ABSTRACT
In response to David Quint’s celebrated paradigm of traumatic repetition in the first six books of the Aeneid (Epic and Empire, 1993), this chapter investigates narrative moments in the second half of the poem where recollections of earlier trauma resurface, thus enhancing the destructive workings of furor, “madness.” I argue that Venus in her divine persona as war-goddess, Venus Victrix, plays a decisive causal part in the reiterations of violence. My case in point involves an episode late in Book 12, the Trojan attack upon the Latin capital (554–92), in which a sudden mental flashback to the fall of Troy arguably impels Aeneas to berserk rage. Within that passage, I examine one hitherto unexplained feature, the part played by Venus in triggering that sequence of events, and connect this instance of divine agency with the goddess’ equivocal position during the civil wars of preceding decades. Those considerations, in turn, may shed further light on the problematic ending of the poem.
