GRICE E CERUTI: NISO ED EURIALO

 Rome’s national epic displays a similar tendency to treat sex and love.ship, in he interests of esplong wha this text might suggest about the pre-conceptions of its Roman readership. See Makowski for an overview of ancient and modern views of the pair, along with arguments for describing them as erastes and eromenos on the Greek model (Makowski finds particular parallels with Plato’s Symposium). For literary discussions of Nisus and Euryalus that take as their starting point the erotic nature of their relationship see Gordon Williams, pp. 205-7, 226-31, Lyne, pp. 228-9, 235-6, and Hardie, 23-34). Bellincioni, ‘Eurrialo’ in Enciclopedia Virgiliana (Roma), observing that Virgil has added tdhe motif of their friendship to his Homeric models summarses thus: “L’AMORE CHE UNISCE EURIALO E NISO E UN SENTIMENTO INTERMEDIO FRA L’AMCIZIA E LA PASSIONE … PUR NELLA SUA PUREZZA, TENDE ALL’EROS. COMNQUE E PASSIONE CHE SI PONE FINE A SE STESSA E NON SI SUBIRDINA A PRINCIPI MORALI, COME LA SLEALTA SPORTIVA DI NISO NEL 5o CHIARAMENTE DIMOSTRA. Bellincione cites Colant, ‘Le’peisode de Niuses et Euryale ou le poeme de l’amitie, LEC, 19, 89-100. IThe pair of Trojan warriors Nisus and Euryalus are cast in the roles of erastes and eromaneos. Virgil’s narrative of the two valourus young Trojans has, of course, various thematic functions and will have resonated in various ways of a Roman readership. Here I focus on only one aspect of the narrative, namely the eroticiation of their relation Niso ed Eurialo are first introduced in the funeral games in Book 5. ‘Nisus et Euryalus primi, Eurialus forma insignis viridique iuventa, Nisus ammore pio pueri’ (Vir. Aen. 5. 2292-6). ‘First came Nisus and Euryalus: Euryalus outstanding for his beauty and fresh yourhfulness, Nisus for his deveted love for the boy’. During the ensuing footrace, Nisus indulges ia a questionably bit of gallantry: starting off in first place, he slips and falls in the blook of sacrificed heifers, then deliberately trips the man who was in second place, in order the Euryalus may come up from behind an win first place. Non tamen Euryali, non ille oblitus amorum (Vir. Aen. 5. 334 -- ‘He was not forgetful of his love Euryalus, not he! (The plural AMORES is ordinarily used of one’s sexual partner, one’s LOVE in that sense 0- Liddell Scott ic. Virgil himself uses the word in the plural to refer to a bull’s mate at Georgics 3 227. Indeed, Servius, ad Aen. 5 334, writing in a different cultural climate, was worried by precisely thiat fact, observing that OBLITUS AMORUM AMARE NEC SUPRA DICTIS CONGRUE: AIT ENIM AMORE PIO PUERI, NUNC AMORUM, QUI PLURALITER NON NISI TURPITUDINEM SSIGNIFICANT. Virgil’s phrase, OBLITUS AMORUM contradicts his earlier AMORE PIO PUERI because AMORES in the plural ‘can only SIGNIFY SOMETHING DISGRACEFUL’ Whereas the description of Nisus’s love for the boy as PIUS apparently precludes, for Servius, PHYSICALITY. ‘ The two Trojans reappear in a celebrated episode from Book 9, when they leave the camp at night in an effort to break through enemy lines and reach Aeneas. They succeed in killing a number of Italian warriors, ut eventually are themselves both killed. Euryalus first and then his companion, who, after being morally wounded, flings himself upon Euryalus’s body. The episode beings with this description of the pair. Nisus erat portae custos, acerrimus armis, Hyrtacides, comitem Aenea quem miserat Ida venatrix iaculo celerem levibusque sagittis; et iuxta comes Euryalus, quo pulchrior alter non fuit Aenaedum Troiana neque induit arma, ora puer prima signans intonsa iuventa. His amor unus erat pariterque in bella ruebant. Vir. Aen. 9 176-82. Nisus, sonof Hyrtacus was the guard of the gate, a most fierce warrior, swift with the javeling and with nimble arrows, sent by Ida the huntress to accompany Aeneas. And next to him was his companion Euryalus. None of Aeneas’s followers, none who had shouldered Trojan weapons, was more beautiful: a boy at the beginning of youth, displaying a face unshaven. These two shared one love, and rushed into the fightin side by side. Virgil’s wording is decorous but the emphaisis on Euryalus’s youthful beauty and particularly the absence of a beard on his fresh young face, as well as the comment that the THWO SHARED ONE LOVE and fought side by side – imagery that is repeated from the scene in Book 5 and is continued throughout the episode in Book 9 – is noteworth  For Euryalus’s youth, cf. 217, 276 (puer) and especially the evocation of his beauty even in death (433-7, language which recalls the erotic imagiery of CATULLUS and Sappho – Lyne, pp. 229. For their INSEPARABILITY, cf. 203: TECUM TALIA GESSI and 244-5 (VIDIMUS … VENATU ADSIDUO. Note: NEVE HAEC NOSTRIS SPECTENTUSR AB ANNIS QUAE FERIMUS, 235-6, CONSPEXIMUS. 237. how Nisus gallantly presents his plan to the assembled troops NOT AS HIS OWN Bt as his AND EURYALUS’S (235-6:  Likewise the question that Nisus asks Euryalus when he first proposes the plan t o him has suggestive resonances: DINE HUNC ARDOREM MENTIBUS ADDUNT EURYALE, AN SUA CUIQUE DEUS FIT DIRA CUPIDO? Aen 9 184-5. Cf. Makowsky, p. 8 and Hardie, p. 109. For the phrase DIRA CUPIDO, compare DIRA LIBIDO at Lucretius (De natura rerum, 4. 1046, concerning men’s desire TO EJACULATE and muta cupido at 4. 1057. Euryyalus, is it the gods who put this yearning (ardor) into our minds, or does each person’s grim desire (dira cupido) become a god for him?” In addition to its ostensible subject (a desire to achieve a military eploit), Nisus’s language of yearning and desire could also evoke the dynamis of an erotic relationship. So too the poet’s depiction of Nisus’s reaction to seeing his young companion captured by the enemy is notable for its emotional urgency and its portrayal of Nisus’s intensely protective for for the youth. Tum vero exterritus, amens, conclamat Nisus nec se celare tenebris amplius aut tantum potuit perferre dolorem. Me, me, adsun qui feci, in me convertite ferrum, o Rutuli, mean fraus omnis, nihil iste nec ausus nect potuit, caelum hoc et conscia sidera testor, tantum infeliciem nimium dilet amicum (Vir. Aen 9 424-30. Then, terrified out of his mind, unable to hid himself any longer in the shadows or to endure such great pain, Nisus shouts out: “ME! I am the one who did it! Turn your weapons to me, Rutulians! The deceit was entirely mine, HE was not so bold as to do it; he could not have done it. I swear by the sky above and the stars who know: the only thing he did was to love his unahappy friend too much. There is, in short, good reason to believe that Virgil’s Nisus and Euryalus, whose relationship is described in the circumspect terms befitting epic poetry, would have been UNDERSTOOD by his Roma readers as sharing a SEXUAL bond, much like the soldiers in the so-called SACRED BAND of Thebes constituted of erastai and their eromenoi in fourth-century B. C. Greece (Note also that 9.199-200 (meme … figis?) seems to echo Dido’s words to Aeneas at 4.314 (mene fugis?. So too Makowski p. 9-10 and 9.390-3 )Euryale infelix, qua te regione reliqui? Quave sequar? Rurus perplexum iter omne revolves fallacis sylvae simul et VESTIGIA RETRO observata legit dumisque silentisu errat) might recall the scene were Aeneas loses Creusa a t the end of Book 2. Haride p. 26) points to parallels with the story of Orpheus and Euryide in the Georgics, as well as as to that of Aeneas and Crusa in Aeneid 2. For the Sacred Band of Thebes, see Plut, Amat. 761B. Pelop, 18-9, Athen. 13.561F and 602A, and the probable allusion at Pl. Smp. 178e-179a. When Nisus, mortally wounded, flings himself upon his companion’s lifeless body to join him in death, the narrator breaks forth into a celebrated eulogy. Tum super exanimum sese proiecit amicum confossus, placidaque ibi demum morte quievit. Fortuanati ambo! Si quid mean carmina possunt, nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo, dun domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit. (Vir. Aen. 9. 444-9). Then he hurdled himself, pierced through and through, upon his lifeless friend, and there at last rested in a peaceful death. Blessed pair! If my poetry has any power, no day shall ever remove you from the remembering ages, as long as he house of Aenea dwells upon the immovable rok of the Capitol, as thlong as the Roman father holds sway. The praise of the two loving warriors joined in death ould hardly be more stirring – cf. Wiliams, 205-7, Lyne, 235, for their ‘elegiac union of LOVERS IN DEATH’ he adduces Pr0.18 – AMBOS UNA FIDES AUFERET, UNA DIES, and Tibull. 1 1 59-62 as parallels. op. 2.2, and the language coulnt NOT BE MORE ROMAN. And Virgil’s words obviously made an impression among those who wished to EXPRESS FEELINGS OF INTIMACY AND DEVOTION IN PUBLIC CONTEXTS, for we find his language echoied in funerary instricptions for a husband and his wife as well as for a woman praised by her male friend. The inscription on a joint tomb of a grandmother and gradauther explicitly likens them to Nisus and Euryalus. CLE 1142 = CIL 6. 25427, lines 25-6, husband and wife: FORTUNATI AMBO – SI QUA EST, EA GLORIA MORTIS QUO IUNGIT TUMULUS, IUNXERAT UT THALAMAS; CLE 491 = CIL 11.654: a woman praised by her male friend: UNUS AMOR MANSIT PAR QUOQUE VIDA FIDELIS. Cf. Aen. 9. 182. HIS AMOR UNUS ERAT PARITERQUE IN BELLA RUEBANT. CLE 1848.5-6 granddaumother and granddaughter: SIC LUMINE VERO, TUNC IACUERE SIMUL NISUS ET EURIALUS.  So too Senece quotes the lines as an illustration of the fact that great writers can immortalize people who otherwise would have no fame: just as Cicero did for Atticus, Epicurus for Idomeneus, and Seneca himself can do for Lucilius (an immodest claim but one that was ultltimately borne out), so ‘our Virgil promised and gave and everlasting memory to the two,’ whom he does not even bother to name, so renowned had the poet’s words evidently become (Senc. Epist. 21.5 VERGILIUS NOSTER DUOBUS MEMORIAM AETERNAM PROMISIT ET PRAESTAT; FORUTATI AMBO SI QUI MEA CARIMA POSSUNT. It is revealing that sometimes Porous boundary in Roman tets between wwhat we might call friendship and eroticism among males – and overlaps I hope to discuss in another context – that Ovid citest Nisus and Euryalus as the ULTIMATE EMBODIMENT OF MALE FRIENDSHIP, putting them in the company of THESEUS AND PIRITUOUS, ORESTES AND PYLADES ACHILESS AND PATROCLUS, Tristia 1.5.19-24, 1.9.27-34 but the relationship between ACHILEES AND PATROCLUS, at least, was openly described as including a sexual element by classical Greek writers (see n. 92), and with characteristic cluntness by Martial (11.43), wh cjites the pair as an illustration of the special pleasures of anal intercourse. The relationships between Cydon and CClytius, Cycnus and Phaethon, and Juupiter and Ganymede (on Eneas’s shield) all demonstrate that pedersastic relationships enjoy a comfortable presence in the world of the Aeneid. Niusus and Euryalus are thus HARDLY ALONE. Some scholars have even detected an EROTIC ELEMNET in Virgil’s depiction of the relationship between Aeneas and Evander’s son Pallas. See e. g. Gillis, Putnam, and Moorton. Erasmo and Lloyd have independently described erotic elements in the relationship between the young Evander and Anchises, a relationship that, they argue, is then replicated in the next generation, with Pallas and Aeneas.  But their relationship is more complex than the rather straightforward attraction of Cydon for beautiful boys, of Cycnus for the well-born young Phaethon, and even of Jupiter for Ganymede. For while those couples conform unproblematically to the Greek pedrerastic model (one partner is older and dominant, the other young and sub-ordinate), Nisus and Eurialus only do so AT FIRST GLANCE. AS the poem progresses they are transformed from a Hellenic coupling of Erastes and eromanos into a pair of ROMAN MEN (VIRI). The valosiging distinctions inherent in the pederstaist paradigm seem to fade with the Roman’s poet remark that the rwo rushed into war side by side (PARITER – PARITERQUE IN BELLA RUEBANT Vir Aen 9. 182), and they certainly DISAPPEAR when the old man Aletes, praising them from their bold plan, addresses the TWO as VIRI (QUAE DIGNA, VIRI, PRO LAUDIBUS ISTIS, PRAEMIA POSSE REAR SOLVI, 252-3, whe  an enemy leader who catches a glimpse of them shoults out, “Halt, men!” (STATE VIRI, 376), and most poignantly, when the sight of the two “MEN’S” severed heads pierced on enemy spears stuns the Trojan soldiers. SIMUL ORA VIRUM PRAEFIXA MOVEBANT NOTA NIMIS MISERIS ATROQUE FLUENTIA TABO 471-2 . In other words, although Euryalus is the junior partner in this relationship, not yet endowed with a full beard and capable of being labeled the PUER, his actions prove him to be, in the end, as much of a VIR, as capalble of displaying VIRTUS – as his older lover Nisus. There is a further complication in our interpretation of the pair, and indeed all the pederstastic relationships in the Aeneid. Virgil’s epic is of course set in the MYTHIC PAST and cannot be taken as direct evidence for the cultural setting of Virgil’s own day. Moreover, the poem is suffused with the influence of Greek poetry. Thus, one might argue that the rather elevated status of pedersastic relationships in the Aeneid is a SIGN merely of the DISTANCES both cultural and temporal between Virgil’s contemporaries and the character s of his epic. Yet, while the influence of Homer is especially strong in these passages of battle poetry (Virgil’s passing reference to Cydon’s erotic adventures echoes the Homeric technique of citing some touching details about a warrior’s past even as he is introduced to the reader and summarily killed off), is is a much-discussed fact that there are no UNAMIBUOUS, diret references in the Homeric epics to pedersastic relationships on the classical model. The relationship between ACHILLES AND PATROCLUS was understood by later Greek writers to have a seual component see e. g. Aesch. F.r. 135-7 Nauck – from the Myrmidons), Pl. Symp. 180a-b, Aeschin. 1.133, 141-50, Lyne, p. 235, n. 49, crediting Griffin, adds Bion 12 Gow. But the test of the Iliad itself, while certainly suggesting a passionate and deeply intense bond between the two, does not represent them in terms of the classical pederastic model. See further, Clarke, Achiles and Patroclus in Love, Hermes, v. 106 p. 381-96, Sergent, 250-8, and Halperin p. 75-87. Virgil might thus be said to ‘out-Greek’ Homer in his description of Cydon. G. Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer, Gottingen, cites no Homeric parallel for these lines. And yet the pederastic relationships in the Aeneid occur NOT AMONG GREEKS but rather among TROJANS AND ITALIANS, two peoples who are strictly distinguished din the epic from the Greeks, and who,more importantly, together constitute the PROGENTIROS of the roman race. Cf. Turnus’s rhetoric at 9.128-58 based on sharp distinctions among the Trojans, Greeks, ndnd Italians, and the weighty dialogue between Jupiter and June at 12.808-40, where it is agreed that Trojans and Italians will become ONE RACE. Virgil’s readers found pederstastic relationships ina n epic on their people’s orgins, and temporal gap or no, this would have been unthinkable in a cultural context in which same-se relationships were universally condemned or deeply problematized. But is it still not the case that, since Nisus and Euryalus are freeborn Trojans, Virus, and perhaps also Aeneas and Pallas. Significalntly, though, the arua of a male-female relationship in the Aeneid, namely the doomed love affair of Aeneas with the would-be univira Dido. In other words, while a MALE-MALE relationship that corresponds to what would among among Romans of Virgin’s own day be considered stuprum is capable of being heroized in the epic, a male-female relationhship that th etet implicitly marks as a kind of stuprum is not. This tywo types of relationships in the brates, even glamorizes, a relationship that in his own day would be labeled as instance sos stuprum? Here the gap between Virgil’s time and the mythis past of his poem has significance. While, due toe o their freeborn status, analogues of to Nisus and Euryalus in Virgil’s OWN DAY could not have found their relationship SO OPENLY CELEBRATED, they did find HEROISED ANCESTORS IN NISUS AND EURYALUS, Cydon, and Clutis. And perhaps also Aeneas and Pallas. Significantly, though, the aura of the mythic past does not extend so far as to conceal the moral problematization of a male-female relationship in the Aeneid, namely the doomed love affair of Aeneas with the would-be univiria Dido. In other words, while a male-male relationship that corresponds to what would among Romans of Virgil’s own day be considered stuprum is capable of being heroized in thee pic, a male-female relationship that the tect implicitly marks as a kind of stuprum is not. The issue is complex. Dido is of course neither Roman nor Trojan, and thus at first glance Aeneas’s relationship with her does not constitute stuprum. But since Dido’s experiences are, in important ways, seen though a Roman filtre, above all, the commitment to her first husband that makes her a prototypical univira, her involvement with Aneas (aculpa 4 19, 172, constitutes an offense within the moral framework poposed by the text in a way that the relationship between Nisus and Euryalus does ot. This distintion revelas something about the relative degrees of problematization of the two types of relationships in the cultural environment of Virgl’s readership. ‘Blessed pair! If my poetry has any power no day shall ever remove you from the remembering ages, as lon as the house of Aeneas dwells upon the immommovable rock of the Capitol, as long as the Romans father holds sway.’ One can hardly imagine such grandiose prise of an adulterous couple ina Roman epic!”