1.1 Aeneas as innocent
The Aeneas-Achilles encounter in Iliad Book 20 has generated a vast scholarly discussion.1 Aeneas, incited to fight Achilles by Apollo, is rescued by the otherwise pro-Achaean god Poseidon because he is fated to survive and rule over Trojans in the future:
ἀλλ’ ἄγεθ’, ἡμεῖς πέρ μιν ὑπὲκ θανάτου ἀγάγωμεν,
μή πως καὶ Κρονίδης κεχολώσεται, αἴ κεν Ἀχιλλεὺς
τόνδε κατακτείνῃ· μόριμον δέ οἵ ἐστ’ ἀλέασθαι,
ὄφρα μὴ ἄσπερμος γενεὴ καὶ ἄφαντος ὄληται
Δαρδάνου, ὃν Κρονίδης περὶ πάντων φίλατο παίδων
οἳ ἕθεν ἐξεγένοντο γυναικῶν τε θνητάων.
ἤδη γὰρ Πριάμου γενεὴν ἔχθηρε Κρονίων·
νῦν δὲ δὴ Αἰνείαο βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει
καὶ παίδων παῖδες, τοί κεν μετόπισθε γένωνται
But come, let us lead him away from death, lest maybe the son of Cronus will be angry, if Achilles kills this man. For he is fated to escape, in order that the offspring of Dardanus not perish without seed and disappear—Dardanus whom the son of Cronus loved more than all the children who were born to him and mortal woman. For by now the son of Cronus has conceived hatred for the offspring of Priam. As it is, mighty Aeneas will rule among the Trojans, and his children’s children, those born later.2
Achilles is surprised to realize that Aeneas must be dear to the immortals. The prophecy is obviously similar to Aphrodite’s promise to Anchises in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite:
σοὶ δ’ ἔσται φίλος υἱὸς ὃς ἐν Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει
καὶ παῖδες παίδεσσι διαμπερὲς ἐκγεγάονται·
You will have a dear son, who will rule among the Trojans, and sons will be born continually to his sons.
Discussion has centered on the relationship of this passage, Il. 20.300–8, to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and to the possible existence of Aeneiadae, whose patronage may have inspired both the Hymn and this passage.3 There are, however, perplexities with the hypothesis that the passage reflects such patronage. Aeneas does not appear in an especially heroic light. Not only does he require a divine rescue (his second), but the passage also narrates an earlier occasion when he fled Achilles. So scholars have speculated that the Iliad does not directly respond to patronage, but adapts a poem that did, one in which perhaps it was Achilles who required a god’s rescue.4 Even the Hymn to Aphrodite seems an odd product if it was intended to please a family by celebrating its origins, since it emphasizes how the events it narrates embarrass the goddess, who does not want them to be known.
On the other hand, significant aspects of the passage have been relatively neglected. When Poseidon proposes the rescue of Aeneas from Achilles, he exclaims emphatically that Aeneas does not deserve to die:
ἀλλὰ τίη νῦν οὗτος ἀναίτιος ἄλγεα πάσχει
μὰψ ἕνεκ’ ἀλλοτρίων ἀχέων, κεχαρισμένα δ’ αἰεὶ
δῶρα θεοῖσι δίδωσι, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν;
But why now does this man, who is innocent, suffer pains, for no reason, because of the griefs of others, when he always gives pleasing gifts to the gods who hold wide heaven?
Aeneas must be saved as a descendant of Dardanus (303–6), because, of all his children with mortal women, Zeus loved Dardanus most, but he hates Priam’s line. Aeneas is fated to survive and rule over Trojans (307–9). There are two questionable points in this speech. First, there is no other indication that Zeus hates the line of Priam. On the contrary, he expresses pity for Hector more than once, although he has determined that Troy will fall, and even considers rescuing him from Achilles. Hector, no less than Aeneas, has made offerings. Second, however, for the external audience, Aeneas could be very far from guiltless. According to Proclus’ summary of the Cypria, at the instigation of his mother he sailed with Paris when Paris went to abduct Helen, and vase paintings confirm this information. Aeneas is present and labeled on Boston 13.186 (signed by Makron), and on Cincinnati 1962.386–8, from the mid-fifth century.5
Either the Iliad-poet knows the tradition of Aeneas’ participation in the abduction, and suppresses it, or he happens not to know it, or it is a later development. Here the emphatic tone of Poseidon’s speech becomes salient: ἀναίτιος (“innocent”) is repeated by μάψ (“pointlessly,” “for no reason”), which is then glossed by ἕνεκ’ ἀλλοτρίων ἀχέων (“because of the griefs of other people”). Poseidon seems to be protesting too much, especially since elsewhere in the Iliad such moral responsibility is not at issue when the gods debate whether to intervene. Bruce Louden has suggested that Aeneas is a survivor of the apocalyptic destruction of his city as the “one just man,” like Lot or Utnapishtim, but he can only fit this role if his part in Helen’s abduction is suppressed.6 Otherwise, Aeneas was guilty as sin. It is striking that after Pandarus treacherously wounds Menelaus, Aeneas joins with him and does not reproach him in any way (Il. 5.179–238). No other Trojan does so, either. The episode seems thematically to repeat the abduction of Helen, and it concludes with Aeneas’ loss of his horses to Diomedes.7
Similarly, the Iliad’s famously odd “wrath of Aeneas” at Il. 13.459–61 may reflect the narrator’s desire to distance Aeneas from the “bad” side of the Trojan royal house. The Hymn says that Aeneas will rule (ἀνάξει) the Trojans and that his line will never fail (196–7), but Aphrodite says nothing about rule after Aeneas himself and nothing about Troy’s fall or her future son’s heroic qualities. 8 The Iliad, however, promises that his descendants will also rule (20.307–8), and Achilles’ mockery of what he imagines Aeneas hopes, that he will become ruler of Troy (20.179–83), makes Poseidon’s prophecy even more salient. Indeed, the Iliad’s Aeneas is complicated: he kills five Achaeans (more than any other Trojan but Hector), but nowhere in the tradition does he have a major achievement in the war, and in probably traditional episodes—the loss of his horses, and his flight from Achilles (20.188–94), he fails—although he survives both. Aeneas does not have a developed epithet system. Indeed, he has no unique epithet other than a patronymic, ἐΰς πάϊς Ἀγχίσαο. Twice he is Ἀγχισιάδης, but this epithet is not even unique to him. The Aeneas-tradition does not look very deep and rich.
West asks why the Cypria needed Aeneas to go to Sparta, suggesting that he went straight back to Troy to report, while Paris stopped at Sidon and elsewhere.9 Herodotus, of course, says that in the Cypria Paris returned directly to Troy (2.117), and if there were multiple versions of the poem, we cannot be certain that the same version included both Aeneas’ participation and eastern wanderings of Paris and Helen10 But Aeneas’ participation is surely far more significant, since it implicates both branches of the Trojan royal house in Paris’ crime. Homer’s Aeneas fits the tendency of the Iliad to limit Trojan guilt and create sympathy for them, even as Aeneas’ lack of heroic success is also typical of the poem’s Trojans.11This looks like an example of what our laudanda has called “disacknowledgment”: the poet implicitly, yet pointedly contradicts stories known from the Cycle.12
Finally, Poseidon’s promise that Aeneas will rule over “Trojans” is peculiarly unspecific. Poseidon says nothing about where Aeneas and his people wil...
