 points out that, according to Hesiod, the Bronze Race uses bronze to build houses, and the threshold and walls at the entrance of Alcinous’ palace are made of bronze too (Od. 7.86–91).

18 Virgil’s use of epochal imagery must be understood in the framework of the Hesiodic tradition, as represented by Hesiod himself (Op. 109–201) and Aratus (Phaen. 96–136): see P.A. Johnston, Vergil’s Agricultural Golden Age: A Study of the Georgics (Leiden, 1980). For a Roman audience, the Trojan War marks the boundary between mythical and historical time; the subject matter of the Aeneid, therefore, is involved in this transition. See D. Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (Berkeley, 2007), 82–4 and 117–20.

19 Verg. G. 1.121–46: among other things, humans learn how to cultivate grain, make fire and catch game, all of which play a role in Aen. 1.174–215. See R.F. Thomas, ‘Torn between Jupiter and Saturn: ideology, rhetoric, and culture wars in the Aeneid’, CJ 100 (2004–5), 121–47, at 129–30.

20 P. Hardie, Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986), 90–7 discusses the influence of Hes. Theog. 621–3 and 729–35 on Verg. Aen. 1.50–63, showing that the Hesiodic intertext makes it possible to read the storm as a sort of Gigantomachy/Titanomachy. Cf. V. Buchheit, Vergil über die Sendung Roms. Untersuchungen zum Bellum Poenicum und zur Aeneis (Heidelberg, 1963), 66 n. 252. S.J. Harrison, ‘Vergil on kingship: the first simile of the Aeneid’, PCPhS 34 (1988), 55–9 argues for Virgil’s use of Theog. 81–93 as a model for Neptune calming the storm at Aen. 1.148–56. The copresence of allusions to the Theogony and, as I suggest, Works and Days (notably, the ‘Myth of the Races’) in this section of the Aeneid confirms the Latin tendency, explored by modern scholarship, to read Hesiod’s three major poems (Theogony, Catalogue of Women, Works and Days) as providing in combination a ‘universal’ history from the origins of the cosmos down to present. See e.g. Rosati (n. 6), 361–2; I. Ziogas, Ovid and Hesiod: The Metamorphosis of the Catalogue of Women (Cambridge, 2013); Van Noorden (n. 6), 213–14. For an interpretation of Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days as two sides of the same poetic project, see J.S. Clay, Hesiod’s Cosmos (Cambridge, 2003).

21 E. Giusti, ‘Virgil’s Carthaginians at Aen. 1.430–6: Cyclopes in bees’ clothing’, CCJ 60 (2014), 37–58, at 50–3. On the Cyclopes as blacksmiths at Hephaestus’ service in Hellenistic poetry, cf. Callim. Hymn 3.46–61, the primary model of G. 4.162–9. On Virgil’s reception of this depiction of the Cyclopes, see the fashioning of Aeneas’ shield (Aen. 8.416–53).

22 See Giusti (n. 21). On the association between bees and the Golden Age in Virgilian poetry, with attention to Hesiod’s Golden Age, see Johnston (n. 18), passim and, specifically, 90–105.

23 A. Schiesaro, ‘Furthest voices in Virgil’s Dido I’, SIFC 100 (2008), 60–109, at 79 n. 84.

24 See especially Verg. Aen. 1.463 solue metus; feret haec aliquam tibi fama salutem (‘forget your fears. We are known here. This will give you some hope for the future’, transl. D. West).

25 The images’ description is focalized through Aeneas, who might be misinterpreting them: see e.g. N. Horsfall, ‘Dido in the light of history’, PVS 13 (1973–4), 1–13; M.C.J. Putnam, ‘Dido’s murals and Virgilian ekphrasis’, HSPh 98 (1998), 243–75; Ganiban (n. 1), 199–200.

26 These lines (Op. 152–5) follow the lines on the use of bronze for practical purposes, including to forge weapons (150–1), linking bronze with the disappearance of the corresponding Race.

27 The ekphrasis recalls explicitly Rhesus’, Troilus’ and Hector’s deaths.

28 See e.g. Aratus’ Phaenomena, which envisages a sequence of three generations (96–136: Gold–Silver–Bronze), and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which lists four antediluvian epochs (89–150: Gold–Silver–Bronze–Iron); in both cases, the Bronze Race is the first to stand out for its violence. In the Hesiodic sequence of generations, the Heroic Race follows the Bronze Race, hence it uses bronze too (Homeric heroes have bronze weapons: cf. West [n. 9], 188–9). However, in the Works and Days already the Silver Race is violent (134–5). On Aratus, see A. Schiesaro, ‘Aratus’ myth of Dike’, MD 37 (1996), 9–26 and D. Kidd, Aratus Phaenomena (Cambridge, 2007), ad loc. Roman elaborations of Hesiod’s ‘Myth of the Races’ tend to speak of epochs instead of generations: see H.C. Baldry, ‘Who invented the Golden Age?’, CQ 46 (1952), 83–92, at 88–90 and A. Barchiesi, Ovidio: Metamorfosi. Volume I, Libri I–II (Milan, 2005), 168.

29 Pyrrhus first slays Polites, Priam’s son, before his father’s eyes; then, he kills Priam with his ‘gleaming sword’ (2.552–3 coruscum … ensem): the adjective coruscus, recalling luce coruscus aena (2.470), underscores the bronze of which Pyrrhus’ sword is made. According to A.M. Bowie, ‘The death of Priam: allegory and history in the Aeneid’, CQ 40 (1990), 470–81, at 471, the expression luce coruscus aena alludes to the gleaming of Achilles’ armour before the duel with Hector in the Iliad, a gleaming which Priam observes from Troy’s walls (Il. 22.32 χαλκὸς ἔλαμπε, 22.134 χαλκὸς ἐλάμπετο). In the Aeneid, weapons are usually made of bronze, as in the Homeric poems, or of iron, which Homer mentions rarely (C. Saunders, Vergil’s Primitive Italy [New York, 1930], 143–4). The alternance of iron and bronze in the Aeneid might be influenced by the hypothesis, attributed to Apollonius Rhodius, that the word χαλκός denotes both ‘bronze’ and ‘iron’ in the Homeric poems. See Schol. uet. Ap. Rhod. 1.430 Wendel, which counters this theory by quoting Hes. Op. 151 (cf. West [n. 9], 189, but the identification of ‘Apollonios’, mentioned in the scholium, is uncertain: according to Wendel, he is the son of the grammarian Chaeris, who belonged to Aristarchus’ school).

30 See Verg. Aen. 6.792–4 aurea condet | saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arua | Saturno quondam (‘[the man who] will bring back the golden years to the fields of Latium once ruled over by Saturn’, transl. D. West). On Aen. 6.791–7, see N. Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid 6. A Commentary (Berlin and Boston, 2014), 539–45 and, in particular, 542 on 6.793–4, highlighting the link between Saturn’s reign in Latium and Kronos’ rule during the Golden Age according to Hesiod (Op. 111). Cf. Jupiter’s presentation of the future Roman/Augustan Golden Age at Aen. 1.291–6, when the iron bolts of the gates of War, i.e. of Janus’ temple, will be locked (1.293–4 dirae ferro … claudentur Belli portae; cf. Aen. 7.609–10 centum aerei claudunt uectes aeternaque ferri | robora) and Furor will be bound with bronze fetters (1.295–6 aenis | post tergum nodis): since Hesiod, bronze and iron are typically associated with epochal imagery. In Book 6, see also lines 5–8, which recall the Trojans’ ‘primal acts’ after disembarking in Africa (Thomas [n. 19], 129).

31 Verg. Aen. 7.45–6 rex arua Latinus et urbes | iam senior longa placidas in pace regebat (‘King Latinus … had reigned over the countryside and the cities for many peaceful years’, transl. D. West). The genealogical sequence Saturn–Picus–Faunus–Latinus is apparently contradicted by the sequence emerging from the statues in Picus’ palace, portraying Janus, Saturn, Sabinus, Italus and the other kings of the Aborigenes (Aen. 7.177–82); that series, however, blends genealogical and dynastic lines. See N. Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid 7. A Commentary (Berlin / Boston / Köln, 2000), 146–7 and, for a perceptive analysis, S. Casali, ‘The kings of the Laurentes: contradictions and points of view in Virgil’s Aeneid’, CJ 115 (2020), 283–301.

32 Verg. Aen. 7.203–4 Saturni gentem haud uinclo nec legibus aequam, | sponte sua ueterisque dei se more tenentem (‘[we Latins] are Saturn’s people, righteous not because of laws and restraints but holding of our own free will to the way of life of our ancient god’, transl. D. West).

33 Horsfall (n. 31), 287.

34 See N. Horsfall, Virgilio: l’epopea in alambicco (Napoli, 1991), 95; J.J. O’Hara, Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan (Cambridge, 2007), 96–8; N. Horsfall, The Epic Distilled: Studies in the Composition of the Aeneid (Oxford, 2016), 84.

35 See Verg. Aen. 8.322 on Saturn establishing laws. The inconsistency with Aen. 7.203–4 underscores Evander’s and Latinus’ different views about Latium’s peacefulness, even if we were to admit that Latinus is embellishing truth on purpose when addressing Ilioneus (see e.g. Horsfall [n. 31], 164). On Latium’s Saturnian Golden Age, see Aen. 8.324–5 aurea quae perhibent illo sub rege fuere | saecula (‘his reign was what the men call the Golden Age’, transl. D. West). According to Horsfall, perhibent is ‘the poet’s way of saying “vd. Hes.”’ (Horsfall [n. 34 (2016)], 118). On Latium’s decadence, see Aen. 8.326–7 deterior donec paulatim ac decolor aetas | et belli rabies et amor successit habendi (‘but gradually a worse age of baser metal took its place and with it came the madness of war and the lust for possessions’, transl. D. West). On epochal imagery in these lines, see L.M. Fratantuono and R. Alden Smith, Virgil, Aeneid 8. Text, Translation, and Commentary (Leiden and Boston, 2018), 432.

36 See how Ilioneus stresses that the Trojans descend from Jupiter (Aen. 7.219–20) after Latinus underscores the Latins’ Saturnian lineage. Together with the Trojans, a new ‘degenerate’ epoch, worse than the Golden Age, arrives in Latium. See R. Thomas, Lands and Peoples in Roman Poetry: The Ethnographical Tradition (Cambridge, 1982), 100–2.

37 Cf. Verg. Aen. 4.138–9, which emphasizes the golden details of Dido’s clothing with the triple repetition of aurum (noun) and aureus (adjective) when she leaves her chamber to join the hunting party. Here too, the triple repetition underscores the allusion to specific models, namely Artemis’ epiphany in Callim. Hymn 3.110–12 and Apollo’s in Callim. Hymn 2.32–4. See W. Clausen, Virgil’s Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry (Berkeley / Los Angeles / London, 1987), 22–3; cf. Wills (n. 3), 286–7.

38 Nelis (n. 2), 67–71.

39 Nelis (n. 2), 79–82. On the models of Aeetes’ palace in the Argonautica, see R.L. Hunter, Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica Book III (Cambridge, 1989), 121 and M. Campbell, A Commentary on Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica III 1–471 (Leiden / New York / Cologne), 193–4.

40 Nelis (n. 2), 81.

41 See Hunter (n. 39), 122 on Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.217–18 (θριγκὸς δ᾽ ἐφύπερθε δόμοιο | λαΐνεος χαλκέῃσιν ἐπὶ γλυφίδεσσιν ἀρήρει, ‘above the palace a stone entablature rested upon bronze capitals’, transl. R. Hunter); cf. Campbell (n. 39), 199. See also Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.230–1 (καί οἱ χαλκόποδας ταύρους κάμε, χάλκεα δέ σφεων | ἦν στόματ᾽, ἐκ δὲ πυρὸς δεινὸν σέλας ἀμπνείεσκον, ‘he had also fashioned for him bulls with bronze feet, and bronze too were their mouths, and they breathed out a terrible blast of flaming fire’, transl. R. Hunter), with sinister overtones (Campbell [n. 39], 212).

42 Hesiod’s description of the Islands of the Blessed (Op. 167–8) influenced Horace’s at Epod. 16.63: L.C. Watson, A Commentary on Horace’s Epodes (Oxford, 2003), ad loc. Hence, the allusion to Hesiod’s Bronze Race (Op. 143–55) at Hor. Epod. 16.64–5 does not come unexpected. According to Mankin, it aims to suggest a parallel between the violence of Hesiod’s Bronze Race and that of the Romans at Horace’s time: D. Mankin, Horace Epodes (Cambridge, 1995), ad loc.