Lee M.

Fratantuono

DIANA IN THE AENEID

In Book i of the Aendd, Diana ismentioned twice (once by name, once

obliquely) in two significant contexts. Aeneas' mother Venus visits him

near Carthage, where he has landed after Juno's storm sent him away
from his desired Italy. For reasons Virgil does not make explicit, Venus ap
pears dressed in the usual accoutrements of Diana, the virgin huntress: she
bears a bow and has her robes raised up above the knee to facilitate quick
movement in a forest. Virgil compares her to some Spartan girl or Thra
cian Harpalyce, and Aeneas, uncertain of her identity, asks if she is either
sister or a (1, 327-329):
Apollo's nymph
o - quam te memorem, virgo? namque haud tibi vultus
mortalis, nee vox hominem sonat; o dea certe!
an Phoebi soror? an Nympharum sanguinis una?
At length Venus for her son the country and people of Carthage,
identifies
with special emphasis, course, on Dido. Aeneas
of begins to explain his
own identity and recent troubles, but is cut short by his mother (who had
a short while before been complaining about the very same troubles
only
to Jupiter). Before she urges him to press on towards the
leaving Tyrian
city and not to worry about his missing companions, whose safety she in
terprets from a portent of twelve swans (her own bird). As she leaves, Ae
neas recognizes at last that this is his mother. It is unclear exactly how this
moment of recognition occurs; he reproaches her for not speaking to him
without disguise, but she departs in silence.
Only
a short while later, after Aeneas has arrived at Dido's temple to Juno
(the poem's air thus heavy with irony already), Dido herself is compared
to Diana by Virgil in an extended simile. Dido enters the temple escorted
by her entourage, and sits down to oversee her task of lawgiving and man
agement of the building of her city (1, 496-504):

regina ad templum, forma pulcherrima Dido,

incessit, iuvenum caterva.
magna stipante

qualis in Eurotae ripis aut per iuga Cynthi

exercet Diana choros, mille secutae
quam
hinc atque hinc glomerantur Oreades; ilia pharetram
fert umero gradiensque deas supereminet omnis;
Latonae taciturn pertemptant pectus:
gaudia
talis erat Dido, talem se laeta ferebat
per medios, instans futuris.
operi regnisque
30 LEE M. FRATANTUONO

The significance of both comparisons is their inappropriateness to the con

texts. Neither Venus nor Dido can
accurately be compared to Diana, the
In the instance of who assumes Diana's
virgin huntress. Venus, deliberately
dress, there is an implicit element of mockery. In the instance of Dido, the
case ismore poignant. Since the murder of Sychaeus, Dido has been living
a celibate life in a wild place. But in the context of Aeneas' first sight of
her, she is more akin to Minerva or even Juno, fulfilling the role of city
builder and lawgiver, watching over her people with a mother's affection.
There is nothing of Diana about her, except her beauty and towering over
the women in her procession; in this regard she could be compared to any
The prominence of the simile, however, cannot be denied; this
goddess.
is the first appearance of Dido in the poem, and in a sense it sets the tone
for the reader's image of her.
While it is understandable that Venus, laughter-loving and playful, might
engage in of the goddess who is her opposite, Virgil's point in
mockery
Dido to Diana is less clear as the reader moves Book
comparing through
i. At most it adds a vague and indefinite to what is al
layer of uneasiness
an uneasy book, loaded as it iswith both the trials of Aeneas before
ready
he reaches Carthage and the awareness on the reader's part that the trick
eries of Venus and Juno, in particular their agreement to have Dido fall in
love with Aeneas, will no doubt have tragic consequences.
The next mention of Diana in the poem, while eerie and memorable in
its context, is without significance for understanding Virgil's characteriza
tion of the goddess. At the end of Aeneas' recounting to Dido of his jour
ney from Troy to Carthage, the immediate adventure before the death of
Anchises and subsequent storm is the escape from the Cyclopes. In one of
the more memorable similes in Virgil, the menacing are seen
Cyclopes by
the Trojans from their boats, standing like immense trees on the seashore
(3, 677-681):
cernimus astantis lumine torvo
nequiquam
Aetnaeos fratres caelo alta ferentis,
capita
concilium horrendum: cum v?rtice celso
quales
aeriae quercus aut coniferae cyparissi
constiterunt, silva alta Iovis lucusve Dianae.

In Book 4, Dido and Aeneas consummate their love in the midst of a rain
storm that has interrupted their hunt. Again, Virgil's scene introduces Di
ana, this time obliquely, as the two soon-to-be lovers ride out on horseback.
This time it is Aeneas who is compared to one of Latona's children, com
the image Virgil began in Book 1
with Dido and Diana.
pleting Significantly,
Dido's hunting attire ismade of gold and purple, the marks of royalty, not
the insignia of the more humbly dressed Diana (whose bow is traditionally
golden, but clothes never of either gold or purple) (4, 138-139):
 DIANA IN THE AENEID 31

cui ex auro, crines nodantur in aurum,

pharetra
aurea subnectit fibula vestem.
purpuream

All is gold; Dido is playacting Diana, and we think of Marie Antoinette

a The not
of this gold and purple will
playacting shepherdess. significance
become clear until much later in the poem.
When Dido resolves to commit suicide, inwhat is the coda to the whole

tragedy of the first four books of the Aeneid, she conceals her plans by
strange rites allegedly intended to break the spell of love. Anna falls for the
ruse, not fearing that her sister will actually take her own life. The Mas

sylian priestess Dido has secured for the ritual invokes the triple goddess
(the virgin moon in the sky, the virgin huntress on earth, the virgin witch
in the underworld) (4, 509-511):
stant arae circum et crinis effusa sacerdos
ter centum tonat ore deos, Erebumque Chaosque
Hecaten, tria virginis ora Dianae.
tergeminamque

The mention of Diana in her manifestation as witch-goddess is to be ex

in a passage so full of sorcery and But Dido has come full
pected magic.
circle; inappropriately to Diana when she was introduced, her
compared
now invokes the chthonic Diana as the queen prepares to com
priestess
mit suicide.
in his deliberately
point inappropriate introduction of Diana in
Virgil's
the Dido story remains unclear as Book 4 closes. Still, as the reader moves

through the rest of the first half of the poem and into the beginning of the
war in there is no sense of serious problem in the narrative;
Italy, especially
since Virgil has compared Aeneas to Apollo, there seems a justification in
any exceptionally talented and beautiful young person to some
comparing
or will remain unclear until Book 11.
goddess god. Virgil's point
Diana is next mentioned in a bitter catalogue by Juno, wherein she la
ments that she is unable to finish her enemies the way other divinities are
(7, 305-306):
... concessit in iras

deum Dianae ...

ipse antiquam genitor Calydona

More and important our Diana's role in the epic,

interesting understanding
however, is the extraordinary tale told later in Book 7 towards the end,
where we learn that Hippolytus' son (how and with whom the sex-hating

Hippolytus had a child is not explained)1 Virbius is one of Turnus' native

1
A similar, less audacious, of of a to a notorious
though example ascription genealogy
celibate is Statius' giving of a son, Parthenopaeus (Virgin Face!), to Atalanta (Thebaid 4,

246-344).
32 LEE M. FRATANTUONO

Italian allies. In the version Virgil relates, Hippolytus was back to

brought
life by Asclepius's art and Diana's love.1 Virgil is silent as to the fate of this
son of Diana's favorite. He is the first of the last three heroes in the cata
of Latin warriors. After him comes Turnus, and last of all, in the
logue
emphatic final note of the book, is Camilla, Diana's other favorite.
We must expect that Virgil's audience was very much aware of the
Hip
and much less aware of Camilla. The question of Camilla's
polytus myth,
invention is one of the fundamental problems of understanding the charac
ter. Did Virgil invent her, or was the story of this virgin huntress and war
rior heroine known to the educated antiquarians of Virgil's time? While
the question cannot be solved definitively, what is clear from the pendant
to Book 7 is that Camilla is a sort of reappearance of Dido. She wears the
same the leader of her people
purple and gold, and she is, like Dido, (the
Volscians). We know nothing more about her from the introduction we
receive in the catalogue, and she will not reappear for three and a half
books. Significantly, there is no mention of Diana in the Book 7 passage;
we remember Dido, and Diana is nowhere in mind (7, 803-817):
hos super advenit Volsca de gente Camilla
et florentis aere catervas,
agmen agens equitum
bellatrix, non illa col? calathisve Minervae
femineas adsueta manus, sed virgo
proelia
dura cursuque ventos,
pati pedum praevertere
illa vel intactae summa volaret
segetis per
nec te?eras cursu laesisset aristas,
gramina
vel mare per medium fluctu suspense tumenti
ferret iter c?leris nec aequore
tingeret plantas,
illam omnis tectis effusa iuventus
agrisque
miratur matrum et prospect?t euntem,
turbaque
attonitis inhians animis ut ostro
regius
velet honos levis umeros, ut fibula crinem
auro internectat, ut
Lyciam gerat ipsa pharetram
et
pastoralem praefixa c?spide myrtum.

We know nothing of Camilla's romantic life from this introduction (though

both mothers and young men find her desirable as she rides by), but we do
see that unlike Diana, she is a leader of military forces and more akin to
Minerva, the only goddess mentioned. In fact, the reader of this passage
remembers how Dido was strangely compared to Diana, and feels more
comfortable with this passage, where the war goddess ismentioned instead
of the huntress. Still, the mention of purple and gold evokes Dido, and the
confusion mounts. Itwill remain until the crucially important revelations
and actions in Book 11.

1
The story is also told by Ovid (Metamorphoses 15, 497-546).
 DIANA IN THE AENEID 33

The battle at the

situation
beginning of Book 11 is one of weariness. Ma
jor players on both the war are
sides of dead: Pallas, Lausus, Mezentius.
Cries are mounting for the unpopular war to end with a single combat be
tween Aeneas and Turnus. A truce is called for the burial of the dead, and
while there is momentary peace the Latins hold a council of war. Here
matters come to a head between Turnus and Drances, his bitter enemy.
Turnus correctly notes that the Italians still possess significant forces, in
cluding Camilla and her Volscian cavalry, who are mentioned again
finally
after so is deliberating arrives that the Tro
long. While the council word
jans have begun to move into the plain before the capital. Here Virgil is
very unclear about the state of the war. If we are to accept that the truce
for the burial of the dead has expired, we must then also assume that Tur
nus and the other Latin commanders have forgotten that it is time for hos
tilities to commence (there is no mention of the expiration of the truce).
An is to argue that the Trojans have broken
alternative the truce, and this

possibility must
be acknowledged. Whatever the case, scouts have notified
Turnus that Aeneas' of battle is to a frontal attack with
plan feign cavalry
to cover an infantry assault from over difficult terrain. Turnus decides to
lie inwait and ambush Aeneas, while sending Camilla to handle the eques
trian maneuvers.

At this stage in the narrative, on the

edge of the battle that could have
determined the outcome of the war, Virgil interrupts to introduce Diana's
role in the story of Camilla, told by the goddess to her nymph Opis.1 We
now learn that Camilla had been promised to Diana as a votive
offering
made by her father, Metabus, when he was Privernum as an exile on
fleeing
account of his tyrannical ways. The Volscians were hot on his trail and the
River Amasenus treacherous to cross; Metabus made a prayer to Diana to

give over his daughter to her care if she would protect her from harm. He
tied Camilla to a spear and flung her to safety over the river.2 After escap

1 a tradi
The of the nymph's name is uncertain. Servius Danielis ad loc. records
point
tion that Opis and Hecaergon were nurses of Apollo and Diana after their birth on Delos.
Callimachus In Dianam 204 and 240 addresses the goddess herself with the title/name Opis
there seems to be some on the idea of Artemis as a huntress);
(where playing "far-sighted"
In Delum mentions a stays with Artemis after bring
similarly Hyperborean girl, Opis, who
votive to Delos. Thomas ad Georges 4,343 that the name became
ing offerings hypothesizes
transferred from one of the goddesses' to herself, but it seems more likely that
nymphs
the reverse is true, and that as a cult-title of the goddess, the name was felt suitable for a

votary of the goddess. Despite the learned associations of the name, especially for Hel
as
lenistic poets, in a real sense
Virgil is depicting Diana talking
to herself; just as Camilla
should not have entered battle, so Diana herself will not.
2
over childbirth and the development
The story reflects Diana's traditional patronage
of female children in general.
 34 LEE M. FRATANTUONO

ing the pursuing Volscians, Metabus and his daughter eschewed urban life
and lived in the wild, off of the land as hunters. Camilla's childhood
living
and adolescent dress is carefully described, and at last we see the goddess
true image: Camilla wears no a
Diana's explicitly gold, but instead tigress'
as a covering (11, 576-577):
pelt

pro crinali auro, pro longae tegmine pallae

tigridis exuviae per dorsum a v?rtice pendent.
As the story unfolds, we are struck by the change that has apparently come
over Camilla since the days of her adolescence. Diana does not explain why
Camilla abandoned her sylvan existence and decided to go to war. Nor
does she explain how Camilla, the exiled daughter of the Volscian tyrant,
has somehow managed to return to her people and become their military
leader.1 The one definitive constant between the narrative Diana tells in
Book 11 and the introduction to Camilla in Book 7 is her desirability for

marriage (11, 581-582):

multae illam frustra Tyrrhena per oppida matres
nurum ...
optavere

While Camilla's virginity was not mentioned in Book 7, here her

explicitly
attractiveness is at once followed by explanation for her celibacy (11, 582
584):
... sola contenta Diana
aeternum telorum et amorem
virginitatis
intemerata colit.

Diana's purpose in telling the story of Camilla to Opis is simple: Opis must
avenge Camilla and kill whoever it iswho kills Diana's favorite. Meanwhile
Diana herself will take the body, unspoiled, back to Camilla's patria, pre
sumably Priver num.
Camilla's on the battlefield are She successfully con
exploits astonishing.
trols the development of the cavalry battle, and the Trojans are thrown
into chaos. One of her victims is in many ways a mirror image of herself
(11, 677-683):
... armis
procul Ornytus
ignotis et equo venator Iapyge fertur,

1
The seeming inconsistencies between the narratives in Books 7 and 11 have led some
to that the Camilla in Book 11was as a separate
speculate epyllion originally composed
short epic in the Hellenistic tradition and was inserted, more or less into the
satisfactorily,
narrative of the war in This misses deliberate somehow, in some
Italy. Virgil's point; way,
Camilla has undergone a of circumstance. Her a
change story offers profound reflection
on the nature of adolescence and its frequently reckless decisions.
 DIANA IN THE AENEID 35

cui pellis latos umeros erepta iuvenco

pugnatori operit, caput ingens oris hiatus
et malae texere lupi cum dentibus albis,
manus armat catervis
agrestisque sparus; ipse
vertitur in mediis et toto v?rtice supra est.

Camilla mocks
Ornytus, asking him if he thinks he has come to a hunt.
The air is heavy with irony here, since Camilla's own is identi
background
cal. Still, Ornytus is dressed as a hunter, not in the gold and purple Camilla
has acquired since leading her people into battle. Ornytus' hunting cos
tume underscores the change in Camilla's life; she is no the
longer sylvan
huntress, but, like Dido, a leader dressed in the colors of royalty. It is as if
Camilla, on the threshold of adulthood, sees Ornytus and scoffs that he
has not yet matured beyond hunting to war.
Left to their own devices, Camilla's forces would have routed the Trojan
horse while Turnus waited to ambush Aeneas. At this point in the narra
tive, Jupiter intervenes and rouses up Tarchon to push the attack against
the Latins. In some sense this is at variance with Jupiter's own
suspiciously
edict at the beginning of Book 10 for the immortals to refrain from inter

fering in the battle; in any case, the effect is clear, and the tide begins to
turn in favor of the Trojans.1 Arruns, an Etruscan whose exact provenance
on the battlefield is never made one of Aeneas'
entirely clear (he could be
allies, or even one of Turnus' forces, upset at how a woman is taking all
the glory on the battlefield), to circle Camilla, to slay her
begins seeking
unawares.2 Camilla, meanwhile, notices one Chloreus, a
Phrygian who
was
once a priest of His is and out of char
Cybele. clothing exceedingly garish
acter for a male warrior on the battlefield:
gold and purple (the colors we
associate with Dido's hunt in Book 4 and Camilla herself on the battlefield,
and not with Camilla's youthful tiger cloak), and saffron, predominate in
his effeminate attire (11, 774-777):

aureus ex umeris erat arcus et ?urea vati

cassida; turn croceam

chlamydemque sinusque crepantis
carbaseos fulvo in nodum auro
collegerat
acu tunicas et barbara crurum.
pictus tegmina

1
It should be noted that Diana, who was more than willing to raise from
Hippolytus
the dead with Asclepius's help (as related in Book 7), is not willing to save Camilla; the
seems to be that Diana, unlike her father, is actually his edict. Further, while
point obeying
commentators have Diana herself that Camilla should never have entered this
agreed with
war, the reason is not because she is incapable of it will take two
performing superbly:
to her.
gods destroy
2
The fact that Arruns is readily able to pursue Camilla does to
surreptitiously point
wards his being one of her own allies, and thus able not to arouse her suspicions.
36 LEE M. FRATANTUONO

Camilla may very well have been better off staying in the woods and hunt
animals, but she has so far and well in amale-dominat
ing performed ably
ed war. Chloreus a
gives the air of not having any idea where he is; eunuch
priest of Cybele, his effeminacy is the effeminacy for which the native Ital
ians have so readily mocked the Trojans thus far in the poem.
Camilla is confused. In Book 7 she had been called a bellatrix, but now

Virgil calls her a venatrix (the change is significant); she hunts Chloreus
down, him like a animal. Her confusion is over the fate of his
stalking
gold and purple spoils. She cannot decide whether they should be hung
in a temple (presumably Diana's) as a votive
offering, or worn by her, the
huntress (11, 779-780)\l
... sive ut se ferret in auro
captivo
venatrix ...

an irrational
Her pursuit of him is blind and incautious, and motivated by
desire for booty and love of spoils (11, 782) :2

femineo et ardebat amore.

praedae spoliorum

Much has been made of Camilla's as the cause of her death. In

distraction
does not as Arruns
terestingly, Virgil simply describe taking his lucky shot
because of Camilla's distraction. Instead, he has Arruns pray to Apollo that

1
Cf. K. W Gransden, Virgil Aeneid xi, Cambridge 1991, ad loe. He notes that one usually
dedicates not to Diana. This is the
hunting trophies, military ones, precisely point; Camilla
has gone so astray from her roles as devotee of Diana and huntress that she conflates the
world of the hunt with the world of war and fails to see the inappropriateness of her ac
tions, with disastrous results. A would wear
real warrior his enemy's (like Turnus),
spoils
the risk of
revenge or set them
up on a as Aeneas does with Mezentius'
despite tropaeum,
arms. But no true huntress would wear this purple and gold costume; those who
only
playact the hunt, like Dido in Book 4. All the emphasis of this passage is on 780 venatrix,
to underscore the utter of wearing this costume while animals.
inappropriateness hunting
The two lives of Camilla, bellatrix and venatrix, have met.
2
"Irrational", as Servius is that Camilla has mis
correctly glossed femineo. Virgil's point
taken Chloreus as prey for a hunt enough, since he cuts such a
(understandably pathetic
in combat). The huntress pursues her prey in battle one
figure single-mindedly, though
must be on guard from all sides, including, one's own allies (if Arruns is taken
apparently,
to be an of Turnus). Some have taken this line to mean that Camilla has a woman's love
ally
of fine clothes, but Camilla's is not so much what she wants as her
problem uncertainty
over what to do with it. Camilla, like any obsessive hunter, has an irrational for the
passion
and of the chase. Femineo is a reminder, however, that Camilla remains
booty spoils good
a woman her entrance into war, she has suppressed the traditional roles
despite though
of a woman's life. Just as she has a choice over the fate of the robes, so she had a choice
over her own life; Chloreus' rejection of his masculinity is permanent. The ar
imperfect
debat well describes her continuous desire for the trophy as she pursues Chloreus
burning
through the crowd of warriors.
 DIANA IN THE AENEID 37

he might both kill Camilla and return home, however inglorious (because
he has killed a woman, and not even in direct combat). Apollo grants the
first part of the wish and ignores the second. So Virgil takes pains to point
to the divine intervention in Camilla's death, which helps underscore his
respect for her: the implicit point is that she could have killed Chloreus
without help, but Arruns needs divine assistance even to kill the distracted
Camilla. Frightened at his very luck, Arruns flees away but is killed
by Opis,
and Camilla's death serves as an example to the women of Latium, spur
ring them on to risk their lives to defend their home.
While it is true that Camilla confuses the world of the hunt and the
world of war, she performs exceedingly well in either, and it is highly sig
nificant that only Jupiter's direct intervention and Apollo's aid to Arruns
stops her aristeia. Still, she has no as
place in this war, Diana laments. Vir
gil frames Camilla's exploits by the two unfortunate men, Ornytus and
Chloreus, both of whom would have been better off avoiding battle (like
Camilla). Ornytus was dressed in hunting attire, like Camilla before she
entered this war. Camilla's dress in Book 7 was described as
gold and pur
a leader of her and more similar to
ple, the royal colors befitting people,
Chloreus' gold and purple priestly robes than to her old tiger skin costume.
So when sees Ornytus,
Camilla she sees herself, as she once was, a fellow
hunter, woefully out of place. When she sees Chloreus, she sees herself
once again, but this time in a more complex and confusing way, in a sense
as she is now: Chloreus, a
like her, is devotee of a
deity who imposes celi
bacy. Like Camilla, Chloreus has left the service of his deity to enter this
war.l Just as Camilla has abandoned the traditional Roman conceptions of
womanhood, so Chloreus abandoned his masculinity to become a eunuch

priest of Cybele (the irony being, of course, that despite his abandonment
of Cybele for war he cannot regain his manhood).
While seeing two men who represent the two facets of life she has aban
doned, the hunt and religious service, it is the clothes of Chloreus that
confuse her. Somehow, not only did Camilla manage to become the Vols
cians' leader, but also she assumed new gold and purple robes (how easy
itwould have been for Virgil to have let her keep her tiger skin and appear
as the native Italian, defending her country). Presumably her
quintessential
Volscian subjects gave her these robes, as clothes a leader.
befitting They
may be appropriate for war, but not for a huntress, and so the clothes re
flect the inappropriateness of Camilla's participation in the war. She does
not belong in them any more than she belongs in this war. Ornytus elic
ited real hatred in Camilla, because his hunter's dress gave the appearance

1 a
il, 768 olim sacerdos means he was "once a not that he has been
priest", "long priest".
Camilla, likewise, has left Diana's service.
38 LEE M. FRATANTUONO

that he was denigrating his opponents and making them out to be mere
game a woman like Camilla). Chloreus, though, elicits silence
(especially
from Camilla. Her confusion is profound. While he clearly does not belong
in war and does not cut the figure of a threatening opponent, he has the
same and she iswearing, and he looks more female than male
gold purple
(further underscoring their similar appearance). This is why she wonders
whether or not to wear his clothes, as
opposed to hanging them in a tem
saw herself in both Ornytus and Chloreus. In Ornytus'
ple. Camilla case,
she thought she saw only what she once was, forgetful of how, tragically,
she is still the same huntress girl. In Chloreus' case, she sees herself as she
is now, a former religious votary dressed in foreign clothes who does not

belong in war. The lessons she failed to grasp when she saw Ornytus, she
sees now in Chloreus, but dimly; before she can connect the dots, Arruns
strikes. Put another way, Camilla saw her old but true self in Ornytus, and
reacted (with of, a tone "Iwas once where you are, but
contemptuously
have now outgrown that"), while in Chloreus she saw what she now had
become, but, a venatrix at heart, she did not clearly see the implications
of her new role as bellatrix. The clothes, as itwere, suddenly did not
seem
to fit as well.
The Camilla forces the reader to remember
narrative the unfinished
questions of Books i and 4 and the Dido narrative. Diana's role in Book 11
is without controversy or confusion; since Camilla remained a virgin, Di
ana's affection for her iswithout surprise.1 But why was Dido, in her pur
and to Diana? How do we remember Dido when we
ple gold, compared
read of Camilla in Book 11? Is Virgil implicitly comparing and contrasting
these two similar, yet quite different women?
The Roman of Virgil's day would
audience have seen little in Dido be
sides Cleopatra, ready to seduce another Roman and threaten his fate. In
the Camilla epyllion (notwithstanding any displeasure at the notion of a

1
What is is that his introduction of Camilla
subtly interesting,
though, Virgil preceded
with mention resurrection.
of Hippolytus' In the Camilla narrative, is the direct
Apollo
agent of Camilla's death, whereas in the raising of Hippolytus, son had worked
Apollo's
with Diana to save her favorite. The conflict in Book 11 between sister and brother has
not been examined (there may be some mitigation, in that does
closely admittedly, Apollo
not answer Arruns' and does nothing to protect him from his sister's
fully prayer, agent
of death). There may also be significance in the fact that and Diana are both dei
Apollo
ties who over sudden death; Camilla's decision to enter the man's world of this
preside
war may be reflected, in Apollo's of her sudden death: she has become
subtly, oversight
a man, in a sense. Further, decision to ignore Arruns' for his own
Apollo's prayer safety
has because Arruns is Apollo's own and should be able to expect his
significance priest
protection.
 DIANA IN THE AENEID 39

woman in battle),
the primitive, native heroism of Italy is everywhere.1 In

terestingly, inmore
recent times Dido has received the sympathy of many
readers of the Aeneid, and Camilla has been savaged as a vicious, uncontrol
lable monster, really because she, a woman, dares to fight (old prejudices,
it would seem, die hard). Even in her purple and gold on the battlefield,
Camilla the huntress still manages to succeed. Her participation in the war
may be a "mistake", but she dies only because of divine intervention, not
because of any faults of her own. Dido, in her purple and gold (appropri
ate for a queen, but not for a hunt), playacted Diana and ended up
finishing
the hunt in amost un-Diana-like way, by consummating her love with Ae
neas. The sexual union between Dido and Aeneas in the cave, orchestrated

by Venus and Juno, utterly perverts Diana's world of the hunt.2 When we
meet Dido, she has been widowed for some time and in her lonely celi
bacy (having rejected many suitors), she has become Diana-like in some

1
Camilla fills the Penthesilea-role in war in For whatever reasons, Virgil has
Virgil's Italy.
selected amajor of
the post-Iliadic tradition and placed it as the penultimate event
episode
in his Aeneid. has
delved into cyclic epic before in the Aeneid, in Book 2's ex
Virgil notably
tended treatment of the wooden horse. But that subject matter was essential to his
plot,
-
while the Camilla exists, without Aeneas this Achilles never meets
episode significantly,
his Penthesilea, because his heart had already been stolen by a character Achilles never

faced, namely Dido. master-stroke in adopting for his Italian war is that
Virgil's Troy-lore
he saw the in his Penthesilea serve, like Pallas for Aeneas, as a scapegoat
advantage having
for his Hector, Turnus. Thus in the Aeneid Camilla must die before Turnus, and indeed
her death will be marked the same line as his (11, 831-12, 952), while in the
by Troy-lore
Penthesilea dies after Hector. Hence Book 11must open with the burial of Pallas, and end
with the burial of Camilla. It is also and perhaps that Aeneas never
interesting, significant,
meets Camilla. has the virginal qualities of his Camilla, in a rejection (or
Virgil preserved
at least of the Greek tradition of Penthesilea, who was most not a
suppression) probably
virgin, and definitely aroused the sexual interest of Achilles (though it should be noted that
Turnus seems better suited to a with Camilla than with Lavinia). The
relationship point,
is that the romantic associations attached to Penthesilea also redound to Camilla.
though,
underscores this by his repeated indication of her attractiveness to mothers and their
Virgil
and lastly by his noting that her death the Latin women on to
sons, spurred fight for their
country: cf. 11, 892 monstrat amor verus patriae, ut videre Camillam. It should be noted that
Penthesilea had a good reason for going to
fight
at
Troy; she was seeking
to expiate the
death of sister Hippolyta, killed by her when she meant to a stag
accidentally slay (Quint.
Smyrn. Posthorn. 1, 25-27). M. Paschalis, Virgil's Aeneid: Semantic Relations and Proper Names,
Oxford 1997, p. 369, sees a connection between Camilla's from her horse at the
separation
moment she is shot and the traditional Amazon name but this is overly subtle.
Hippolyta,
More is that a horse, however is involved in Camilla's death, as in
noteworthy indirectly,
Hippolytus'; Diana's cult at Aricia had a prohibition against horses.
2
Juno, of course, wants Dido and Aeneas to fall in love to the inevitable
delay founding
of Rome. Venus is afraid that Dido will in some way harm Aeneas, and wishes to
safeguard
her son and bestow her usual blessings of sexual pleasure. Juno comes off as the smarter
of the two.
40 LEE M. FRATANTUONO

regards, but, unlike Camilla, she is forever separated from Diana because
she is not a virgin. Dido may have fallen in love with Aeneas because of the
machinations and Juno (though one imagines
of Venus the goddesses did
not have much work to do), but her suicide is her own choice. In Dido we
see an image of Eastern irrationality, of not only Cleopatra but also Me
dea. There is a very real sense of fear for both Aeneas and Ascanius as the
news of the imminent departure of the Trojans reaches In Camilla
Dido.
there is none of this. Even her admittedly vicious battlefield are no
exploits
or Turnus during the war. At
bloodier than anything performed by Aeneas
is concerned to Turnus
her death, Camilla only with having word brought
that he should maintain the ambush (which still would have been severely
damaging
to Aeneas, notwithstanding her own death) and continue the
women to
battle. Her death inspires the of the capital fight; in her death
she becomes an of extreme heroism.
example
In a sense, Diana presides over the deaths of both Dido and Camilla,
both of whom die with their faithful (Anna and Acca, not insignifi
friends
close at hand. In Dido's case, Diana was invoked
cantly similarly named)
in a manner utterly foreign to the Camilla narrative, as the
witch-goddess
Hecate. In Camilla's case, Diana is only the earthly huntress.1 In the respec
tive depictions of these women, the Aeneid becomes a poem of conflict on
three levels: on the mortal level, a conflict between the image of Eastern
womanhood embodied in Dido and the image of native Italian woman
hood embodied in Camilla, on the urban level, a conflict between old Troy
and the native Italians who will be the founders of new Rome,2 on the
divine level, a conflict between Venus-Cybele (Phrygian, Eastern deities)
and Diana, worshipped in the grove at Aricia and the quintessential native
Italian deity, the Diana of Hippolytus-Virbius and Camilla. Venus was re

sponsible for Dido's irrational love for Aeneas, and her decision to dress like
Diana brilliantly underscores her attitude towards the whole charade Dido
has been living: since Sychaeus' death, Dido has lived like Diana in sexual
abstinence, but she ismost definitely not Diana-like in reality.
The comparison of Aeneas to Apollo is also highly significant. For the au
dience of Virgil's day, any mention of Apollo in tandem with Aeneas would
have resonated with the extreme importance of Apollo to the Augustan
as we remember Dido in her purple and gold
religious program. And, just

1
Diana Nemorensis, the name by which she was honored at her
temple
at Nemi (near
Aricia).
2
The Aeneid
opens and closes with two to women
speeches given by Jupiter important
in his life. The
first speech, to Venus, reveals the truth, but only part of it; Aeneas will
indeed be safe and be the father of a great nation, Rome, but, as we do not learn until
the stunning revelations in Book 12 in to Juno, Rome will not be a Trojan
Jupiter's speech
Rome but an Italian Rome (the Italy of Camilla).
 DIANA IN THE AENEID 41

when Camilla comes to fight, so we remember Aeneas/Apollo when Ar

runs/Apollo dispatches her. Arruns, with a name similar to Ae
deliberately
neas', in a sense stands in as a proxy for Aeneas (who, in the epic tradition,
should have been the one to slay the Penthesilea of the Aeneid). Arruns does
this under Apollo's direct intervention. Since Camilla is to Turnus what Pal
las is to Aeneas, and since Book 11 opens and closes with the two young,
dead heroes, itwould have been suitable for Virgil to have had both Turnus
and Aeneas kill the other's beloved proxy fighter. The emotional pathos of
their final single combat would have been all the more intense. It remains
to be not have Aeneas meet Camilla.
explored why Virgil does
One explanation is the poet's wish to avoid the dedecus of
having Aeneas
kill awoman, even a great
fighter like Camilla. This explanation isweak, in
that for Virgil anything Achilles did is in some way suitable for Aeneas to
do. Since Achilles killed Penthesilea, so Aeneas could kill Camilla. Another
explanation could be Virgil's wish to have Turnus appear as guiltier than
Aeneas for their final meeting; the blood of Pallas is on Turnus, but Aeneas
was nowhere near Camilla's death
(indeed, one of Turnus' own men may
have slain her). A deeper explanation is found in Virgil's startling decision
to give both Camilla and Turnus the same death-line, the line he uses to
end the poem. The reader of the end of Book 12 recalls Camilla at the mo
ment of greatest emotional power in the poem, its final line. Putting aside
issues of completion and final revision, the repetition of Camilla's death
must seen as an
line be example of deliberate, purposeful repetition. We
are reminded, however that just as Camilla's death was
subtly, wrought by
divine intervention, not so much by human action, so Turnus7 death is the
result of the enemy Turnus himself correctly identified to Aeneas: Jupiter,
whose decisions in the Aeneid are always identical to Fate's (12, 894-895):

ille quassans: "non me tua fervia terrent

caput
dicta, ferox: di me terrent et
Iuppiter hostis".

The "indignant" shades of both Camilla and Turnus are precisely indignant
because they know in their final moments that it is the inexorable will of
Fate that they are victims of their killers (11, 831; 12, 952):

vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras.

Arruns will not meet Turnus, and neither does Aeneas meet Camilla; the
two great antagonists are not near the fatal rendezvous between
anywhere
Arruns and Camilla. Having Aeneas involved in Camilla's death would have
the appropriateness of having Apollo Ar
greatly diminished intervened;
runs can appeal to Apollo, but surely Aeneas should not have to appeal to

anyone to kill a girl (and Virgil wants to emphasize that Camilla dies by
are plot considerations. brilliant
divine intervention). Finally, there Virgil's
42 LEE M. FRATANTUONO

in Book n was the battle

masterstroke plans of the ambush and cavalry
feint. Itworks well to underscore
the point of how Turnus' plan would
have worked, and Aeneas worsted in battle, had not the gods intervened.
Turnus' ambush plan could even have succeeded after Camilla's death: it is
her death that so deeply affects Turnus that he gives up the ambush and lets
Aeneas come to set up his camp before the Latin capital.
safely through
When we finish the Camilla narrative, there is a further reminiscence of
Book i and Venus' mockery of Diana. With Virgil's narrative of Camilla,
new meaning is added to his mention in Book i of "Thracian Harpalyce".

Harpalyce (the "Snatcher She-wolf") does not appear earlier than Virgil.
Servius Danielis says she was killed while a raid for food (after the
making
death of her father, who, like Metabus, had been exiled by his own peo
*
ple). Presuming that Virgil's readers knew something about Thracian Har

palyce, the connection to Camilla, also the wild daughter of an exiled fa

ther would now be remembered. Camilla and Harpalyce were both raised

among wild animals.2

In the final analysis, the revelations of Jupiter in Book 12 that the new city
of Rome will be Italian, not Trojan, reveal the ultimate victory of Diana
(and Juno, for that matter) over Venus in the Aeneid (12, 834-837):

sermonem Ausonii tenebunt,

patrium moresque
est nomen erit; commixti corpore tan turn
utque
subsident Teucri. morem sacrorum
ritusque
adiciam omnis uno ore Latinos.
faciamque

These line are an extraordinary close to the divine conflict of the poem.
They represent a victory for Italy over Troy. One wonders if Aeneas and
his people would be pleased to overhear this conversation; one wonders

1
R. G. Austin, P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Primus, Oxford 1971, ad 1, 317 wisely asks
if Callimachus could have been the source for the stories of Harpalyce and/or Camilla.
2
There is also a connection between and Arruns, Camilla's killer.
Camilla/Harpalyce
Arruns is a native of the region around Mount Soracte. He was one of the fire-walk
Virgil's
of Apollo who worshipped on that mountain. Servius notes that wolves were
ing priests
said to snatch the exta the priests of Apollo carried the fire on Soracte; if chased
through
back to their dens the wolves killed their pursuers a fatal exhalation (halitum pestiferum)
by
from their cave. In order to
slay the wolves, the Apollonian priests had to become wolves
themselves (de qua responsum est, posse earn sedan, si lupos imitarentur, id est rapto viverent).
From this fact the priests of Apollo were called Hirpini, from the Sabine word for wolf. It
is unclear had to do to imitate wolves;
exactly what the priests of Apollo
probably they
had to dress in wolf-skins and live in the wild ex rapto, before to enter the dens
attempting
and slay the offending animals. In all of this lore there is a air of
tantalizing lycanthropy,
of Camilla (and Harpalyce) as werewolves, an role for devotees of the Mistress
appropriate
of Animals. Both women are thus viewed as pestes who must be eradicated by religious
rites. For more on the Arruns see W H. on Soracte:
fire-walking Fitzgerald, 'Firewalking
A Note on Horace Carmen 1.9', Vergilius 1985, 59-60.
Vergilian
 DIANA IN THE AENEID 43

even more what Venus

would think (significantly, she is not made aware
of it). This conclusion to the Aeneid leads to the understanding of Camilla
and the other native Italians as solemn figures, protomartyrs of Italy who
their blood have watered the seed, as itwere, of the future country, he
by
roes and heroines offered as exempla to future generations (Dante, Inferno
i, 106-108):

Di quella umile Italia fia salute

Per cui mori la vergine Cammilla,
Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute.

Fordham University