Vergil on Kingship: the first simile of the Aeneid

Abstract

At Aeneid 1.148–56 Neptune's stilling of the storm roused against Aeneas and the Trojans by Juno is compared with the calming of a mob by a great statesman: ac ueluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est seditio saeuitque animis ignobile uulgus iamque faces et saxa uolant, furor arma ministrat. tum pietate grauem ac meritis si forte uirum quem conspexere silent arrectisque auribus astant; ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet: sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, aequora postquam prospiciens genitor caeloque inuectus aperto flectit equos curruque uolans dat lora secundo. As has been often remarked, this simile, prominently placed as the first in the poem, is evidently programmatic for the value system of the Aeneid. The ‘pietate grauem ac meritis…uirum’ standing up to and defeating the violence of the mob gives a highly Roman rôle-model (not always successfully followed) for Aeneas, the destined hero overcoming the forces of irrationality, something confirmed by the details of the poem as well as the events of its plot; Aeneas is similarly proclaimed by the Sybil in the Underworld as ‘pietate insignis et armis’ (6.402), while the soothing words of the statesman to the mob (153 ‘ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet’) are clearly echoed in the soothing words Aeneas addresses to his storm-shaken sailors in the very next scene of the poem (197 ‘dictis maerentia pectora mulcet’).