THE CONCEPTS 0F HEROISM
IN

VIRGIL, SPENSER AND MILTON

Thesis for ”12 Degree of M. A.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
MichaeI Wilson

1977

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AB ST RA CT

THE CONCEPTS OF HE ROISM IN
VIRGIL, SPENSER AND MILTON

By

Michael Wilson

When Virgil, Spenser and Milton set out to write their respective
epics, each embarks on a quest toward a new definition of heroism.
In the Aeneid Virgil dramatizes the death of the Homeric hero and
heroic code of exaggerated individualism, which finds its greatest
significance within the transcient bounds of its own experience. He
then defines and exemplifies its replacement; a new heroic ideal in
which the emphasis moves from an isolated individualism to the symbolic
significance of individual acts in both an historical, or social, and
religious context. The principal theme of the Aeneid is centered around
Aeneas' conversion from an Homeric to a Roman code of heroism.
Virgil shows that ideally humility and sacrifice, historical and social
responsiblity, can be integrated to form a concept of heroism to which
Spenser and Milton respond actively, primarily because if its ready
adaptability to Christian thought.

The heroism of Virgil's Aeneas may be described as pious resignation.

In Spenser's Faerie Queene this pious resignation gains an'intensified

 

religious significance. The almost fatalistic resignation of Aeneas becomes

Michael Wilson

in Red Cross Knight contrite submission. This submission of the
Christian hero is so extreme, that the hero nOt only acts in the name of
God, but is able to do so only with the grace of God. Evil is accomplished
by man, good by God through man. The Christian hero, ego dissolved,
receiver of grace, stands as the purified will of God manifest in a

corrupt world.

Milton repeats the themes of Virgil and Spenser, integrating what
Virgil saw as pious resignation in the character of Aeneas and what
Spenser deve10ped as the allegorical decline and rise of Red Cross Knight
on the path of righteousness, to form a hero of mild humility and peace-
ful nobility. Adam is not a warrior, nor the founder of a race; neither
is he meant to confront Satan with the explicit end of liberating men.
Rather as the father of men, Adam represents a model of heroic submission
to divine justice and mercy. He is what every man should be, a leader of
a family, a man of self-knowledge. Adam is what Milton envisions as

the ideal Christian hero in a sinful world.

The thesis of Michael Wilson
is approved:

 

'30“ch \ H. Rgm—pbctv

Thesis Di rector

 

Dean

August 1977

THE CONCEPTS OF HEROISM
IN
VIRGIL, SPENSER AND MILTON

Michael Wilson

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English

1977

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Professor Donald M. Rosenberg for taking the
time to read and comment on this thesis. His suggestions were very

helpful.

ii

Preface
The intent of this essay is to explain the concepts of heroism in

the epic poetry of Virgil, Spenser and Milton. Each poet in his epic
defines and exemplifies a concept of heroism in the gradually unfolding
moral, religious, and usually national consciousness of the hero. This
essay Opens with an explanation of Vi rgilian heroism, and is followed
by an explanation of its consequent influences on, and similarities and
dissimilarities to, Spenserian heroism. The essay concludes with an
explanation of the heroism of Milton and its thematic relationship to

the heroism of Virgil and Spenser.

iii

I

The Aeneid is a solemn, highly ritualized poem of heroic death and
rebirth. It is addressed specifically to the necessary, though in some
important ways regretful, even remorseful, death of the Homeric hero
and heroic code as Virgil presents it, a code of elevated individualism
which finds its greatest significance (indeed its only significance) within
the transcient bounds of its own experience. In the Aeneid Virgil defines
and embodies its replacement: the birth of a Roman civilization in‘which
the heroic emphasis moves from the isolated significance of individual
events to the symbolic significance of isolated events in both an historical
or social and cosmic context. The central theme of the Aeneid is built
on Aeneas' conversion from an Homeric to a Roman code of heroism.

The essential problem with the Homeric world-view, which places V.
it in a radical contrast to a Virgilian world- View, is the lack of any long-
range sense of social or historical significance surrounding particular
events. Each sequence is uniquely separate from the next. There is no
particular concern for historical consequence, nor sense of responsi-
bility to future generations. And, of course, there is lacking any sense
of personal commitment to a just divine influence directing history.
Because of the absence of a just, divine influence, the individual and the
moment provide the only constant, fleeting as it may be, and are
elevated to supreme importanceGI

The strength of this hero comes from his ability to stand up

2

against a meaningless world and give it meaning in terms of his own
accomplishments. How he withstands the indiscriminate flaying about
of misfortune, while retaining his own self— respect and courage, dis—
tinguishes his greatness, his areté. Central to the Homeric hero is an
immense courage sustained by a necessarily self-centered pride which
spurs the quest for glory and the fame born of glorious deeds, a fame
that lends immortality to a short and otherwise insignificant life. The
emphasis is, then, on the self, for life is short, and there is much to
be done for glory's sake. Brooks Otis points out that the thrust of any
Odyssean speech stresses "My areté, my metis, which carries me
(and hence you) through. "2 Consistent with this emphasis on the self is
Kitto's description of arete’, which he sees in terms of self fulfillment:

What moves him [Homeric hero] to deeds of heroism

is not a sense of duty as we understand it--duty

towards others: It is rather a duty towards himself.

He strives after that which wg translate 'virtue' but is

1n Greet arete, 'excellence. '
AreteI is a self— sustaining force, it provides an heroic identity. Without
it there is mere existence, life without semblance of meaning or
purpose. Of course this notion of arete’ becomes in Virg‘l a mixture of
personal dignity and self— glory, which finally he assesses as a threat to
a tranquil society. This, then, is a primary difference between the two
codes of heroism which are at odds in the Aeneid: whereas the actions
of Homeric heros are self-motivated, the actions of Aeneas are for the

benefit of all ancestors, families and gods. Otis says correctly that

Aeneas, unlike Odysseus, has no mission without his men, that without

3

his men there is no reason for the survival of Troy, that the heroic
moment is no longer only one fleeting unrecapturable moment, but in
the Aeneid gains an historical significance because it is social: "it is
the moment of a people symbolized by a man.”4

Most of the drama of the Aeneid is built on the conflict between
these two codes which takes place both within Aeneas, as he converts to
the Roman code of piety, and around him, as he confronts various
representations of the now-dying heroic code. Examples of the old
standard are constantly placed in both the foreground and background of
the action, always in juxtaposition with Aeneas and the new age he
represents. But the Aeneid is not so free of complexity, so obviously
didactic as this polarity suggests, for the two codes are not always so
clearly distinguishable that one appears righteous and the other does
not. The old code is not made unheroic in comparison as much as it is
dispelled as no longer viable in a sophisticated and complex social
structure, where a certain degree of restraint is needed to preserve a
common good will and peace. When Otis says the mission of Rome is
peace, "the driving spirit of Turnus, Camilla, Nisus, Mezentius, Amata,
as well as of Dido, is passion, and through passion, violence, "5 he
captures the important distinction between the two codes. A distinction
that, despite Virgil's genuine admiration for these unique and extra-
ordinary individuals, an admiration most evident in his mixed treatment
of Turnus, leaves him nevertheless wary of their methods and motives.-

Virgil creates a new hero, a hero with a social and spiritual

4
responsibility, whose world-view is dominated no longer by feelings of
futility and meaninglessness, but rather is directed by a sense of
purpose and history, a hero who is cognizant of the direct influence each
action of his life bears on lives of future men, aware that the personal
drama of his life is no longer exclusively his own but carries a greater
significance to which he must address himself. The birth of this new
hero is no easy task, and reluctantly begins in the midst of death and
bitter destruction.

The Aeneas of Book II is still very much a Trojan warrior with a
code and heritage like that of Hector and Turnus. But when compelled
to abandon a home which is in a ruinous state of horror and confusion,
against a passionate desire to remain, fight and die if necessary in a
glorious, if futile last effort to protect his homeland, Aeneas undergoes
a change of character which begins to distinguish him from the likes of
Hector and Turnus. Fittingly, it is Hector himself, spokesman of a
dying code, who, recognizing its limitations, appears before Aeneas
and warns him that he must flee:

Our home, our Priam-these have had their due,

Could Pergamus be saved by any prowess,

Then my hand would have served. (1. 398- 400)6
The message is clear: prowess in battle will no longer sustain the fate
of Troy. Aeneas must learn another kind of strength, a strength of
patience and restraint. That the message is delivered by a mutilated

Hector gives Aeneas a first-hand glimpse at the bloody end of a once

proud man, a glimpse not without effect:

Oh this

Was Hector, and how different he was

from Hector back from battle putting on

Achilles spoils or Hector when he flung

his Phrygian firebrands at Darden prowsi ( 1. 371-7 6).
This irony is hard to accept, that a man once so glorious is now
hideous, as he stands "in tears and sorrow, " "dismembered. . .black
with bloodied dust. . . His beard unkempt his hair. . . thick with blood"
(1. 377-81). The scene is especially important because it signals a
recurring theme of violence breeding violence, blood begetting blood.
This is, then, the cycle that Aeneas must not perpetuate no matter the
strain on his pride. He must transcend the cycle of blood vengeance.
This is the message of Hector, the fading shadow of a dying age.

Virgil goes to great lengths to dramatize this cycle of blood-letting
in Book II, and Aeneas is forced to stand and witness it while restrained
on all sides from his immediate impulse for vengeance. The episodes
that follow are some of the finest in the @3319. They provide a
panorama of scenes which offer a picture of merciless slaughter, brutal
destruction and defilement, in toll the general waste of life, and
property caused by useless war waged by the proud. The scenes are
particularly important because of the profound suffering they cause in
Aeneas, which later gives him credibility as an heroic figure. Certainly
in the fires of Troy are the beginnings of Roman piety painfully forged
in his heart.

After Hector vanishes, the "howls of war" fill Aeneas' hearing,

and he starts from bed. Climbing to the roof of his house, he sees the

6

elements of war, which are by and large indiscriminate forces such as
fire that destroy whole wheat fields or:

a torrent

that hurtles from a mountain stream lay[ing] low

the meadows, low the happy crops and low

the labor of the oxen, dragging forests

headlong (1. 414-19).
The image of pastoral devastation is used again and again to describe
the random cruelties of war. These particular images call to mind the
innocent casualties that have little to do with one man's injured pride or
anothers' heroic quest for glory, or other such typical initiators of
destruction. They are images of wheat fields, meadows, happy crops,
oxen and forests all being razed by the insensitive hand of war.

The scene overwhelms Aeneas, and his first impulse is to per-

petuate the destruction:

Insane, I seize my weapons. There's no sense

in weapons, yet my spirit burns to gather

a band for battle. . .

Rage and anger drive my mind. My only thought

how fine a thing it is to die in arms (1. 728-33).
The telling words in this passage are insane, burns, rage and anger.
His actions are irrational, passionate, even savage, as he and his men
are compared to hungry "wolves in a black fog / driven blindly by their
belly's endless / frenzy" (1. 481- 84). Their hunger is, of course, for
battle and satisfied vengeance. These images both of pastoral devas—

tation and frenzied savagery are repeated in the later books of the

Aeneid with reference to Turnus and the war in Latium. The images at

 

that time recall the setting of Troy and invite a comparison between the

7
Aeneas of Book II and of Books VII - XII as well as between Aeneas and
Turnus.

In the ensuing scenes Aeneas makes his way to Priam's palace.
Along his path there has been everywhere "fear, harsh grief and many
shapes of slaughter" (l. 498). Virgil reminds the reader of the mass
hysteria and loss of life, never allowing them to slip too far into the
background. At Priam's palace:

the fight is deadly, just as if

There were no battles elsewhere, just as if

No one were dying now throughout the city ( 1. 589-91).
The words "just as if" by contrast conjure up the countless bloody
scenes of battles and death occurring throughout the city. Virgil never
allows this reality to be eclipsed by a few sporadic moments of
individual endeavor. The technique is used by Virgil to move the
emphasis away from the particular and into the general, or sometimes
to emphasize the general significance of the particular act. At the palace
of Priam Aeneas experiences perhaps his most difficult and painful test.
Entering a realm of deep confusion "anguish and sad commotion"
( 1. 650), he finds himself inside the palace where "the vaulted walls
echo with the wail and woe of women" (1. 650- 51). Pyrrhus is this time
the warrior of the moment. His savagery is unrestrained as he and his
band storm the gate. Here again Virgil introduces a simile which

depicts random destruction of innocents. They storm the palace like:

The foaming river

when it has burst across resisting banks

and boundaries and overflows its angry

flood piling in a moss along the plains

as it drags flocks and folds across the fields (1. 664- 68).

8

Again the pastoral is disrupted. Victimized flocks and folds represent
the daughters of Hecuba, as well as Hecuba and the defenseless, aging
King Priam himself. In this passage Hecuba and her daughters also
are compared to doves, an image of innocence, driven by a dark storm,
a random destroyer. Polites is slaughtered by Pyrrhus before his
parent's eyes with cold brutality and arrogance. The arrogance of this
act will be recalled in Book X, when Tulrnus slaughters Pallus, callously
lamenting the fact that Evander was not present to watch. Virgil under-
scores the callous act:

Polites falls before his parent's eyes

within their presence he pours out his life

in streams of blood (1. 700-02).
Pyrrhus then slaughters Priam, who slips in "the blood that streamed
from his own son" (1. 739-40). It is important to distinguish these
early scenes of violence from the running catalogues of conquests and
slayings which make up much of the later books of the _A_e_n_ei_c_l. The
blood-letting of Book II is not merely one of many conventional epic war
sequences or a rehashing of old myths (in this case the sack of Troy).
Virgil is directly concerned with the effect of this type of destruction on
the peaceful sanctity of man, on the continuity of a civilization. At the
heart of Book II is a lesson of control and restraint which Aeneas must
learn for the sake of Troy, Rome, and from Virgil's point of View the
survival of a peaceful co-existence of man. For Virgil, the passionate
violence of someone like Pyrrhus, or later Nizus, Errylus, Menzentius

and Turnus, as well as Dido's own form of passion, breeds a chaos that,

9

usually self- destructive, is always universally disrupting to the nature
of things. It is the passion-bred chaos that continually disrupts the
peace that Aeneas must learn to avoid. This message runs through the
Aeneid and must be realized by Aeneas on his path toward a full under-
standing of Roman piety.

At the sight of once noble Priam's dismembered body, a sight
reminiscent of Hector's bloodied appearance, Aeneas is nearly over-
come:

This was the first time savage horror took me
I was astounded (1. 151-52).

In this maddened fram of mind Aeneas experiences a major reversal.
Left alone in the chamber of Priam, surrounded by the sights and sounds
of death, he becomes concerned for his own family. But before leaving
sees Helen "crouching silently/within a secret corner of the shrine"
(1. 764-65). His immediate impulse is for venegeance:
In my mind a fire
is burning; anger spurs me to avenge
my falling land, to exact the debt of my crime
(1. 774-76).
For though there is no memorable name
in punishing a woman and no gain
of honor in such victory. . . it will be
a joy to fill my soul with vengeful fire, to satisfy
the aches of my people (1. 785-92).
But before he is able to accomplish this deed his passion is stayed by
the goddess Venus. From Venus Aeneas learns that though his family

is protected by the gods, his homeland is not, that Helen is not to blame

but that Iupiter's will would have Troy leveled. For the first time

10
Aeneas is being asked to abandon his own perspective for one that is
transcendent. The wider perspective shows his fighting to be futile
and his thirSt for vengeance misdirected. For the moment he is calmed
and Helen is spared.
Nevertheless Aeneas returns home only to be incensed again by
his father's refusal to leave Troy:

Again I take
arms and, miserable long for death (1. 884-85).

Let be; and let me at the Greeks again

to make my way back to new battles. Never

shall we all die this day without revenge (1. 905-07).
But Aeneas is given another sign:

Over Iulus' head

There leaps a lithe flametip that seems to shed

a radiance; the tongue of fire flickers

harmless, and plays about his soft hair, grazes

his temples (1. 924-28).
The omen works a dramatic reversal in Aeneas' father Anchises. He is
at once understanding and accepting, convinced that the sign is from
Jupiter: "Now my delay is done; I follow; where/you lead, I am. . .
Yours, this omen;/and Troy is in your keeping. Yes I yield" (1. 949-52).
The omen comes as a flash of insight to Anchises as a kind of religious
awakening, and fills him with a spiritual strength with whiCh he will
inspire Aeneas time and again on their journey. While Aeneas maintains
a certain amount of courage and strength, Anchises is able to provide the
spiritual energies hs son lacks in the early going.

At the end of Book II Aeneas loses his wife Cruesa. Panicked he

returns to the city in search of her. The scene both gives Virgil a chance

11

to put a prophecy into the mouth of Cruesa's spirit, and affords him one
final look at the devastation of war. Troy "high as the highest rooftop"
is in flames, "The boiling tide /is raging to the heavens. "

And here, from every quarter, heaped together

are Trojan treasures torn, from burning altars--

the tables of the gods, and plundered garments,

and bowls of solid gold, and Trojan boys

and trembling women stand in a long line (1. 1031-35).
Aeneas' suffering has been poignant. His task was no light one, his loss
almost unbearable. But that Aeneas does endure the loss must be
remembered, for Turnus will experience the same flames when in the
last moments of his life, he looks upon the burning Latium. His
reactions are contrasted constantly with earlier reactions of Aeneas.

In Book 111 there are two themes which contribute to Aeneas'
development as a hero. The first is the relationship between Aeneas
and his father, Anchises. The second develops Aeneas' relationship to
the gods. These relationships work a long way toward defining Roman
piety and consequently Virgilian heroism. Basic to both is a solemn
spiritual interchange that is meant to give the poem a religious (and not
merely political) seriousness. To begin with, every stage of travel in
Book III is for the most part initiated and directed by Anchises, who is
by this time a spokesman of divine purpose, teacher of Aeneas in the
ways of Roman piety. Though Aeneas' very departure from the shores
of Troy signifies a crucial symbolic victory over those aspects of him-

self which he will meet again in Turnus, and is thus a major stOp toward

Roman piety, he remains unsure of his destiny, and is in need of the

12
guidance his father and the gods can provide. The opening of Book III
demonstrates this need:
No sooner
was summer come upon us than my father
Anchises bid us spread our sails to fate.
Weeping, I must give up the shores, the harbors
that were my home, the plain that once was Troy
( 1. 11-15).
Clearly, Aeneas' weeping shows that his heart is not in this journey.
Anchises is, on the other hand, of one mind, the only one inspired by
the cosmic significance of Troy's fall and the impending outcome of
their travels.
It is Anchises who finally unravels the omens of Apollo after an
initial misunderstanding;
Who then could heed Cassandra's prophecy?
But let us trust in Phoebus; warned by him,
let us pursue a better destiny (1. 247-49).
And again it is Anchises who is anxious to leave Trojan Chaon, the home

of Andromache:

Meanwhile Anchises has our sails made ready
That no delay rob us of driving winds (1. 616-17).

Throughout Book III Anchises is a symbol of perseverence, careful
judgment, sympathy, reverence and wisdom. Keen to observe the
significance of the horses of the plains of Minerva's Height, he notices
the harnesses of war, which have "yielded to the chariot beneath / the
yoke and reins of peace" (1. 705-06), and recognizes in this a sign of
peace to come: "Then there is also / some hope for peace" (1. 706-07).

The hardest lesson Aeneas had to learn in Troy was restraint. Here the

13

image of the yoke and reins, the symbol of restraint, recalls that lesson.
The voyage continues as Anchises spurs them past Charybis and, "They
do as they are told" (I. 731). Finally, and perhaps most importantly,
when the Greek warrior, Achaemenides pleads for protection against
the great Cyclops of Etna, Anchises is quick to offer a compassionate
hand:

Father Anchises

does not wait long to offer him his hand

and steadies the young man with the strong pledge

(1. 790-92).

Anchises demonstrates a novel ability to befriend a former enemy with
a simple gesture of kindness. This is another lesson directed at Aeneas,
for eventually he must confront the Latins with the same gesture. All
these deeds have been in part for the benefit of Aeneas' education.

The second theme is Aeneas' relationship to his gods. Several
times in Book 111 both Aeneas and Anchises are shown in the midst of
prayer and ritual. The continual reference to these ceremonial times
gives this book, as well as the entire poem, a highly religious
atmosphere. And again, as with the violence in Book II, much of the
ceremony in the poem is more than epic convention or mythic trapping.

There are, of course, several examples of ceremony and special
rites, examples that seem to increase and intensify as the epic
progresses.7 But what finally is important about all of them is exactly

what they tell of Aeneas and Virgilian heroism. Each time Aeneas prays

or performs a rite, he demonstrates a religious awareness of and

adherence to the spiritual nature and divine influence within himself and

14
the things and events around him. By praying at almost every turning
point in the poem, he repeatedly renews his bond with the intrinsic
spirituality of life. Anchises begins this pattern of communion which
Aeneas learns and continues after his father's death. It is Anchises
the teacher who reappears in Book VI when Aeneas is having serious
doubts about his future. Anchises, as the original convert to the
Roman cause and teacher in the ways of piety, strengthens Aeneas
by revealing the order of things and the way he fits into them.

Virgilian heroism has been defined and exemplified by self-
restraint and acknowledgment of the importance and preservation of the
pastoral way of life. This restraint and appreciation of the pastoral
arise from a spiritual vision as Opposed to the limited visibn of the self-
seeking individual. To Virgil, who is primarily a religious poet, in the
spiritual significance of the hero lies his greatest distinction.

Cyril Bailey goes to great lengths to analyze Virgil's religious
intent, and a very brief summary of a few of his major conclusions,
WOJld be useful. 8 The religious tone of the _A_er_1e§i_ fluctuates neces-
sarily because of the vast variety of religious cults and traditions,
which find their way in one form or another into the poem. The type of
religious emphasis placed on each source varies depending upon Virgil's
handling of it. Much of the religion in the _A_e_p_e_i_d_ is based either on the
old Italian traditions, which are bred of a simple pastoral existence, as
they pertain to the spirits of the countryside, divinities of the household

and deities of the seasons, along with the protectors of the vine and the

15
olive, or on the state-cults which stress a cosmic machinery manip-
ulating history as Virgil uses them? Now insofar as Aeneas demon-
strates an awareness of both the spiritual value of particular events and
everyday experiences, and the general or cosmic destiny of man as it is
to be fulfilled by the founding and flourishing of the Roman state, he
comes very close to what Virgil terms piety, the outstanding attribute
of Roman heroism. Furthermore, Aeneas reaches an ultimate in
heroism only when he is able to reconcile the spiritual value of everyday
life with an overall divine plan. There is an example in Book III of
religious ceremony where this reconciliation seems to occur.

The example is again the passing of Minerva's Height where the
white horses of the plain are recognized for their real significance as
both symbols of war and peace. But it is the potential for peace that
impresses Anchises most“ Immediately Aeneas and his warriors respond
to this omen by praying to Pallas, while covering their heads with
"Trojan veils, " a custom common in Virgil's Rome. 10 The solemnity
of this event cannot be over- emphaSized on the cosmic level. Aeneas is
associated, as the founder of Rome, with the attainment and preservation
of peace, a peace which with his compliance will be accomplished
eventually by a working out of a divine will. The peace gained by the
cosmic machinery will put an end to the random destruction of the
pastoral world, which thrives on old traditions of daily ceremonies that
recognize the spiritual value of everyday things. Though the horses as

symbols of war are associated with harnesses, the horses as symbols

16

of peace are associated with the yoke and rein, tools of a pastoral
existence. Aeneas, as the ideal Virgilian hero, must recognize the
spiritual value of everyday life, indeed the godliness of a pastoral
existence, and therefore, must understand that his cosmic role is as
the instrument of divine will, whose intent it is to establish a nation
founded on the principles of peace and preservation of a peace which will
prOtect the pastoral way of life and the religious solemnity that Virgil
attaches to it.

Clearly the finest examples of Virgil's use of the pastoral to
convey this process of heroic recognition are in Books VI and VIII of the

Aeneid. In Book VI the pastoral is used to express metaphorically the

 

paradise of the righteous. They are described as the "lands of gladness, "
"glades of gentleness" and the "Groves of Blessedness. " While in
Book VIII the pastoral kingdom of Evander, Pallanteum, as the organic
reflection or earthly complement to the Elysian fields of Book VI,
represents the immediate and working relationship between the ideal
and the everyday life of pious ritual and thanksgiving. Both scenes are
given a like mood of solemn dignity and gentle nobility, created with a
same reverence for the pastoral that is unmistakable throughout the
poem. And in both instances the pastoral landscape is shown to hold
within it a spiritual bond with the wisdom and workings of the divine,
and therefore, gives the special sense of religion instrinsic to Virgil's
conception of Aeneas', and ultimately Rome's, place in history. Each

time Aeneas comes away from these settings of peaceful communion

17
with a renewed insight and understanding pertaining to his own destiny,
the nature of man and divine Providence. I

Aeneas is told by Musaeus in Book VI that those who reach the

"fields of gladness":

live in shady groves

and settle on soft riverbanks and meadows

where fresh streams flow (1. 891-93).
And here in the midst of the locus amoenus, he discovers his father "in
the deep of a green valley. . . lost in thought. . . studying the souls of all
his sons to come" (1. 898-900). The depth and intensity of Anchises'
contemplation is expressed very nearly allegorically by the "deep of a
green valley" surrounding him. This association with the meditative
spirit gives the pastoral a specifically profound and reverent signif-
icance. Indeed, from the same deep green valley of contemplation will
spring the great heroes of Rome. -

In Book VIII Aeneas returns to the pastoral. By first sailing
through a "shade of varied trees and cleave green woods reflected in
calm water" (1. 124), Aeneas reaches Evander, who is found "within a
grove/ before the city" (1. 134-35), celebrating the anniversary of his
people's liberation. On this journey to the sacred regions of Pallanteum,
Aeneas moves symbolically toward the sacred regions of his own
consciousness. When the two regions meet, he is ready to receive the
wisdom this land and its people have to offer.

The people of Pallanteum are in the midst of celebrating the

anniversary of the heroic deeds of Hercules, who freed the land of the

l8
monster Cacus. There are some parallels between the story Evander
relates of the hero of action, Hercules, who frees the victimized
innocents or pastoral Arcadians of the brutal ravager of the land, and
the present circumstance of Aeneas. The story is meant as a lesson in
heroism for Aeneas, as he, too, is to be a great liberator and protector
of the pastoral ideal, a hero of action who rids a brutalized humanity of
the proud, vicious warriors of vengeance and vain- glory. Evander says
to Aeneas "try/ as he did to deserve divinity" (1. 47 8-79). This notion
of hero-liberator slaying the savage beast who threatens the existence
of the pastoral, and therefore the spiritual founts of life, is a theme
central to Virgil's Aeneid.

After the celebration, Aeneas is shown the great shrines,
remnants of a golden age, now the grassy foundations of forthcoming
Rome. The scene recalls Elysium where Anchises reveals to Aeneas
the soon to be heroes of Rome. As the heroes were born of the
spiritual pastoral "Fields of Gladness" and "Groves of Blessedness, "
so the seat of Rome will spring from the golden age of rustic and solemn
shrines. The best example of a Roman shrine born of rustic ancestry
is the capital where the "Arcadians believe / that often they have seen
Jupiter himself, " which Virgil says was once "rough with thick under-
brush," and that "even then / its holiness had filled the fearful farmers /
with dread, and even then they shuddered at / the woods and rock"

(1. 455- 59). Evander points out that "this grove, this hill, tree-topped/

are some god's home" (1. 459- 60). Here again the grove is given a

l9

mystical significance that, of course, the tillers of the lands, the simple
farmers recognize immediately by virtue of their humility. This grove,
someday the Roman Capital, begins as a wooded temple of natural holi-
ness, where the earth and the heavens mingle to form the hilly shrine
of jupiter, a shrine symbolic of the divine sanctity and authority given
to Rome as the righteous warriors of peace and forbearance. The
message that Aeneas receives while in Pallenteum is then a reiteration
of the words of Anchises, who said:

remember Roman, these will be your arts:

to teach the ways of peace to those you conquer,

to spare defeated peoples, tame the proud

(Bk VI 1.. 1135-37).

The process of internalization seems to culminate in one final
scene where Aeneas receives spiritual as well as practical aid, while in
the midst of the idyllic pastoral. This time the aid comes from Venus
in the form of a gift of armor. On his journey back to Latium, Aeneas
rests his men in a symbolic landscape:

Close by the cooling stream of Caere stands

a spacious grove, held sacred far and wide

in ancient reverence; and on all sides

the hills hem in the forest of dark firs (Bk VIII 1. , 755- 58).
The sacred grove, again used to underscore the religious importance of
the event, has been consecrated to Silvanus, god of "fields and flocks"
(1. 782). Here as always Virgil is careful to assure that the pastoral is
linked to a scene in which Aeneas receives divine sustenance. Venus

finds her son "in a secluded valley / withdrawn beside a cooling stream"

(1. 790-91), presumably meditating on the things he has learned and the

20
things he must do. His contemplative mood is reflected in the holy
grounds around him. The entire effect of the scene recalls the medita-
tive spirit of Anchises, and the implication is that Aeneas has gained
the wisdom of his father; he has internalized the pastoral ideal of
humility and sacrifice. In this setting he gains the armor, which has
been elaborately designed to depict the long history of Rome. And for
the third time the knowledge offered by his father and then by Evander
is repeated, as he is again reminded of the meaning of his life in
relationship to the ultimate passage of humanity. He must remember
that he is a Roman hero whose greatest gift is the ability to place others
before him, and that with this ability "upon his shoulder he / lifts up the
fame and fate of his sons" (1. 954-55).

When Aeneas finally reaches Latium, he is a man transformed,
indeed reborn. No longer a Trojan warrior, but the prototype of a new
hero, he has learned restraint and sacrifice, endured great suffering,
and gained the wisdom and knowledge of men and gods. His highest ideals
are those of peace which will be attained only by the laying aside of
selfish pursuits, vainglorious delusions and ignoble pride. This, then,
is the Aeneas that arrives in Latium to establish Rome and a world of
peaceful co-existence. ‘

For the remainder of the poem, an irony, to this point in the
narrative only slightly felt, becomes very important to the thematic

direction and ultimate resolution of the poem. All through the Aeneid

 

the image of the pastoral has been used to contrast as well as dramatize

21
the wasted brutality of war. Always it has been the innocents who are
victimized by the few whose motives usually are selfish. Virgil's dis-
dain for this senseless slaughter is obvious enough, but beyond this, the

poet of the Aeneid fears for a less explicit, more devastating loss. He

 

fears the final and fundamental deprivation of all that this subtly pro-
found way of life represents, be it simple human values, a closeness to
the land, an awareness of origins, or perhaps most importantly, a
respect and awe for the spiritual presence in all forms and aspects of
existence. Essentially, Latium, like Pallanteum, is a civilization in
which these values are found. The Latins are a race of Saturn, a people
of self— rule or natural-law. In King Latinus' initial speech to the
Teu'crians the Latin values are emphasized:

Do not forget

the Latins are a race of Saturn needing

no laws and no restraint for righteousness;

they hold themselves in check by their own will

and by the customs of their ancient god (Bk VII 66, 860-71).
Though Latinus speeks of the pastoral ideal, there is an irony implicit in
the situation that spoils this ideal. The same natural philosophy
espoused by Latinus, while creating an environment of individual liberty
and pastoral tranquility, also sustains the liberty of a few extraordinary
men who comprehend life only insofar as it pertains exclusively to the
bounds of their own personal drama. These men wage indiscriminate
battle in the pursuit of fame, inadvertently violating the very ideal that

nourishes their valued freedom. Menzentius and Turnus are examples

of this kind of man. Still an0ther perplexing irony arises when having

22
arrived in Latium with the visage of savior, Aeneas offers as an
alternative to natural law, positive or civil law as a possible solution
for controlling these violent outbreaks, and finds his own philOSOphy also
in violation of the pastoral ideal because it threatens the very natural
communion and individual liberty it seeks to protect. These ironies
are given dramatic light when Aeneas, the hero of action, is forced to
violate Pallanteum by taking Evander's son Pallas out of Arcadia and into
the corrupt world, where he is the first to be slaughtered in battle. The
incident is very much a sacrificial rite suggesting that the pastoral must
lose some of its innocence and freedom to the state in order to protect
and preserve at least a remnant of its phiIOSOphy.

But Virgil does not surrender easily to this paradox as he attempts
to overcome it by seeing a divine, benevolent state wed to a philOSOphy
which gives sanctity to individual life. In this union one does for the
other what each is unable to do for itself. Aeneas and Rome will rid
the world of men and women like Mezentias, Amata and Turnus, while
the philos0phy and way of life of the race of Saurn will insure the
benevolence and longevity of a state which is founded on the respect and
reverence Aeneas has gained, and his decendants will inherit, for this
ideal. Through these events is born a golden age of political and
natural rule working in union for the benefit of each. This marriage is
the central ideal of the Aeneid. And it is up to Aeneas as a Roman hero
to bring it about. But there are some contradictions in this ideal that

Virgil, who very much aware Of them, never completely resolves,

23
contradictions which in fact go far to explain the existing tension
between the implied note of celebration and the actual strain of resigned
melancholy both heard at the end of the poem. The melancholy, again
parodoxically born of the celebrated peace, stems from an uneasiness
felt for What seems an inevitable loss (if only in part) of the pastoral
ideal, when a long-sought peace is established through violence and
maintained by authority of a state, whether or not this state is divinely
sanctioned. The last and most crucial trial of the Roman hero, then
occurs in Latium, which is Troy revisited. Aeneas, a new conqueror
much changed, now the hero of Providence, carrying the message of peace
and positive law, finally must confront and overcome his former self,
Turnus, the symbolic remnant of a dying age. This trial is waged
amidst such conflicting themes as birth and death, gain and loss, cele-
bration and melancholy, which Oppose each other with great complexity
and meaning as they reflect both Aeneas' success and failure as an
heroic figure.

The obvious success of Aeneas is explicit enough. Turnus is
defeated, allowing the race of Saturn topass into Rome, while the champion
of obedience, restraint, and peace prevails. The Aeneid, was specifically
written to convey this theme that justifies the ways of Rome to men,
that credits Augustus' claim to divine authority. But other realities
work implicitly against this pronounced glorification of Augustus and
Rome. Contradictory to this theme is Aeneas' final inability to

overcome his passion and spare Turnus. For with this failure

24

is implied the inherent limitation of political solutions: simply that they
are made by men, and that men are made of passions. Aeneas, one
who will rule many, slays Turnus in a moment of lost control, passionate
rage, in the very spirit of vengeance he has fought to overcome. At
that instant Aeneas falls short of the ideal of merciful rule and takes
on, if only partially, the blood-lust of Turnus. Ironically, Virgil's
ideal peacemaker enters the Arcadian pastoral stained with the blood of
the defeated. The implication clearly suggests that not only will the
pastoral not be preserved by the state, but that conversely, the blood-
letting code of vengeance is perpetual. A closer reading of certain
passages in the final scenes in Latium tells much of this ambiguous
relationship between Aeneas and Turnus, which culminates in death.

Turnus is on one hand the epitome of all that is inherently
dangerous about a way of life unprotected by the authority of civil law.
He is arrogant, brutal, merciless, and blind to the destruction his futile
struggle lays on the innocents about him. On the other hand, he is also
an extraordinary man with exceptional prowess in battle, love and
loyalty for family and home, and self-assertive pride which yields an
undaunted courage. Together these two natures make up his tragedy.

Essentially, the final books of the Aeneid are dominated by Turnus'

 

tragic quest for fame. And in an important way his tragedy, which is
painfully ironic, guides and influences the final tone of the poem, which
ends hopelessly unresolved.

His circumstances initially are not unlike the ones Aeneas

25

experiences in Troy. He, too, is asked to lay down his arms and sur-
render his city to a conqueror. His response to this indignation is
predictable:

Insane, he raves

for arms, he searches bed and halls for weapons.

Lust for the sword and wars damnable madness

are raging in him and—above all—anger (Bk VII, 1. 607 -10).
Here again is the same passionate, irrational response that has
become by now so familiar. Aeneas, also, at one time is obsessed
with feelings of self-righteousness and indignation. However, unlike
Turnus, he is able to overcome them for the time and leave Troy without
perpetuating the cycle of vengeance. But in Turnus the passion burns
even until it swallows him with its flames. The fury Allecto is this
blaze personified, and Juno invokes her to ignite the flame in Turnus
that he may spread it in his arrogance to all parts of Latium:

For you can arm for battle brothers, though

they feel at one, and ruin homes with hatred;

and you can carry fire brands and lashes

beneath their roofs; you have a thousand names,

a thousand ways of injuring; awake your fertile

breast and break this settled peace;
sow war and crime; let sudden quarrel spur
young men to want, demand, and seize the sword
(Bk VII, 1. 443-50).

This passage gives an exceptionally important account of the particular
dangers of unleashed frenzy. Virgil expresses his greatest fears and
warnings regarding civil strife, domestic ruin and wasted youth. But
once Allecto begins, she is not easy to stop:

I shall

compel the neighboring towns to war by rumor,

inflame their minds with love of insane Mars
(Bk VII, 1. 722-24).

26
And from this point on Turnus is her slave.

Many are the examples both in actions and in simile which describe
Turnus' lust for blood, examples which at times seem direct allusions
to Aeneas' own experience in Troy. Aeneas had been compared to a
wolf thirsty for blood, frenzied by hunger for flesh. Turnus in Book IX
is described with the same simile:

fierce and desperate

with rage, the wolf is wild against his absent

prey, after such long famine now the frenzy

for food, his dry and bloodless jaws

torment him (1. 78-81).
Turnus is outraged by the sheltered Trojans much as a wolf is by the
bleating of the penned lambs. The point of the simile is that Turnus,
as the predator wolf, seeks the slaughter of innocents to nurture his
hunger for revenge, his passion for glory. Aeneas would have done the
same thing to Helen had Venus not stayed his anger. And when Turnus
finally does enter the encampment, he is again compared to the
predator among the defenseless:

he

had locked him in the city like some monstrous

tiger among the helpless flocks (l. 97 4-7 6).
The references to sheep and flocks bring to mind the pastoral and exactly
what is at stake, what is lost in this senseless conflict. Turnus is
oblivious to this loss, for in the midst of death he can think of only one
thing, glory.

In this scene he likens himself to Achilles:

you shall say to Priam that here, too, an Achilles
can be found (1. 989-90).

27
This association is important because it places Turnus (even if only in
his own mind) in the tradition of the Old hero, now the enemy of Aeneas.
And coming from the mouth of Turnus, it reveals his strongest motiva-
tion for battle as personal fame or glory. His comparison to Achilles
exemplifies his hammartia. To be like Achilles is worth all the blood
in Latium, even his own, perhaps especially his own.

Later in Book X the driving force of this flaw is most visible
when Turnus, in what must be his least sympathetic moment,
slaughters Pallas in a very Pyrrhus-like fashion, going so far as to call
for the presence of Evander so that he may suffer his son's brutal
death just as Priam suffered the death of his son Polites. This is, of
course, the arrogant Turnus who brings about his own death. And
Virgil, wishing to underscore the blind, passionate, self-destructive
nature of the act, intrudes with a lament that sound much like the chorus
of tragedy:

O mind of man that does not know the end

or future fates, nor how to keep the measure

when we are fat with pride at things that prosper

A time will come to Turnus when he will long

to purchase at great price an untouched Pallas,

when he will hate this trophy and this day

(1. 690-95).

The phrase "to keep the measure" emphasizes again the value Virgil
places on the ability to restrain the emotions, to overcome pride and
vainglory. Turnus mocks this ideal as he gloats in the blood of his

triumph. Furthermore, the belt that he rips from Pallas' body carries

a highly significant scene which intensifies the drama and brutal irony

28
Of the act. It shows "a band of fifty bridegrooms, foully slaughtered/
one wedding night, and bloodied marriage chambers" ( 1. 685-86). When
Pallas is slain, the symbolic marriage, or sacred trust, between the
philosophies of the race of Saturn and the race of Jupiter is violated.
As Pallas' belt would indicate, it has been horribly bloodied. And
although Turnus committed the deed, it is after all Aeneas who brought
Pallas out of Arcadia and into battle with the Latins. This belt with its
imagery of nuptial defilement is a prime example of the implicit mood
Of melancholy which opposes or doubts the plausibility of political
solutions, that fears positive law can never enter Arcadia without com-
promising innocence.

Turnus, then, is his most audacious when he takes the life of
Pallas. But Virgil is careful not to leave this portrait of Turnus as it
is, so obviously unsympathetic. Consequently, from this point most
of his poetic skills seem guided by a desire to see Turnus as sympathetic,
though for the most part ironically so. His death, certainly necessary
to the good of humanity, does not signify, however, an unqualified
celebration, for where there is gain there is loss, and with the death
of Turnus is lost a mode of hero that carries with it a dignity and
personal pride that for all its limitations cannot help but be in some
ways profound.

Beginning with the council of Latin leaders in Book XI, Virgil casts
Turnus in a favorable, if ironic, light when in opposition to Drances,

who is "just as spiteful as before/ spurred by the strings of his insidious

29

envy / of Turnus' glory" (I. 444-445). The characterization of Drances
adds significantly to the ambivalent feelings Virgil holds for Turnus.
Certainly it would seem that Drances' argument is the correct one, for
he calls for peace: "let us beseech / Turnus, and beg his favor, that
he may / give way, forego his own right for the sake / of king and
homeland" (1. 47 2-75). He calls Turnus and justly so, the "source
and cause of all / these trials of Latium" (1. 477-478). And his words
appear tempered by reason:

There is no safety in war. What all of us are asking you,

Turnus, is peace. . .pity us,

your fellow citizens; put Off your pride

and, beaten, leave the field. We have seen enough

of death in our defeat, enough broad lands

stripped of their husband men (1. 478-488).
Yet every aspect of this speech is shadowed by the fact that Drances is
a bitter, resentful man, "lavish / with wealth and even more with words"
and of course, "low-born" on his father's side. His words are
described as "taunting" and he "heaps resentment high" (1. 451). The
speech which comes so near Virgil's, or at least Aeneas', sentiments
is little more than political rhetoric, shallow words from a shallow man.
Conversely, Turnus' answer is laced with the emotions of an irrational
man repulsed by the thought of defeat and subjugation:

But if something still remains

of our old courage, then I should consider

him happy in his trials and best of souls

who—to avoid the sight of such a peace-

would fall in death and gnaw the dust once and for all

(1. 550-555).

His words ring a familiar note: if there can be no peace with honor, then

30
there must be no peace at all, rather death with honor should be pre-
ferred, death in the name of "king and homeland. " This exchange is
rich with perplexing irony because the right words come from the wrong
mouth, and although the wrong words come from Turnus, he neverthe-
less appears victor by default. The scene, then unfolds with an irony
that justifies Turnus, who deceives himself, and dismisses Drances,
who speaks the truth.

This ironic sympathy follows Turnus to the battlefield. Book XII
depicts the noble death he has so long sought. In this book he is every-
thing that Aeneas might have been in Book II. The reader, therefore,
is provided with the other side of the coin. This is perhaps why Turnus
is elevated to such importance in the final books. Both sides of the
story must be told in order that they be weighed evenly. And in that
Turnus' responses are invariably the opposite of Aeneas' in every case
in which a similar situation occurs, Virgil provides a framework for
comparison.

In Book XII Turnus is the unquestionable underdog, and as such he
becomes sympathetic, but this sympathy. is partially ironic because, of
course, Turnus' suffering is self-initiated. That Virgil goes to great
lengths to make Turnus' suffering real, to give him a personal dimension
which cannot be dismissed easily after his death, heightens the sympathy,
but also intensifies the irony. One feels sympathy for his situation,
understands his resentment, enters into his pain as he watches his world

slip away, yet at the same time one feels all this could have been avoided

31
if not for his blind fury and arrogant pride. Both sympathy and a pervad-
ing irony accompany Turnus in practically every scene in which he
appears in Book XII.

Before leaving to meet Aeneas, Turnus gazes upon Lavinia, and
for the first time there is a hint of genuine love, which makes his
suffering that much more poignant, and his character that much more
sympathetic. Lavinia is pained by the spite of her mother, as well as
by the general sorrow Of things:

Lavinia's hot cheeks were bathed in tears; she heard

her mother's

words; and her blush, a kindled fire crossed

her burning face. And just as when a craftsman

stains Indian ivory with blood-red purple,

or when white lilies, mixed with many roses

blush, even such, the colors of the virgin (1. 88-94).
She is at once as a work of art and nature, both ivory and lily, beautiful
and delicate, innocent, a virgin stained with remorseful tears. This is
the beauty that incenses Turnus, ironically the face that fires his wrath,

ironic simply because his wrath prolongs and deepens her pain:

His love drives Turnus wild; he stares at his
Lavinia; even keener now for battle (1. 95-96).

When faced with a similar circumstance Aeneas overcame his passion
and left his Cruesa in Troy and Dido in Carthage.

When Turnus' sister tries to protect him from his impending
death, he delivers a speech that is reminiscent of many given by Aeneas

in Book II:

32

And shall I let the Latins' homes be leveled

The only shame my fate has yet to face

not let my sword refute the words of Drances'

Shall I retreat? Shall this land see me fleeing?

And after all is death so sad a thing? (1. 854-58).
At first Aeneas would not suffer unavenged death. He would have had
Helen's life and many others had he not overcome his bitterness:

Again I take
to arms and, miserable, long for death (Bk II, 1. 884-85).

Never
shall we all die this day without revenge (Bk II, 1. 906-07).

And Turnus, like Aeneas in Book II, is out of his mind with despair.
One overcomes his despair while the other does not:

Confused by these shifting images

of ruin, Turnus stood astounded, staring

and silent. In his deepest heart there surge

tremendous shame and madness mixed with sorrow

and love whipped on by frenzy and a courage

aware of its own worth (1. 886-91).
This passage recalls Aeneas' own panoramic view of destruction in Troy.
Another passage shows Turnus looking back from the battlefield to his
city much as Aeneas looked on Troy. The same implicit pathetic irony
can be seen working:

he turned his blurring eyes

upon the walls and from his chariot looked

back to that splended city. There a whirlwind

of flames was rolling on, storey by storey,

Skyward, and gripping fast a tower one

that he himself had built (1. 893-898).
Again, one senses his remorse, while also realizing his responsibility.

The pathetic irony in all these scenes separates Aeneas from

Turnus. Turnus in his blindness is unaware that he himself is leveling

33
all this destruction, which in turn is causing him so much grief. This
is the tragedy behind all passionate, impetuous action, for it inevitably
turns back on itself. Each time Turnus chooses rage and violence, as he
does when speaking to Drances, or when he sees Lavinia slipping away,
or when he experiences his city doing the same, he insures more death,
more burning cities. Aeneas, on the other hand, attempts to break this
cycle of vengeance. His methods are non- violent, peaceful:
You seek peace for the dead
and those cut down beneath the chance of battle?
But I would give that to the living too. I should not be
here if the fates had not made this my home
and place. I do not war
against your nation. But your King abandoned
our friendship; he preferred to trust himself
to Turnus' sword (Bk XI, 142-149).
He will not plunder the city, which was the Greeks' greatest offense.
He will not defile native gods, as did the Greeks in Troy; he will not
demand more than is prophecied:
I shall not subject Italians
to Teucrians, ask Kingdoms for myself:
both nations, undefeated, shall accept the equal laws
of an eternal compact:
their sacred rites, their gods shall be intact
(Bk XII, 255-59).

This last speech, delivered in the form of a prayer, "may the sun
be witness to my prayer, " gives divine credence to his method Of con-
quest, which is in fact no conquest, but a union or marriage.

The personal tragedy of Turnus is waged amidst or against the
powers of Providence. This power Aeneas understands, and humbled,

no longer is concerned with personal glory or vengeance. Blind

to the powers of Providence, Turnus still believes the ultimate

34
glory is to be won in the moment, the chance encounter which guarantees
equal fame in victory or defeat. In the final lines of the poem these
two great heroes of different codes meet.

The struggle is multi-leveled. Aeneas fights Turnus while at the
same time battling himself, who at one time looked very much like
Turnus. Turnus struggles with Aeneas as well as his own "tremendous
shame and madness mixed with sorrow / and love. " Aeneas seeks to
overcome his passion, Turnus only to satisfy it: "I beg you, let/ me
rage this madness out before I die" (1. 905- 6). Aeneas fights for all
men, Turnus for himself. A familiar simile is used to dramatize
Turnus' selfish struggle. He is compared to aloosed boulder causing
indiscriminate destruction, which "with a mighty thrust / drives down
the slope and sounding upon the earth / rolls woods and herds and men
along its course" ( 915-17). Again woods, herds, and men signify the
disrupted pastoral. The conflict, at its most profound, pits Turnus'
vain attempt for glory against all the cosmos. The full impact of this
vain attempt is demonstrated in yet another simile, which describes the
frightening futility of Turnus' position:

Just as in dreams of night when languid rest
has closed our eyes, we seem in vain to wish
to press on down a path, but as we strain
we falter weak; our tongues can say nothing,
the body loses its familiar force, no voice, no
word, can follow (I. 1209-1214).
All of fate is closing in, "so whatever / courage he calls upon to find a

way / the cursed goddess keeps success from Turnus" (1. 1214-16). The

path of escape eludes Turnus, though he frantically seeks it. As the

35

cosmos descends one envisions Turnus' movements to be in slow motion
becoming slower until he is frozen, restricted by his own limited
consciousness, which has refused to acknowledge the realities around
him. At this point he is a pathetic, remorseful figure, humbled by his
own fears:

Then shifting feelings overtake his heart,

he looks in longing at the Latin ranks

and at the city, and he hesitates

afraid (1. 217-20).
He is beaten by fate, and recognizing this, his tragedy is complete but
for his death. And though it is ultimately fate or the cosmos that
defeats Turnus, it is finally, and with the deepest irony, Aeneas, who,
not as the instrument of fate, nor as the new hero of Roman humility,
compassion and restraint, but as one man acting and sounding very much
like his former self, slays Turnus. The tension at the end of the poem
is not resolved, but intensified, for if Aeneas cannot overcome his
passion, the question arises as to the plausibility of anyone ever reach-
ing this ideal, anyone ever being able finally to "keep the measure. "
It appears that Virgil understands the difficulty of his ideal as well as
the limitations of men. There is a provocative line spoken by the
Trojan warrior, Nisus, that perhaps by nature of its directness reaches
out and encompasses the final tone of a poem that must remain
ambiguous:

is it

the gods who put this fire in our minds

or is it that each man's relentless longing,
becomes a god to him? (Bk X, 1. 243-46).

36
Perhaps it is Virgil's own relentless longing for a golden age of peace
that drives him to believe in Aeneas, but perhaps it is his own more
profound, if more melancholy, understanding that this golden age is
at last a fading ideal, another relentless longing of men, which finally
does not allow him to Create a totally new hero, one who is clearly
possessed of an unqualified right to re-encounter, rediscover, indeed

recreate Arcadia.

II
In relation to the overall development of the heroic tradition, the
success or failure of Aeneas to fulfill the lofty idealism of Virgil's
vision of heroism is not as important as the nature of the vision itself.
Certainly humility and sacrifice, the fundamental elements of the
Virgilian vision of heroism, have a substantial effect on succeeding

heroic poetry. Virgil demonstrated in the Aeneid that, at least ideally,

 

humility and sacrifice as well as a social and spiritual awareness can be
integrated in one man to form a unique picture of heroism to which
Renaissance England would respond actively, primarily for its ready
adaptibility to Christian thought.

The political, cosmic and religious realities of Renaissance
England, much like those in Virgil's Rome, go a long way toward deter-
mining the essential nature of Spenserian heroism. The hero of the

first book of the Faerie Queene is the champion of Christ and the

 

protector of the Crown; the greater good is now Christianity and the
English monarchy. Like Aeneas, Red Cross Knight is the humble
instrument of a divine purpose when he slays the dragon. This
symbolic confrontation with the satanic elements of the world is meant
to free the spiritually infected Eden, which all men internally possess.
Red Cross Knight's quest is a model for what must be experienced

by all men. He is the hero in each man that must understand his own
significance and responsibility, that must free himself so as to bring

37

38
spiritual strength to others. Red Cross Knight is also St. George the
dragon- slayer, patron saint of England, and so gains national or political
significance. And as the liberator of Eden he is Christ, the Saviour of
man. Spenser's epic is a tribute to the glory of Christ and the sanctity of
England, much as Virgil's epic is a tribute to the splendid simplicity
of the pastoral ideal and sanctity of Rome to protect and perpetuate it.
And just as Aeneas undergoes a process of education, so Red Cross
Knight experiences a like process, whereby he learns to subordinate
individual goals, desires and fantasies to the larger purpose, which is
accomplished by obedience and loyalty to both God and Queene.

At the beginning of Book I Red Cross Knight, brimming with
anticipation, is riding across an open plain. Young and fresh from the
plow and field, his life has known little excitement, and it is with
zealous and well-meaning intent that he sets out upon a "great
adventure." But at this time, though the Knight be well-intentioned,
Spenser carefully points out early signs of an ill- fated and misguided
pride, which seeks out the challenge of encounter for its own sake. His
battles with Sansfoy and Sansjoy are instances of this type of encounter.
The Knight's innocence is shown in obvious contrast to the armor on his
back:

Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine
The cruell markes of many a bloudy fielde
Yet arrnes till that time did he never wield
(Bk 1, i, 1).11
Though the armor, which bears the red cross, symbolic of Christ's

death on the cross and the struggle of good against evil, has borne the

39
battles of many heroes and will hear more beyond the death of George,
the Knight himself is new to the struggle. He is now merely George the
plowman, a man of misinformed innocence and vulnerable naiveté. The
agitated state of the horse "which did chide his foaming bitt/ As much
disdayning to the curbe to yield" (Bk 1, i, I) also reflects the dangerous
state of overly excited energy the Knight experiences as he places a
personal quest to prove himself a brave knight before the greater quest
to slay the dragon and free Una's parents, Adam and Eve, from
enthrallment.

Red Cross Knight, like Aeneas, progresses toward the realiza-
tion of his significance to the workings of history. This progression
begins when in his young rashness, he immediately leads Una off the
path of righteousness into an ominous forest "whose loftie trees yclad
with sommers pride / Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide /
Not perceable with power of any starre" (Bk 1, i, 7). In this darkness
separate from heavenly light, they come to the cave of Errour. In the
region of Errour the wiser Una warns Red Cross Knight against too
impetuous action. She is well aware of the Knight's over-zealous desire
to wage battle, as well as his inexperience to do so successfully:

Be well aware, quoth then that Ladie milde,

Least suddaine mischiefe ye too rash provoke:

The danger hid, the place unknowne and wilde,
Breedes dreadfull doubts: Oft fire is without smoke
And perill without show: therefore your stroke

Sir knight with-hold, till further triall made.

Ah Ladie (said he) shame were to revoke

The forward footing for an hidden shade:

Vertue gives her selfe light, through darkenesse for to wade.
(Bk 1, i, 12).

40
His rather naive answer, implies that virtue will take care of itself.
His well-intentioned, but misinformed innocence that does not allow for,
or underestimates, the destructive, beguiling powers of evil. In any
event despite warnings from Una and their companion, the dwarf, Red
Cross Knight rushes into the cave "full of fire and greedy hardiment"
(Bk 1, i, 14). This particular description emphasizes the passions of the
Knight out of control. Hot tempered and greedy, the young Knight is like
the passionate Aeneas who craved the blood of the Greeks. Though the
circumstances are quite different, the actions of both warriors are not
in the best interests of those who must be protected. Both potential
heroes act prematurely, Aeneas to avenge the loss of his city and the
defeat of his people, Red Cross Knight to prove his worthiness in battle.
The feelings of Virgil and Spenser toward this type of behavior are the
same, though Spenser's are much less clouded by political scepticism
and philosophical melancholy. There is no doubt that as long as Red
Cross Knight's actions are "full of fire and greedy hardiment, " he moves
from his purpose and acts not for the benefit of humanity as the agent of
Christ, but as the agent of his own pride and purpose. When Red Cross
Knight enters the cave of Errour, he commits intellectual error, which
is implied by the books and pamphlets in the vomit of Errour, and
separates himself from the wisdom of Una for a time and is nothing more
than brute force. Immediately, he is caught within the grasp of Errour,
striving to regain his lost freedom. And only after Una cries out to him,

reminding him of his purpose, is he able to free himself and slay Errour:

41

His lady sad to see his sore constraint,

cride out, Now now Sir Knight, shew what ye bee,

Add faith unto your force and be not faint:

Strangle her, else she sure will strangle thee

(Bk 1, i, 19).

The relationship between Red Cross and Una is established. Without
her he is separated from God's truth and remains only blinded force.
Of course, Red Cross must realize the full implications of this bond
before he can successfully battle the dragon. This relationship is not
unlike certain aspects of Aeneas' relationship to his father, who
supplies the wisdom and guidance to an Aeneas who is physically, though
not yet spiritually, strong enough to sustain the trials that must be

endured on his way to Latium. Due to the rigid allegory of Book I of the

Faerie Queene, the relationship between Red Cross and Una is much

 

more clearly defined than the relationship between Aeneas and
Anchises, though some similarities are apparent; in both cases it is
the one who encourages the Other in moments of waning strength, courage
and confidence.

Red Cross is successful in his battle against Errour, and Una
praises his valor:

His Ladie seeing all, that chaunst, from fare

Approcht in hast to greet his victorie,

And said, Faire knight, borne under happy starre,

Who see your vanquisht foes before you lye;

Well worthy be you of that Armorie,

Wherein ye have great glory wonne this day,

And proou'd your strength on a strong enimie,

Your first adventure: many such I pray,

And henceforth ever wish, that like succeed it may
(Bk 1, i, 27).

42
But his first adventure is not quite worthy of the "great glory" bestowed
upon him. During the struggle Spenser describes the Knight's fighting
form and attitude in unflattering terms. He is said to attack the Off-
spring of Errour with "clownish hands, " and though his life, and there-
fore Una's, are in serious peril, he is "fearefull more of shame / Then
of the certaine perill he stood in" (Bk I, i, 24). His pride is more
important than his life, again like Aeneas, who sought revenge in order
to save face in defeat, rather than take the rational course and save
the lives of his family and people. Thus, though the words of Una seem
at first to give a dimension of true heroism to the young Knight's actions,
in light of the actual events her words seem somewhat premature, if not
unintentionally ironic. Perhaps both Red Cross and Una have yet to
understand the deeper dimensions of heroism. Primarily, this first
encounter has been a test of physicalstrength and courage. The next
tests will be of a different nature. Now the enemy becomes more
deceptive, less visible. Una has said that fire is not always preceded
by smoke, and in the case of Archimago and Duessa, she is more
precise than she herself realizes. Both Una and Red Cross follow
Archimago to his hermitage. Here they are divided, faith from
strength, separation being the most dramatic way for Spenser to convey
the essential need one has for the Other. But before this happens the
Knight experiences a series of mental states he is shown ill-equipped to
handle. Disturbed by the erotic dream Archimago plants in his mind,
Red Cross wakes to discover a weeping figure who appears to be Una

conjured up by the magic of Archimago. She is anxious for the

43

demonstrated love of the Knight, to which he responds by nearly slaying
her in her disgrace. Aside from the obvious disappointment he feels for
protecting what appears a less than worthy charge, he responds par-
tially from guilt and astonishment over his own lustful dreams. Rather
than question the possible deception, the Knight is more concerned that
his fight earlier that day was, and future fights will be, waged in vain:

Long after he lay musing at her mood,

Much grieved to think that gentle Dame so light,

For whose defense he was to shed his blood

(Bk 1, i, 55).

Though the encounter with Errour may have been successful, these later
tests of mental and emotional strength the Knight fails. He is
impetuous, unable to recognize deceit and too ready to judge Una given
his own sexual weakness vanity and pride. These faults are compounded
the next morning when Red Cross discovers what appears to be a faith-
less Una in the embrace of a young squire:

All in amaze he suddenly up start

With sword in hand, and with the Old man went;

Who soone him brought into a secret part,

Where that false couple were full closely ment

In wanton lust and lewd embracement:

Which when he saw, he burnt with gealous fire,

The eye of reason was with rage yblent,

And would have slaine them in his furious ire,

But hardly was restreined of that aged sire

(Bk 1, ii, 5).

His immediate response is violence. His passions released, a jealous
rage overpowers reason. He wishes to strike out, and would have

ruthlessly, had not Archimago stayed him. Nevertheless, Red Cross

must vent his anger, so he flees, "flying from his thoughts and

44
gealous fear" (Bk 1, ii, 12). Within this metaphor the actual enemies of
the Knight emerge: ignorance and pride. The Knight has moved from
intellectual to spiritual error, and from this point on the growing
desolation and bleakness of a life separate from the truth of God is time
and again dramatized. As the Knight falls further and further from Una,
he falls deeper and deeper into the isolation of his own ignorant pride,
unable to rid himself of the "gealous fear" and wild thoughts that began
his flight.

Separated from Una, Red Cross is vulnerable to the temptations
and failings of a man without faith. He becomes little more than warrior
without purpose or higher intent. It is nOt surprising, then, that his
first encounter is with the knight, Sansfoy, who rides with Duessa, Una's
antithesis. The deceitful Duessa is the ironic reward of a victory of the
faithless over the faithless. Red Cross rushes into this fight with the
same naive impetuousness he exhibited against Errour. This time,
however, his rash action stems from something other than youthful pride.
Now the deep psychological wounds, and the resultant displaced anger he
holds for Una drives him into foolish battle, "Spurring so hate with rage
dispiteous" (Bk 1, ii, 15). He fights as a ram "with ambitious pride"

(Bk 1, ii, 16), with animal force for the right to possess falsehood. The
Knight wins, and yet by doing so, further solidifies the irony of his position.
Throughout his spiritual development, he is able to defeat the Sarazin
Knights, but each time he moves away victorious, it is as though he takes

on the traits of the conquered. In defeating Sansfoy his position of

45
faithlessness becomes more pronounced and his descent to despair
hastened.

The Knight's actions convey a sense of confused and finally negative
or sinful purpose. His responses continually are the result of a weak-
ness in himself, be it ignorance, passion, or pride. He fights Errour
to prove his untested strength and courage despite the fact that it places
Una in unnecessary danger. Certainly from jealousy he flees from what
he assumes to be an unfaithful Una, but perhaps more subtly, he flees
from his own sense of aroused passion, passions admittedly stirred by
Archimago, but nonetheless, felt by the Knight, who is forced to deal
with them. So in part he flees from his own fantasies, which he sees
materialized in the "1er embrace" of the false Una and the squire. And
finally, in hope of redeeming the failure of having lost his charge,
maddened by jealousy and perplexed and frightened by lust, he enters an
ironic fruitless battle with Sansfoy. It is intellectual error that the
Knight carries from the cave of Errour, jealousy and distrust, other
kinds of error, that carry him from a feigned cheating Una, and faith-
lessness that carries him to Sansfoy. His motives range from naive but
well-intentioned innocence to jealous and infuriated spite.

The passions of Red Cross aroused, he proves an easy prey for
Duessa:

He in great passion all this while did dwell,

More busying his quicke eyes, her face to View,

Then his dull eares, to heare what she did tell
(Bk 1, ii, 26).

Duessa appeals to all that Red Cross thinks he needs to recover from

46

his past failings. He wins her with his strength, is taken by her beauty
and is flattered by her compliments:

Faire seemely pleasaunce each to other makes,

With goodly purposes there as they sit:

And in his fancy he her takes

TO be the fairest wight, that lived yit

(Bk 1, ii, 30).

She soothes his vanity, bolsters his pride and awakens his lust. The
Knight, immersed now in self-indulgence, perhaps feeling justified or
having been betrayed by Una, is led to the city of Pride. But prior to
entering this city, he meets Fradubio, and Spenser uses one more
exchange to delineate the degree to which the Knight is blinded without
the resources of Una. Red Cross hears his own story repeated on the
lips of Fradubio, and yet is unable to comprehend, made stupid by "sad
fear and ghastly dreriment" (Bk I, ii, 44). His only response is to get
away from this "living tree" as quickly as possible, "That from the
blond he might be innocent" (Bk I, ii, 44). The dramatic irony is clear;
the Knight, already stained by guilt, returns to Duessa.

Canto IV begins with a narrator's heed to other knights to be
forewarned of the failings of Red Cross lest they stumble into the same
pitfalls. Red Cross is at this point every man representing all
vulnerable men in the midst of a corrupt world, striving for redemption.
Unlike Christ, he is capable of failure, sin and finally damnation. His
path to salvation is not unconditional, but as he overcomes weakness,

vulnerability and sin, he draws nearer the ideal of heroism. His degen-

eration and ultimate regeneration constitute an education for all men.

47
Becoming a model for heroism in an infected world, he resembles

regenerate man in Paradise Lost.

 

Duessa leads Red Cross through a corrupt world that has beaten
its path to the house of Pride:
Great troupes of people traveild thitherward
Both day and night, of each degree and place,
But few returned, having scaped hard,
With balefull beggerie, or foule disgrace,
Which ever after in most wretched case,
Like loathsome lazars, by the hedges lay
(Bk 1, iiii, 2).
Again the ignorant pride of the Knight clouds his vision as he moves
toward the city, oblivious to these warnings of indiscriminate ruination.
The house itself "without morter laid / Whose wals were high, but
nOthing strong, nor thick" (Bk 1, iiii, 4), is without substance of founda-
tion. The irony of this house is directed to the young Knight's own con-
dition. Of the house Spenser laments:
It was a goodly heape for to behould,
And spake the praises of the workmans wit,
But full great pittie, that so faire a mould
Did on so weake foundation ever sit
(Bk I, iiii, 5).
Red Cross Knight, himself, full of pride and the blinding passions of
jealousy, spite and lust is "a goodly heape for to behould, " but rests
on a weak foundation of force, separate from faith, temperance and
moderation. Without Una, Red Cross is without substance, purposeful
intent. He is a wasted creation of the divine "workmans wit. " Within

this house the Knight prepares to fight Sansjoy. The description of his

preparation is an ironic foreshadowing of what he will be:

48

The noble hart, that harbours vertuous thought,

And is with child of glorious great intent,

Can never rest, until it forth have brought

The eternall brood of glorie excellent

(Bk 1, v, I).

This passage gives an account of the noble heart the Knight will possess by
Canto X. At this point, however, he has far from a "noble hart, that

'9

harbours vertuous intent. The reference is mostly ironic, for it con-
trasts the less-than-noble intent of Red Cross, who remains concerned
with how he might gain as much personal honor as possible in what
seems little more than a grudge match with Duessa as the spoils. Red
Cross' "noble hart" is now the source of "restlesse passion" which "did
all night torment. / The flaming corage of that Faery Knight, Devizing,
how that doughtie turnament/ with greatest honour he atchieven might"
(Bk 1, v, 1). The Knight still seeks glory for its own sake, and therefore
his presence in the house of Pride.

Time and again the setting, in this case the house of Pride,
reflects allegorically the mental make-up of the Knight. A like allegor-
ical setting is used when the Knight is caught unaware by Orgoglio and later
when tempted to suicide by Despaire. The Knight's fight with Sansjoy is
shaded by the walls that surround it. Again the Knight can only lose in
victory. Ironically, Duessa urges Red Cross on, her call clarifies his
purpose, which is to protect, as she says, "Thine the shield, and I, and
all" (Bk 1, v, 11). These words revive him from his swoon:

Soone as the Faerie heard his Ladie speake,
out of his swowning dreame he gan awake,
And quickning faith, that earst was woxen weake,

The creeping deadly cold away did shake
(Bk 1, v, 12).

49
The sequence is an ironic reminder of the first canto, when Una's words
saved the Knight from defeat. The incident parodies the first canto,
and in doing so reveals the depth of spiritual ignorance to which the
Knight has fallen. And when Sansjoy disappears, Red Cross shows an
almost uncontrollable lust for blood, reminiscent of Aeneas in Book II

and Turnus in the latter books of the Aeneid:

 

Not all so satisfide, with greedie eye
He sought all round about, his thirstie blade
To bath in bloud of faithlesse enemy

(Bk 1, v, 15).

After the dubious victory, dramatic irony is again employed as
the Knight falls before this questionable Queen on "lowly knee" thinking
to greatly advance "his gay chevalree" (Bk 1, v, 16). Of course his
chivalry has not been advanced, and the Knight, in proving his strength
and skill in battle, has exposed ignorant pride. At this point he under-
stands only that Una has mocked him, his pride insulted, his Queen
failed. In light of all of this he fights meaningless battles if only to
prove his ability. The passionate need to slay Sansfoy and gain Duessa,
to slay Sansjoy and protect her shows an attempt to re-establish his
integrity. Each man fails to or refuses to realize the original fault lies
within himself; that by striking out rather than more courageously look-
ing within, he jeopardizes not only his own life but the lives of many
others as well. Each acts out of unenlightened passion, falling deeper

into an abyss of faithlessness and self-deception. Though the Knight

finally recognizes the danger he faced prior to his escape from the house

50

of Pride, this understanding hardly enlightens him, for all he can do in
his freedom is lament the loss of Duessa and the unfaithful Una:

Yet sad he was that his too hastie speed

The faire Duess' had forst him leave behind;

And yet more sad, that Una his deare dreed

Her truth had staind with treason so unkind

(Bk 1, vi, 2).

Still unable to see through the disguise of Duessa or the truth about Una,
his experiences seem to have taught him little.

The Knight's degeneration morally and now physically continues
in Canto VII. Duessa finds him worn, resting and unarmed. And here
the Knight, like the Nymph of the fountain who "sat downe to rest in
middest of the race" (Bk 1, vii, 5), sits, quest abandoned, careless and
inattentive, vulnerable to the attack of Orgoglio. Allegorically his
present state summons the giant, who merely reflects the Knight's carnal
pride:

Poured out in loosnesse on the grassy ground,

Both carelesse of his health, and of his fame:

Till at the last he heard a dreadful sound

(Bk I, vii, 7).

Spenser is careful to show the cause and effect relationship between the
carnal pride of the Knight and the appearance of Orgoglio. The Knight
is enthralled by his own pride. Caught terribly off guard, with "unready
weapons, " he is little match in a fight:

But ere he could his armour on him dight,

Or get his shield, his monstrous enimy

With sturdie steps came stalking in his sight

(Bk 1, vii, 8).

This time physical strength fails, as his mind, infected by deceit and

51

ignorance can no longer guide an unprotected and weakened body. Red
Cross takes both a physical and emotional beating:

Disarmed, disgrast, and inwardly dismayde

And eke so faint in every joynt and vaine,

Through that fraile fountaine, which him feeble made,

That scarsely could he weeld his bootlesse single blade

(Bk 1, vii, 12).

Thus, he lands in the dungeon of his own sickened soul, a prisoner to
the very pride and passion he was unable to recognize and arrest in
himself. The Knight is of course saved by heavenly grace. By allowing

this to occur, Spenser brings the principle of grace into the hero and

heroic quest that is not altogether present in the Aeneid. Grace is that

 

principle or gift of God that comes in the form of divine aid for the
faltering or weak in heart who are for the most part well-intentioned in
spirit. Grace is perhaps the Christian poet's answer to the pre-
Christian epic poet's use of divine intervention. But more specifically,
it is something much more religious and occurs much less frequently.
It is grace that leads a man to humility, makes him aware of his own
limitations and the unlimited powers of compassion and forgiveness held
by God. This power saves the Adam in Red Cross. Spenser begins
Canto VII by saying as much:

Ay me, how many perils doe enfold

The righteous man, to make him daily fall?

Were not, that heavenly grace doth him uphold,

And stedfast truth acquite him out of all,

(Bk 1, viii, 1).

Una or "steadfast truth" has pursued the Knight throughout the poem:

"Her love is firme, her care continuall" (Bk 1, viii, 1). She is the Truth

52
that through heavenly grace has been restored to a spiritually deteriorat-
ing Red Cross Knight. But presently he can think of nothing but a quick
death that must relieve him of this living death into which he has fallen,
a plaint which foreshadows his colloquy with Despaire. The relationship
between pride and despair is fundamental to the spiritual decay of the
hero. A pride which denies the grace of God must necessarily result
in the desolation of despair.

Reunited with Truth and aided by grace the Knight begins his
regeneration, but not before "his pined corse. . . A ruefull spectacle of
death and ghastly drere" first encounters the final obstacle before
completely climbing out of that dungeon of living death. Although
heavenly grace saves the hero from tOtal Oblivion, Red Cross must
take alone the final steps toward God. These final steps are ones of
psychological introspection, recognition of guilt and genuine remorse
which lead directly to humility, consequent spiritual regeneration and
final heroic contemplation of universal truth and man's relation to it.

Red Cross confronts the figure Despaire, "A man of hell',’ whose
dwelling is "low in an hollow cave /Farre underneath a croggie clift
ypight/ Dark, dolefull, drearie, like a greedie grave /That still for
carrion carrcases doth crave" (Bk 1, ix, 33). The imagery of desolation
and death recalls the cave of Errour and the dungeon of Orgoglio, and
each scene with escalating intensity suggests the bleak cavernous
regions to which man may descend in a state of self- loathing and over-

whelming shame. Again the presence of human misery and death make

53
up the allegorical landscape which reflects the mental condition of the
Knight. His first response to Despaire is consistent with past action,
as he flares up in anger and desire for revenge at the sight of the
bleeding corpse of Sir Terwin:
With fine zeale he burnt in courage bold
Him to avenge, before his blood were cold
(Bk 1, ix, 37).
Despaire for the moment avoids the blow by turning this wrath back
upon the Knight. He does this using rhetoric in a Satanic way, which
persuasively argues that death by suicide is a necessary, if not desirable,
end to a life which offers little more than an inevitable cycle of trans-
gression and remorse:
Is not short panic well borne that brings long ease
And layes the soule to sleep in quiet grave?
Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas
Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please
(Bk 1, ix, 40).
In light of the Knight's history the proposition of repose is inviting,
especially given Despaire's next argument:
The longer life, I wote the greater sin,
The greater sin, the greater punishment. . .
For he, that once hath missed the right way
The further he doth goe, the further he doth stray
(Bk 1, ix, 43).
First, there is the implicit irony that Despaire could not purposely mis-
interpret the Christian doctrine without first understanding it. Despaire
relies primarily on these two arguments: first that "Death is the end

of woes" or that there will be no atonement; second, that there is no

hope of forgiveness or mercy, for once one sins, the process of

54

degeneration is irreversable, "the further he doth goe the further he
doth stray. " The implicit contradiction is of course that one cannot hope
for escape in death if a life of sin is to be punished. And, on the other
hand, if one need only die to escape punishment, then there is no cause
to lament or fear a sinful life, indeed, no cause to cut it short.
Despaire makes no mention of the soul of man in his first argument and
no mention of grace or mercy in the second. The Knight, failing to
realize Despaire's deliberate omission, is overcome by regret, guilt,
shame, fear, and chooses suicide as the only end to his pain. And
although Una prevents the suicide, her presence does not prevent Red
Cross initially from entering the cave of Despaire. She remains united
with Red Cross primarily due to the aid of heavenly grace and not the
Knight's own awakened spirit. This union he has yet to understand and
internalize. He is still a victim of poor judgment, and it is up to Una
to point out the flaws in Despaire's arguments:

Come, come away, fraile, feeble, fleshly wight,

Ne let vaine words bewitch thy manly hart,

Ne divelish thoughts dismay thy constant spright.

In heavenly mercies hast thou not a part?

Why shouldst thou then despeire, that chosen art?

Where justice growes, there grows eke greater grace,

The which doth quench the brond of hellish smart,

And that accurst hand-writing doth deface.

Arise, Sir knight arise, and leave this cursed place.

(Bk 1, ix, 53).
The Knight has forgotten the justice and grace of God that can

purge a truly repentant man. Only the last remnant of faith saves him

from that final, irreversible sin. The episode with Despaire marks the

55
lowest depth spiritually to which Red Cross Knight will fall. It is the
last in a series of confrontations that have been designed to depict his
disintegration. From this low point the pattern reverses, and a feeling
of ascension begins to dominate the course of the remaining narrative
as the strength of Una leads Red Cross to the house of Holinesse.
Spenser opens Canto X by again emphasizing the meaning of grace

and its place in every man's life. If Virgil begins the transformation of
the hero from inflated individualism in the void of unknowable fortune,
to the humble, predominantly obedient hero of Providence and society,
Spenser directs that transformation to the point where the individual is
nothing, or at best, sinful, if not the grateful recipient of God's grace:

Ne let the man ascribe it to his skill

That thorough grace hath gained victory.

If any strength we have it is to ill,

But all the good is Gods, both power and eke will

(Bk 1, x, 1).

Man is incapable Of anything but sin without the grace of God. There is
no Virgilian ambivalence of feeling concerning what is truly heroic, nor
is there doubt as to the divine nature and purpose of God. Those who
do not have faith in this divine nature are either ignorant or of the devil's
part. Distinctions of clarity, constant purpose and unqualified faith are
the most important ones between Virgilian and Spenserian heroism.
Virgil moves toward defining the hero as the servant-of a cause greater
than himself, but remains never wholly convinced of the realistic

application of his ideal. One reason for his doubt is perhaps the less-

than- clear focus his greater cause takes unless it be the Roman state,

56
which is perhaps a cause not always worthy of its servant. Spenser, on
the other hand, has no misgivings concerning his greater cause and as
a result his hero crystalizes, giving his poetry a clear picture of the
true Christian hero.

Beginning with submission and new found humility the Knight gains
access to the house of Pride's antithesis, the house of Holinesse. Here
the way is "streight and narrow" as he passes into a "Spacious court. . .
Both plaine, and pleasant to be walked in" (Bk 1, x, 6). Keeper of the
house is Caelia "as thought/ from heaven to come, or thither to arise"
(Bk 1, x, 4). She , like Arthur, represents a form of heavenly grace,
without which the Knight is beyond supplication. Caelia teaches the
Knight "celestiall discipline / And Opened his dull eyes, that light mOte
in them shine. " (Bk I, x, 18). In this canto the exchange is essentially
spiritual, one in which the Knight receives the divine knowledge necessary
to clarify his purpose and justify his existence. Caelia, and later the
figure of Contemplation, resemble Anchises and Michael, each a
spokesmen of revealed truth, a symbolic fountainhead of spiritual
guidance. Caelia, like Anchises and Michael, offers sustenance,
regeneration:

And that her sacred Booke, with bloud ywrit,
That noen could read, except she did them teach,
She unto him disclosed every whit,

And heavenly documdnts thereout did preach,
That weaker wit of man could never reach

Of God, of grace, of justice, of free will,

That wonder was to heare her goodly speach:
For she was able, with her words to kill,

And raise againe to life the hart, that she did thrill.
(Bk 1, x, 19).

57

Through Caelia, Red Cross is led to a vision, a pure state of
contemplation, of recognition. On this highest mount of contemplation
Red Cross envisions the city of God, the new jerusalem "that God has
built/ For those to dwell in, that are chosen his / His chosen people
purg'd from sinfull guilt" (Bk 1, x, 57). From these heights
Contemplation is able to give Red Cross Knight his last and most
important role-defining gift: a sense of vocation and identity. Realizing
that by necessity of this vocation, which involves a responsibility to Una
and the faithful, waiting for redemption, Red Cross descends from the
contemplative heights and now sustained on the strength of heavenly
grace and divine purpose, returns to Una.

In the final two cantos of Book I the allegory expands to a level of

apocalyptic prophecy. Allusions to the Book of Revelations underscore

 

the apocalyptic importance of the events. As the allegory moves beyond
the quest of one knight, the spiritual growth of one man, the universal
implications of Christian heroism are enacted. Graham Hough gives
an account of the allegory in the last two cantos:
Una's parents are only comprehensible as our common
parents, Adam and Eve, the types of human kind; their
land is Eden ravaged by the Fall. And Una as their
daughter cannot now be understood as Truth or Faith,
but only as the Church, the whole body of the faithful,
waiting to be redeemed; and the Red Cross Knight as
a type of Redeemer.
On one level of allegory, Red Cross Knight is a vulnerable man of a
corruptible nature. Like Adam, he is prone to sin, fallible, like Aeneas,

to mistake, unrestraint. On another level, Red Cross Knight comes to

58
represent Christ and the apocalyptic second coming. Leaving out the
obvious political significance of this struggle, Red Cross is also Saint
George, England's patron Saint, there remain, then, two levels of
meaning which complement each other in a way that say much about the
Christian hero and his relationship to Christ. As St. George fights
the dragon, he becomes less the man of corruptibility and more the man
of Christ, indeed, for the moment Christ himself, the Redeemer. The
more submissive and humble, the more ready to receive the grace of
God, the nearer Red Cross comes to the heroic ideal, which is Christ,
the final Redeemer of men.

With the culmination of the three- day battle, Spenser immediately
moves out of the prophetic mode. Red Cross Knight again becomes one
knight of many in a continuing struggle against Satanic elements in a
corrupt world. Also, the kingdom of Una's parents no longer represents
all of humanity waiting for redemption, but rather one corner of the
world, a world to which the Knight must return as is his obligation to

the Queen. Spenser, writing much of the first book of the Faerie

 

9_ti_e_e_ne in an heroic mode, quickly modulates to a prophetic or apoc-
alyptic mode in the final cantos, only to complete the book by returning
to the heroic mode. He does this in order to bind the Christian notion
of heroism in a fallen world to the ideal Christian hero, Christ.

If one phrase could be used to describe the heroism of Aeneas,

it would be pious resignation. In the Faerie Queene this pious resigna-

 

tion gains an intensified religious fervor. The almost fatalistic

59
resignation of Aeneas becomes in Red Cross Knight a spiritual sub-
mission. And the submission of the Christian hero to the will of God
is of such an extreme sort, that he not only performs in the name of
Christ, but is able to do so only with the benefit of grace. Evil is
accomplished by man, good, by God through man. Only when a man is
humble and truly submissive is the strength of God able to flow through
the veins, cleansing the mind, purging the spirit. The unheroic stands
as an obstacle before the grace of God; the Christian hero, ego dissolved,
receiver of grace, stands as the purified will of God made manifest in

a corrupt world.

III

In many ways Book I of the Faerie Queene presents an almost for-

 

mulaic equation for Christian heroism. At times this makes it impossible
to think of Red Cross in psychological terms the way one thinks of Satan

or Adam in Paradise Lost. Indeed Spenser does not intend that it should

 

be any other way. He is working in the strict manner of allegory toward
a workable definition of the Christian hero- redeemer. This definition
created by Spenser is in many ways similar to the concept of heroism

in Paradise Lost. Milton begins the composition of Paradise Lost with

 

 

the declared intention of transcending his predecessors philosophically,

or theologically, and artistically:

 

I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventrous son, I

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rime
(Bk 1, 1. 12-16).13

Soaring above the Aonian Mount, or more specifically beyond the poetry of
Homer and Virgil, Milton creates an heroic vision of his own which
centers in the regenerated spirit of Adam. In some ways a general

description of Paradise Lcst would resemble a Medieval morality play

 

with Satan acting as the agent of Hell, Christ the agent of Heaven, and
Adam the corruptible man capable of moving or being drawn in either
direction. Satan is the model of classical heroism perverted within the
Christian framework, and Christ is the ideal hero, a divine model for

man. Adam, as he matures, comes to recognize both standards for

60

61

what they represent, and chooses accordingly. The steps leading up that
choice, a progression not unlike the path Red Cross Knight follows
toward Christian heroism, lead Adam to a psychological crisis where he,
too, like Red Cross Knight, contemplates death, before submitting to
Divine mercy and justice. With Satan representing the old and Christ
the ideal new, a polarity is established from which Adam the Christian
man evolves as a realistic model for heroism. He becomes as Frye
writes, "What leaders of men were intended to be, peaceful patriarchs. "14

However, not before Milton goes to great lengths to develop, high-
light, and finally undermine a standard of heroism previously elevated
in the epic of Homer, and not wholly rejected in the epic of Virgil, does
he allow Adam to emerge as the Christian heroic prototype; that is,
the human sum "Of Patience and Heroic Martyrdom" (Bk IX, 1. 32). John

Steadman points out in his book Milton's Epic Characters: Image and

 

Idol that Milton's intent in Paradise Lost is "to define clearly the essence
of true heroism by contrasting it with spurious norms" thus, delineating
"genuine and counterfeit virtue, true and false standards of praise. "15
Steadman says that Milton to this end continually refers to heroic
prototypes in Homer, Hesiod, Statius and Virgil when speaking of Satan
and his compatriots. Satan is like Odysseus in guile, disguises and
rhetoric, and like Achilles and Turnus in wrath and thirst for vengeance.16
One conclusion Steadman draws is that Milton "by casting his devils in

the mold of classical heroes. . . achieves poetic imitation of the ancients,

yet simultaneously emphasizes the gulf between Christian and pagan

62
conceptions of heroic virtue. If Hell is classical, it is also heathen. "17
Although these points are helpful, they do not answer all the questions
that arise surrounding Milton's repeated allusions to antiquity. But for
the moment Steadman's argument will be pursued.
Certainly, Satan's character is in part based on the characters

of Odysseus, Achilles and Turnus. Chronologically, Milton's narrative
begins almost literally where Virgil's culminates. Satan, as a repre-
sentative of Homeric heroism as it is portrayed by Virgil in the body of
Turnus, has been told he must bow before the new King. The brightest,
most glorious angel in heaven is insulted by this request and organizes
a rebellion. Like Turnus, by refusing to submit to the greater will of
Providence, Satan sets the stage for war and the ideal opportunity to
exhibit his prowess, and if this prowess fails, then at the last there is
glory to be gained. The following speech of Satan resembles the speech
of Turnus to Drances. Satan has been told to give up, that his struggle
is useless and blasphemous. He replies:

Hast thou turnd the least of these

To flight, or if to fall, but that they rise

Unvanquisht, easier to t ransact with mee

That thou shouldst hope, imperious, and with threats.

To chase me hense? err not that so shall end

The strife which thou call'st evil, but wee style

The strife of Glorie: which we mean to win,

or turn this Heav'n it self into the Hell

Thou fablest (Bk VI, 1. 284-292).
Both Satan and Turnus are indignant as they feel slandered and cheated
of natural rights.

The substance of Satan's speech rings a familiar note. He speaks

of the tribute of glory for its own sake, and fame, the reward for great

63
prowess and courage. His words express a lust for fame born of
glorious deeds, whether they be waged in victory or defeat. As this
type of fame is Homeric, so the speech professes the Homeric code
of elevated individualism whereby the man is the only constant when
faced with an unjust or indifferent divinity. The poet's primary pur- \
pose of this battle in Heaven is to present this Homeric code in contrast \.
to Christian spirituality. The war in Heaven is perfect for this purpose I
because of the explicit absurdity of the battle which underscores the I.
absurdity of all like battles.
The battle is shown as little more than an Opportunity for Satan

to indulge in ludicrous fantasy. And the entire code, which calls for
war so that one man can realize and exhibit greatness, is subjected to
satire and irony. Such a code is revealed for its shallow and wasteful
nature. Milton points out the implicit faults of this code of heroism in
a passage which echoes similar misgivings held by both Virgil and
Spenser:

For strength from Truth divided and from Just,

Illaudable, naught merits but dispraise

And ignomine, yet to glorie aspires

Vainglorious, and through infamie seeks fame:

Therefore Eternal silence be thir doom

(Bk VI, 1. 381-85).

Not only can these words be applied to the actions of Satan, but they
stand as the total condemnation of classical heroic virtues, which
grow in part from this very aspiration to self- glory. The words

"strength from Truth divided" call to mind the central themes of both

the Aeneid and the first book of the Faerie Queene. Turnus is prowess

 

64
divided from the Providential fate of Aeneas; Red Cross is strength divided
from God's Truth. Turnus, Red Cross, and now Satan all seek glory in
what are vain pursuits.

For the remainder of Book VI Satan follows a course similar to
that of Turnus. Milton is careful to link Satan and the scenes around
him with similar scenes in Virgil's Aeneid. On the battle lines Satan
taunts his enemy with accusations of laziness and frivolity:

I see that most through sloth had rather serve,
Ministring spirits, trained up in feast and song;
Such hast thou arm'd, the Minstrelsie of Heav'n
(Bk VI, 1. 166- 68).
These taunts correspond to those leveled against the Trojans:
But you wear robes of saffron, ornamented
and gleaming purple; you like laziness,
and you delight in dances; and your tunics
have sleeves, your bonnets, ribbons. You indeed
are Phrygian women-hardly Phrygian men:
now go, prance through high Dindyma, there where
the twin-mouthed pipes delight familiar ears!
(Bk IX, 1. 820-26).
Neither Satan nor the Latins understand the ceremonial implications
of song and feast. Their values lie in war, destruction and pain. The
accusations they make capture only the surface reality and not the
spiritual significance of celebration and ritual. Satan's inability to
understand, or at least to admit to, anything beyond the surface reality
leads him from one stage of disintegration to the next. His belief that
physical force can overcome God causes his downfall. This reliance on
physical force marks his as well as Turnus' great failings as heroes.

Milton does much to associate Satan with Turnus. The early signs of

the war in Heaven are described:

65

Clouds began

To darken all the Hill, and smoak to rowl

In duskie wreaths, reluctant flames, the signe

Of wrauth awak't ' (Bk VI, 1. 56-59).
Virgil uses like imagery:

And here the Teucrians can see a sudden

Cloudbank that gathers with black dust and darkness

that rises from the plains (Bk IX, 1. 41-43).
And in the midst of this tumult Satan stands "before the cloudie Van /
On the rough edge of battel ere it joyn'd" (Bk VI, 1. 107-08). Turnus,
"at the center of the line, " projects his personage in what is described
as a "rolling mass. . .of gloom and darkness" (Bk IX, 1. 45-46). The
scenes are nearly identical with like moods of awesome foreboding.
When the two sides meet, Milton's angels are said to have "no thought
of flight / None of retreat" (Bk VI, 1. 236-37), and of his warriors Virgil
states "neither side / knew what was flight" (Bk X, 1. 1041-42). As
Milton's one battle scene continues to unfold, it looks more and more
like a Virgilian landscape. However, at the same time the atmosphere
is quite different, as it approaches the mock-epic, becoming more and
more absurd as angels, spiritual beings who cannot actually harm one
another, become very physical, throwing mountains and devising
ridiculous weaponry. Through the entire battle, Milton underscores the
absurdity of waging physical war on a spiritual plane. Aware of the
limitations of Homeric battle prowess as a viable trait of heroism
because of its stress of the physical, he presents it for its true value

in the battle of Heaven. When Satan is thrown to Hell, so is the Homeric

code of heroic prowess. At one point in the struggle Satan is wounded;

66

the scene is in many ways like the death of Turnus at the end of the Aeneid:

 

ten paces huge

He back recoild; the tenth on bended knee

His massie spear upstaid; as if on Earth

Winds under ground or waters forcing way

Sidelong, had push't a Mountain f rom his seat

Half sunk with all his Pines. Amazement seis'd

The Rebel Thrones, but greater rage to see

Thus foil'd thir mightiest (Bk VI, 1. 194- 201).
Virgil writes:

The giant Turnus,

struck, falls to earth; his knees bend under him.

All the Rutulians leap up with a groan,

and all the mountain slopes around reecho;

tall forests, far and near, return that voice

(Bk X11, 1. 1235-39).

Milton reconstructs this scene to give Book VI the atmosphere of class-
ical heroism, while at the same time undermining all claims to heroism
Satan might gain through the association by employing the mock-epic
which shows physical prowess to be truly unheroic, even ridiculous,
as it is used to confront God. What Milton seems to be doing in Book V1
is recreating the circumstances of the Aeneid, placing Satan in the role
of 'I‘urnus, God in the role of Providence and Messiah in the role of
Aeneas. He does this to finally complete what Virgil could not seem to;
that is, by recreating the circumstances in such a way that Satan can
appear nothing if not unheroic and dangerous to all concerned, Milton
sweeps away the unresolved ambiguities surrounding the character of
Turnus. Here, then, is an example of what Steadman sees as Milton's

imitation of the ancients so as simultaneously to remind one of the vast

difference between Christian and pagan heroism.

67
Milton continues his story beyond the banishment of Satan, leaving

the scenes of war, but not before God has summed up with stark realism
the futility of war:

Whence in perpetual fight they needs must last

Endless, and no solution will be found:

Warr wearied hath perform'd what Warr can do,

And to disorder'd rage let loose the reins

(Bk VI, 1. 693-96).
The content of his speech seems to indicate the necessity of war so as to
reveal its products, waste and desolation. The degeneration of Satan is
perhaps the greatest waste suffered as the result of his defiant act in
Heaven. The initial pathos and eventual inantiy of this degeneration
dominates much of the thematic content of the poem. It is a fall that
brings down with it Classical norms of heroism while allowing the spiritual
awakening of Adam, the new Christian hero.
C. S. Lewis traces Satan's decline succinctly:

From hero to general, from general to politician

to secret service agent, and thence to a thing that

peers in at bedroom or bathroom windows,

and thence to a toad, and finalig to a snake--

such is the progress of Satan.
If Satan begins as a hero, it is a hero of the stature of Hector or Turnus
that he most resembles. The likes of Hector and Turnus are of course
the "spurious norms" Steadman refers to as having the most in common
with the Satan that first appears in Hell. Satan, like the others, allows
his excessive pride to guide his steady decline. To save himself would

be to submit to God's will, and this submission would be defeat. Satan

must fall because he defies God, the true, just God of Christianity.

68
Turnus, like Satan, falls but nOt wholly for the same reasons. He does
not fall because he is necessarily a sinner or even in the wrong, but
rather because he is over-powered by the mightier forces of unknowable
Providence. The controlling powers of Virgil's universe are unlike the

Christian deity in Paradise Lost. As it was with Spenser, Milton

 

introduces an element of religious conviction nOt always present in the

Aeneid. This conviction is what makes it possible for Steadman to say

 

flatly that Milton fuses the Biblical notion of Satan with the classical
picture of heroic virtue. Where one is found wanting, so then must be
the other. 19 Though the directness of this statement seems an over-
simplification, it remains that, for Milton there can be no varying degree
of faith or conviction. One believes in the Saviour or one does not,

and though artistically Milton respects the classics, philosophically and
theologically he must disagree devoutly:

Since first this subject for Heroic Song
Pleas'd me long choosing, and beginning late;
Not sedulous by Nature to indite

Warrs, hitherto the onely Argument

Heroic deem'd, chief maistrie to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabl'd Knights

In Battels feign'd. . .

or to describe Races and Games,

Or tilting Furniture, emblazon'd Shields,
Impreses quaint, Caparisons and Steeds;
Bases and tinsel Trappings, gorgious Knights
At Joust and Torneament; then marshal'd Feast
Serv'd up in Hall with Sewers, and Seneshals;
The skill of Artifice of Office mean

Not that which justly gives Heroic name

To Person or to Poem (Bk IX, 1. 25-41).

In this lengthy passage Milton sweeps away with one motion the "spurious

norms" against which he contrasts and elevates the Christian ideal of

69
heroism. He does not tolerate the violence waged in the "name" of
heroic virtue. He undermines some of the finest epic poetry to his day,
all with the intention of offering a "higher Argument, " which lifts Adam
as the mutable complement of Christ, the realistic model for all men
to emulate in its stead. His battles, no longer leveled with sword and
shield, will be fought with the intellect, the spirit in a continual struggle
against the beguiling powers of Satan.

But before Milton dismisses all the various forms of heroism, he
constructs a drama in which this is done for him. All these forms of
heroism he integrates within Satan's psychology, allowing Satan with his
own words and actions to disintegrate them for him. By the time Milton
delivers the invocation of Book IX, Satan has already cleared the way,
prepared the reader for the profound rejection Milton makes. Milton's
invocation is merely a commentary on what Satan has already
dramatized.

Satan initially appears to possess all the essential traits of the
classical hero: great pride, physical strength and stature, leadership,
courage and self- reliance. Milton explicitly associates Satan and his
followers with the heroic legions of antiquity. He invites, indeed demands,
that the two are thought of as one. The rebel warriors of Hell are
described:

Anon they move

In perfect Phalanx to the Dorian mood

Of Flutes and soft Recorders; such as rais'd
To highth of noblest temper Heros old

Arming to Battel, and in stead of rage
Deliberate valour breath'd, firm and unmov'd

With dread of death to flight or foul retreat (Bk 1, 1. 549-55).

70

Satan stands before this a wesome troop which moves "in guise / Of
Warriors old. " (Bk, 1. 564-65), nearly overwhelmed by the spectacle:

And now his heart

Distends with pride, and hardning in his strength

Glories

(Bk 1, 1. 571-73).

One more time in this passage Milton underscores the similarities
between Satan and Turnus forcing them to a prominence that cannot be
ignored. The conspirators are compared to the "Heroic Race. . . That
faught at Thebes and Ilium, on each side / Mixt with auxiliar Gods"
(Bk 1, 1. 577-79). Initially, Milton intends Satan to be thought of as heroic
by classical standards. In this way early in Paradise Lost Milton
consciously gives the character of Satan a dimension of classical heroism.
This is done so that as Satan steadily declines from his original grandeur
and begins to represent the unambivalent threat which his conventional
type of heroism poses to the Christian universe, he collectively brings
down all the kinds of heroism on which he is modeled. When Satan
moves out of classical Hell and into the Christian realities of God's
dominion, his as well as all classical heroism, is diminished or eclipsed
by the brilliance of God and His creation.

Satan's greatest flaw lies in his continual inability to submit to what
he himself recognizes as genuine truth until a point is reached when this
truth is no longer recoverable. In Book I his words contain contradiction
and contrivance. Aware of the futility of his struggle, he incites his

followers to continue the �