Sobre el enfoque de género en la experiencia

Etruscans are a major part of Vergil’s Aeneid. In the latter half of the Aeneid, through a series of surprising twists and breaks from literary and historical tradition, Vergil draws complex portraits of Etruscan characters, perhaps for the first time in literature, and, in making Etruscans both the allies and, through Dardanus, even the ancestors of the Trojans (and therefore, the Romans), he encourages a reconsideration of Etruscan literary stereotypes.325 _{While all Etruscan} characters in the Aeneid contribute to Vergil’s re-imagination of Etruscan ethnic identity, the Caeretan king Mezentius is the prime exemplar of the Vergilian Etruscan. Vergil introduces Mezentius in Books 7 and 8 as a villainous, arrogant tyrant who conforms to negative literary stereotypes of Etruscans, but by the end of Book 10 Mezentius’ words and actions have transformed him into a complex, sympathetic character. By engaging with familiar ethnic stereotypes about Etruscans and then subverting them, the Aeneid forges a new kind of Etruscan literary identity, a uniquely Vergilian one: at the end of the Aeneid, there emerges a richer characterization of Etruscanness than hackneyed stereotypes would allow. In this chapter, I will examine the Etruscans’ role in the Aeneid, how Vergil treats Etruscan ethnic identity, and how the Aeneid recasts literary and historical traditions through the use and subsequent subversion of Etruscan ethnic stereotypes. In the Aeneid, I will argue, the Etruscans become indispensable actors in Rome’s origins, active agents in Roman history, and windows into Vergil’s

understanding of contemporary Roman identity. Consequently, the text of the Aeneid itself

actively plays a major part in the construction and negotiation of the ethnic identity of Etruscans in the first century BCE.

Scholars have discussed the Etruscans and their role in Vergil’s Aeneid since antiquity. It has been such a common topic of discussion that in 1987 Nicholas Horsfall opined that “Virgil’s treatment of the Etruscans continues to attract much, even too much attention,”326 _{despite his} acknowledgement that Vergil’s treatment of the Etruscans is “striking” and “unusual.”327 _The focus of these discussions, however, has generally been fairly limited. The central topic of debate concerns the differences between the historical tradition on the legend of Aeneas and the version Vergil presents in the Aeneid. With regard to the Etruscans, the Aeneid differs

considerably from other versions of the Aeneas legend. For example, Vergil makes Dardanus, the founder of Troy, come from Etruria, whereas other accounts place his origin in Greece.328 Another element in the story that seems to have been uniquely Vergilian is the poet’s handing of the Etruscans’ relationship with Aeneas: the Etruscans are elsewhere some of the Trojans’ foremost enemies, but Vergil changes that tradition, making the majority of the Etruscans Aeneas’ allies. The earliest source on the Aeneas legend for which we have evidence, Cato the

326 _{Horsfall (1987, 100) is responding to those who maintain (perhaps too often) that the explanation for Vergil’s} “partiality” to the Etruscan element in the Aeneid is due to Vergil’s own Etruscan origins (see discussion in Hall 1982) or that he was possibly taught by Tarquitius Priscus, a great Etruscan antiquarian of his day. Horsfall (1987, 100) insists that the Aeneid does not display an advanced knowledge of Etruscan religion, but he does admit that in Vergil’s day things Etruscan were “alluring.”

327 _{Horsfall 1987, 100-101.}

328 _{Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 1.60-61), evidently following Varro (according to Serv. ad Aen. 3.167),} places Dardanus’ origins in Arcadia. Wilhelm (1992, 134) contends that Etruscan Dardanus occurs in Vergil first. Horsfall (1987, 98-99) argues that Vergil may not have been the first to set Dardanus’ origins in Etruria, based on some second or early first-century BCE Etruscan boundary markers from Tunisia that make reference to “Dardanii” (ET Af 8.1-8.8; see Heurgon 1969) and a quote from Pliny the Elder, who writes that the citizens of Cora were descended from Dardanus (Corani a Dardano Troiano orti, Plin. HN 3.63).

Elder’s Origines (FRH 5 F6-9),329 _{agrees with the later histories of Livy (1.2-3) and Dionysius of} Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 1.64-65), who were rough contemporaries of Vergil himself. In these versions, Mezentius, not Turnus, is the last enemy the Trojans face, and it is usually Ascanius who either slays Mezentius or makes peace with the Etruscans.330 _{Moreover, in these historical} works Mezentius appears to be the sole ruler of the Etruscans, but the Aeneid names other Etruscan leaders and makes Mezentius an exile from his own people. Indeed, in the Aeneid

Tarchon and the Etruscans unite under Aeneas’ banner and ultimately defeat the allied forces of Mezentius and Turnus. Vergil thus retains Mezentius’ allegiances, but at the same time isolates him (and his son Lausus and their followers) from many of the other Etruscans, whom he portrays favorably.331

Vergil may have been the earliest extant author to make the Etruscans allies of Aeneas and treat the subject at length, but it is nevertheless possible that he drew inspiration from an earlier source, Lycophron’s Alexandra.332 _{Lycophron’s poem dates to the Hellenistic Period} (most likely the second century BCE),333 _{and it takes the form of a messenger speech to King}

329 _{For the texts of the fragments and commentary, see Cornell 2013. The fragments of Cato’s Origines are} preserved in paraphrases from Servius, Macrobius, and the so-called First Vatican Mythographer. In general on the Aeneas legend, see the commentary in FRH on 5 F4-12.

330 _{In the Aeneid, Aeneas kills Mezentius, but the Etruscan king rarely dies in other accounts. Cato does have} Mezentius dying at Ascanius’ hands after Aeneas’ death or disappearance (FRH 5 F6-8). Livy’s Mezentius, however, makes peace with Ascanius after Aeneas’ death (1.3.4-5). Likewise, Dionysius’ Mezentius strikes a truce with Ascanius after the death of his son, Lausus (Ant. Rom. 1.65.5). See Eden 1964-65, 33.

331 _{In the Latin Catalogue, Mezentius and Lausus have one thousand, presumably Etruscan, troops (see below} footnote 370).

332 _{Horsfall (1973, 76) had originally expressed doubts that Vergil had read Lycophron at all, positing instead that} some other Republican authors had preserved Lycophron’s version of the myth, but he later (2005, 36) argued that, although Vergil knew Lycophron well, the Aeneas passages in the Alexandra postdate Vergil (Horsfall 2005, 39- 40). The most recent editors of Lycophron’s text argue convincingly that the Alexandra not only predates Vergil but also that there are enough detailed correspondences between the two works to show that Vergil indeed knew the text of the Alexandra and drew on it when composing the Aeneid (McNelis and Sens 2016, 167-168, 205, 210-217). 333 _{On evidence for the date of the Alexandra, see McNelis and Sens 2016, 10-11.}

Priam reporting a prophecy made by Cassandra upon the departure of Paris from Sparta (before the Trojan War). At several points, Cassandra describes the wanderings of Aeneas and his arrival in Italy (the so-called “Roman lines”), prophesying that Tyrsenia (Etruria) will receive Aeneas (Lycoph. Alex. 1239), and that he will meet Odysseus and the sons of Telephus, Tarchon and Tyrsenus, who will give him aid (Lycoph. Alex. 1242-1249). Despite Vergil’s possible use of the Alexandra of Lycophron as a source (or other previous sources, for that matter), questions still remain: why did Vergil diverge from the other traditions and make the Etruscans Aeneas’ allies? Why treat the Etruscans sympathetically and give them such prominence in Aeneas’ story? Some would argue that evidence from outside the Aeneid indicates that Vergil’s apparent interest in Etruria stems from his own personal background and relationships, for Maecenas, Vergil’s patron, was himself of Etruscan heritage.334 _{Some maintain rather that Vergil was} engaging in Etruscan antiquarianism that was part of Roman intellectual culture during his lifetime.335 _{Still others have downplayed or ignored the importance of the Aeneid’s Etruscans.}336

Earlier critics set the stage for these debates, arguing that Vergil introduced Etruscan allies for Aeneas for practical reasons. Richard Heinze, for example, maintained that, in order for the Aeneid’s story to be plausible, Aeneas required a large number of troops to defeat Turnus’ army.337 _{Heinze argued further that by including Etruscans who were under Aeneas’ leadership} Vergil was advancing Augustan propaganda: the Etruscans’ subordinate position in the epic

334 _{Hall 1982, passim; Wilhelm 1992, 134-135. Maecenas, Augustus’ friend, was from Arretium (modern Arezzo)} and descended from the Cilnii (mentioned as potentates of Arretium in Livy 10.3.2) on his mother’s side (Syme 1939, 129). The poet Horace writes about Maecenas’ descent from Etruscan kings (Maecenas atavis edite regibus, Hor. Od. 1.1.1; Tyrrhena regum progenies, tibi, Hor. Od. 3.29.1).

335 _{Hall 1982, passim; Horsfall 1987, 103-104; Wilhelm 1992, 134-135.} 336 _{See, for example, Feeney 1999, 190-194.}

mirrors their future submission to the Romans under Augustus.338 _{Heinze states that Vergil} relied on contemporary stereotypes in his characterization of ethnic groups,339 _{but he also} recognized that there are inconsistencies in the representation of certain nationalities in the

Aeneid, especially that of the Etruscans, whose general portrayal, Heinze observed, is at odds with other depictions of their cruelty, cowardice, and extravagance.340 _{Following Heinze’s lead,} Jean Gagé argued that Vergil’s creation of a positive role for Etruscans not only made them (retroactively) willing subjects of the Romans through Aeneas, but also that in doing so Vergil sought to placate certain Etruscans of his own day, who were angry about their treatment by Rome after the Social War and during the civil wars of the first century BCE.341

More recent scholarship on the Etruscans in the Aeneid has typically focused on

individual episodes involving Etruscans, and has not been concerned with Vergil’s treatment of Etruscans in general. Indeed, the 1960s and ’70s saw increased attention to the Etruscan Catalogue and especially to the character Mezentius, both mainly from Aeneid 10, which itself was becoming a subject of greater interest to scholars, as was the latter half of the Aeneid more generally.342 _{Most studies of the Etruscan Catalogue and Mezentius episodes,}343 _{however, have} concentrated upon the scenes’ antecedents in Greek literature or their function within the epic, and Vergil’s treatment of Etruscans has not often been discussed comprehensively. Some even

338 _{Heinze 1915, 179.} 339 _{Heinze 1915, 270.} 340 _{Heinze 1915, 270-271.} 341 _{Gagé 1929, 143.}

342 _{Benario 1967, 23: “In the vast range of Vergilian studies, the tenth book of the Aeneid has been more completely} ignored than any of its companions. A review of the bibliographies of Mambelli and Duckworth reveals how little attention has been devoted to the book that contains several of Vergil’s finest scenes, and comprehensive studies of the author and his work tend to treat it with a certain disdain.”

more recent assessments of the Etruscans’ part in the Aeneid are rather dismissive. Stephen Harrison finds the Etruscan Catalogue’s order and content baffling, confessing that “it might be argued that the Etruscan Catalogue is generally composed of nonentities who play no significant part in the Aeneid.”344 _{Building on Harrison’s observations, Denis Feeney argues that the}

Etruscans’ disappearance from the narrative is precisely the point—Etruscans disappear from the narrative in much the same way that they disappeared from history through their conquest and subsequent Romanization.345 _{Often observations about the Aeneid’s Etruscans are limited in} their scope to either short episodes or short articles, and, like many earlier scholars, they do not account for how Vergil treats things Etruscan throughout the entire poem.

Only one work is devoted entirely to the study of Etruscans and their role in the Aeneid, an unpublished dissertation by W. Duncan Stalker, whose ideas on the subject have largely gone unnoticed.346 _{Contrary to others who have argued that the Aeneid is about establishing}

connections between Greece and Rome, Stalker maintains that “it is in helping to define what is Roman, in opposition to what is Greek, that Virgil’s Etruscans make their greatest contribution to the Aeneid.” He makes the case for the strong, positive involvement of the Etruscans in the

Aeneid, demonstrating their close relationship to the Trojans in the poem: “The Aeneid suggests that whatever is true of the Etruscan national character must ultimately be true, at least in part, of the Roman national character as well,”347 _{and he argues that their role was meant to add a}

344 _{Harrison 1991, 108.} 345 _{Feeney 1999, 190-194.}

346 _{Stalker 1991. A note on page ii of the dissertation says that it was finished in 1980, but that it was not approved} until 1991, shortly before the author’s untimely death. These factors may account for its relative obscurity, for I have not found Stalker cited by any author other than Syed (2005).

“uniquely Roman national mythology” to his epic,348 _{and moreover that the Aeneid substituted an} Etruscan (Italian/native) ancestry for a Greek one.349 _{Most importantly, Stalker’s thesis strives,} often convincingly, to impose a clear unity on the Aeneid, explaining it as a kind of historical allegory.350 _{Because of his insistence, however, on an overarching, pro-Augustan interpretation} of the poem, Stalker’s conclusions are perhaps too neat, too unilateral, for they do not allow for ambiguous or ambivalent meanings. And despite his compelling discussion of the Etruscans in the text of the Aeneid, Stalker does not explicitly address how Vergil portrays the ethnic identity of Etruscans, except to say that they are (like the Trojans) another source for the “divergent strains in the Roman character.”351 _{Stalker’s interpretation of the role of the Etruscans in the}

Aeneid goes a long way toward understanding their function in the text, but his focus is not on how Vergil portrays Etruscan ethnic identity, perhaps because it is only in recent years that literary constructions of ethnic identity have become a great interest to scholars.

It is now generally agreed that identity, and especially Roman identity, is a major theme of Vergil’s Aeneid. Scholars have increasingly shown in recent decades that Vergil’s idea of Romanness is accepting of those not born in Rome. Katharine Toll, for example, has argued that Vergil works to create Romanness as an “open category,” and one that is especially inclusive of Italians, like Vergil himself, who were new Roman citizens.352 _{Likewise, Clifford Ando has}

348 _{Stalker 1991, 9.} 349 _{Stalker 1991, 102.}

350 _{Stalker (1991, 71-73) admits that allegorical readings of the Aeneid are problematic and that the text allows for} multiple historical parallels simultaneously and that rigid one-to-one associations are impossible. In my opinion, his allegorizing is still too one-sided at times, although he states that “since we are assuming that the poem is not an allegory, we will examine the similarity between a fictional and a historical episode with the implicit understanding that we are revealing a similarity of kind and not a simple identification of the one with the other” (Stalker 1991, 73).

351 _{Stalker 1991, 215-216.}

maintained that Vergil’s works promoted an idea of Italian identity that was synonymous with Roman identity, for the Aeneid shows a version of Roman history in which Romanness derives from an Italian identity that had absorbed the Trojan.353 _{As Ando writes, “We would thus be} remiss if we did not read [Vergil’s] poetry as a contribution to an on-going discourse about the nature of the community that then existed on the Italian peninsula.”354

In this spirit, recent years have seen the emergence of important book-length works on identity in the Aeneid, specifically the works of Yasmin Syed (2005), Jay Reed (2007), and Kristopher Fletcher (2014).355 _{Syed shows that the text of the Aeneid “articulated Roman} identity...through the reader’s identification and differentiation from its fictional characters.”356 She argues that Vergil’s textual strategies present ethnicity as an ambiguous construct and “[allow] for ethnic diversity.”357 _{Reed likewise explores Roman identity in the Aeneid through} Vergil’s treatment of other characters, especially the pathos that Vergil evokes from readers as they gaze upon the deaths of young warriors. Reed argues that Vergil in doing so creates boundaries and oppositions of gender and nationality in the Aeneid. The works of Syed and Reed contend that Vergil’s Aeneid encourages readers to identify and sympathize with others, especially Aeneas’ enemies. For his part, Fletcher has shown that Aeneas’ search for Italy in the first half of the Aeneid mirrors the experience of other non-native Romans whom Vergil wants to

353 _{Ando 2002, 138-139.} 354 _{Ando 2002, 136.}

355 _{See also Wimperis 2017, whose dissertation is a study of the rhetorical construction of cultural memory and} ethnic identities through characters in Vergil’s Aeneid. Except for a footnote (2017, 56 n. 133), Wimperis does not include Etruscans as one of the ethnic groups of his study.

356 _{Syed 2005, 1, and also 8 on how the Aeneid “shaped the reader’s sense of self by various textual strategies that} establish a relationship between the reader and the fictional characters.”

357 _{Syed 2005, 223. Moreover, Syed argues here that Vergil’s textual strategies potentially undermine or negate} notions of ethnic essentialism.

come to love Italy. Each author explores the Aeneid’s treatment of identity in different ways, but all agree with Toll and Ando that, when it comes to identity in the Aeneid, Vergil’s text fosters a sense of belonging and inclusivity in the reader.

For the most part, however, these works on identity in the Aeneid focus on the meaning of Roman identity or Romanness. None of these authors address at length the construction of Etruscan identity in the Aeneid or its relationship to Roman identity. Syed mentions Etruscans but once, and notes that she does not discuss the poem’s second half.358 _{Fletcher does so only} briefly, because his main subject of study is Aeneas’ journeys in Books 1-6.359 _{Reed discusses} some of the problems in Vergil’s treatment of Etruscans, but not in great detail;360 _{he focuses} instead on specific characters, such as the Etruscan Lausus, but is not much interested in Etruscan identity.361 _{As we have seen, although Etruscans in the Aeneid have been discussed} often, they have not appeared in more recent, general discussions of ethnic identity in the Aeneid. Despite a few recent works that do comment specifically on Vergil’s construction of Etruscan identity in the Aeneid, there is no recent work that discusses his treatment of things Etruscan in

358 _{See Syed on Etruscans (2005, 222) and on her omission of the poem’s second half (2005, 227).}

359 _{Fletcher briefly discusses Etruscans and their connection to Aeneas and the Trojans twice, both in connection to} Creusa’s prophecy of Book 2 (Fletcher 2014, 71, 242).

360 _{Reed 2007, 5-6, 11.}

361 _{Reed (2007, 38) writes as follows: “The shared objectification of four fallen warriors [including Lausus] who} come from different nations both symbolically unites those nations as constituents of a greater, and subjects them to an implicitly Roman eye. The gaze establishes difference. It delineates a subject position empty of nationality in itself, but defined by opposition to other nationalities: ‘we’ are not Trojan, not Greek, not Etruscan, not Italian. This empty nationality we are invited to identify as Roman; the Roman thus takes its lineaments and purpose from what it is not. The Roman, above all, is the subject, not the object, of a domineering gaze.”

detail.362 _{It is that lack that this chapter is meant to supply.}

Enter Mezentius

Etruscans are first formally introduced in Aeneid 7, appropriately enough, after Aeneas sets foot in Italy. When they are introduced, Vergil gives every indication that the Etruscans will