A line of Latin poetry in Manhattan
On a fine autumn morning, a hijacked passenger aircraft flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in New York. About fifteen minutes later, a second aircraft flew into the South Tower. Two other hijacked planes crashed in Washington DC and Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 innocent people were killed. On that day in 2001, the world changed for all of us.
The Manhattan monument that commemorates the victims of the 9/11 tragedy has on it a line of Latin poetry: ‘Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo’. This means ‘No day will ever erase you from the memory of time.’ The source is the Aeneid, a long poem written by the Roman poet Virgil to commemorate the Trojan hero Aeneas and his establishment of a settlement in Italy that would lead to the foundation of Rome.
The Aeneid was not just a tribute to the glorious past. It had contemporary political relevance. While Virgil was writing it, order was being restored in Rome and its dominions by Julius Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, after nearly a century of intermittent civil war. In the eyes of Octavian, honoured with the new title Augustus in 27 BC, the Aeneid was to celebrate the refoundation of Rome under himself as the first emperor.
This refoundation turned out to be extraordinarily successful. The Roman Empire survived in western Europe for more than four hundred years. In eastern Europe and what is now the Middle East, it lasted even longer, until the Ottoman conquest in 1453. Indeed, because the conquering sultan Mehmed II called himself ‘Kayser-i Rûm’ or ‘Emperor of Rome’, one could argue that the Roman Empire lasted right up until the sultanate was abolished in 1923. For this long-lived empire, the Aeneid became the founding myth. For many readers, even today, that aspect of the poem is central.
Who, then, are the people referred to as ‘you’ in that line inscribed on the Twin Towers memorial? In today’s context, the answer is simple: the nearly 3,000 victims. But in the context of the Aeneid, the answer is not what you might expect. So is this line a suitable choice for the memorial? I think it is, but for reasons that take us beyond what Virgil tells us about Rome, and towards what he tells us about the human condition.
The plot of the Aeneid
We first encounter Aeneas, the Trojan hero, when he and his small Trojan fleet are washed up by a storm on the coast of north Africa. They find themselves in the territory of Dido, the founding queen of Carthage in what is now Tunisia. Dido makes the Trojans welcome, and Aeneas tells her about his escape from Troy and his wanderings in quest of the land of Italy where, according to prophecy, he and his followers are to settle.
Virgil reminds us constantly of one quality in Aeneas: he is ‘pious’. ‘Piety’, for Romans in Virgil’s time, meant devotion to the gods, to one’s family, and to one’s country. Thus Aeneas always does, or tries to do, what the supreme god Jupiter wants, he carries with him the sacred objects that represent the city of Troy, and his attitude towards his father Anchises is one of humblest respect.
Dido falls in love with Aeneas, and he with her, although he never acknowledges this explicitly to her. He dallies in Carthage until Jupiter reminds him sternly of his destiny in Italy, where he is to marry the princess Lavinia and found a dynasty of rulers. So the pious Aeneas wrenches himself away from Dido, and she in despair kills herself as the Trojan fleet sails away.
On arrival in Italy, Aeneas is granted a visit to the underworld, where his dead father Anchises shows him some of the Roman leaders yet to be born, and impresses on him Rome’s destiny as a bringer of order and civilization to the world. Lavinia’s father, the Italian king Latinus, at first welcomes Aeneas. However, a trivial incident between the Trojans and the Italians leads to skirmishes. The Italian prince Turnus, who had been hoping to marry Lavinia himself, inflates these skirmishes into full-scale war.
The Trojans are penned inside a stockade by the seashore while their leader, Aeneas, seeks help from a neighbouring king, Evander. Help arrives, but there are still desperate battles to be fought. The outcome is finally decided in single combat between Aeneas and Turnus. Aeneas wounds Turnus in the leg, and has him at his mercy. Turnus concedes defeat, but Aeneas kills him anyway.
There the poem ends — or, rather, stops. We are not shown the predestined foundation of the new city out of which Rome will arise. We are not shown the marriage between Aeneas and Lavinia. In fact, Lavinia plays almost no part in the poem. She never speaks, and Aeneas never speaks to her. The poem ends not in reconciliation but in exhaustion and anger.
Was Augustus satisfied? Evidently, yes. The Aeneid quickly became part of the school curriculum, and continued so for as long as Latin remained on the syllabus for all educated people in the western world — that is, up until the twentieth century. Truly, Aeneas has never been erased from the memory of time. Yet the people in the poem that are addressed as ‘you’ in that quotation do not include Aeneas. Who are they, then? The answer is surprising, but it provides a clue to the fascination of this poem. Yes, triumph is undermined by grief. But, if we listen to Virgil carefully, we will hear him point towards something greater than both.
The ‘you’ that the poet addresses
Besieged within their stockade, and with their leader Aeneas absent, the Trojans are desperate. If only Aeneas can be warned, so that he can bring help! The young warrior Nisus devises a plan to sneak through enemy lines and get a message to Aeneas. His friend Euryalus insists on coming too. They present the plan to Aeneas’s worried lieutenants, and the offer is gratefully accepted.
All goes well at first. The enemy troops have been carousing, and are in a drunken stupour. Nisus and Euryalus, on their way through the enemy camp, take the opportunity to leave behind a bloody mess of corpses. Euryalus picks up as plunder a swordbelt and a splendid helmet. The two of them, by moonlight, thread their way through dense bush. But Euryalus, hampered by the extra armour that he is now carrying, falls behind. By the time Nisus realizes this, it is too late. Moonlight glinting on Euryalus’s stolen helmet has attracted the attention of a party of Italian soldiers. Euryalus is captured.
Nisus rushes back to rescue his friend. With two spear throws, he kills two of the enemy. The enemy leader, Volcens, is furious. Unable to see where the spears are coming from, he threatens to take revenge by killing Euryalus. Nisus, in panic, comes out into the open, shouting ‘No! It was all my idea! Kill me instead!’ But it is too late. As Nisus rushes upon him, Volcens stabs Euryalus in the ribs. Nisus is transfixed by Italian swords and spears. Yet he manages to plunge his sword into Volcens’s mouth before collapsing in death on top of his dead friend’s body.
The Italians, in mourning, carry Volcens away. But Nisus and Euryalus are decapitated. Their heads are stuck on long poles and paraded in front of the Trojan camp. The Trojans are forced to witness the gruesome proof of the mission’s failure.
So Nisus and Euryalus are not only killed but humiliated. Yet Virgil inserts four lines of lavish praise for them, including the line now inscribed on the Twin Towers memorial. It is the most lavish praise that Virgil bestows on anyone in the poem. Why? Why, in particular, do Nisus and Euryalus deserve it, rather than Aeneas?
More about Nisus and Euryalus
The night mission is not the first time that Nisus and Euryalus appear in the poem. They have already taken part in the funeral games held in Sicily to honour Aeneas’s father Anchises. The games are a light-hearted interlude before the Trojans’ final arrival on the Italian mainland.
Nisus and Euryalus are good runners. As the contestants in a footrace approach the finish, Nisus is in first place, Salius in second, Euryalus in third. But the track crosses a patch of ground that is wet with the blood of sacrificial animals. Nisus slips and flies headlong. Salius is about to overtake him — but Nisus deliberately trips Salius, so that Euryalus can overtake them both and come in first.
Salius complains: ‘Nisus tripped me deliberately! I should get the first prize!’ So does Euryalus concede, in sportsmanlike fashion? No. He says nothing. His eyes brim with tears. The assembled Trojans pity the handsome boy. They insist that he should be allowed to keep the first prize. Aeneas, as umpire, agrees, but grants a special compensatory prize to Salius.
Now Nisus splutters indignantly, covered in mud and gore: ‘If Salius gets a prize because he tripped, what about me? If I hadn’t slipped, I would have won!’ Everyone laughs, and Aeneas gives a special prize to him too.
What are we to make of Nisus and Euryalus, then? In the footrace, they are bad losers. During the night mission, instead of getting through the enemy camp quickly, they waste time on a killing spree. Euryalus’s greed for plunder leads to his capture. Nisus, seeing his friend captured, could still have kept in mind the Trojans’ precarious military situation. One against many, he has no chance of rescuing Euryalus; yet, even on his own, he could get the vital message through to Aeneas.
Instead, Nisus sacrifices the public good in order to try to save his friend — an attempt that is doomed to fail. So they are a foolish, greedy and bloodthirsty pair. Virgil has set us a puzzle. Why should these two deserve to be remembered for all time?
The answer, I think, lies in what Virgil tells us about them when they are first introduced. Each of them is outstanding for one thing: Euryalus (the younger one) for his beauty, and Nisus for his ‘pious’ love for Euryalus. And Euryalus loves Nisus in return. When they go into battle together, ‘a single love’ binds them. Nisus, in his last plea to Volcens, protests that he, Nisus, is solely responsible for what has happened, and that Euryalus is guilty only of having loved him too much.
Remember now the importance of Aeneas’s ‘piety’: his commitment to his country, his family and his gods. Virgil tells us that Nisus and Euryalus display ‘piety’ in their devotion to one another. Aeneas is thus shown as loyal to commitments that are imposed on him by convention. The two young warriors, on the other hand, are loyal to a commitment that is not imposed but chosen: their commitment to one another. Could this be why they are praised so lavishly? If so, this may be a clue to understanding the way the poem ends.
Aeneas’s chosen commitments
The killing of Volcens and the killing of Turnus have something in common: they are both acts of vengeance. Nisus kills Volcens to avenge his friend Euryalus. Aeneas kills Turnus to avenge someone that I have not yet mentioned: Pallas, the young son of the king Evander from whom Aeneas had sought help. Pallas goes off to war for the first time alongside Aeneas and the Trojans. He hero-worships Aeneas, and hangs on his every word. Aeneas, for his part, commits himself to looking after Pallas and instructing him in warfare — a chosen commitment, just like the chosen commitment that binds Nisus and Euryalus. Aeneas becomes in effect Pallas’s second father.
Turnus kills Pallas in battle, and strips him of his swordbelt. Aeneas is devastated. He goes on a killing rampage. At last, the long-deferred duel between Turnus and Aeneas takes place. The supreme god Jupiter sends a hideous bird-like monster from the underworld to unnerve Turnus and take away his strength. Aeneas wounds Turnus in the leg. He considers sparing him. After all, Turnus has conceded defeat, and Rome’s civilizing mission (Virgil has told us) will be to spare those who yield and to impose peace on the world. Even so, Aeneas kills him.
In terms of Aeneas’s destiny and the future of Rome, this final act of slaughter is pointless. It seems almost as if Virgil is saying that, after we have piously laboured through grief and pain to fulfil the tasks that fate imposes on us, the outcome we can expect is more grief and pain. No wonder many readers have judged the poem beautiful but unbearably bleak. Yet the praise that Virgil heaps on Nisus and Euryalus suggests a kind of consolation.
What triggers Aeneas’s decision in the end is the sight of Pallas’s swordbelt, which Turnus is wearing — Pallas, whom Aeneas has chosen to treat as a son. So that final killing, brutal though it is, arises not from a commitment that has been imposed on Aeneas but from a commitment that he has chosen. At the very end of the poem, for the first and only time, ‘pious’ Aeneas displays piety of the kind for which Virgil tells us that Nisus and Euryalus will be remembered for ever.
What about Dido, abandoned by Aeneas in Carthage? Did he not choose to commit himself to her, too? Or did he merely carelessly allow her to believe that he loved her? When disengaging himself from her, Aeneas emphasizes stiffly his higher duty: the task of leading the Trojan remnant to Italy. So in the rest of the Aeneid it is not surprising that Dido is almost never mentioned. But ‘almost never’ is not ‘never’. When preparing Pallas’s body for burial, Aeneas puts on him a tunic made by Dido. It is too late for Aeneas to make amends to her. But at least, by linking her with Pallas, he acknowledges finally the ‘piety’ that she too deserves from him.
The emperor again, and the World Trade Centre victims
Imagine the first time that the closing lines of the Aeneid were recited in the presence of the emperor Augustus and his court. Aeneas seems ready to spare Turnus. Then the sight of Pallas’s swordbelt ignites fury in Aeneas, and he plunges his sword into Turnus’s chest. Turnus groans. His soul, recoiling from his pitiless enemy, takes refuge among the shades of the dead. Then — nothing. The reciter sits down. There is silence.
Can this be the end? What about Aeneas’s marriage to Lavinia and the foundation of his new city? The courtiers look furtively towards the emperor. But Augustus is smiling. He begins to clap. There is general relief. Everyone joins in tumultuous applause.
The poem scarcely mentions Augustus. Even what it says about Rome’s greatness is curiously muted. When Aeneas visits the underworld, he is shown the future, yet he behaves afterwards as if he remembers nothing of this vision. But Augustus is no fool. He recognizes that the Aeneid is a masterpiece. And, in the long run, an enigmatic masterpiece will serve his and Rome’s interests better than sycophantic praise.
What about the World Trade Centre victims? That line of poetry, extolling Nisus and Euryalus — is it suitable for their memorial? Yes, it is. It tells us that ordinary flawed people become admirable, deserving to be remembered for ever, when they are ‘pious’ in Virgil’s sense. That includes being faithful to those they love. Their mutual devotion will protect Nisus and Euryalus from ever being forgotten. For those who died at the World Trade Centre, Virgil’s message is this: their untimely death, tragic though it is, is insignificant in comparison with all the good that those who knew them will remember them for.