dido the epicurean - quia

Dido the EpicureanAuthor(s): Julia T. DysonReviewed work(s):Source: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Oct., 1996), pp. 203-221Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25011040 .

Accessed: 25/02/2013 11:32

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ClassicalAntiquity.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:32:31 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25011040?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


JULIA T. DYSON

Dido the Epicurean

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas

atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari.

(Georgics 2.490-92)

Happy he who could recognize the causes of things, and cast all fears and inexorable fate and the screech of greedy Acheron under his feet.

Felix, heu nimium felix, si litora tantum

numquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae.

(Aeneid 4.657-58)

Happy, ah, too happy, if only the Dardanian keels had never touched our shores.

THE De Rerum Natura tells us that the key to happiness is to recognize the

indifference of the gods and the mortality of the soul. The Aeneid shows us a

world in which these principles are overturned, a world of inexorable Fate with

greedy Acheron at its center.1 Yet even as Virgil denies the truth of the Epicurean world view, he recognizes its beauty. Lucretius postulates that human misery is caused by religio, superstitious fear of divine wrath; by conquering religio Epicurus made it possible for humans to live in tranquillity (e.g., DRN 1.62-79,

This paper has benefited greatly from the helpful comments of editor Amy Richlin, the anonymous referees, and many friends and colleagues. In particular, I would like to thank Wendell Clausen, Cynthia Damon, Joseph Farrell, Denis Feeney, Ralph Johnson, James O'Hara, Christine Perkell, Richard Tarrant, Richard Thomas, Clifford Weber, and Susan Ford Wiltshire.

1. For an opposite view, see Williams (1983) 213.

? 1996 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ?~f



204 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 15/No. 2/October 1996

3.1-30).2 In the Aeneid, religio wins. The Dido episode belongs to a larger pattern in which Virgil employs Lucretian language and imagery to contradict Lucretian doctrine:3 the words of the queen herself, of the narrator, and of other characters continually remind us of the Epicurean ideal even as they show it to be

unattainable. I shall argue that Virgil portrays Dido's fall partly as a clash between

Epicureanism and the supernatural machinery of the Aeneid. This is not to say that Dido is an Epicurean, but rather that her shifting re

lationship to Epicureanism is an important aspect of her character. Ancient "Epi cureanism" is itself a slippery term: it seems that the philosophy of temperance and tranquillity often degenerated in practice into sensualism and superstition.4 In Cicero's De Natura Deorum, an important unsympathetic source for late Re

publican Epicureanism, Balbus the Stoic quips that the voluptuous variety of succulent birds and fishes suggests that Providence is "Epicurean" (2.160), while Cotta the Academic insists that Epicureans-even Epicurus himself-exhibit an

extraordinarily morbid dread of death and the gods (1.85-86). Dido embodies such ironies, mouthing apparently Lucretian sentiments even as she comes to

personify a Lucretian exemplum malum. She speaks words that recall ataraxia while engaging in political activities; while her poet sings a Lucretian song, she succumbs to the passion Lucretius excoriates; she sarcastically points to the gods' indifference a few seconds before she invokes their aid. Yet even an adherence

to the purest Epicurean principles could not have helped her. Her serenity and her madness, her love of Aeneas and her loss of him, and finally her suicide, are

brought about by that divine intervention which Lucretius declares impossible. Readers since Servius have noted an Epicurean strain in Dido that contrasts

with Aeneas' "Stoicism."5 While the latter has received some fairly elaborate

2. See Kenney (1971) 3-4 for a concise summary of this philosophy and of how it differs from the common conception of "Epicureanism."

3. Mentions of this Kontrastimitation (so called by Buchheit 1972) appear frequently in discussions of Virgil's use of Lucretius; see, e.g., Farrell (1991) 169, Hardie (1986) 233 for

bibliography. 4. As Kenney (1971) 4 points out, "Nothing in fact could be more misleading than the

equation of Epicurean doctrine with mere hedonism. Rather the reverse is the case: the trouble with Epicureanism, and the main reason perhaps why it never enjoyed the general success of Stoicism, was not that it was too easy, but that it was too difficult, too austere, too unworldly." Pease (1927) 248 regards Dido's material and emotional self-indulgence as similar to that of "those followers of [Epicurus] who won for the term 'Epicurean' its less favorable meaning," though such

indulgence is "far from the temperate and almost austere life of Epicurus himself." 5. On Aeneas' "Stoicism" see, e.g., Bowra (1933-1934) 366-76, Edwards (1960) 162-65,

Galinsky (1988) 323-40. Pease (1935) 36-37 notes that "Dido exhibits not a few characteristics of the typical Epicurean, and as such stands in sharp contrast to the commonly observed Stoicism of Aeneas" (see p. 36 n. 285 for bibliography); Hahn (1931) 19 makes a similar observation and

equates Dido's Epicureanism with impietas; Feeney (1991) 172-73 observes, "the urge to read an

Epicurean Aeneid founders with Dido, who is herself a character with an Epicurean reading of the poem's action-a reading which is proved comprehensively wrong." Pease (1927) 246-47 also

points out some of the Epicurean "hints" I discuss below: the song of Iopas (1.742-46), Dido's sarcastic Epicurean outburst (4.379-80), and Anna's question about Sychaeus' shade (4.34).



DYSON: Dido the Epicurean 205

treatments, however, no parallel study exists that does justice to the complexity of Dido's Epicureanism. I hope to show that Virgil's Lucretian language, sentiments, and images in the Dido episode, far from being isolated moments or incidental

reminiscences, form a consistent pattern. There is a paradox in the widespread appeal of Epicureanism among the elite of a society known for its pragmatism, political and military prowess, and superstition. There are also paradoxes internal to Lucretius' poem: the idea of the "anti-Lucretius in Lucretius" holds some

truth, even if it has been often misapplied.6 Virgil employs a series of Lucretian allusions to explore and expose these paradoxes. It is sometimes asserted that

Virgil ultimately rejected Epicureanism because he objected to political quietism;7 my sense is more that he found the philosophy of ataraxia inadequate to explain or combat the reality of Evil.8

With our first glimpse of Dido, Virgil begins to foreshadow the conflict between Epicurean calm and the role she is fated to play. It is notable that her

first words, which we might expect to sound Homeric or Apollonian, instead point to the goal of Epicurean psychology. She is confident and in control, counseling the Trojans to put away fear (metus) and care (cura):

"Solvite corde metum, Teucri, secludite curas."

(1.561)

"Loosen fear from your hearts, Trojans, put away your cares."

A character's opening line often adumbrates his identity. While Aeneas' first

words contain a clear allusion to those of Odysseus,9 Dido's injunction to dispel

6. Segal (1990) 8 counsels against falling into the "appealing abyss" of the "anti-Lucretius in

Lucretius"; Hardie (1986) 165 notes that Lucretius' technique of "writing deliberately contrasted and apparently irreconcilable passages...was one of the factors inviting the construction of an 'anti Lucrece chez Lucrece'." It is not my aim to treat this subject fully. Lucretius' doctrine of pure materialism, however, does seem to me to clash logically with his assertion of the reliability of the senses (1.699-700) and emotionally with his passionate repugnance at untimely death (5.221, and of course the plague at the end of the poem [6.1138-12861). Perhaps unconsciously, he assumes standards of right and wrong that cannot be generated merely by atoms and void.

7. Michels (1944) 148 and Farrington (1963) 87, for instance, imply that Virgil's "polemical inversion" of Lucretius springs largely from objections to his political views; Ferguson (1990) 2266

notes, "The theme of the glory of Rome is impossible in Epicurean terms." Such observations

complement mine, though my emphasis is different. 8. See Johnson (1976) 152-53: "In his fear, in his vast Epicurean sensitivity to pain and

suffering, Vergil nevertheless turned from the calm, austere garden back to the world where

unreasoning power is a reality that must somehow be persuaded or suffered and where pain must be inflicted or endured. The garden was impossible because he could not teach himself not to hear the screams and riot outside."

9. Both heroes call "three and four times blessed" those who died gloriously in battle rather than ignominiously at sea (Aen. 1.94-96, Od. 5.305-306). Harrison (1992) 124 points out that the

strange discrepancy between Aeneas' opening words and his opening gesture-lifting his hands to

heaven, as if to begin a prayer-may be a clue that "there is something about pius Aeneas and his

pietas that is out of joint." But that is another story.




metus and cura employs the vocabulary of Lucretius' famous formulation of the

Epicurean ideal:

nonne videre nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi utqui corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur iucundo sensu cura semota metuque?

(2.16-19)

Do you not see that nature barks after nothing else for itself than that pain be absent, separated from the body, and that it enjoy a mind with pleasant sensation, removed from care andfear?

Dido is not, of course, enjoining upon Aeneas' men the sort of mental utopia Lucretius envisions; the Trojans' cura and metus are a rational response to their

situation, not a general groundless anxiety to be dispelled by Reason. But the

very distance between the Virgilian and the Lucretian contexts gives her words

irony and poignancy. Dido's own serenity of mind is itself a result of supernatural manipulation, Mercury's fulfillment of Jupiter's command to soften the Tyrians' hearts and create in the queen a "calm spirit and benign mind" (quietum...animum mentemque benignam, 1.303-304). The emotional quietude so coveted by the

Epicureans, a state predicated on divine indifference to human affairs, has in Dido's case been implanted by gods obeying the dictates of Fate; the pathological care and fear she is soon to experience will also be induced by the gods' poison.

By echoing Lucretius' words in Dido's first line, Virgil may be hinting already at the impossibility of Epicurean tranquillity in the world of the Aeneid.'O

10. Certain phrases in the next few lines of her speech have a Lucretian flavor, strengthening the case for a Lucretian reference in her opening words:

"solvite corde metum, Teucri, secludite curas. res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt

moliri et late finis custode tueri.

quis genus Aeneadum, quis Troiae nesciat urbem, virtutesque virosque aut tanti incendia belli?"

(1.560-66)

(1) secludite. Servius comments on the strangeness of the prefix: "'secludite' vero pro excludite: quod fit aut propter hiatum, aut propter suavitatem, ut a, 'silice in nuda conixa reliquit' pro enixa." The OLD cites Virgil's secludite curas as the sole instance of a figurative use of this verb.

Though Servius' explanation may be right as far as it goes, the se- prefix may also be a subtle allusion to the seiunctus and semota in the Lucretian passage just quoted.

(2) res dura et regni novitas. The word novitas occurs only here in Virgil, but frequently in Lucretius, especially in the famous novitas mundi passage (5.780-1135); though the word is too common to be called "Lucretian" per se, Virgil's res dura et regni novitas has some reminiscence of Lucretius'

At genus humanum multo fuit illud in arvis durius, ut decuit, tellus quod dura creasset

(5.925-26) or




Dido's Lucretian words also stand in ironic contrast to her worldly position. This contrast, however, well reflects the reality of Epicureanism in the late

Republic and early Empire: many who were designated Epicureans by themselves and others played active roles in the political, military, and religious spheres." To take one notable example, C. Cassius Longinus the tyrannicide, a self-declared

Epicurean, "defended his and Pansa's devotion to the doctrine of pleasure as the end of all action, while both were engaged in political and military activity of the greatest importance, participation which according to Epicurean doctrine

produced the greatest disturbance of the soul."12 Dido first appears doling out laws and statutes to her subjects from her throne in the temple of Juno (1.504

508). Her political activities are alien to pure Lucretian tenets but in line with the actions of many Roman Epicureans. The religious setting points up a disagreement between Lucretius and the most influential of these: though Philodemus drew on the writings of Epicurus and others "to argue for full participation in traditional cults," Lucretius' more "revolutionary" dogma mocked such participation."3 The

disjunction between Dido's words and her situation could be said to represent the tension between Lucretius' poem and Roman practice.

multaque praeterea novitas turn florida mundi

pabula dura tulit, miseris mortalibus ampla. (5.943-44)

(3) genus Aeneadum. Servius identifies this as something that Virgil should have revised: "satis propere dixit Aeneadas, quamquam ab Ilioneo audierit 'rex erat Aeneas nobis', nec haec in

opere inemendato miranda sunt." The form Aeneadum occurs only once in extant Latin literature before Virgil: as the first word, and hence in the title, of Lucretius' poem. Indeed, the use of genus with a genitive plural is a favorite construction of Lucretius; I count 19 instances. Virgil uses this construction in the beginning of the metempsychosis passage (inde hominum pecudumque genus vitaeque volantum, 6.728), generally regarded as his most Lucretian in language and least Lucretian in meaning (see Norden [1957] ad 723ff., Catto [1989] 60-69). Austin (1977) ad 6.728 connects this line with the beginning of the song of lopas, 1.742-43, discussed below.

(4) tanti incendia belli. This is reminiscent of Lucretius' description of the Trojan War:

denique materies si rerum nulla fuisset nec locus ac spatium, res in quo quaeque geruntur, numquam Tyndaridis forma conflatus amoris

ignis, Alexandri Phrygio sub pectore gliscens, clara accendisset saevi certamina belli, nec clam durateus Troianis Pergama partu inflammasset equus nocturno Graiugenarum.

(1.471-77) 11. See, e.g., Momigliano (1941) 151-53, Castner (1988) xix, Ferguson (1990) 2262 for lists

of politically active or otherwise highly visible Epicureans. Nichols (1976) 45 notes that even the Memmius addressed in Lucretius' poem was in all probability a "politically powerful and ambitious man."

12. Castner (1988) xix. Cassius was not alone: Momigliano (1941) 153 observes that despite Philodemus' "firm conviction" that Epicureans should remain aloof from politics, "not only did he fail to persuade his pupils and friends, but, as we saw, his escape from political passions was narrow and incomplete."

13. Summers (1995) 33.




Similarly, her court is replete with precisely that luxury which Lucretius declares unnecessary, but which would have been common among those who used the doctrine of "pleasure" to justify debauchery.14 After stating that nature demands nothing more than a few necessities and freedom from care and fear, Lucretius paints a vivid picture of extravagant opulence:

gratius interdum neque natura ipsa requirit, si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes

lampadas igniferas manibus retinentia dextris, lumina nocturnis epulis ut suppeditentur, nec domus argento fulget auroque renidet nec citharae reboant laqueata aurataque templa ...

(2.23-28)

It is pleasing, from time to time, but nature does not go lacking, if there are not golden statues of youths throughout the house carrying fire-bearing torches in their right hands, that lights may be supplied to nocturnal

banquets; and the house does not gleam with silver and glisten with gold; and citharas do not bellow through paneled and gilded rooms ...

Equipped with lighting for nocturnal banquets (1.726-27), "huge" (ingens) silver and gold on the tables (1.640-41), golden laquearia ("paneled ceiling," 1.726), and golden cithara (1.740-41), Dido's patently Homeric palace is peppered with Lucretian images of superfluous ornament.'5 In particular, the laquearia, which

appears only half a dozen times in extant literature before Virgil,'6 occurs mainly in poetic and philosophical discourse describing unnecessary or ill-fated luxury. In an Ode steeped in Lucretian language and sentiment,'7 Horace uses the word

as Lucretius does to represent ornament that cannot dispel anxiety (2.12.11). Undoubtedly the image harks back to Ennius' famous depiction of doomed Troy with its "barbarian wealth, embossed and paneled roofs" (ope barbarica, /tectis

caelatis laqueatis, Trag. fr. 90); Cicero twice quotes the Ennian lines in the

Tusculan Disputations, once to illustrate the fragility of greatness (1.85), once, interestingly enough, the bankruptcy of Epicureanism (in its more sensualistic

manifestation) as a consolation for extreme grief such as Andromache's (3.44

46). In the De Legibus, the speakers express their preference for a riverside

locus amoenus (like that of Lucretius, 2.29-33) as a place to discuss philosophy, scorning magnificent villas, marble floors, and laqueata tecta (2.2). The only other instance of a laqueatum tectum before Virgil is in a temple (In Verrem II 1.133), the appropriate place for such ornament. Dido's laquearia, then, would seem to

14. See Castner (1988) xvii. 15. As Gale (1994) 1 11 observes, Lucretius' banquet scene is itself "reminiscent of the descrip

tion of Alcinous' palace in Odyssey 7." 16. I here take laquearia, laqueata tecta, laqueata templa, and laqueatum tectum as equivalent. 17. See Nisbet and Hubbard (1978) 254 for a discussion of Horace's debt to Lucretius, and

especially to the proem of DRN 2, in this highly Epicurean Ode.




recall both the Ennian description of the tragedy of Troy and the philosophical tradition contrasting natural pleasures with useless luxury.

If Dido has a weakness for luxury, her fatal weakness is for love.'8 Here too Virgil shows Dido falling prey to the vice in words that recall the Lucretian

injunction to avoid it. Virgil implies that love and luxury are linked, showing Dido succumbing equally to the charms of Cupid-as-Ascanius and to those of the ominous Trojan gifts:

praecipue infelix, pesti devota futurae, expleri mentem nequit ardescitque tuendo Phoenissa, et pariter puero donisque movetur.

(1.712-14)

Especially unhappy, doomed to the plague that is to be, the Phoenician woman cannot satisfy her mind, and starts to burn through gazing, and is moved equally by the boy and the gifts.

Though the fire imagery in ardescitque tuendo may be derived from love poetry, the closest grammatical parallel for this type of line end-an inchoative verb with an ablative gerund-occurs in a passage that, though about love, is far from love

poetry. Lucretius counsels his readers to avoid love assiduously, describing its wounds in almost clinical terms:

ulcus enim vivescit et inveterascit alendo

inque dies gliscit furor atque aerumna gravescit. (4.1068-69)

For the wound comes to life and grows inveterate through nourishing, and day by day the furor grows and the sorrow becomes heavier.

This grammatical figure occurs only once more in Virgil's works, this time of the violence of Turnus:

haudquaquam dictis violentia Turni flectitur; exsuperat magis aegrescitque medendo.

(12.45-46)

The violence of Turnus is turned not at all by the words; it rises up the

more and grows sick through remedying.

Though love is not explicitly stated as the cause of Turnus' violentia, his response to Lavinia's blush makes clear the connection between amor and arma: illum

turbat amorfigitque in virgine vultus; /ardet in arma magis ("Love disturbs him, he fixes his glance on the maiden; he burns all the more for arms," 12.70-71).'9

18. Segal (1971) 342: "Luxury and Dido's love are virtually inseparable." 19. That the violentia of Tunus owes something both to the Lucretius passage (4.1068-69)

and to the Dido passage (1.712-14) is perhaps confirmed by the line ending the opening simile of Book 12 (4-9), in which Turnus, balancing the comparison of Dido to a wounded deer (4.68-73),




Virgil also alludes to the Lucretian lines when describing the plague in Georgics 3

(454), alitur vitium vivitque tegendo ("the fault is nourished and lives through covering").20 With these memorable phrases-ardescitque tuendo, aegrescitque

medendo, alluding to Lucretius' inveterascit alendo and perhaps his own vivitque tegendo-Virgil plays brilliantly on the Lucretian image. Lucretius spoke of love as a dangerous wound; Dido burns with it, Turnus sickens, and both are as doomed

as the plague-stricken animal of the Georgics. Unlike Lucretius' pupil, however, Dido has no possible defense against the wound inflicted by a god whose poisons can subdue even Jupiter. The evils that Lucretius warns against have no remedy in

the world of the Aeneid. In the midst of Dido's suffering comes the song of lopas, mysterious and

complex, with multiple layers of allusion:21

hic canit errantem lunam solisque labores, unde hominum genus et pecudes, unde imber et ignes, Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Triones, quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.

(1.742-46)

He sings the wandering moon and the labors of the sun, whence comes

the race of men and beasts, whence rain and fires, Arcturus and the rainy

Hyades and the twin Triones, why the winter suns hurry so to bathe

themselves in Ocean, or what delay hinders the late-arriving nights.

Though Homer's song of Demodocus (Od. 8.266-366) and Apollonius' song of

Orpheus (Arg. 1.496-511) are the main epic models for this passage, Lucretius lies behind it in several ways. Iopas conspicuously omits any mention of the divine

machinations that characterize the other two songs, but sings instead a didactic

is compared to a wounded lion: "haud secus accenso gliscit violentia Turno" (12.9). The word gliscit occurs only here in Virgil; it seems likely that there is in gliscit violentia a reminiscence of Lucretius'

gliscitfuror, and the fire imagery in accenso Turno recalls the burning of Dido in ardescitque tuendo. There may also be a reference to Lucretius' "ignis Alexandri Phrygio sub pectore gliscens" (1.474), as Putnam (1965) 225-26 suggests: "Love leads to war, and Turus, thinking of war, finds its cause in love."

Virgil probably had several Lucretian passages in mind. As Clausen (1987) 163 notes, "Aegresco, a Lucretian verb (see TLL s.v.), is not found elsewhere in Virgil, and the Lucretian gerund (see Munro on Lucr. 1.312) is suggestive." He cites DRN 3.521-22:

ergo animus sive aegrescit, mortalia signa mittit, uti docui, seu flectitur a medicina.

"Turnus suffers, Virgil seems to imply, from a latent disposition to violence, a sickness of the soul"

(89-90). 20. Thomas (1988) ad loc. See also his commentary on the end of Georgics 3 (452-566) for

numerous other connections between love and disease, "the twin calamities of Book 3" (ad 452). 21. See Segal (1971) 348: the song is "an example of Virgil's complex, integrative art in its

richest form."




poem on natural philosophy, de rerum natura.22 The end of the description of the song is a verbatim quotation from a passage in the Georgics (Aen. 1.745 46 = Geo. 2.481-82) in which most readers see an allusion to Lucretius.23

Finally, lopas' choice of a scientific subject alludes to the scholiastic tradition that interpreted Demodocus' story as "scientific," an Empedoclean allegory of the forces of love (Aphrodite = philia) and strife (Ares = neikos) in the universe;24 this

allegorization was itself "translated back into poetic terms with especial felicity by Lucretius in the proem to book one of the De Rerum Natura."25 Thus lopas' poetic and philosophical predecessors, in addition to his subject matter, point directly or indirectly to Lucretius. The contrast that emerges between the song and its context is not so much between the "calm, remote heavenly bodies and

the immediate tumult in Dido's breast"26-for the sun and moon wander and labor

too27--as it is between the assured rationalism of Lucretian poetry and the malign supernatural forces that are destroying Dido's reason.28

22. Knauer (1964) 168 observes that Virgil has replaced Homer's divine farce with "de re rum natura"; Little (1992) 16 states that the song "is Virgil's summary of a comprehensive Lu cretian account of the 'nature of things', from the origin of life and matter"; Hardie (1986) 58

quotes the comment of Tiberius Donatus that Iopas' mentor Atlas teaches things "quae omnia ad rerum naturam pertinent" (i, p. 143 Georgii); Brown (1990) 318-21 demonstrates how both the

song of Iopas and the Georgics passage (2.475-82) are modeled on Lucretius and other didactic

poetry. 23. In Geo. 475-94 the poet presents two options-singing scientific poetry and enjoying a

bucolic idyll-and says that he would prefer the first but would settle for the second; he then beatifies those who were able to attain these as felix and fortunatus respectively. Merrill (1935) 258 uses Georgics 2.490-92 (felix qui ...) as an epigraph for his commentary on the De Rerum

Natura. See Klingner (1967) 271; Buchheit (1972) 71; Dyson (1994) 12; Conington (1881), Page (1898), Williams (1979), and Mynors (1990) ad loc. For a different view see Ross (1987) 228-31 and

Thomas (1988) ad loc. 24. See Knauer (1964) 168, discussed by Hardie (1986) 62 and Farrell (1991) 258-60, for

the idea that the tradition of interpreting Demodocus' song as Empedoclean allegory was partly responsible for lopas' natural-philosophical subject matter.

25. Hardie (1986) 62. 26. Clausen (1987) 31. 27. The "wandering" (errantem) moon anticipates Dido's request to Aeneas to narrate his

wanderings (errores, 755; errantem, 756); the "labors" of the sun recall the labors imposed on Aeneas by Juno (tot adire labores, 1.10). (The view of Richter [1977] 104 that Virgil is using the word labor here in a scientific sense does not preclude such symbolic resonance.) See Poschl (1962) 151-54.

28. Many interpretations stress the importance of contrast both within the song itself and between the song and its context: Eichholz (1968) 108 notes the "contrast between impersonal song and

personal feelings"; Hannah (1993) 128-29 argues that oppositions between the stars named in it fit the theme of "similarity and opposition" also evident "in the groupings of sun and moon, mankind and animals, water and fire, winter suns and late (summer) nights, Carthaginians and Trojans, perhaps even Aeneas and Dido"; Segal (1971) 344 notes that "the content of the song stands in an ironic tension with its setting"; Kinsey (1979) 79 states, "Amid the good cheer of the banquet, lopas sings of a Universe of toil and uncertainty"; Brown (1990) 321-22, noting the parallel between Iopas' indirect questions and Dido's direct ones, points out that the "effect of this stylistic connection is to draw attention to and sharpen the contrast between the song of lopas and Dido's interrogation

of Aeneas."




Recognizing something of Lucretius in Iopas may help to explain an odd detail for which there is no known epic model. At the climax of her banquet, immediately before lopas' song, Dido takes just a sip from her ceremonial cup, "barely touching it with her lips" (summo tenus attigit ore, 1.737). Her restraint here contrasts with her imprudent imbibing of destructive love, which occurs after the song:29

nec non et vario noctem sermone trahebat infelix Dido longumque bibebat amorem ...

(1.748-9)

Nor did unhappy Dido not also draw out the night with various conversa tion, and drink a deep draught of love ...

This juxtaposition of temperance and sensualism is emblematic of the ironies and contradictions that have characterized Dido from the beginning. But there is more to it than that. Lucretius twice explains his strategy of sweetening his salubrious

philosophy with the Muses' honey, likening his readers to children who must be deceived into drinking bitter medicine (1.936-50

- 4.11-25):

sed veluti pueris absinthia taetra medentes cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum

contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore, ut puerorum aetas improvida ludificetur labrorum tenus, interea perpotet amarum 940 absinthi laticem, deceptaque non capiatur, sed potius tali pacto recreata valescat, sic ego nunc, quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque vulgus abhorret ab hac, volui tibi suaviloquenti 945 carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram, et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle, si tibi forte animum tali ratione tenere

versibus in nostris possem, dum perspicis omnem naturam rerum qua constet compta figura. 950

But as doctors, when they try to give bitter wormwood to children, first touch the rims around the cups with the sweet and golden liquor of honey, that the unsuspecting youth of the children may be deluded as far as the lips, but meanwhile drink down the bitter liquid of wormwood, and, though beguiled, be not harmed, but rather refreshed in such fashion grow strong; so I now, since this reasoning often appears to be rather grim to those by whom it has not been handled, and the crowd cringes back from

it, wished to expound our reasoning to you in sweet-speaking Pierian

song, and as it were touch it with the Muses' sweet honey, if perchance I

29. See Brown (1990) 333-34.




might in such a way hold your attention in my verses, while you perceive the whole nature of things, in what shape it stands arranged.

An allusion to this famous Lucretian simile would help to explain the puzzling elements in the Virgilian episode-Dido's just touching the cup with her lips, and the scientific nature of Iopas' song-and would reveal a deeper irony and sadness in Dido's tragedy. As the children in Lucretius' simile are beguiled and deluded "as far as their lips" (labrorum tenus) by the honey around the medicinal

cup, so Dido touches the cup "with the tip of her mouth" (summo tenus attigit ore). But while the children "drink down the bitter" medicine (perpotet amarum), Dido "drinks a deep draught of love" (longumque bibebat amorem). The cup that Dido drinks is not healing philosophy but its opposite, the dangerous love that will destroy her reason, her sanity, and her life. The irony here is exquisite, enhanced by an important pun that was a favorite with Virgil and Lucretius: amarus ("bitter") and amor ("love").30 Jane Snyder, commenting on Lucretius' lines 1.939-41 quoted above, points out that such a pun may have suggested itself to Lucretius:

The word amarum, echoing the amorem ending line 924 [et simul incussit suavem mi in pectus amorem/musarum] and placed in the context of

the etymological figure of line 941, may well be an intentional double entendre, implying that what is amarus at first taste may then become a suavis amor (cf. line 924) when the "victim" has come to know the

natura rerum (line 950).31

We cannot say with certainty that Lucretius had such a double entendre in mind, or that Virgil would have noticed it if he had; but given Lucretius' proclivity for

wordplay, and Virgil's capacity for careful and insightful reading, it is probable that Virgil did see a pun-and, as so often, inverted it.32 While Lucretius' boy drinks deep (perpotet amarum) the healing medicine, amarus but soon to turn to amor, Dido drinks deep (bibebat amorem) the love that seems sweet on the

lips but will soon turn to wormwood when her amor becomes amarus.

The Lucretian strain in the song of Iopas adds an important dimension not

only to this scene but to the Dido episode as a whole. In an exaggeratedly epic

30. Snyder (1980) 114 points out that "punning on the two words was standard" (see also 65), citing Quintilian's example of wordplay in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, "nam amari iucundum sit, si curetur ne quid insit amari" (4.14.20), and Virgil's Eclogues:

et vitula tu dignus et hic: et quisquis amores haud metuet dulces, haud experietur amaros.

(3.109-10)

See also Brown (1987) ad DRN 4.1134. 31. Snyder (1980) 115. 32. The ancients were far more inclined than we to see such puns as reflecting the "nature of

things." On the prevalence and significance of wordplay in Latin poetry, see Ahl (1985) 17-63.




setting,33 there are hints of Epicureanism in Dido and her court. But the venenum ("poison," 1.688) of Venus-whom Dido innocently calls alma Venus ("fostering

Venus," 1.618), like the life-giving deity of DRN 1.2-destroys any possibility of equanimity. Whereas Lucretius claims that his philosophical song will heal the listener as bitter wormwood heals the boys, the song of Iopas, a miniature

De Rerum Natura, is powerless to help Dido as she sickens with bitter love. The Epicurean references we have seen in Book 1 are largely implicit, words

or situations that invite comparison with Lucretius (and others) and challenge us to recognize Dido's distance from-or ironic adherence to-Epicurean principles and practice. Throughout Book 4, however, overt consideration of the status of the gods and the soul comes to the fore, as characters from Anna to Iarbas to Dido voice questions or statements that touch on Epicurean theory. Servius is useful here in alerting us to when it is that Virgil speaks "according to the Epicureans." Anna attempts to win over her sister by implying that the dead have no concern with the living: of Dido's contemplated infidelity, Anna asks,

"id cinerem aut manis credis curare sepultos?" (4.34)

"Do you believe that the ashes or the buried shades care about this?"

Servius comments,

quia marito iuraverat, ut "non servata fides cineri promissa Sychaeo." et bene extenuat dicendo non animam, sed cineres et manes sepultos. dicit autem secundum Epicureos, qui animam cum corpore dicunt perire.

Because she had sworn to her husband, as in "the pledge promised to the ashes of Sychaeus was not preserved" [4.552]. And Anna softens it

well by saying not "soul" but "ashes and buried shades." She speaks, moreover, according to the Epicureans, who say that the soul perishes with the body.

As Servius points out, Anna's Epicurean argument, though it helps to win over the lovesick Dido, ultimately proves to be destructive: Dido's bitterest self-reproach is that she did not preserve her pledge to her dead husband. Indeed, our last

glimpse of her in Hades shows her reunited with his shade (6.473-74), implicitly

33. In addition to the references to Odyssey 6-8 and Argonautica 3 throughout Dido's banquet, there are more subtle allusions to other epics in her query at the end of Book 1 (750-56). For instance,

Dido asks to hear about the son of Aurora (1.751), a minor character in the Iliad but the hero of the

Aithiopis. Her question about the horses of Diomedes (1.752) may allude to the cycle of Herculean

epics: while the reference recalls the Iliadic incident in which Diomedes snatches Aeneas' horses (I1. 5.323-24; see Lyne [1987] 138-39), it also may recall the man-eating horses of Diomedes of

Thrace, notorious for their role in the labors of Hercules. (Servius ad 1.741 informs us that Hercules, not lopas, was the original pupil of Atlas' "natural philosophy.") The ambushes of the Greeks (1.754) are of course the subject of the Iliad, and the wanderings of Aeneas (1.754-56) recall the Odyssey and other nostoi.




refuting Anna's words. Not only is Anna's Epicurean argument false, but it is used to encourage behavior that Dido, Virgil, and the reader all know to be wrong behavior that would accord with seeing Epicureanism as self-indulgent sensuality, in opposition to Lucretius' diatribe against immoderate sexual passion.

The second passage that Servius (ad 210) identifies as "Epicurean" occurs in Iarbas' complaint to his putative father Jupiter:

"Iuppiter omnipotens, cui nunc Maurusia pictis gens epulata toris Lenaeum libat honorem, aspicis haec? an te, genitor, cum fulmina torques nequiquam horremus, caecique in nubibus ignes terrificant animos et inania murmura miscent?"

(4.206-10)

"Omnipotent Jupiter, for whom the Mauretanian people, dining on em broidered couches, pours a libation of wine, do you see these things? Or, father, when you hurl the thunderbolt, do we shudder at you in vain, and do blind fires in the clouds terrify our spirits and mingle empty rumblings?"

Here the intent is the opposite of Anna's: while she embraces Epicureanism by implying that the soul does not survive after death, Iarbas implicitly denies it

by challenging Jupiter-in whom, as a hundred altars testify (4.200), he does believe-to refute the Epicurean stance.34 Lucretius goes to great lengths, with both physical and moral arguments, to prove that we do "shudder in vain" at the thunderbolt (6.96-422). And yet the result of Iarbas' speech is to rouse the god's concern, which Lucretius would say is impossible. The questions of both Anna and Iarbas point up the Epicurean position in a way that demonstrates its falsity.

These passages prepare the way for the agon between Aeneas and Dido, where Stoic meets Epicurean in a climactic confrontation. Aeneas defends his actions by citing Fate and the gods (4.340-61), and Dido responds with furious sarcasm:

"amissam classem, socios a morte reduxi

(heu furiis incensa feror!): nunc augur Apollo, nunc Lyciae sortes, nunc et love missus ab ipso interpres divum fert horrida iussa per auras. scilicet is superis labor est, ea cura quietos sollicitat."

(4.375-80)

"His lost fleet, his allies I brought back from death (oh, I am on fire, carried by Furies!): now Apollo the augur, now the Lycian lots, now even the go-between of the gods sent from Jupiter himself carries the terrifying

34. The "Mauretanian people," as Nadeau (1970) 341 points out, is a learned reference to the land of the Western Aethiopians, recalling "the common Homeric motif of the gods being present at

banquets among the Aethiopians." Jupiter is thus characterized not only as Homeric but as interacting freely with humans, traits opposed to the serene isolation of the Epicurean gods.




commands through the air. No doubt this is a labor for the gods above, this care troubles them in their quiet!"

This last sentence is quintessentially Lucretian in tone, language, and meaning: his gods are placida cum pace quietos ("calm with placid peace," DRN 6.73), far removed from the cura inimical to ataraxia. Commentators note that she "is made an Epicurean for the moment."35 Yet the rest of her speech abruptly reverses this approach, as she appeals to divine justice to punish Aeneas (si quid pia numina possunt, "if the pious divinities have any power," 382) and declares that her Shade will torment him eternally (omnibus umbra locis adero, "I will be present everywhere as a Shade," 386). Servius astutely observes this shift from an Epicurean to a Stoic position:36

QUIETOS SOLLICITAT Cicero in libris de deorum natura triplicem de diis dicit esse opinionem: deos non esse, cuius rei auctor apud Athenas exustus est; esse et nihil curare, ut Epicurei; esse et curare, ut Stoici: secundum quos paulo post 'si quid pia numina possunt [4.382]': nam

modo secundum Epicureos ait 'ea cura quietos'.

TROUBLES THEM IN THEIR QUIET Cicero in his book about the nature of the gods says that there are three opinions about the gods: that the gods do not exist, the originator of which view was burned at Athens; that they exist and do not care, as the Epicureans say; that they exist and care, as the Stoics say: according to whom a little later she says "if the

pious divinities have any power": for now according to the Epicureans she says "[No doubt...] this care [troubles] them in their quiet."

This ambivalence on Dido's part once again reflects the tension in her relationship to Epicureanism, with her desire for a world free of intrusive gods conflicting with her desire for divine justice and her own immortality. The dissonance that began when we met her, as she uttered Lucretian words from atop her throne in the

temple of Juno, here comes to a head.

35. Austin (1955) ad 4.379f. Edwards (1960) 158-59 notes the contrast between this "great Epicurean outburst" and "her last words, an assertion that she has been following Fate's path all the time." Pease (1935) 324-25 cites ancient parallels and remarks that this passage is "anachronistic in attributing Epicurean doctrines to a lady of the heroic age." Ferguson (1990) 2266 observes, "The only expression of Epicureanism is put into the mouth of misguided Dido, and patently repudiated."

36. As Austin (1955) ad 382 points out, there may be here an echo of Aeneas' "Stoic" response to Dido's first speech:

di tibi, si qua pios respectant numina, si quid usquam iustitiae est et mens sibi conscia recti,

praemia digna ferant. (1.603-605)

On mens sibi conscia recti, Servius comments, "secundum Stoicos, qui dicunt, ipsam virtutem esse

pro praemio, etiamsi nulla sint praemia." Thus their first exchange, in a sense, foreshadows their last.




When Dido's fury has settled into hatred, a Lucretian phrase once more

expresses the conflict between Stoic and Epicurean with precision. Before cursing Aeneas she admits her defeat in these words:

"si tangere portus infandum caput ac terris adnare necesse est, et sic fata Iovis poscunt, hic terminus haeret..."

(4.612-14)

"If it is necessary for his wicked head to touch the harbor and swim to

land, and thus the fates of Jupiter demand, here the boundary stone is fixed ..."

Commentators notice the unmistakable Lucretian signature in hic terminus haeret,37 but do not seem to notice the profound irony of this phrase in its context in the Aeneid. For Lucretius, it occurs first in a triumphant declaration of Epicurus' victory over the tyranny of religio:

unde refert nobis victor quid possit oriri, quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens.

quare religio pedibus subiecta vicissim obteritur, nos exaequat victoria caelo.

(1.75-79)

Whence he brings back for us, victorious, what can happen, what cannot, in what manner, in a word, each thing has its power limited, and the boundary stone fixed deep. Wherefore religion, in turn, cast down under his feet, is crushed; the victory makes us equal to heaven.

The idea of the terminus haerens, the unalterable law of what can and cannot

happen-specifically, the impossibility of supernatural intervention in human affairs-is at the heart of Lucretius' philosophy. When Dido uses the phrase, the context is inverted: it sums up her defeat by supernatural forces, the unalterable will of the gods. The Lucretian song of Iopas was powerless against the malign forces of love, supernaturally implanted; Dido's Epicurean argument to Aeneas,

with its sarcastic implication that the gods scorn to intervene, can do nothing to

counter the (within the epic) very real intervention of the very human gods. When she finally concedes, she calls on the gods, declares the immortality of her Shade, and in her passion commits suicide-the climax of the Lucretian catalogue of

human folly (3.79-84). Moreover, as A.-M. Tupet demonstrates, ritual language and actions mark her death as a devotio, making her both priestess and victim in a

37. So Austin (1955) ad 4.614: "Virgil has adapted Lucretius' alte terminus haerens (used of the finite power of things, i.77, &c.-one of Lucretius' great signature-phrases, like flammantia moenia

mundi)." Nothing like terminus haerens occurs elsewhere in extant Latin literature.




human sacrifice38-the climax of the Lucretian exposition of the evils of religio (1.82-101). In her manner of death, she succumbs to the very evils that Lucretius seeks to combat.

Her final moment on earth, like her opening line (solvite corde metum, Teucri, secludite curas, 1.562), is a last reminder of Epicureanism. This may seem strange, given the unquestionably supernatural elements in her demise. Juno, pitying her

long suffering, sends Iris to cut the fatal lock that will release her from life:

ergo Iris croceis per caelum roscida pennis mille trahens varios adverso sole colores devolat et supra caput astitit. "hunc ego Diti sacrum iussa fero teque isto corpore solvo": sic ait et dextra crinem secat, omnis et una

dilapsus calor atque in ventos vita recessit.

(4.700-705)

Therefore dewy Iris, with her saffron feathers dragging through the sky a thousand colors varying as the sun hits, flies down and stands above her

head. "On command, I bring this sacred [hair] to Pluto and loose you from this body": thus she speaks and cuts the hair with her right hand, and all at once the heat slipped away and life receded into the winds.

Commentators compare the unforgettable and markedly Homeric lines describing the death of Turnus, ast illi solvuntur frigore membra/vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras ("but his limbs are loosed in cold and his life flees with

a groan, resentful, down to the Shades," 12.951-52). Dido's tirades before her death lead us to expect similar sentience from her Shade: she makes a great point of her immortality with her memorable threat to Aeneas, omnibus umbra locis adero. dabis, improbe, poenas. /audiam et haec Manis veniet mihifama sub imos

("I will be present everywhere as a Shade. Wicked one, you will pay the penalty. I will hear, and this report will come to me deep among the Shades," 4.386-87). But what is remarkable about Dido's death is that we do not hear of her soul fleeing

resentfully to the Shades. Turnus' escaping vita exhibits a strong personality (cum gemitu, indignata) and a clear direction (sub umbras); the state of Dido's vita, by contrast, is left ambiguous, with nothing in the final line of Book 4 to contradict

Epicurean dogma.39 Lucretius states that the primordial seeds responsible for life are those of heat (calor) and wind (ventus):

38. Tupet (1970) 242-55. duBois (1976) discusses Dido's role as a sacrificial victim, noting in particular that the myth of Iphigeneia is a "sub-text of the Dido episode" (19) and pointing out the

passage in which Dido herself alludes to that myth (4.425-30). The description of Dido's nuptial bed soon to become her funeral pyre (4.645-48), and her final curse upon Aeneas' fleet (661-62), recall and reverse Lucretius' description of Iphigeneia's abortive "wedding" to ensure safe sailing for her father's ships (1.95-101).

39. If anything, in ventos recessit implies dissolution: the only other object in the Aeneid said to recede in ventos is Acestes' flaming arrow, which is explicitly "consumed" (tenuisque recessit/consumpta in ventos, 5.526-27). The imago of Creusa, on the other hand, is said to recede




noscere ut hinc possis non aequas omnia partis corpora habere neque ex aequo fulcire salutem, sed magis haec, venti quae sunt calidique vaporis semina, curare in membris ut vita moretur.

est igitur calor ac ventus vitalis in ipso corpore qui nobis moribundos deserit artus.

(3.124-29)

So that from this you may know that not all bodies have equal parts nor

equally support health, but rather those seeds which are of wind and of hot vapor take care that life stays in the limbs. It is therefore the heat

and wind of life in the body itself which deserts our dying limbs.

While Virgil's calor atque in ventos is not quite Lucretius' calor ac ventus, the

phrases are similar enough to suggest that, in Dido's death, Virgil has chosen to sound one last Lucretian chord.

The epilogue (6.450-76) leaves no doubt where Dido's spirit has gone. Her resentful Shade undermines her Epicureanism as clearly as Aeneas' fiery wrath

(12.946-47) undermines his Stoicism. But Virgil reminds us in her death, as in Aeneas' moment of hesitation (12.940-41), what might have been if Fate and human nature were not as they are.

Felix, heu nimium felix, si litora tantum

numquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae.

University of Texas at Arlington

WORKS CITED

Ahl, Frederick. 1985. Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets. Ithaca and London.

Austin, R. G. 1955. P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Quartus. Oxford. . 1971. P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Primus. Oxford. . 1977. P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Sextus. Oxford.

Bowra, C. M. 1933-1934. "Aeneas and the Stoic Ideal." In Harrison (1990), 363-77.

Brown, R. D. 1987. Lucretius on Love and Sex: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura

IV, 1030-1287 with Prolegomena, Text, and Translation. Leiden. . 1990. "The Structural Function of the Song of Iopas." HSCP 93: 315-34.

Buchheit, Vinzenz. 1972. Der Anspruch des Dichters in Vergils Georgika: Dichtertum und Heilsweg. Darmstadt.

Castner, Catherine J. 1988. Prosopography of Roman Epicureans from the Second Century B.C. to the Second Century A.D. Frankfurt am Main.

Catto, Bonnie A. 1989. "Vergilian Inversion of Lucretius in Anchises' Exposition of the Soul." Vergilius 35: 60-69.

into the breezes (tenuisque recessit in auras, 2.791). It is characteristic of Virgil not to tell us where

things go when they vanish.




Clausen, Wendell. 1987. Virgil's Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry. Berkeley. Commager, Steele, ed. 1966. Virgil: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs,

N.J. Conington, John. 1881. The Works of Virgil, with a Commentary. London.

duBois, Page. 1976. "The capuoptx6c of Virgil: Dido as Scapegoat." Vergilius 22: 14-23.

Dyson, Julia T. 1994. "Georgics 2.503-12: The Temple's Shadow." Vergilius 40: 3-18.

Edwards, M. 1960. "The Expression of Stoic Ideas in the Aeneid." Phoenix 14: 151-65.

Eichholz, D. E. 1968. "Symbol and Contrast in the Aeneid." G&R 15: 105-12.

Farrell, Joseph. 1991. Vergil's Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic: The Art of Allusion in Literary History. Oxford.

Farrington, Benjamin. 1963. "Polemical Allusion to the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius in the Works of Vergil." In Geras: Studies Presented to G. Thompson, pp. 87-94.

Prague. Feeney, D. C. 1991. The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition.

Oxford. Ferguson, John. 1990. "Epicureanism under the Roman Empire." ANRW 11.36.4: 2257

2327. Gale, Monica R. 1994. Myth and Poetry in Lucretius. Cambridge. Galinsky, G. K. 1988. "The Anger of Aeneas." AJP 109: 321-48.

Hahn, E. A. 1931. "Pietas Versus Violentia in the Aeneid." Classical Weekly 25: 9-21.

Hannah, Robert. 1993. "The Stars of Iopas and Palinurus." AJP 114: 123-36.

Hardie, Philip R. 1986. Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium. Oxford.

Harrison, E. L. 1992. "Aeneas at Carthage: The Opening Scenes of the Aeneid." In Wilhelm and Jones (1992), 109-28.

Harrison, S. J., ed. 1990. Oxford Readings in Vergil's Aeneid. Oxford.

Johnson, W. R. 1976. Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid. Berkeley. Kenney, E. J. 1971. Lucretius: De Rerum Natura Book III. Cambridge. Kinsey, T. E. 1979. "The Song of Iopas." Emerita 47: 77-86.

Klingner, Friedrich. 1967. Virgil: Bucolica, Georgica, Aeneis. Zurich.

Knauer, Georg Nicolaus. 1964. Die Aeneis und Homer: Studien zur poetischen Technik

Vergils mit Listen der Homerzitate in der Aeneis. Hypomnemata 7. Gottingen. Little, D. A. 1992. "The Song of Iopas-Aeneid 1.740-6." Prudentia 24: 16-36.

Lyne, R. O. A. M. 1987. Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid. Oxford.

Merrill, W. A. 1935. T. Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex. New York.

Michels, A. K. 1944. "Lucretius and the Sixth Book of the Aeneid." AJP 65: 135-48.

Momigliano, A. 1941. Review of B. Farrington, Science and Politics in the Ancient World. JRS 31: 149-57.

Mynors, R. A. B. 1972. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. 2nd ed. Oxford. - . 1990. Virgil's Georgics: A Commentary. Oxford.

Nadeau, J. Y. N. 1970. "Ethiopians." CQ 20: 338-49.

Nichols, James H., Jr. 1972. Epicurean Political Philosophy: The De Rerum Natura of Lucretius. Ithaka and London.

Norden, Eduard. 1957. P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis Buch VI. 4th ed. Stuttgart. Page, T. E. 1898. P. Vergili Maronis Bucolica et Georgica, with Introduction and Notes.

London. Pease, Arthur S. 1927. "Some Aspects of the Character of Dido." CJ 22: 243-52.

. 1935. P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Quartus. Cambridge, Mass.

Poschl, Viktor. 1962. The Art of Virgil: Image and Symbol in the Aeneid. Translated by G.

Seligson. Ann Arbor.




Putnam, Michael. 1965. The Poetry of the Aeneid: Four Studies in Imaginative Unity and Design. Cambridge, Mass.

Richter, Will. 1977. "Lunae Labores." Wiener Studien 11: 96-105.

Ross, David O. Jr. 1987. Virgil's Elements: Physics and Poetry in the Georgics. Princeton.

Segal, Charles P. 1971. "The Song of Iopas in the Aeneid." Hermes 99: 336-49. . 1990. Lucretius on Death and Anxiety: Poetry and Philosophy in the De Rerum

Natura. Princeton.

Summers, Kirk. 1995. "Lucretius and the Epicurean Tradition of Piety." CP 90: 32-57.

Snyder, Jane N. 1980. Puns and Poetry in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura. Amsterdam.

Thomas, Richard F. 1988. Virgil: Georgics. 2 Vols. Cambridge. Tupet, A.-M. 1970. "Didon Magicienne." REL 48: 229-58.

Wilhelm, Robert M. and Howard Jones, eds. 1992. The Two Worlds of the Poet: New

Perspectives on Vergil. Detroit.

Williams, G. 1983. Technique and Ideas in the Aeneid. New Haven and London.

Williams, R. D. 1979. Virgil: The Eclogues and Georgics. New York.



dido the epicurean - quia

Documents