It is not surprising, therefore, that memory plays a central role in Vergil’s Aeneid. On a grand scale and from the perspective of memory studies, the Aeneid can be defined as the poetic construction of Roman cultural memory; no wonder Augustus was keenly interested in its progress. It is an aspect of the Aeneid that has not been discussed much; occasional treatments, without reference to the current literature on memory, include meditations along the lines of the socalled Harvard School; Vergilian scholarship, esp. in Europe, has moved on. Let me spend a few minutes, then, on outlining the pervasiveness of this theme in the Aeneid.

We can start with the invocation to the Muse. Instead of using the equivalent of aieide or ennepe, Vergil deliberately chooses memora – not just sing or tell, Muse, but “bring back to memory.” This occurs within a series of innovations that are connected. Vergil uses canere in the first verse, but in the first person, something Homer never did; further, cano, es Servius points out, is polysemus sermo, having three principal connotations. Interestingly enough, the nexus of cano and memorare already occurs in the first verse of the 3^rd Georgic - te memorande canemus – introducing the passage where he announces that he will write an epic. Back to the Aeneid: in contrast again to Homer, Vergil postpones the invocation to the Muse until verse 8, and he calls on her as a provider of collective memory. Four verses earlier, in line 4, he singles out the individual memory of Juno (saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram) as a major agent in the Aeneid. We don’t know of any such behavior of Juno in the previous tradition. As has been recognized, the wrath of Juno assimilates Aeneas to Herakles, a pattern that is maintained throughout the Aeneid. Herakles, of course, was a preeminent memory figure in Greek mythology and Vergil’s procedure reflects the creative synthesis of Greek and Roman in Roman culture, a synthesis that reached new heights under Augustus.

From the very beginning, then, Vergil alerts the reader or listener that the theme of memory will be an important part of the rich texture of his epic. This series of references to memory is rounded off, some 200 lines later, by the famous forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit (203). It adds another dimension: one should not forget bad events. It is, one the one hand, the Vergilian variation of the famous me mnesikakein [The Athenian Amnesty Decree was discussed later in this lecture] and, on the other and more generally, the recognition, amply supported now by research in the cognitive sciences, that memory is not fixed, but changes and acquires new layers and perspectives.

Memory, then, is construction and reconstruction. A commonplace illustration of this is the divergent testimony of witnesses in court, who observed exactly the same traffic accident or other event. A deliberately striking example in the Aeneid is the diverging accounts by Latinus and Evander about the so-called golden age in Latium. Right at the beginning of his welcome to the Trojan ambassadors, Latinus presents his ancestors as

Saturni gentem haud vinclo nec legibus aequam,

sponte sua veterisque dei se more tenentem (203f.)

It’s a matter of remembering (Gedächtnis vs. Erinnerung; comment) – atque equidem memini, he continues, to have heard from Auruncos senes that Dardanus, the Trojan ancestor, migrated from Italy to Phrygia. This is pure Gedächtnisgeschichte: he adverts to the fact that fama – from fari, what is being told, i.e. the oral tradition – became less transparent (obscurior) in the course of the years.

Well, as we all know, Greeks like to remember things differently. In the next book, therefore, King Evander remembers a very different scenario (8.314ff.). The Latins were a rough bunch, at the civilizational stage of hunter gatherers, quis neque mos neque cultus erat (316). They were ignorant of agriculture. Then came Saturn, expelled by Jupiter, and

Is genus indocile ac dispersum montibus altis

composuit legesque dedit.

This led to aurea saecula, but tellingly enough, only after the introduction of leges – in the traditional concept of the golden age, laws were not needed, as in fact Latinus had claimed. A broader context, of course, is the modification of the GA concept by Vergil and Augustus, which started with the Georgics: the GA is not an automatic recycling to paradise, but needs to be attained by effort, labor. The principal issue here, however, is this: totally different memories. Impossible to say, with von Ranke, wie es wirklich war. The only progress we can make is with Ged’geschichte, which concerns itself with how people remember, and why, rather than with what may actually have happened.

Throughout the Aeneid, Vergil presents a whole spectrum of how people remember. An almost pathological case is Andromache in Book 3. She is unable to forget; she cannot free herself from her memories. In fact, she lives in them even physically as she and Helenus – and Aeneas can barely trust his eyes – have built up a replica of Troy, a kind of Disneyland Troy. Aeneas heard about first through an incredibilis fama (3.294) – another example of word of mouth or oral tradition – and that fama then turns out to be reality. The issue that Vergil broaches here is that of the right balance between remembering and forgetting, a topic that, as I already have pointed out, is much discussed in the current literature on memory, including clinical research ( UC Irvine). Andromache’s obsession with the past is pathological. Already in his times, long before the new insights we now have on the basis in neurobiological research, Nietzsche remarked poignantly: “There has to be point where the past has to be forgotten, otherwise the past will be the grave digger (Totengräber) of the present.” It is a very topical issue, I’ll come back to the model of the Athenian Amnesty Decree of 403. In the case of Andromache, there is no Geschichtsbewältigung (coping with history). She was part of the life at Troy and experienced it to the fullest, but that is true of Aeneas also. His reaction, however, is now oriented to an unknown future, and not a known past. Not that it is simple: vitamque extrema per omnia duco (315), but, deliberately placed at the beginning of that verse: vivo. Implicitly, and in Nietzsche’s term, Andromache has already buried herself. Accordingly, that is also the tenor of Aeneas’ parting words (493-5):

vivite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta

iam sua

- your life is already over, whereas

nos alia ex aliis in fata vocamur.

And then: vobis parta quies.

It sounds like an epitaph: requiescat in pace.

Whether Greek and Roman authors, like Vergil, present character development, in the modern sense, has been the subject of considerable debate and we can come back this in the discussion. I don’t incline to that view, but it depends on the definition one uses, as always. I would argue that, as in the case of Achilles and protagonists in Greek tragedy, like Oedipus, it is insight and recognition that develop for Aeneas. When we see him for the first time in the epic, in the sea storm, his thoughts immediately go back to his past: he wishes had fallen at Troy and Vergil adds to the Homeric model (Od. 5) ante ora patrum (1.95). In Book 3, he knows that he cannot return to the past. The only thing he can hope for is to construct a modified memory landscape upon arriving in Italy, which includes Trojans and Italians. Of course Juno, in order to give up her memor ira, will insist that every vestige of Troy be relinquished: occidit occideritque sinas cum nomine Troia. Jupiter assents in order to reconcile her, but the cream of the aristocracy in Rome were the familiae Troianae for whom, as we have seen, memory was essential.

Let me conclude this discussion of Vergil with two short exempla, of many more that could be cited, that illustrate the pronounced role of memory in the Aeneid. Both occur in prominent places. One is the beginning of the second half of the epic. Again the invocation of the Muse is postponed – and we shouldn’t forget that this twofold invocation calls double attention to the Muses whose mother was Mnemosyne (Archelaos of Priene) and the memoria for Aeneas’ nutrix, Caieta, is the real proem in the middle (7.1-4). Put briefly, Aeneid Books 7-12, the maius opus, begins with an act of commemoration and remembrance. As we might expect, the second example occurs at the end of the second half and therefore of the Aeneid overall: when Aeneas, quite in contrast to Homeric heroes, listens to the plea of his defeated opponent and hesitates to kill him, he sees Turnus wearing the baldric of Pallas: saevi monimenta doloris. It is this aspect of memory that impels him to act the way he does.