The fifth scene represented on the Shield of Aeneas describes Porsenna's siege of Rome and the resistance of the Romans, with the two classic exempla of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia (Verg. Aen. 8.646–51):
According to Roman mainstream tradition, at the beginning of the Republic, Porsenna, an Etruscan king of Clusium, tried to reinstate the exiled Tarquinius Superbus by besieging Rome, but the heroism of Romans such as Horatius Cocles, C. Mucius Scaevola and Cloelia impressed him so much that he decided to give up the siege and make peace with his enemies. He then sent his army against the Latins and was finally defeated at the battle of Aricia by the joint forces of the Latin League and their allies from Cumae. However, there circulated also less flattering versions of the story: Tacitus (Hist. 3.72, Porsenna dedita urbe) hints at the fact that the Romans had in fact surrendered to Porsenna, and Pliny refers to a humiliating treaty imposed on them by the Etruscan king (HN 34.139).
Virgil gives an emphatically pro-Roman representation of these events as the defence of libertas. I would like to deal especially with lines 649–51, which concisely recount Porsenna's reaction to the exploits of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia, as well as the exploits themselves, in order to highlight some of the strategies through which Virgil magnifies these glorious deeds, presenting Porsenna in a negative light, and the Roman heroes surrounded by an almost superhuman aura. My principal interest is in line 650, Virgil's unique reference to the deed of Horatius. I will also, however, say something about lines 649 and 651, since in each of them too Virgil introduces at least one major difference from the historiographical tradition, and especially from Livy's account, and since, apart from a few exceptions, Virgil's exegetical tradition shows little or no concern for these differences.
PORSENNA
In his detailed comparison of Virgil's description of the Shield with Livy's narrative, A.J. Woodman maintains that Virgil wrote Aen. 8.630–62 with Livy's first pentad in mind, and that he, as a doctus poeta, proposed alternative versions of some of the events recounted by Livy, sometimes with the intention of making them more ‘Augustan’.Footnote 1 Regarding our scene, Woodman notices that, in comparison with Livy's account—where we find Porsenna's attack (2.10.1–2) followed by the exploits of Horatius Cocles (2.10.3–13), C. Mucius Scaevola (2.10.12) and Cloelia (2.13.6–11)—Virgil ‘omits the exploit of Mucius altogether, while at the same time retaining in minanti (649) the threats of Porsenna which characterize Livy's Mucius episode (12.12 rex … minitabundus, 15 minis, cf. 8 fortunae minas)’.Footnote 2 This is a shrewd observation: in Livy's version, Porsenna is described as threatening only in relation to Mucius’ exploit—ironically, the exploit Virgil does not mention. We may add that, even in this case, Livy's Porsenna shows a raging and threatening attitude towards Mucius only before his heroic deed: while seeing the Roman burning his hand, the Etruscan king is described as ‘almost spellbound by this marvel’ (prope attonitus miraculo, 2.12.13); he orders Mucius to be removed from the altar and then speaks words full of admiration, letting him go unharmed (2.12.14) and provoking his apparently courteous reply: Mucius, quasi remunerans meritum, recognizes that Porsenna knows how to honour bravery and falsely ‘reveals’ to him that there are three hundred Romans ready to undertake his same attempt at assassinating him (2.12.15).Footnote 3 And while Livy notes no psychological reaction on Porsenna's part to Horatius’ deed, leaving his admiration implicit, later the king, out of respect for Cloelia, and far from being characterized as ‘indignant’ and ‘threatening’ because of her exploit, is described as reacting to it with even greater benevolence: his initial rage rapidly turns into admiration, and he declares that her deed was even greater than those of the likes of Horatius and Mucius (deinde in admirationem uersus supra Coclites Muciosque dicere id facinus esse, 2.14.8).Footnote 4 Though this does not seem to interest exegetes of the Aeneid, Virgil is clearly presenting a very different Porsenna from the Livian one—a worse Porsenna. By doing so, he probably chooses to align with a different historiographical tradition which must have presented the figure of Porsenna in a more negative light, and of which some traces are to be found in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ version (Ant. Rom. 5.21–39).Footnote 5 In Dionysius, Porsenna is defined as ἀνὴρ αὐθάδης καὶ διεφθαργμένος τὴν γνώμην ὑπό τε πλούτου καὶ χρημάτων καὶ ἀρχῆς μεγέθους, ‘a self-willed man, deeply corrupted in his mind by both his wealth and possessions and the greatness of his power’ (5.21.2); and while he will finally express his admiration at least for Cloelia's deed (5.34.3), he does indeed react to Mucius’ exploit with an angry and threatening speech which shows no traces of admiration (5.28.4).Footnote 6 In Virgil's account, Porsenna is not the ‘sentimental king with an admiration for Roman virtues which passes into friendship’ of Livy's account, but still ‘a reckless foe’.Footnote 7
HORATIUS CYCLOPS
But if Virgil's version of Porsenna's reaction can find parallels in the historiographical tradition outside Livy, his account of Horatius Cocles’ deed contains an altogether unparalleled detail. In all the tradition, starting with Polybius, Horatius holds the Sublician bridge against the invading army of Porsenna until the rest of his companions demolish it, and then, in full armour, swims back to safety across the Tiber.Footnote 8 Virgil is the only source in which Horatius himself is said to demolish the bridge: pontem auderet quia uellere Cocles (Aen. 8.650). This major innovation goes largely unnoticed in the exegetical tradition of the Aeneid, and elsewhere; La Cerda is the only interpreter to address this issue in his ‘Nota’ ad loc.:
4. pontem avderet qvod vellere.] At non ipse Cocles, sed Romani: nam ille tantum hostem sustinuit. Sed defendi potest: nam Cocles auctor facti & audaciæ illius. Liuius de illo: Itaque monere praedicere, ut pontem ferro, igni, quacumque vi possint, interrumpant: se impetum hostium quantum corpore uno posset obsisti, excepturum [Liv. 2.10.4]. Paria Dionys. lib. 5 [Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.24.1]. Ad hunc modum explicui alio in loco Neptunum & Phoebum dici posse conditores Troiae, quia auctores. Dicit vellere, pro, revellere. Propert. Eleg. 11. lib. 3. abscissos pontes [Prop. 3.11.63].Footnote 9
La Cerda realizes that it was not Cocles himself who demolished the bridge but the Romans behind him. He thinks that Virgil can say that Horatius destroyed the bridge because he ordered his companions to do so. La Cerda adds that in another note he had similarly explained that Neptune and Apollo can be said to have been the conditores of Troy because they had been the auctores of it, that is, because they had been those who recommended its construction.Footnote 10
La Cerda's explanation, apart from his reference to Neptune and Apollo, is not absurd, and it is conceivably possible that other commentators too have silently thought that Horatius ‘demolishes’ the bridge because, while opposing the enemies, he orders his companions to do so.Footnote 11 In this ekphrastic context, however, this would not be a simple way of expressing himself on Virgil's part, and it was not how Heyne interpreted this line. By explaining ‘pontem sublicium, evellens trabes sublicis impositas’, he clearly thinks of an action personally and concretely accomplished by Horatius himself.Footnote 12 Before him, the paraphrase of Ascensius also presupposes that Horatius demolishes the bridge by himself: ‘quod Cocles, Romanus ille, auderet vellere, i. divellere, et interrumpere securi pontem, s. sublicium, ingruentibus hostibus’.Footnote 13 No translation that I have seen renders the phrase so as to imply something like ‘Cocles dared to order his companions to tear up the bridge’; the parallelism with Cloelia's actions in the next line, which are obviously to be taken as personally accomplished by her, also suggests that here Horatius himself is demolishing the bridge.
In any case, even if Virgil wanted us to understand that the scene on the Shield represented Horatius ordering his companions to tear up the bridge, his words make us visualize a hyperbolical image of Horatius’ deed. Virgil's language suggests a Horatius who appears to possess a strength even greater than the superhuman strength already attributed to him in the tradition. Virgil also offers an etymological comment on the innovation he introduces in Horatius’ story. The cognomen Cocles, that is, ‘one-eyed’, is derived, through Etruscan, from the Greek κύκλωψ.Footnote 14 The meaning of Cocles ‘one-eyed’ is unanimously attested.Footnote 15 At Plaut. Curc. 393–4 Lyco, having addressed Curculio as unocule, explains to him: de Coclitum [Coculitum Ribbeck, Lindsay] prosapia te esse arbitror, | nam ei sunt unoculi. Here it is not specified who these Coclites are supposed to be; at Enn. Sat. fr. 67 Vahlen ( = 26 Courtney = 16 Goldberg–Manuwald) they are identified with the Arimaspi: decem Coclites quas montibus summis | Ripaeis fodere. And Varro, who preserves the fragment, (wrongly) explains: ab oculo cocles ut ocles dictus qui unum haberet oculum (Ling. 7.71).Footnote 16 The equivalence Cocles/κύκλωψ is explicitly established in Servius’ note here:
et modo ‘Cocles’ in hoc homine, de quo dicit, proprium est nomen, in aliis appellatiuum, nam luscos ‘coclites’ dixerunt antiqui: unde et Cyclopas ‘Coclites’ legimus dictos, quod unum oculum habuisse perhibentur.Footnote 17
Horatius Cocles was the ‘One-Eyed’, because he had lost one of his eyes in a previous battle: see [Aur. Vict.] De uir. ill. 11.1; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.23.2; Plut. Vit. Poplic. 16.7.Footnote 18 Plutarch's account is especially interesting, since he too connects the cognomen Cocles with Κύκλωψ:
ὁ δ᾽ Ὡράτιος τὸν Κόκλιον ἐπωνύμιον ἔσχεν ἐν πολέμῳ τῶν ὀμμάτων θάτερον ἐκ κοπείς· ὡς δ᾽ ἔνιοι λέγουσι, διὰ σιμότητα τῆς ῥινὸς ἐνδεδυκυίας ὥστε μηδὲν εἶναι τὸ διορίζον τὰ ὄμματα καὶ τὰς ὀφρῦς συγκεχύσθαι, Κύκλωπα βουλόμενοι καλεῖν αὐτὸν οἱ πολλοὶ τῆς γλώττης ὀλισθαινούσης ἐκράτησεν ὑπὸ πλήθους Κόκλιον καλεῖσθαι.
Horatius had been given his surname of Cocles because he had lost one of his eyes in battle. But some say that his nose was so flat and sunken that there was nothing to separate his eyes, and his eyebrows were united. People wanted to call him ‘Cyclops’, but by a slip of the tongue he was called instead ‘Cocles’ by the majority of people.
Horatius’ superhuman strength in Virgil's line—framed as it is between a verb of seeing, aspiceres, and the noun Cocles, which etymologically refers to a visual defect—is highlighted by his surname Cocles/Κύκλωψ.Footnote 19 All the more so, since the action ascribed to him, pontem … uellere, ‘tear up the bridge’, does not suggest at all a Horatius—in Heyne's words—‘evellens trabes sublicis impositas’ (since it is implausible to imagine a Horatius who does not fight at all, how could he have done that while at the same time keeping the enemy back?). Horatius’ action of pontem … uellere is more naturally envisaged as a sudden, definitive ‘uprooting’ of the bridge, an uprooting which recalls the famous action of Polyphemus at Od. 9.481 ἧκε δ᾽ ἀπορρήξας κορυφὴν ὄρεος μεγάλοιο, ‘he broke off the peak of a huge mountain and threw it toward us’. ‘Uprooting the bridge’ is exactly what a Cyclops would have done in Horatius’ situation. Virgil nowhere mentions Polyphemus’ ‘breaking off’ of the peak of the mountain, but, when Ovid evokes or narrates that part of Ulysses’ adventures, he will resort to a compound of uellere, namely reuellere (the same verb that La Cerda used to gloss uellere here):Footnote 20 first when Polyphemus ‘repeats’ his iconic gesture on the occasion of his killing of Acis, Met. 13.882 insequitur Cyclops partemque e monte reuulsam | mittit, and then when Achaemenides remembers that very passage of the Odyssey at Met. 14.181–2 uidi, cum monte reuulsum | immanem scopulum medias permisit in undas. At Sil. Pun. 9.466–8 Pallas reiterates the Cyclops’ action, and once again the verb used is a compound of uellere: hic dea conuulsam … partem | uicini montis scopulisque horrentia saxa | in Martem furibunda iacit. Returning to the Aeneid, we recall that earlier in Book 8 (at lines 236–40) Hercules tears off the top of Cacus’ cave and throws it down (237–9 hanc [sc. silicem] concussit et imis | auulsam soluit radicibus, inde repente | impulit), making the river flow back from the impact (240 refluitque exterritus amnis), ‘similarly to how the Cyclops tears off the crest of a cliff and casts it into the sea, causing a tidal backwash that rocks Odysseus’ ship’ (Od. 9.480–6).Footnote 21
If pontem … uellere Cocles seems insufficient to activate an allusion to the Cyclops breaking off the mountain, we may remember that, as we know from Seneca the Elder (Suas. 1.12), Virgil's reference to reuulsas | Cycladas at Aen. 8.691–2 (the huge ships at Actium are compared to ‘uprooted Cyclades swimming in the sea’ and to ‘high mountains colliding’) was sufficient to make Maecenas himself, Virgil's contemporary, think of the Cyclops’ rock-throwing; he contrasted favourably Virgil's credas innare reuulsas | Cycladas directly with Dorion's bombastic account of Polyphemus hurling the rock after Odysseus, καὶ καίρια βάλλεται νῆσσος ‘and an island is flung from his hand’.Footnote 22
CLOELIA
Horatius Cocles’ hyperbolical description is followed by another vignette which also contains an altogether unparalleled, and potentially hyperbolical, detail: that of Cloelia. According to the vulgate story, Cloelia, while held hostage by Porsenna, managed to free herself from custody, and crossed the Tiber to return to Rome, by swimming or on horseback, only to be handed back to Porsenna, who, impressed by her courage, freed her and other hostages. In Virgil's version, she dared to swim uinclis … ruptis (8.651). No account of Cloelia's exploit mentions any uincla.Footnote 23 In the exegetical tradition of the Aeneid, this is noticed, and has been misinterpreted ever since Servius:
atqui obsides non ligantur; sed uincla pro custodiis accipiamus, <Serv. Dan.: aut certe pro foederibus:> aut certe ‘ruptis uinclis pontis’, id est ponte resoluto.
Both of Servius’ explanations are clearly impossible: uinclis … ruptis cannot conceivably correspond to frustrata custodes (Livy 2.13.6) or to elapsa custodiam (Flor. 1.4.7), as in Servius’ first explanation,Footnote 24 and his idea of ruptis uinclis = ‘after Cocles had broken the bridge’, though taken into consideration by La Cerda, is absurd.Footnote 25 Slightly more likely would be Servius Danielis’ (ruptis) foederibus: with her escape Cloelia broke the pact the Romans had concluded with Porsenna; on the other hand, the use of uincla = foedera without an adjective or a defining genitive would be hard to parallel.Footnote 26 Furthermore, it would be awkward on Virgil's part to highlight Cloelia's breaking of the given word.Footnote 27
Pace Servius and all the commentators who follow him (as a matter of fact, almost all those who consider the problem), uinclis … ruptis, which is standard language,Footnote 28 in this context, and, moreover, in the description of an artwork, cannot but have the literal meaning of ‘having broken her bonds, her chains’.Footnote 29
This unique version of Cloelia's deed (whether or not invented by Virgil), in which she is detained by Porsenna as a fettered hostage, once again betrays an anti-Etruscan bias: Virgil imagines Porsenna's treatment of his hostages as being much harsher than that envisaged by the tradition represented by Livy and Dionysius. If, on the other hand, Virgil is following or inventing a version in which Cloelia was not a hostage but a prisoner, his strategy can be seen as aimed at giving a justification to Cloelia's deed: after all, hostages are not supposed to escape.Footnote 30
Furthermore, an account in which Cloelia is able to escape ‘having broken her bonds’ clearly has hyperbolical overtones: in the Aeneid the only human to literally ‘break his bonds’ is Sinon (2.134), but even that happens only in a lying tale; otherwise, only ships, arrows and horses can rumpere uincla, while at 8.225 it is the superhuman monster Cacus who is able to rumpere catenas (to activate the portcullis of rock and block the entrance to his cave). In the tradition, Cloelia is an exceptionally brave girl, and her manly uirtus is often noticed,Footnote 31 but her action of breaking her bonds, even if it might fall within the boundaries of verisimilitude (uincula can be ropes, not necessarily metal chains), suggests an extraordinary strength, and perhaps even superhuman powers.
CONCLUSION
The tradition about Porsenna and the events surrounding his siege of Rome was not univocal. There were variations as to the presentation of Porsenna, the details of the exploits of Horatius, Mucius and Cloelia, and even the final outcome of the war: as we mentioned above, Tacitus refers to Rome as having surrendered to Porsenna (‘Three words demolish pages of Livy’, as Syme says),Footnote 32 and Pliny reports the harsh terms of the treaty the Romans had to accept (ne ferro nisi in agri cultu uteretur, HN 34.139). Describing the fifth scene on Vulcan's shield, Virgil consistently gives the most patriotic account of the war. At 8.646–7 the two distinct actions attributed to Porsenna (iubebat and premebat) may allude to the sequence of events as attested in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 5.21.1–2): first, the king sends ambassadors to Rome to ask the Senate, ‘mixing prayers with threats’ (μεμιγμένας ἀπειλαῖς ἐπικλήσεις), to let the exiled Tarquins return and to give them back their possessions (iubebat); second, both attempts having been rejected, a year later, he declares war against the Romans (premebat). Compared with Livy's version, in which Porsenna, reacting to the Tarquins’ cry for help, just ‘moves against Rome with a hostile army’ (2.9.4), this sequence offers the opportunity of suggesting the unflinching reaction of the Roman senators, who considered themselves bound by the curses and oaths they had pronounced (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.21.1). Next, the image of the Romans rushing upon the weapons of the enemy in the name of liberty (Aeneadae in ferrum pro libertate ruebant, 8.648) suggests a unanimously heroic reaction on the part of the Roman people which contradicts the picture given by Livy, who, on the contrary, underlines the panic which seized the senators at the declaration of war (non umquam alias ante tantum terror senatum inuasit, 2.9.5) and, above all, their fear of a betrayal by the plebs (nec hostes modo timebant, sed suosmet ipsi ciues, ne Romana plebs, metu perculsa, receptis in urbem regibus uel cum seruitute pacem acciperet, 2.9.5; there follows the granting of many privileges to the plebeians in order to secure their support).
The following three lines continue to emphasize Roman heroism: Porsenna is no longer an ‘easy’ and noble enemy to face, as is clear from the fact that he reacts angrily and threateningly to Horatius’ and Cloelia's deeds; Horatius does not limit himself to single-handedly keeping the enemy at bay as per the tradition, but seems to ‘tear up the bridge’ by himself like a real Cocles/Cyclops; and Cloelia is no longer a hostage who flees from mild custody, but a prisoner who ‘breaks her bonds’, or even ‘her chains’, before swimming to safety across the Tiber. Presenting Porsenna in a negative way (through his angry and threatening attitude and his binding of an imprisoned Cloelia) magnifies his threat to Rome, and so adds to the heroism of Horatius and Cloelia; but it is above all the Cyclopic Horatius and the exaggeratedly strong Cloelia (suggesting an imprisoned Titan?) who contribute to Virgil's programme of representing the events of Roman history on the Shield of Aeneas in the sublimely hyperbolic way that Philip Hardie illustrated in his Cosmos and Imperium.Footnote 33 Particularly relevant for our passage are Hardie's observations on the ‘Gigantomachic allegory’ underlying the episodes of the Gallic attack on the Capitol (which immediately follows the Porsenna section, Aen. 8.654–62) and of the battle of Actium (Aen. 8.675–713).Footnote 34 Hardie tended to privilege the identification of the allegorical ‘Giants’ with the enemies of the proto-Roman Aeneas, of Rome and of Augustus, but more broadly important for the Shield and the Aeneid in general is the Gigantomachic colouring of Roman history itself—since, as it has been observed starting with Hardie himself, ‘the Aeneid's Gigantomachic imagery actually makes conflicting suggestions and pulls the reader in different directions’.Footnote 35 We have already seen an example of this when Hercules tears off the pinnacle of rock above Cacus’ cave and throws it down (Aen. 8.236–40). Hardie demonstrated that Virgil represents Cacus as ‘specifically Gigantic’ ([n. 21], 111) and reminiscent, among others, of Polyphemus; but he also noticed how the ‘Cyclopic’ gesture of Hercules at Aen. 8.236–40 and his hurling vast rocks at Cacus (uastisque molaribus instat, 8.250) suggest instead an identification between Polyphemus and Hercules himself.Footnote 36 A Gigantomachic imagery characterizes both the enemies and the defenders of Troy/Rome. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate to find here a Gigantomachic colouring on the side of Roman libertas, just before the Gigantomachic overtones of the Gallic attack on the Capitol.Footnote 37
