Swords and Spears, Ploughshares and Pruninghooks
Book VII Juno wants war
Aeneas finally reaches the Tiber. He receives his father’s sign that they are where they are supposed to settle. Meanwhile, the Latins of the area have also been prepared by their ancestors and local gods to accept the Trojans. A line going back into the mists of time, to the gods themselves, has no more sons. Latinus and his people have been told to expect a foreign prince to wed his only daughter, and by mingling his blood with those of the Trojans, raise his race / gens to new heights.
Juno has been forced by fate and the gods to allow Aeneas and his people to settle in their promised land by the Tiber, and to marry Livinia, the daughter of Latinus. Juno will still show her power by forcing Aeneas and Latinus to spill the blood of their own people to do it. Wasn’t Mars allowed to destroy the Lapiths?1 Didn’t Jove give Calydon over to the wrath of Diana have Calydon?2
Lavinia’s bridesmaid will be Bellona, the goddess of war, and her dowry will be paid in the blood of the people of both father Latinus and father Aeneas. Just like Troy burned because Hecuba’s son Paris stole the wife of another man, so now Venus’s son Aeneas will be another Paris. Because he is “stealing” Lavinia from her mother’s preferred son-in-law, Troy reborn will also burn.
Not allowed to use immortal allies from heaven, she seeks one from the underworld: a Fury named Allecto (from Greek meaning “the implacable or unceasing anger”). Horrific in her natural shape, with snakes for hair, she is also a shape shifter with many faces.
As of this book of the Aeneid, it appears that Juno is able to command her to abandon her usual role as a Fury, which is to punish murder. Virgil notes that even Pluto (Dis), the ruler of the underworld doesn’t like her. In this case, Juno is not punishing murder at all, but simply asserting her power as a goddess on par with Diana and Mars. Since Aeneas and Latinus are not inclined to fight each other, she will use the deceit of the Fury Allecto to drive them to war.
Allecto does not even confront Amata, Lavinia’s mother, face to face, but simply poisons her with a snake from her hair. Amata already favored Turnus, and is worried that Aeneas will not actually settle in their lands, but continue to rove, and take her daughter with him, just like Paris stole Helen. She comes up with a different interpretation for the prophecy that Lavinia must marry a foreigner. After all, couldn’t “foreigner” just mean “anyone not under the rule of Latinus?” Since Turnus is a Rutulian, couldn’t he count as a foreigner? It’s a clever argument, but Latinus doesn’t buy it.
The poison from Alecto’s snake continues to work on Amata. Now she goes on to feign Bacchic possession, and calls on the women of Latium to join her in the woods, where she has stolen Lavinia away.
Amata taken care of, Allecto turns to Turnus. At first, she takes on the appearance of an old priestess of Juno, and tries to rile Turnus to war against both Latinus and Aeneas. What right has Latinus to refuse him, what right has Aeneas to take his place? But Turnus isn’t falling for it. He tells her to leave the making of war and peace to men, and go back to her duties at the temple. So now Allecto takes her true form, and her torch infects him with the madness of warlust.
Finally, and most tragically, she moves to the countryside, where Aeneas’s people are camping and building, near the shepherds who already work the land. His son, Ascanius, is hunting, and Allecto makes sure his arrow hits a stag who has been adopted by Silvia, the daughter of Tyrrhus, who is chief herdsman of Latinus, and the warden of his estates. It makes its way back to Silvia, who calls for help. While her father gathers up herdsmen, Allecto sounds the alarm, rousing not only the herdsmen but the Trojans, who think Ascanius is in trouble.
The herdsmen don’t have a chance. In the ensuing clash, the noblest and wisest of the country people, Galaesus is killed while trying to calm things down, as well as Almo, the eldest son of Tyrrhus. The people take both bodies to Latinus and demand blood.
Then Turnus shows up at the palace. Then the Latium mothers, driven to Bacchic ecstasy by Amata. And everyone wants war. Everyone wants Latinus to open the “Gates of War.”
Latinus still refuses. He warns them all, and retires from the public eye. So Juno, having dismissed Allecto back to the underworld, comes down from heaven and opens the Gates of War herself.
And now, we have the exact opposite of Isaiah 2:4.
et conflabunt3 gladios4 suos in vomeres5 et lanceas suas in falces6 non levabit gens contra gentem gladium nex exercebuntur ultra ad proelium7. – Jerome’s Vulgate
and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. – King James
Here, the country folk are turning their farm tools into weapons.
vomeris huc et falcis honos, huc omnis aratri cessit amor; recoquunt patrios fornacibus enses. Classica iamque sonant; it bello tessera signum. – Virgil, Book 7, lines 635-637
Pride in plowshare and scythe had given way To this, and so had love of plowland labor. Swords of their fathers in the smithy fires They forged anew. The trumpet calls went out, The password, sign of war, went round; – Robert Fitzgerald translation
The Latin word translated as plowshare is the same noun in both Isaiah and the Aeneid, so is the noun translated as pruninghook in Isaiah and scythe in the Aeneid. The noun translated as sword means sword in both Isaiah and the Aeneid: the version used in the Aeneid is a more “poetic” form.
The verbs translated as “beat into” in Isaiah and as “forged anew” in the Aeneid both have the meaning of melting down: ie, using heat to reshape metal.8
My translations, to make the similarities more obvious:
Isaiah 2:4
And they shall melt down their swords into the plough’s cutting edge and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift the sword against nation, nor shall they train for battle any more. — maryh10000
Aeneid, Book VII, line 635-637
No more do they care about pruning hooks or the cutting edge of the plough, and all desire to use one is done. They melt them down and reforge the swords of their fathers. Now the trumpets sound, and the tessera9 goes out. War! — maryh10000
Mars got the centaur Eurythion to abduct the bride of the Lapith king Pirithous bride because he wasn’t invited to the wedding. This started a war between the Lapiths and the centaurs.
She sent a gigantic boar to ravage the countryside of Calydon because King Oineus left her out with his offerings of the first fruits to the gods.
conflabunt: melt (down), cast/weld (conflo, conflare, conflavi, conflatus)
sword
ploughshare; the cutting edge of a plough
pruninghook; sickle; scythe
battle
conflabunt: melt (down), cast/weld (conflo, conflare, conflavi, conflatus)
recoquunt: reheat, melt down, forge anew (recoquo, recoquere, recoxi, recoctus)
Tessera: die; square tablet marked with watchword, countersign; token, ticket. This indicates a material object, in addition to the sound of the trumpet. A “signed order”, so to speak.
Thanks for sharing your experience with the Aeneid, Ms. Mary. I've been enjoying each post. 👍
It's been almost four decades since I read the work, and it hits me fresh each time how the ancient gods are such petty, spiteful jerks, engaged in doing the most harm to the most vulnerable. Like a mean kid with someone else's toys.
OTOH -- Joel 3:10