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Author Topic: Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius  (Read 4522 times)

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Offline Rhetor

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Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« on: December 15, 2004, 10:44:12 am »
Inspired by Jochen’s quiz on the Palladium, I would like to pose this question.

On a familiar Julius Caesar denarius ca. 47-46 BC we find Venus on the obverse and a depiction of Aeneas carrying his father Anchises out of a burning Troy on the reverse.  Aeneas is also carrying the Palladium.  See attached image.

However, in the Aeneid Book 2, Virgil repeats this scene, but has Aeneas’s father carrying the penates (the Roman hearth gods), not the palladium.  Here’s Fitzgerald’s translation of the key passage in the Aeneid:

Then come, dear father.  Arms around my neck;
I’ll take you on my shoulders, no great weight.
Whatever happens, both will face one danger,
Find one safety.  Iulus will come with me,
My wife at a good interval behind.
Servants, give your attention to what I say.
At the gate inland there’s a funeral mound
And an old shrine of Ceres the Bereft;
Near it an ancient cypress, kept alive
For many years by our father’s piety.
By various routes we’ll come to that one place.
Father, carry our hearthgods, our Penates.
It would be wrong for me to handle them  
Just come from such hard fighting, bloody work  
Until I wash myself in running water.


This passage is almost an ekphrasis of the Julius Caesar denarius, except the palladium is replaced by the penates, which are held by Anchises, not Aeneas.  Surely Virgil must have had a few of his adoptive father’s denarii jingling in his purse or pocket and would have been quite familiar with the earlier iconography.  Why does Virgil depart so markedly from what would have been a most familiar image to Romans?  He's writing ca. 29-19 BC, so the Aeneas denarius is probably still in circulation in large numbers.

Has anything been written on this numismatic/literary variant?

Rhetor


Offline curtislclay

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Re:Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2004, 10:56:08 am »
When Virgil writes "Penates", could he not mean or be including the Palladium?
I imagine a commentary on this Virgil passage would have to address this question.
Curtis Clay

Offline LordBest

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Re:Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2004, 12:04:09 pm »
Considering the Palladium was a small statue like the penates, its reasonable to assume in the face of no other opinion that he meant the term to include the palladium.
                                           LordBest. 8)

Offline Jochen

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Re:Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2004, 02:23:49 pm »
The Palladium of Troy was stolen by Odysseus and Palamedes. So it was not possible for Aeneas to take it with him when he left the burning Troy with Anchises and his little son! The rev. of this famous denar must be an invention of the moneyer to explain the presence of the Palladium in Rome and to add to the descent of the gens Julia.

Regards,
Jochen


Offline curtislclay

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Re:Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2004, 03:15:00 pm »
    Myths are of course inventions so need not be consistent or compatible!
    According to Woerner, Palladion, in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der gr. und Roem. Mythologie III.2, col. 3440, Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Ovid, Plutarch, and Pausanias assert that Aeneas took the Palladium from its temple in Troy to Italy.
     Many other authors, however, claim Aeneas received the Palladium only in Italy, from Diomedes who had stolen it from Troy.
     So Caesar's coin type is not just an invention of the moneyer as Jochen suggests!
Curtis Clay

Offline Jochen

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Re:Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2004, 04:58:48 pm »
Curtis, you are right when you say myths are apriori alogical and had not to be compatible! So let me say the moneyer has taken that variant of the myth that matches the claims of the Julian gens!

Jochen

Offline Rhetor

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Re:Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« Reply #6 on: December 15, 2004, 05:28:28 pm »
If, as Jochen says, the moneyer reinforces the "claims of the Julian gens," I still wonder why Virgil opts for a different tradition than the one circulating--literally--in the form of the coinage of Augustus' adoptive father.  Virgil too was about furthering the claims of the Julian gens, and offering some pro-Augustan propaganda (though I think the Aeneid is much more complex than that).

As to the prospect that Virgil meant to include the Palladium with the penates, I suppose it's possible, but I don't find it convincing.  In Book 2 Sinon makes it pretty clear that the Trojan Horse has been left to replace the Palladium, and there's no indication that the Greeks have returned the Palladium too, along with the gift of the Horse.  In short, Virgil does not restore the Palladium to the Trojans to have it in place to be taken away later.  Plus, Virgil is anachronistically attributing Roman penates/hearthgods to the ancient Trojans as a way of suggesting/fabricating an aetiology of penates veneration in Rome by all Romans.   There's only one Palladium, in contrast.  

Maybe the aetiology of penates veneration in Rome is my ultimate answer, but I still find it remarkable that Virgil would alter such a common image which was consciously promulgated by the father of the man for whom the epic was written.  In short, why is he messing with Julius Caesar's iconography?  Wouldn't that annoy Augustus?

Rhetor

Offline Rhetor

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Re:Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« Reply #7 on: December 15, 2004, 05:31:33 pm »
BTW, this is what Bernini does with the Virgil passage...

Offline slokind

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Re:Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« Reply #8 on: December 15, 2004, 09:17:36 pm »
I must agree  with both Jochen and Curtis, while congratulating Rhetor for contributing the Bernini detail--since this is the kind of erudition that the Renaissance and 17th century excelled in.  While the sources differ as to who took the Palladium (and note, too, how many other places claimed having it), Household Gods are Lares and Penates.  They belong to a different, domestic level of religion, exactly analogous to those Rachel sat on, having secreted them in the camels' saddle bags (Genesis, ch. 30-something).  When you move a gens or any sort of clan to a new homeland, you must bring them with you.  The Palladium was Troy's; it is civic rather than domestic.  For the installation of the Lares and Penates in their new Home, see the Ara Pacis Augustae.
Pat L.

Offline Robert_Brenchley

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Re:Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2004, 04:28:35 pm »
Genesis 31:33-5. The story is that Rachel had stolen her father's household gods when she left with her husband. The father is represented as a conniving untrustworthy character who gets no sympathy. Father chased after the couple and caught them, then searched their camp swearing to kill whoever had them. Rachel was menstruating at the time, or said she was anyway, which made ritually unclean; nobody could touch her or anything she'd touched without becoming unclean themselves. So she sat on the bag containing the gods, which naturally remained undiscovered.
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Offline Rhetor

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Re:Virgil and the Aeneas Denarius
« Reply #10 on: December 20, 2004, 10:17:31 am »
By Aeneas' standards, I think Rachel would've failed the pietas test.

Thanks to Jochen and Slokind for the info on the Palladium--I had no idea the statue had such a complex history.

Rhetor



 

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