Cynthia Liu, University of Oxford
Achilles and Orestes are well-studied models of mythical vengeance for the Aeneid. Allusions to Achilles and Hector’s duel and Achilles’ Shield are well known (West 1974). Curtis (2017) has shown that the final duel of Book 12 culminates a series of militarized choral scenes drawing on the association of battle with human and cosmic chorality displayed on both Homeric and Virgilian shields (also Hardie 1986). Scholars have also noted evocations of Orestes’ myth throughout the Aeneid (Rebeggiani 2015, Hardie 1991). In this paper I will merge these two models. While the influence of Aeschylus’ Oresteia has been well-studied with regard to Orestes’ presence in Virgil’s corpus (Dewar 1988), Euripides’ Orestes and Elektra are not sufficiently treated. I argue that their choral odes provide models for Virgil’s combination of Achilles’ Shield, Orestes, and cosmic-choral movement in the final duel of Aeneid 12.
Elektra’s first stasimon, describing Achilles’ shield, draws a parallel between Achilles and Orestes. There, the brightness of the sun and star choruses on the shield turns back Hector’s eyes (464-9). The second stasimon echoes this moment when Zeus turns back the path of the sun and stars at the revelation of Thyestes’ betrayal of Atreus (727-36) (Csapo 2008, 2017). The same antistrophic movement of the heavens, parallaxis, for the same reason appears in Orestes’ third stasimon (1001-6). Achillean revenge colours Thyestes and Atreus’ conflict over Atreus’ wife. A similar pattern appears in Turnus and Aeneas’ conflict over Lavinia, which also mirrors Orestes, Atreus’ grandson, and Pyrrhus’ conflict over Hermione (Rebeggiani 2015). Furthermore, the same reversal of cosmic-choral movement is played out in the final duel of the Aeneid. Curtis (2017) has noted the significance of Aen. 12.763 (quinque orbis explent cursu totidemque retexunt) within its intratextual context: retexunt re-enacts/re-weaves the circular movements (orbibus orbis / impediunt) of the lusus Troiae’s chorus (5.584-5) and of Aeneas’ Shield (8.448-9). I suggest that since the Shield has been read as a “cosmic icon” (Hardie 1986), orbis…retexunt also evokes cosmic parallaxis. Euripides’ combination of the Homeric Shield with parallaxis would provide a model for the framing of revenge and violence in Aeneid 12. Additionally, in the myth of Thyestes and Atreus, parallaxis is a divine sign by which Atreus secures his victory over Thyestes. In light of this myth, Aeneid 12’s orbis retexunt foreshadows Aeneas’ victory over Turnus. Finally, Plato attaches parallaxis to the cyclical destruction-creation of the Pythagorean Great Year (Tim. 39d). Elektra’s second stasimon’s parallaxis and its echo of the cosmic imagery on Achilles’ shield occurs directly before the murder of Clytemnestra and so signals a climactic and paradoxic moment of political/familial destruction and restoration. Likewise, Aeneas’ Orestean and Achillean moment of revenge, ambiguously both destructive and foundational, is signalled by cosmic-choral reversal. Thus, the movements of the final duel of Aeneid 12 performs a military dance of cosmic parallaxis that resets both the Roman and, given the metapoetic weight of the word texere and of the ekphrasis of Aeneas’ Shield, the epic stage.