Vergil, or Enjambment and Long-Awaited Resolution

Nothing would seem more appropriate to a New Year post than a discussion of narrative resolution. A characteristic feature of Latin epic verse, with its typically short period length and penchant for compressing individual thoughts into individual lines or small groups of lines, is enjambment. This device is the postponing of a word grammatically and/or syntactically necessary for the completion of a clause onto a line which contains no other words in that clause; it is, in other words, a sort of “hanging” word. It serves to add emphasis to the most striking or important word of the clause through suspenseful reveal. A couple examples of its use and effects are here taken from the first book of Vergil’s Aeneid. Most of Aeneas’ Trojans, unbeknownst to their leader, have survived a disastrous storm at sea. They explore the area inland of where their ships landed, until they come across Carthage, a new city under construction by Phoenician refugees led by a woman named Dido. Aeneas and a companion have just arrived at the city, where they see their countrymen conversing with the Carthaginian queen. She offers them encouraging words , which in turn causes Aeneas and his companion, to consider moving out of the miraculous, Venus-imposed cloud which had been hiding them from view during their initial tour of the city.

His animum arrecti dictis et fortis Achates
et pater Aeneas iamdudum erumpere nubem               
ardebant.
…
‘Unus abest, medio in fluctu quem vidimus ipsi
submersum; dictis respondent cetera matris.’

Their minds encouraged by these words, brave Achates
And father Aeneas to at long last break forth from the cloud
Were burning.
…

‘One man is missing, whom in the midst of the waves we ourselves saw
Drowned…’

Enjambment is, of course, not a unique feature of the poetry of any one language. The syntactic flexibility offered by Latin’s declensional endings, however, allows for long hyberbata (“hyperbaton” was covered in a previous post) culminating in enjambment, a potent combination. In the first three lines quoted above, establishing the emotional state of Aeneas and Achates, his companion, are the point of the lines, but this point is not made until the end of the second clause and beginning of the third line containing the sentence. Their eagerness to reveal themselves to their previously-lost friends is delayed for a time by  prudence, which counsels caution against hastily revealing oneself as a stranger in a foreign land. This delay is enacted by the syntax of the verse, even as its words bespeak impatience.

In the second set of lines, Achates remarks that all of Aeneas’ men seem to have made it to Carthage, except for one. Achates leaves both Aeneas and the reader/listener in a suspense which has the aura of horror about it, the tenor of a sad and unexpected discovery. He first tells Aeneas that the man was seen, then, releasing the chilling tension established by the hyperbaton separating quem from its modifying word (here, a perfect passive participle, submersum), reveals at last that his life was lost at sea. These are but two of numerous examples of Vergil’s artistry at work; when he is long-winded, a clause’s delayed closure packs a semantic and rhetorical punch.