Crime and Punishment in " The Aeneid": the Danaids and the legal context of Turnus' Death

• Autores: Lochlan Shelfer
• Localización: Classical journal, ISSN 0009-8353, Vol. 106, Nº 3, 2011, págs. 295-320
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper offers a new interpretation of the image of the Danaids embossed on Pallas' baldric. It argues that for Aeneas the scene the bloody scene represents the tragic consequences of broken foedera, specifically the marriage foedus. The Danaids act as allegorical antecedents to Turnus in the role of law-breaker, thus framing the poem's final scene as a judicial execution. The Danaids, moreover, are one of several legal antecedents that prefigure Turnus and Aeneas' final scene in legal terms. This paper further argues that Aeneas' hesitation and the ambivalence of the audience towards Turnus' death in fact was Vergil's expression of one of the most debated political issues in the Late Republic and Early Principate, namely that of the death penalty for the elites. This paper provides a discussion of this debate from Sulla to Vergil, pointing out the relationship of the strands of this political issue to Vergil's epic.