ABSTRACT
Cloud-cover appears frequently in classical mythology as a means of obfuscation: for example, in the Iliad Aphrodite rescues Paris from his duel with Menelaus, having “covered him with thick mist” (ἐκάλυψε δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἠέρι πολλῇ,1 3.381), and Zeus similarly tells Hera he will enfold her in a cloud of gold (νέφος ἀμφικαλύψω | χρύσεον, 14.343-4), lest any of the other gods see them while they make love. The use of cloud-cover for concealment is related to the construction of imitative resemblances from clouds, such as in Book 10 of Vergil’s Aeneid, where Juno creates a false Aeneas to battle Turnus (tum dea nube caua tenuem sine uiribus umbram | in faciem Aeneae,2 “Then from a hollow cloud the goddess [makes] a thin shade in the appearance of Aeneas,” 10.636-7). This fabrication is modeled after Apollo’s false Aeneas who fights Diomedes in Book 5 of the Iliad: αὐτὰρ ὁ εἴδωλον τεῦξ᾽ ἀργυρότοξος Ἀπόλλων | αὐτῷ τ᾽ Αἰνείᾳ ἴκελον καὶ τεύχεσι τοῖον (“But Apollo of the silver bow fashioned a phantom likeness to Aeneas, and a similar likeness to his armor,” 5.449-50; Harrison 1991: 227). The Vergilian phantom, which is explicitly constructed of clouds, helps us understand its Homeric predecessor as cloud-like in its ephemerality.3 Elsewhere the appearance of eidola are similarly suggestive of pale imitation. In Iliad 23 when the shade of Patroclus appears to Achilles, it speaks of the other shades of the dead as eidola (εἴδωλα καμόντων, 72), phantoms or the diminished remnants of the once living.
