Ancient Illustrations of the Aeneid : The Hunts of Books 4 and 7

We know of the popularity of the Aeneid soon after Vergil's death and the publication of the poem. It perhaps may not have been so admired by the students who have left us graffiti in Rome, Pompeii, and elsewhere. But poets praised and imitated it from the time of Ovid's Metamorphoses on. By the time of Macrobius, it could be asserted that the Vergilian account of Dido and Aeneas was the favorite topic of painters, sculptors, and the designers of tapestries.¹ The surprising thing is, that there are so relatively few illustrations of Vergilian scenes. A single wall painting, for example, survives from Pompeii and nowhere else. Nevertheless, despite the paucity of illustrations of all kinds, it is worth collecting and studying them, to see how the artists understood the Latin text and how they devised tactics to represent on a flat surface what the poet described. I have chosen the three surviving representations of the hunt of Dido and Aeneas (book 4) and the two illustrations of the hunting and wounding of Silvia's deer (book 7). As will be seen, the sources of these illustrations are various, two mosaic and a sarcophagus for book 4 and two different luxurious manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries for book 7.

The three representations of Dido and Aeneas hunting, based upon Aen. 4.129–159, have only become known during the twentieth century.² A mosaic was discovered in Great Britain in Somerset at a town called Low Ham in 1945. It decorated the floor of a private frigidarium at a villa which dates from the late fourth century.³ A second mosaic was excavated less than a decade ago, in 1995, at a villa belonging to Herodes Atticus in Arcadia in Greece. He was a well-known and wealthy benefactor in many parts of Greece and a friend of Rome during the second century. This mosaic was found in the north stoa of the villa. One photograph has been allowed to the general public, but neither the mosaic nor much other valuable material from the villa has yet been published nine years after excavation.⁴ The third illustration of the hunt comes from the long side of a small sarcophagus, found in Rome in 1964 along the Via Cassia. The sarcophagus contained the little body of a seven-year-old girl who had apparently died and been mummified in Egypt, then transported to Rome for burial with other members of her family.⁵ The sculpture on the sarcophagus is of fine quality and datable to the Antonine era. Therefore, this sculpture and the Greek mosaic for Herodes Atticus are roughly contemporary.

Vergil's initial passage about the hunt in Carthage, 4.129–159, divides it into three phases. First, there are the general preparations, the gathering of equipment, dogs, and horses, and the assembly of the Carthaginians as they await Dido's exit from her palace. When she emerges, she is richly attired in hunting dress and carries a quiver (138), hence presumably bow and arrows. Our attention then shifts to the Trojans who join the group (140ff.). The center of attention is Aeneas, who is pulcherrimus (141). But the poet represents him primarily in indirect fashion through a long simile about Apollo leading his followers over the mountains of Delos (143–149). It is Apollo who has spears; we do not hear of Aeneas' weapons or his horse or dogs. Nevertheless, the simile makes him the center of attention in this paragraph. Vergil leaves it to our imagination to picture the departure of the hunting group from the city, and he next abruptly reports that they have arrived in the mountains, where their prey have their lairs, and the hunt has begun in earnest. The animals are mountain goats which leap down from the crags and herds of deer which race across the dusty fields. Then, Vergil zooms in on a single hunter, Ascanius (156), who is enjoying himself immensely riding eagerly over the terrain, contemptuous of the easy deer and seeking more challenging beasts, namely, boar...