'Gods and culture in traffic:
Virgil's Aeneid and the Imtheachta
Aeniasa (a medieval Irish vernacular
translation of the Aeneid).'
Voyaging abroad to return home.
Eorann O’Connor, King’s College.
Part II Thesis.
2014
Word count: 9, 980.
1
“The life God grants me now
is bare and strait;
I am haggard, womanless,
and cut off from music.”
Sweeney Astray, by Séamus Heaney, §40
The Fifth Century marks the beginning of a radical shift in
Irish cultural practice, its catalyst the influence of
incoming Christian ideology, encoded in a Latin alphabet and
cultural heritage. The diffusion of Christianity initiated
change in the creation and transmission of native saga,
history, genealogy and law. With the Christianisation of
Ireland came developments within the vernacular literary
tradition, both predicated on a pre-existing, highly-organised
intellectual tradition and in turn affecting the progression
of literary practices. “The very gradual introduction of
literacy in Ireland, with the Irish themselves as agents,
provides an explanation not only for the tenacity of the oral
medium (for instance in land law and the workings of
rulership), but also for the important place accorded to the
2
vernacular in the written culture from c.600 AD onwards.”1 It
is against this multi-layered background that we must
understand Imtheachta Aeniasa (‘The Wanderings of Aeneas’), the
twelfth-century Irish translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, which may
be the earliest vernacular translation of the Aeneid in
existence.2 How distinctly Irish is this medieval
interpretation of pagan epic narrative? How does the notion
between “the indigenous and the imported culture” play out?3
Does the notion of such a conflict help us understand the
choices the translator makes?
Before the introduction of Christianity, Irish native
heritage was passed down orally through generations by the
Irish filid, a class of highly-trained poets firmly embedded in
the command structure of Irish society through their intimate
connection with the ruling powers.4 Functioning as oral
archivists of Irish history, legal title,5 genealogy and
mythology, the filid were also the publicists and speechmakers
of the ruling elite, shaping the public image of the ruling
clans through praise poems and providing the legitimacy of 1 Edel, 2001: 11; Johnston considers the notion of a rapid conversion of the elite to Christianity as “a most unlikely victory”, one which would imply that Christianity in Ireland managed to entirely expunge meaningful native tradition. She suggests Ireland was no different to the rest of the Christian West, where conversion was “a process rather than a single event.” 2013: 17-18; see also, Dillon and Chadwick, 1967: 151.2 Stanford, 1970: 37.3 Edel, 2001: 20.4 Jackson 1964: 26; Ó Cathasaigh, in Kelleher and O’Leary, 2006: 20.5 The eighth-century compiler of the largest Irish legal text, Senchas Már, wrote that Irish law was preserved orally by “the joint memory of the ancients, the transmission from one ear to another, the chanting of the poets.” (Ancient Laws of Ireland Vol. 1 30.24-6). Binchy observes “a hard core of pre-Christian institutions” beneath the Christian phraseology of such law tracts and, in comparison with Anglo-Saxan laws, a certain “obstinate refusal to conform to Christian teaching.” 1943: 26.
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those in power through their knowledge of Irish genealogy.6 The
etymology of the Old Irish word fili (plural filid), from the Proto-
Celtic *widluios (seer, one who sees),7 suggests that their role
was originally divinatory and, like the Homeric bard,
functioned as religious prophet, genealogist, historian and
storyteller.8 This class of highly trained, powerful
professionals played a crucial part in the integration of
indigenous Irish and Christian-Latin cultures.9
Their presence is a major factor in the introduction of
literacy to Ireland, occurring in parallel with the
introduction of Christianity, both gradual processes which
signalled an explosion of literacy and a flowering of the
vernacular in the written culture from the seventh century AD
onwards. This period in Irish history produced, in addition to
a very substantial corpus of Latin literature, “the most
extensive and diverse vernacular literature of the Europe of
that time,”10 one “firmly rooted in ancient myth and [which]
remains robustly pagan in character.”11 The creation and
survival of that vernacular literature is evidence of early
6 Edel, 2001: 112-3; Johnston, 2013: 17; Myrick, 1993: 55.7 Greene et al., 2012: 487-488; Jackson, 1964: 24.8 Binchy, 1943: 13, writes of the filid as “credited with supernatural wisdomand powers”; Edel, 2001: 162-3, and Jackson, 1964: 27, discuss the functionof the filid as prophets in Irish native literature e.g. the fili prophetess Fedelm in the Táin.9 Edel, 2001: 29; Ó Cathasaigh describes the filid and clerics exercising their respective roles “within a single literary and scholarly establishment.” Ó Cathasaigh, in Kelleher and O’Leary, 2006: 20.10 ibid., 2001: 11; Watkins wrote of Ireland’s vernacular literature as the oldest in Europe; the earliest monuments of which go back to the sixth century and yet it is “not the beginnings of a literature that we see then,but the full flowering of a long tradition, pre-Christian, pre-literate anduninfluenced by the Greco-Roman world.” 1963: 21711 Ó Cathasaigh, in Ní Chatháin and Richter, 1984: 291.
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Irish churchmen’s deep involvement with and openness to the
pre-Christian lore of their country.12
The oral tradition of the filid entered into ecclesiastical
establishments and was for the first time written down, fusing
together pagan and Christian, oral and literate. We see this
in the production of the Ulster Cycle of secular tales and
legends written in a mixture of verse and vernacular prose
including Táin Bó Cúailnge (‘The Cattle-raid of Cooley’), which
holds a position in Irish literature comparable to that of the
Iliad in Greek.13 Set in the heroic age of the pre-Christian
aristocracy, the Táin is the oldest epic tale of Western
Europe14 and was recorded from the oral tradition between the
eighth and eleventh centuries in monastic settings. The
recorders of such sagas adopted, in general, the linguistic
and expository techniques established by the glossators of
Late Latin texts whilst also transcribing and retaining
archaic passages derived from oral tradition.15 As Johnston
writes, “it is very likely that the maintenance of a distinct
linguistic identity, in this case through Irish, almost a priori
ensured a significant degree of cultural continuity.”16
Recording of Ireland’s indigenous oral tradition occurred
simultaneously with the translating of the Latin-Christian
literary tradition into the Irish vernacular literary corpus.
Texts including Statius’ Thebaid, Virgil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s
12 ibid.: 296.13 Jackson, 2011: 2; Edel, 2001: 31.14 Dunn, 1914: xviii.15 Binchy, 1979-80: 39.16 2013: 18.
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Pharsalia were translated into Irish alongside looser
adaptations of classical works such as Merugud Uilix Meic Leirtis
(‘The Wanderings of Odysseus son of Laertes’) and Togail Troí
(‘The Destruction of Troy’), based on the Odyssey and Dares’ De
Excidio Troiae respectively. These works formed part of a corpus
of classical adaptations written during the High Middle Ages
in Ireland and the continent. In addition to the Irish
adaptations are the twelfth-century French Le Roman de Troie,
Roman d'Enéas and Roman de Thèbes and the thirteenth-century
Spanish Libro de Alexandre and Italian Historia destructionis Troiae. In
contrast to their continental counterparts, the Irish
translations of classical works are more restrained in their
Christianising. Miles highlights this contrast suggesting that
“Irish interest in the poets and their ancient commentators
was unusually secular in character and sensitive to aesthetic
qualities of classical literature.”17 Through analysis of
Imtheachta Aeniasa I will ask whether this “unusually secular”
interest in the classics pertains to an awareness of a pre-
Christian oral cultural inheritance. Furthermore, I will
question whether there is, in the Irish Aeneid, evidence of a
distinct Irish literary sensibility, derived in part from its
pre-Christian linguistic inheritance, as from a post-Christian
adoption of continental tradition. Finally, I will look at the
choices the Irish author makes in his dealings with Virgil’s
pagan text: where he omits, where he retains and where he
makes crucial ideological adjustments.
17 2011: 7.
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The encounter with Virgilian classicism, the imperatives
of Christian revisionism and the liminal significance of Irish
epic narrative combine within the craft of translation where
the exchange becomes imbued with dimensions of literary style,
practice, value and tradition. The dynamics of historical
development place stresses on the discursive function of the
language.18 The translator’s skilful manipulation of
associations and epic tropes (as I will examine) are witness
to the evolving ideologies. More skilful still is the subtle
maintenance of indigenous aesthetic values, seen at the most
intimate level, for instance, in the use of rhythm and
alliteration. The focus on consonants and rhythmical
repetition intensifies the dramatic presence of characters. It
also homes in on the act of expression – the orality of the
word, the power of utterance. In line with what Paul Muldoon,
former Oxford Professor of Poetry, identifies as a “central
tenet of the Irish imagination”,19 the translator moves between
contiguous worlds. Muldoon points to an urge in ancient poetry
“towards the cryptic, the encoded, the runic, the virtually
unintelligible”,20 as strategies devised by a range of Irish
writers “for dealing with the ideas of liminality and
narthecality”21 central to the Irish historical experience.
18 Foucault, 2003: chapter 5.19 2000: 6.20 2000: 5; Furthermore, Dillon and Chadwick describe the rhetorical style bélre na filed (‘language of the poets’) as “marked by deliberate obscurity”, many passages of which still defy interpretation. (1967: 18)21 2000: 5. Muldoon uses ‘narthecality’ to describe being near the edges orboundaries. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘narthex’, from ancient Greek νάρθηξ , came into use in the third century AD denoting the church forecourt. The image seems particularly apt to the discussion of my thesis, the attempt to reposition the Irish pagan tradition whilst engagingwith the theoretic architecture of the new religion.
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I: Dilemmas of characterisation
Imtheachta Aeniasa is preserved in its most complete form in the
c. 1390 Book of Ballymote but linguistic evidence suggests the
translation was itself made much earlier.22 Murphy writes, “A
cursory examination of the language … and proper names … of
the Irish Aeneid leads to the conclusion that it was written
before the middle of the twelfth century and was based
directly on the original Latin.”23 In general, the text adheres
so faithfully to the original Latin that any divergences from
Virgil’s text stand in stark relief from the original and
promise to repay in-depth examination for evidence of the
translator’s concerns.
Imtheachta begins not as the Aeneid does in medias res,
commencing instead with a prologue depicting an assembly of
Greek generals deliberating the fate of the traitors Aeneas
and Antenor. In the opening lines of the translation both the
structure and thematic material of Virgil’s Aeneid are
dramatically altered: a prologue that bears no relation to the
beginning of the Aeneid is inserted, introducing the theme of
Aeneas traditor, a fundamental divergence from Virgil’s text.
Tracing the Aeneas legend back through antiquity it is clear
that ambiguities surrounding Aeneas were addressed by a
variety of authors spanning nearly fourteen centuries, all of
whom seem to suggest tensions surrounding Aeneas.
22 Murphy, 1932; Kobus, 1995.23 1932: 372.
8
The surviving lines of the Iliou persis contain the earliest
account of Aeneas and his followers departing Troy before its
collapse: “The Trojans were suspicious of the wooden horse and
standing round it debated what they ought to do … But at this
very time two serpents appeared and destroyed Laocoon and one
of his two sons, a portent which so alarmed the followers of
Aeneas that they withdrew to Ida. Sinon then raised the fire-
signal to the Achaeans, having previously got into the city by
pretence.”24 In the earliest reference to Aeneas’ departure
from Troy he and his followers flee to Mount Ida before Troy’s
actual fall, seemingly due to their doubts at the portent of
the two serpents. Similarly in Sophocles’ Laocoon, via Dionysius
of Halicarnassus: “Sophocles… represents Aeneas, just before
the taking of the city, as removing his household to Mount Ida
in obedience to the orders of his father.”25 The idea of
preservation of father and sacra, a motif familiar from Virgil,
is repeated in Xenophon’s Cynegeticus, except here the Greeks
grant Aeneas safety.26 Yet, prior to the various depictions of
Aeneas being spared by the Greeks due to his eusebeia, is an
earlier fragment. Fifth-century Hellanicus, preserved in
Dionysius, sees Aeneas collaborating with one Greek in
particular, Odysseus. 27 Dionysius remarks that Damastes of
24 in Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica, pp. 520-1, Frag. 1.25 1.47.2.26 “Aeneas saved the gods of his father's and his mother's family … wherefore he bore away fame for his piety, so that to him alone among all the vanquished at Troy even the enemy granted not to be despoiled”. (1.15) The notion of the Greeks permitting Aeneas’ survival is found again in Lycophron (1261-9), Diodorus Siculus (7.4) and Aelian (3.22).27 “… [Hellanicus] says that Aeneas came into Italy from the land of the Molossian with Odysseus, and became the founder of the city, which he namedafter Romê, one of the Trojan women.” 1.72.2.
9
Sigeum and others agree with Hellanicus’ account,28 which
suggests, if correct, that Hellanicus’ fragment represents the
earliest known version of the founding of Rome.29 That possibly
the earliest extant representation of Rome’s founding joins
Aeneas with Odysseus (Greek champion of the Trojan War,
deviser of the Trojan horse stratagem), may have presented
problems for a Roman audience reading Hellanicus in the Roman
Antiquities. Furthermore, a fragment of the fourth-century
historian Menecrates states that Aeneas, out of hatred for
Paris, betrayed Troy and saved his household30; implications of
hostility between Aeneas and the Trojan dynasty which may also
be read in the Iliad.31 Such variants on the Aeneas tradition
present inconsistency between pious Aeneas, a prince of Troy
at the time of its sack, and Aeneas as the independent ruler
of the Trojan survivors, an opposition which for a Roman
audience, living under Augustus and fully invested in Aeneas
as a founding figure, would have been problematic.32
The pseudepigraphal, allegedly-eyewitness, accounts of
Dictys’ fourth-century Ephemeris belli Troiani and Dares’ sixth-
century De Excidio Troiae historia, both enjoyed particular success in
the medieval period inspiring a myriad of medieval vernacular
versions of the Troy story. In both accounts, Aeneas and 28 ibid.29 Dekel, 2012: 90.30 “Aeneas betrayed the city to the Achaeans out of hatred for Alexander andthat because of this service he was permitted by them to save his household… till Ilium was taken by the aid of Aeneas, who delivered it up to them. For Aeneas, being scorned by Alexander and excluded from his prerogatives, overthrew Priam … and became one of the Achaeans.” 1.48.3-4.31 “For ever was Aeneas wroth against goodly Priam, for that brave though hewas amid warriors Priam honoured him not a whit.” 13.461; Similarly, 20.179-183. See Galinsky, 1969: 47.32 See Galinsky, 1969: 61.
10
Antenor play fundamental roles in aiding the Greeks to
victory,33 a theme inaugurated in the Imtheachta prologue with
Aeneas and Antenor named the traitors who delivered up Troy:
“… and while there fell by them a multitude of our kings and
chiefs and battle-soldiers, they fell by us to a man … save
only the traitors, Aeneas and Antenor, with their followers.”34
Reorganising the structure of the Aeneid, the author moves
immediately from the Aeneas traditor theme in the prologue to
Aeneid 3, Aeneas’ encounter with Polydorus (killed by brother-
in-law, Polymestor, in betrayal of King Priam), making Aeneid 3
the first book the Irish author adapts and continuing the
treason theme established in the prologue. This is the only
time where the order of Virgil’s books is restructured, a
conscious choice, it would seem, to reorganise Virgil’s work
in line with thematic purposes. Polydorus tells Aeneas to
leave the deceitful and fratricidal land of Thrace (“Fagaib in
tir fealltach finghalach”),35 a phrase imbued with dramatic
irony considering Aeneas’ deceitful betrayal of Troy which
dominates the Imtheachta’s prologue.36
Choosing to depict Aeneas as a traitor the Irish author
could be interpreted as enabling Christian ideas of betrayal,
seen in figures such as Judas and Lucifer, to form within the
translation.37 Through a pattern of translatio imperii Aeneas’ 33 As Galinsky notes Dares’ and Dictys’ accounts are not isolated instances but part of the post-Virgilian literature which is critical of Aeneas and openly raises the question of Aeneas’ treason. 1969:48. 34 35-40.35 83.36 For Aeneas’ role as city destroyer see Putnam, 2011: chapters 3 and 4.37 Contemporary texts such as Le Roman de Troie identify Antenor with Judas (“li cuiverz Judas”, “wretched Judas” 26135), and Aeneas with Satan, following their betrayal of Troy; Spence, in Farrell and Putnam, 2010: 137-
11
treacherous actions as the cause of Troy’s fall, out of which
Rome is born, might have resonated with Judas’ betrayal,
causing the death of Jesus, leading to his resurrection and
the rise of Christianity.38 And yet for all that the counter-
tradition of a treacherous Aeneas grew particularly strong in the
Middle Ages,39 Virgil’s epic maintained an ongoing presence,
from Augustine to Dante and beyond; Virgil’s Aeneas as hero
and founder of the Roman nation remained the primary version
with Aeneas retaining his “cachet as pious hero, adapting to
its new Christian surroundings as pietas is replaced by piety.”40
Medieval Europe was thus faced with two contradictory versions
of the Aeneas tale co-existing side by side.
The question remains of whether Ireland’s deeply-rooted
literary heritage also contributed to the characterisation of
classical hero Aeneas. Alongside consideration of Aeneas’
characterisation as an alignment with that of Judas, another
possibility arises when Aeneas proditor is compared with the hero
traitor Fergus, famous Ulster warrior of the Táin. In the poem
Conailla Medb míchuru, (‘Medb enjoined in illegal contracts’),
attributed to Luccreth moccu Chíara, c.600,41 the war between
Ulster and Connaught is caused by the treason Fergus commits
in joining Queen Medb of Connaught and attacking his own land,
resulting in exile by King Conchobar of Ulster. The poem
8.38 Writing on Dares and Dictys, Spence suggests, “The fall of Troy via the treachery (rather than pietas) of the national hero affords a mechanism for representing not only the fall of the ancient world, but the rise of a future nation as well.” In Farrell and Putnam, 2010: 145.39 Baswell, 1995: 18.40 Spence, in Farrell and Putnam, 2010: 137.41 Carney, in Mac Eoin et al., 1983: 113-30.
12
describes the story as sen-eolas (‘old knowledge’), an
indication perhaps that the events and characters of the Táin
belonged to an oral tradition before it was committed to
writing. Furthermore, in the probably twelfth-century42 poem
Clann Ollaman uaisle Emna (‘Children of Ollam are the nobles of
Emain’), famous Ulster and Trojan warriors are assimilated:
Priam to Conchobar, Troilus to Cú Chulainn, Paris to Naíse,
Hector to Conall Cernach and Aeneas to Fergus.43 Interestingly,
the poem links Aeneas and Fergus through exile (“Fergus Énias
re luad loingse”, “Fergus is Aeneas where exile is
considered”),44 an implication that Aeneas’ exile from Troy
(and it is assumed that the poet is referring to the Aeneas
traditor tradition) equals Fergus’ exile from Ulster and
betrayal of his fellow Ulstermen. What surfaces from analysis
of Imtheachta’s Aeneas is the possibility of other dimensions of
historical realities working within the translation.
After Imtheachta’s prologue depicts Aeneas as traitor, the
author proceeds to transform Aeneas into “an Irish warrior of
heroic proportions”,45 thus giving rise to inconsistencies if a
wholly Christian interpretation of Aeneas’ character were to
be taken. Aeneas is described thus “Pleasant, comely, lovely,
and well-born was the hero that came there – fair, yellow,
golden hair upon him; a beautiful ruddy face he had; eyes
deepset, lustrous in his head like an image of a god” (“Mong
42 Poppe and Schlueter, in Hoofnagle and Keller, 2011: 132.43 Poppe writes of the keen awareness among the medieval Irish literati of the similarities between classical and their own pre-Christian heroes. 1995: 28.44 62.45 Zdansky in Handy and Ó Conchubhair, 2013: 48; Ahl in Warren, 1989: 182.
13
findbuidi fororda fair, gnuis caem corcurda aigi, ruisc
cochlacha caindelta ina chind cosmail re delb ndea”.)46
Influenced by Virgil’s own description of Venus’
transformation of Aeneas – the light upon his godlike head and
shoulders, the rosy glow of youth and his eyes of joyful fire47
– still, the reference to Aeneas’ “fair, yellow, golden hair”
is an addition.48 As Griffith notes, Virgil does not tell us
whether Aeneas is dark or fair etc., leaving a rather “vague
and indeterminate … portrayal of Aeneas’ personal
appearance.”49 The specific attention to detail in hair colour
may suggest influence from descriptions of Irish warriors such
as Cú Chulainn in the Táin, a heroic figure lauded for his
unswerving loyalty50: “Each long loose-flowing strand hung down
in shining splendour over his shoulders, deep-gold and
beautiful and fine as a thread of gold … and seven bright
pupils, eye-jewels, in each kingly eye.”51
Moreover, in the Irish heroic tradition, warriors are
often “characterised by a prodigious or superhuman sign: a ray
or a halo of light springing from, or lying above, their
heads.”52 Termed lúan láith, this “hero’s light”53 is found in
descriptions of Cú Chulainn in the Táin54 and Togail Troí in the
46 358-350.47 “Restitit Aeneas claraque in luce refulsit, / os umerosque deo similis; namque ipsa decoram / caesariem nato genetrix lumenque iuventae / purpureumet laetos oculis adflarat honores” 1.588-591.48 By contrast, Dares describes Aeneas as “auburn-haired”, 12. 10-11.49 1985: 309.50 Ní Mhaonaigh in Kelleher & O’Leary, 2006: 51.51 1199-1204; similar examples found at 2140-1, 3474-5, 3718, 4302-3.52 Camponile, in Jazayery et al. 1988: 89.53 trans. by O’Rahilly.54 “lond láith” 236; “lónd láith” 2289-2290.
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form lonna láith used of the luminescence of Troilus.55 Yet
scholars identify lúan láith as of Indo-European heritage,56 with
parallels found in Homer, Virgil and Livy.57 Returning to the
Imtheachta passage above, the word “caindelta”,58 from
‘caindeldae’ (‘like a candle’, ‘bright’, ‘shining’), is used
to describe the luminous glow of Aeneas’ head, emphasised by
the alliteration of ‘f’ and ‘c’. The word ‘caindeldae’, from
Old Irish ‘caindel’, is itself derived from the Latin
‘candela’ (‘candle’), an example of the introduction of Latin
loan words into the Irish vernacular vocabulary. And yet
‘candela’ has the added symbolic significance associated with
Christian religious practice, subliminally it takes the reader
inside the church, it cuts the heroic supernatural halo down
to a prosaic church artefact.59
A similar formula describes Aeneas’ rage after hearing of
Pallas’ death, again linking Aeneas to warriors from Irish
mythological saga, using stock similes also found in Homeric
passages: “[Aeneas’] spirit and power rose in him, and his
anger and his hero’s valour and his bird of valour rose so
that it was hovering over his head. The wrath of a serpent was
the wrath of Aeneas … His was a soldier’s spirit, and a lion’s
55 32509. 56 Camponile, in Jazayery et al. 1988: 91; Murphy, 1955: 29, n. 44.57 Iliad 18.205-6, 225-7; Ab Urbe Condita 1.39, Aeneid 2.679f.; 7.71-8.58 349.59 The use of “caindelta” might also be said to link Aeneas/Cú Chulainn withChrist: Sixth-century Magnus Felix Ennodius used the candle as exemplar of a trinity of meanings: rush-wick as product of pure water, wax as the offspring of the virgin and bees in the flame as sent from heaven. (Opusc. ix, x). Similarly, thirteenth-century Durandus, in his Rationale, interpretedthe wax as symbolic of the body of Christ, the wick as his soul, the flame as his divine nature and the consuming candle as symbolic of his passion and death.
15
power, a hero’s valour, a warrior’s strength … plying them
like a mad ox whom valour lashes … like a lion fiercely
strong.”60 The stock phrase én gaile61 ‘bird of war-fury’ –
another, more enigmatic, name for the hero’s light62 – is
often applied to warriors of Irish mythological saga such as
in the eighth-century, or earlier,63 death-tale of Cú Chulainn,
where “a fluttering bird of valour (i.e. warrior’s light) [is]
above the champion of the single chariot.”64 O’Nolan notes that
such functional phrases, used by scribes to narrate tales
within a highly stylised sonic and semantic framework, are
characteristic of oral style surfacing in medieval texts.65 The
use of formulae in Imtheachta as a stylistic device of
storytelling is, it would appear, indebted to the oral
tradition of pre-Christian Ireland. That the Irish author was
aware of this is perhaps shown in his employment of the word
“caindelta”, symbolic of both the inherited technique of the
filid and the imported religion of Christianity.
In a clear divergence from Virgil, the Irish author
recasts Tarchon, king of the Tyrrhenians, as an Irish druí.66 In
60 2565-2572. Compare in the Iliad Achilles described as a lion, 20.164-175 and Hector as a snake, 22.93-5.Furthermore, in the thirteenth- or fourteenth-century poem ‘The chase of Síd na mBan Finn’, the hero Finn’s “… spirits grew high and his courage rose … so that his bird of valour arose over the breath of the royal warrior … and he went among them and through them and over them like a fierce furiousox that has been badly beaten, or like a lion whose young have been wounded.” (In Fianaigecht, §40).61 2567.62 Campanile, in Jazayery et al., 1988: 91.63 Pokorny, 1921: 123.64 “Énblaith (.i. lón gaile) etarlúamnach úasa erra óencha(i)rpait” (in The Death of Cú Chulainn, 19).65 1969: 234-5.66 2375, 2392.
16
a speech made to convince the Etruscans to hand over
leadership to Aeneas, Tarchon depicts Aeneas in exactly the
same terms as warriors from Irish saga67:
“Is uaitni catha, ocus is ord esoir gni ocus bruiti bidbad, is
sgiaath ditin ocus imdeghla crichi ocus feraind, is cur crodha
cosgarthach, cathbuadhach, co mbruth ocus co mbrigh ocus co
mborrfadh, co med ocus miadh ocus maisi, co mini ocus co
mordacht ocus co m-maccaemdacht, co cruth ocus co cell ocus co
cenel, go ngais ocus go ngail ocus go ngaisgidh. Ocus is drech
ollumun ocus is gnuis righ lais ocus is coir fregra maith do
thabairt fair.”68
“He is a pillar of battle, a hammer for smiting and bruising
foes, a shield for guarding and protecting territory and land,
a brave triumphant, battle-victorious hero, of spirit, force,
pride: of size, honour, beauty; of gentleness, majesty, youth;
of comeliness, sense, birth; of valour, and prowess; and he
has the face of a sage, and the countenance of a king; and it
is right to give him a good answer.”69
Recast as a druí, from whom the Etruscans seek advice,
Tarchon takes on the role of a pagan prophet (Old Irish druí –
‘seer’) or perhaps even a fili. The speech is extremely
emphatic, with its build-up of adjectives and pattern of
alliteration in the repetitions of ‘c’, ‘mb-’, ‘m’ and ‘ng-’.
A development in prose style and narrative technique in the
twelfth century incorporated elaborate epithet systems, 67 Similar passages found in the Táin: 654-659, 727-8, 1614-6.68 2384-2391.69 See Appendix 1 for stark similarities of rhetorical embellishments in theTáin and Imtheachta.
17
alliterative dyads and triads and descriptive runs; all of
which, as O’Nolan points out, gave the texts an unmistakably
oral ring, the overall effect being to impart the measured
pace and aural cohesion that hexameters gave to Homer.70
Furthermore, the rhetorical features of rhythm and
alliteration may indicate a praise poem approach – praise
poetry being a significant part of the filid repertoire71 – thus
denoting Tarchon as the fili of Aeneas. Edel describes how the
filid “shaped the public image of the rulers with their praise
poems and satires”, comparing them to the modern day media.72
An allusion to either the druids or filid of pre-Christian
Ireland may suggest a possible incorporation, on the part of
the Irish author, of aspects of the indigenous culture.73 For
instance, the author applies stylistic features which are
strongly identified with the highest aesthetic demands of the
bardic tradition, primarily when he is dealing with
descriptive panegyric passages concerning Aeneas or other
classical heroes. This again signals a valuing of the
indigenous style, and, since it does not emulate Virgil’s
approach (i.e. the description of Aeneas from Aeneid 1 contains
no alliteration; the Tarchon episode is only loosely based on
passages from the Aeneid), it is an original addition which may
indicate an aesthetic sensibility.
70 O’Nolan, 1969: 1-19; Poppe, 1995: 19-22; Dillon and Chadwick describe thefilid poems as “characterised by elaborate ornament” with alliteration a typical marker of their poetic style. 1967: 18.71 Ó Cathasaigh, in Kelleher and O’Leary, 2006: 18.72 2001: 96.73 Ó Cathasaigh, in Kelleher and O’Leary, notes the filid’s role as purveyor of praise and blame as inherited from pre-Christian times. 2006: 20.
18
The earliest preserved Irish poetry dates from the sixth
century74 and consists of alliterative syllabic verse in praise
of famous men or in lament of a dead hero. Irish sagas such as
the Táin are written predominantly in prose and yet passages of
lament, of praise or when a champion claims his right to the
Hero’s Portion (equivalent to the Iliad’s κλέα ἀνδρῶν) are in
verse. Watkins demonstrates how Irish heroic verse has a
common origin with Greek and Vedic metres and thus holds an
ancient Indo-European inheritance.75 That Tarchon, in the form
of a druí, presents a highly alliterative encomium, similar to
the praise speeches of Irish heroic verse, which contrasts
with the surrounding prose, may be suggestive of certain
sensibilities preserved from the Irish oral tradition, which
in turn may well have its origins in oral epic from Central
Asia.76 As Dillon and Chadwick suggest, the evidence of the old
Indo-European form surviving in Irish literature into the
Middle Ages is evidence of the great archaism of Irish
tradition.77
Virgil’s handling of the contradictions inherent in
Aeneas’ characterisations is at variance with Imtheachta’s and
carries the mark of his unique authorial style. It should be
seen, however, in the context of a long tradition of
ambivalence regarding the Trojan hero. Since the ambiguities
74 1967: 217.75 Watkins, 1963: 194ff.76 Ó Cathasaigh, in Ní Chatháin and Richter, considers that “If Irish literature contains survivals from Celtic and Indo-European culture – and the comparative evidence shows that it does – then clearly these elements must have been transmitted orally until such time as they were transferred into the written record.” 1984: 294.77 Dillon and Chadwick, 1967: 260.
19
within the Aeneas legend are traceable to perhaps as early as
the eighth century BC, the contradictions within Aeneas’
character as both pious survivor and betrayer of Troy were
already available to fifth-century BC historians. Virgil,
while creating his foundation myth which upheld Aeneas as the
forefather of the Roman Empire, was also challenged by the
tensions within the Aeneas legend. Virgil depicts the ghost of
Hector in a dream visitation urging Aeneas to flee Troy
(‘“heu! fuge, nate dea, teque his,” ait, “eripe flammis. /
hostis habet muros …”’)78 and goes on to portray Aeneas as torn
between his opposing responsibilities of staying and fighting
in Troy and responding to the call of a higher mission. The
only way Aeneas could contemplate quitting Troy as it is
sacked is if he is called away not only by a prophetic dream
but by the shade of a great Trojan hero who tells him that
Troy entrusts in him its household gods which he must take as
he seeks the mighty city which he will establish.79 And even
this is only the first in a long line of dispensations offered
Aeneas through the intricate course of his apologetic story of
the Sack. Virgil deals with the ambiguities surrounding
Aeneas’ flight from Troy by overloading his story with so many
episodes of legitimation, blocking but implicitly
acknowledging contradictions in the Aeneas legend which would
have implied the very opposite of heroic courage expected by
Virgil’s audience of the founder of future Rome.
The variance in handling of Aeneas’ heroic ambiguities in
Imtheachta raises the possibility of influence of pre-Virgilian 78 2.289-290.79 2.294-5.
20
approaches more in alignment stylistically with the Irish pre-
Christian oral tradition. Just as Aeneas can be seen to
emulate a pre-Christian Irish warrior, so too, he may be
viewed in respect of his traitor emblem signifying an older
tradition “which did not spring up in reply to Vergil…, but
had its roots in the pre-Vergilian literary tradition.”80 Both
depictions of Aeneas from antiquity are presented in the
Imtheachta: the traitor (perhaps in the shape of Judas/Fergus)
and the hero of Rome (perhaps in the shape of Cú Chulainn).
The conflict within the characterisations of Aeneas may
represent conflicts inherent in the author. (Notably, William
Empson’s fourth type of ambiguity occurs “when two or more
meanings of a statement do not agree among themselves, but
combine to make clear a more complicated state of mind in the
author.”)81 In the case of the Imtheachta, the incongruity may
represent a conflict between the author’s desire to produce a
translation of the Aeneid faithful to Virgil’s pagan text and
an equal desire to stay true to his Christian faith.
Furthermore, the notable markers of Irish saga – elaborate
system of alliteration, use of imagery typical of native Irish
warriors – which may have come directly from the pre-Christian
oral tradition, may also suggest a further layering of the
Irish author’s indigenous inheritance. The ambiguities within
Aeneas’ character, then, may represent both the author and the
text itself, a text which deals with the Irish vernacular and
Latin verse, orality and literacy, pagan and Christian,
indigenous and imported.
80 Galinsky, 1969: 48.81 2004: 133.
21
II: Semantic Dilemmas
Historically, Virgil’s great Roman epic was written in a
period seen to have its own importance to Christians, the time
in which Christianity had its origins. In the medieval age
semantic dilemmas posed uncomfortable choices for translators
dealing with the Aeneid’s pagan themes and the conflicts
between traditional conceptions of an epic hero and Christian
ethics. As early as the fourth century Christian authors were
attempting to create alternatives to Virgil’s Aeneid, to
provide a new reading suitable for a Christian audience.
Medieval authors sought to remedy the difficulties which the
classical canon presented by making the epic genre a vehicle
through which Christian values could be expressed. Saint
Augustine, a Christian author who struggled in particular with
the conflict between his love for classical literature and
Latinity and his devotion to Christianity, writes in his
fourth-century Confessions of his education in the Aeneid which
leads him astray from his own Christian spirituality: “I was
forced to learn the wanderings of one Aeneas, forgetful of my
own, and to weep for dead Dido, because she killed herself for
love; the while, with dry eyes, I endured my miserable self,
dying among these things, far from Thee, O God my life.”82
Augustine’s solution, however, was not to reject pagan
literature for Christian ideology but rather to divert its
resources to Christian use: “Nam versum et carmen etiam ad
82 1.13.20.
22
vera pulmenta transfero”83 (“For verse and poems I can turn to
true food”) thus “transforming the unreality of the Aeneid into
spiritual nourishment for fledgling Christians.”84 Imtheachta
appears to deal with the religious ramifications of the Aeneid
in a similar way, incorporating Christian motifs into Virgil’s
pagan text. Foucault points up “the displacement of the
discontinuous”85 as an essential feature of historical
practice. He emphasises the value of the irreducible
discontinuity, “no longer the negative of the historical
reading (its underside, its failure, the limits of its power),
but the positive element that determines its object and
validates its analysis.”86 In the discontinuities of meaning to
be found in Imtheachta, might there be evidence of concealed
connections to hidden pasts, other “hierarchies of importance,
several networks of determination”?87 In hypothesising an added
dimension of the latency of Irish pagan figures, tropes and
customs still identifiable from the Irish pre-Christian past,
in addition to the Virgilian pagan material, the complexity of
meanings available to the Irish author increases. There is
also the structural dimension of language to consider. The
mode of transference of the pagan text, the vessel to carry it
across into the ideational hierarchy of Christian ethics, is
in itself a remnant of a pagan code.
In seeking for evidence of an Irish pagan aesthetic
floating beneath the surface of medieval Christian
83 3.6.11.84 Ramage, 1970: 55; also, see Wentzel, 2008: 88.85 2002: 10.86 ibid.87 ibid.: 5.
23
sensibilities there are some key areas of difference where
sounding weights might usefully be lowered. One such relates
to the treatment of the Greco-Roman pantheon. Dares’ and
Dictys’ method of Homerepanorthosis sought to correct the gods’
notoriously immoral behaviour and dismantle Homer’s divine
machinery through removing the immortal audience overseeing
and often interfering with the affairs of humans below.
Consequently the reduced role of pagan gods in the De Excidio
Troiae and Ephemeris allowed medieval authors of the Troy tale to
apply Christian dogma to pseudohistorical works, already
diminished in pagan emphasis. The approach of Imtheachta,
however, contrasts with versions of the Troy tale from
medieval Europe.88 The Spanish version of the Troy tale, for
example, found in Libro de Alexandre is heavily Christianised.
Thetis hides Achilles in a convent rather than on Scyros, and
the devil features prominently, causing Achilles’ death.89
While many of his continental contemporaries radically reshape
the story of Troy by exchanging pagan motifs for a wholly
Christian narrative, the Imtheachta author adheres faithfully to
Virgil’s pagan text, retaining with precise accuracy pagan
customs including the prophecies of Polydorus and Hellenus in
Aeneid 3, the omen of serpents in Aeneid 5 and the involvement of
deities such as Juno on the battlefield in Aeneid 10, to name a
few. Furthermore, temples are not replaced with churches,
pagan priests not turned into Christian ones and Lucifer is
nowhere mentioned. The pagan gods and pagan system of Virgil’s
Aeneid are very much visible in Imtheachta particularly when
88 Myrick, 1993: 161.89 §411, §722.
24
compared to the twelfth-century Le Roman d'Enéas which expunges
most of the scenes featuring pagan divinities. From Aeneid 1
alone Neptune’s calming of the seas, Venus’s encounter with
her son and Cupid’s substitution for Ascanius, are all omitted
from the French version but retained in the Irish Imtheachta.
In the following passages the Irish author actually
increases the number of gods included in invocations thus
(over)emphasising the pagan pantheon rather than downplaying
or eliminating it from his work. Furthermore, Imtheachta puts
into the mouth of Aeneas the favourite oaths of heroes from
Irish saga, “I swear by the gods my tribes swear by” and “I
swear by the gods I worship”, formulae which, as Jackson
remarks, “unquestionably belong to a heathen context”, one in
which each tribe had gods of its own.90
Nunc pateras libate Iovi
precibusque vocate /
Anchisen genitorem, et vina
reponite mensis.
7.133-134
Now pour your cups to Jove,
and call in prayer on my sire
Anchises, and set the wine
again upon the board.
… denaidh udpurta dona deib,
aidchid Ioib Apaill uenir na
dei ar chena. 1538-1539
… and offer sacrifices to the
gods, and beseech Jove,
Apollo, Venus, and all the
gods.
Nymphae, Laurentes nymphae,
genus amnibus unde est, /
tuque, o Thybri tuo genitor
cum flumine sancto, / accipite
… ocus aitchidh na dei
adartha, ocus tocbhaidh a lama
friu, ocus is ed roraid: “A
deo nime talman na n-usce na 90 1964: 28; Poppe, 1995: 18.
25
Aenean et tandem arcete
periclis. 8.71-73
O Nymphs, Laurentine Nymphs,
from whom rivers have their
being, and you, father Tiber,
you and your hallowed stream –
receive Aeneas, and at last
shield him from perils.
srothand na n-aband, rom-
saeraidh arna guasachtaib-sea
fuilet ac tomaithem foramsa
don chur-sa o Laitindaib.”
1821-1823
… and [Aeneas] besought the
gods he worshipped, and lifted
up his hands to them, and
said: “Gods of heaven and
earth, and of the waters,
streams, and rivers, deliver
me from these perils that are
threatening me at this time
from the Latins.”91
Another divergence from Virgil is found in the redactor’s
treatment of genealogy. What role indigenous liminal heritage
played in the choices, preoccupation and synthesis of the
Greco-Roman pagan pantheon with the Christian inheritance is
perhaps suggested in Imtheachta’s treatment of genealogy. This
is a key point as the concerns of ancient society with
origins, lineage, patrimony and chronology are concepts
crucial to both the imported and indigenous cultures. In a
section of the early thirteenth-century poem A theachtaire tig ón
Róimh (‘A messenger who comes from Rome’), attributed to the fili
Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe, the poet remarks that without
poetry Ireland’s nobility would be deracinated and one-
91 Similar invocations at 464-5, 1376 and 2956-7.
26
generational: “If it were not for poetry, the music of sweet-
stringed harp or lute would know nothing of a good man after
his death, his career or his repute. Noble men could find no
knowledge of their traditions or descent; let these be woven
in poems, or say goodbye to history.”92
In maintaining the genealogical continuities, the
adjudicator and archivist roles had been held by the filid,
successors to the pagan Druidic tradition. The genealogical
knowledge of the seanchaidhe (‘chroniclers’) and their medium,
the Irish language, were reconciled with the Biblical origin
tale, a conscious attempt to correlate the two traditions –
imported and indigenous. As Edel notes, the great reverence
the Irish had for both Christian-Latin learning and their own
learned traditions is unsurprising from people trained in an
oral culture in which mnemonic techniques played an important
role, “their thinking was not governed by abstract terms and
definitions, but by the association of notions and images.”93
The crucial role of the filid as preservers of Irish genealogy,
heritage and history is perhaps the background to the Irish
preoccupation with synthesising pre-Christian and Christian
genealogy and pseudohistory. Ó Corráin, Breathnach and Breen
draw attention to the defence of indigenous customs and
institutions being maintained in the Irish church through the
seventh and eighth centuries94 and Sharpe points to the secular
control of aspects of its organisation.95 The question of the
92 XVIII 30-31.93 2001: 93.94 1984: 394-412.95 1984: 263.
27
influences within the domain of learning is then an obvious
point to consider and there is evidence of resistance to the
changing apparatus of Christian education in much of the
poetry of the Imtheachta period,96 unsurprising given the status,
privilege and subcutaneous presence of the filid in Irish society.
An example is found earlier in Mac Con Midhe’s protest poem,
which Williams describes as “a spirited defence of poets and
poetry”97 against the attacks of a cleric purporting to have
Papal documents which called for the abolition of the poetic
order in Ireland: “Where is it written in scripture that the
art shall be disgraced? … It is an ugly, barbarous learning
that would have Ireland’s poets expelled!”98
Imtheachta preserves many of the references to genealogy
from the Aeneid, often heavily embellishing Virgil’s writing.
Thus, Ascanius coming into battle is “the tender stripling,
splendid, renowned, famous, the youth, the furious darling,
the point of battle, and manslayer of the West … son of Aeneas, son
of Anchises, son of Ilus, son of Tros, son of Erichthonius,
son of Dardanus, son of Jove, son of Saturn, was that Ascanius
… the origin of the supremacy and overlordship of all the
world was he; for from him sprang the emperors of the world.”99
By contrast, the equivalent passage in Virgil describes
Ascanius as simply “Dardanius”.100 Inclusion of such an
extended lineage perhaps indicates remnants of the Irish oral
tradition, one of its most prominent features being the
96 Williams, 1980: 340-1.97 1980: 340.98 XVIII 5-6.99 2363-2369.100 10.132.
28
catalogues of genealogies memorised by filid as part of their
specialist training, the profession of genealogy being an
essential source for the purposes of succession and which, as
Dumville points out, was orally cultivated throughout the
Gaelic Middle Ages.101
Ireland’s indigenous tradition produced a genealogy and
origin tale for each population group, later adapted into the
Biblical origin legends and genealogies from the seventh
century onwards.102 The pseudohistorical tracts Lebor Gabála Érenn103
(‘The Book of Invasions of Ireland’) and Sex Aetates Mundi104 (‘The
Six Ages of the World’) were major large-scale synthetic
historical texts which drew upon Irish pagan myth interpreting
it within the framework of Judaeo-Christian theology and
historiography. In Lebor Gabála monastic scholars tell of the
successive invasions of Ireland by various peoples including
the Partholón, Tuatha Dé Danaan (the deities of pre-Christian
Ireland) and the Milesians. Carey describes Lebor Gabála’s
inwardness reflecting “a deep and for its time remarkable
reverence for, and interest in, native traditions concerning
bygone times.”105
Combining with Irish genealogical concerns is the
challenge of how to treat the Greco-Roman pantheon. The
problem facing medieval scholars treating pagan figures is 101 In Sawyer and Woods, 1977: 84.102 Edel, 2001: 29.103 Taking form over the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, Lebor Gabála reached its final shape in c.1050; Carey in Edel, 1995: 47.104 Sex Aetates is found in eight manuscripts ranging from the twelfth to the seventeenth century.
105 In Edel, 1995: 47.
29
summed up by Momigliano: “The new history could not suppress
the old. Adam and Eve and what follows had in some way to be
presented in a world populated by Deucalion, Cadmus, Romulus,
and Alexander the Great.”106 This was the dilemma the
Imtheachta’s author faced and then solved through the medium of
a genealogy uniting into one ancestral line Roman characters
with Christian figures from the Bible. Thus, into the
genealogy of Latinus are inserted Noah, his son Ham and Ham’s
son Mizraim.
Whereas Virgil describes Latinus as descended from Saturn
through Faunus, Marica and Picus, the Irish author places
Saturn, Neptune and Apollo into the genealogy of Latinus in
addition to Mizraim, Ham and Noah, characters from the Book of
Genesis.107
Rex arva Latinus et urbes / iam
senior longa placidas in pace
regebat. / Hunc Fauno et nympha
genitum Laurente Marica /
accipimus, Fauno Picus pater
isque parentem / te, Saturne,
refert, tu sanguinis ultimus
auctor. 7.45-49
King Latinus, now old, ruled
over lands and towns in the
calm of a long peace. He was
sprung of Faunus, we are told,
Ba failid ba hemh leo
torachtain chuigi, in tan
doruachtatar Laitin mac Puin
meic Neptune meic Saduirn
meic Pal loir meic Pic meic
Pel meic Tres meic Trois meic
Mesraim meic Caimh meic Noe.
1477-1480
Their arrival at it was to
them joyous and opportune,
when they reached Latinus,
son of Faunus, son of 106 1963: 81.107 The genealogy linking Saturn, Tros, Ham and Noah is also found in the, perhaps, tenth-century Togail Troí ll. 1-3. See Myrick, 1993: 162-3.
30
and the Laurentine nymph,
Marica. Faunus’ sire was Picus,
and he boasts you, Saturn, as
his father; you are the first
founder of the line.
Neptune, son of Saturn, son
of Apollo, son of Picus, son
of Pel, son of Tres, son of
Tros, son of Mizraim, son of
Ham, son of Noah.
Early Christian historians such as Sextus Julius
Africanus and Hippolytus of Rome while tracing Judaeo-
Christian history back to Adam came upon the problem of the
Greco-Roman pantheon. After being stripped of their divine
status the Greco-Roman gods must logically derive from one of
Noah’s three sons: Shem, Japheth or Ham.108 In Lebor Gabála the
author descends all of mankind from Adam through the sons of
Noah,109 describing how Japheth’s son Magog is the great-great-
grandfather of Fénius Farsaid and thus ancestor to the Gaels
and the Irish.110 Consequently, the Irish were able to claim
their heritage as deriving directly from Japheth without any
connection with a euhemerised pagan god from the Greco-Roman
pantheon.111 Furthermore, in the Bible Noah curses Ham for, in
some versions, ridiculing Noah in his drunken naked state, and
in others, for raping his father.112 As punishment Noah curses
Ham and casts him out, prophesising that the sons of Ham would
serve the god of Shem and that Japheth would be enlarged by
God.113 There is, then, a parallel between Ham and the Greco-108 Myrick, 1993: 164.109 §102.110 ibid.; The idea of the Irish descending from Japheth came from Isidore who made the equation Japheth = Europe = Christendom.111 Myrick, 1993: 169.112 Gen. 9:22-27.113 Gen. 9:27.
31
Roman pantheon in that both are rejected and superseded by
another god, i.e. the Christian God. As Myrick writes, “A
Hamite pedigree for Saturn could be used to support the notion
that the Greco-Roman gods inherited a status subservient to
that of the god of Shem and Japheth, and were thus destined to
give way once and for all to Christianity.”114
In Sex Aetates Ham and Cain are described as progenitors of
the monstrous luchorpáin and the semi-divine giant Fomorians of
Irish mythology.115 Clarke observes a remarkable effort to
synthesise and harmonise the two descents of Cain and Ham in
the Irish tradition.116 In the Bible, Cain treacherously
murdered his brother and was cursed with a punishment of being
a wandering fugitive and exile.117 A genealogy linking Ham,
Tros (a ruler and the eponym of Troy) and Latinus also
associate to another prototypical sinner, Cain. Through
Aeneas’ marriage to Lavinia, Latinus and the Latins become
fused with the Trojans, thereby connecting the Trojans to Ham
and through Ham, to Cain. Cain commits the first murder in the
Bible for which he is exiled, roaming the world until he
builds the first city, Enoch.118 The genealogy of Ham, with its
connection to the treacherous, fratricidal Cain, links to the
depiction of Aeneas as the traitor of one city and founder of 114 1993: 175.115 “Thus it was Ham who was the first to be cursed after the flood, whence he is the successor to Cain after the flood. And from him were born the luchorpáin, and the fomoraig, and the horseheads.” §34; The male descendants ofSeth mate with the daughters of Cain and through them “the monstrous creatures of the world were born – the fomoraig and luchorpáin and every monstrous form that was among mankind … for that reason the Flood was sent over the earth, to drown the family of Cain”. §17.116 2012: 27-8.117 Gen. 4:12.118 Gen. 4:17.
32
another in Imtheachta. Ham and Cain are both shunned and exiled,
by Noah and God, respectively.
And yet, when any addition is made to Virgil’s original
in Imtheachta, double meanings proliferate. The genealogical
alignment of the Greco-Roman pantheon and Irish mythological
figures with an outcast son of Noah and the Bible’s first
murderer Cain, becomes further complicated. Given the
comparisons between Aeneas and Irish warriors Fergus and Cú
Chulainn pervading Imtheachta, ambiguities are present. Aeneas’
descent through Latinus from Ham also links him to the pre-
Christian mythological races the Fomorians, Tuatha Dé Danaan
and the luchorpáin and consequently to Cú Chulainn, half-mortal
son of Tuatha Dé Danaan leader, Lug, (Irish mythological god
whose mother is the daughter of the Fomorian leader Balor).
Aeneas is also associated with the traitorous exile Fergus,
whom Irish pseudohistory descended from Partholón and Japheth,
and who is also the foster-father of Cú Chulainn. So far, so
complicated.119 (Creation of ambivalence in legal dispute being
a technique of the genealogist filid.)120 Returning to the
Foucauldian notion whereby rupture becomes the indicator, the
inverted sign of transformation, a sense of “chronological
specificities, particular forms of rehandling”121 can perhaps
be identified here. The problem is to determine, as Foucault
sees it, “what form of relation may be legitimately described
to these different series.”122 What can be recognised in this
119 See Appendix 2 for a visual version of this genealogy.120 See Binchy, 1943.121 2002: 11.122 ibid.; Here I am borrowing Foucault’s specific connotation of “series” todenote the dual significance of the lineage created by the Imtheachta
33
complicated weave of genealogy are Irish mythological figures,
Biblical figures and Classical figures becoming interlinked;
one does not subsume another but all seem to cross paths. What
may be alluded to under the surface of seemingly Christian
ideology is the notion of the Other. Carey demonstrates how
the key themes which run through Lebor Gabála cannot be traced
to Latin learning but seem likeliest to derive from indigenous
teachings concerning the deeper past.123 Ireland, states Carey,
“appears, again and again, not merely as earth and stone but
as the Other, a mysterious being rooted in timelessness and
challenging the limits of our own mortality.”124 Could the
notion of the Other lie beneath the ambiguities of the
Imtheachta – the notion of the otherworldly races the Fomorians
and Tuatha Dé Danaan as the first people to settle in Ireland?
And what of the notion of exile, the cast out divinities of
pre-Christian Ireland which Christian monastics do not seem to
be able to (or do not want to) eradicate from their
genealogies?
The notion of flight, of exile in Imtheachta, may lead us
back to Foucault who talks of a principle of exclusion whereby
elements of history which may not be compatible with a certain
discourse, are exiled.125 A Christian network may not be
compatible with an Irish societal network of the same period
and thus there may be a rupture to be explored. The filid figure
in a different network to the power play of medieval
author.123 In Edel, 1995: 60.124 ibid.125 2002: 67.
34
Christianity and connect to a common societal hierarchy.
Images of the filid wandering the roads of Ireland in an
internal exile and complaints of their ousting are familiar
tropes of Irish medieval poetry. Bitter resentment at the
ousting of the filid underlies the seminal epic poem,
contemporary with Imtheachta, Buile Suibhne, whose story has been
traced back to seventh century oral tradition.126 Séamus
Heaney’s translation sees its hero, Sweeney, as the “figure of
the artist, displaced, guilty, assuaging himself by his
utterance, it is possible to read the work as an aspect of the
quarrel between free creative imagination and the constraints
of religious … obligation.”127 Similarly, Cox identifies a
pattern in the history of Virgilian translations as undertaken
for the most part by writers on the edge of a dominant
culture128 and Burrow, writing on translations of the Aeneid
into English, observes liminality as an essential feature of
Virgilian translation.129 That it is predominantly writers who
view themselves as on the margins of a dominant culture who
turn to Virgil can be identified in contemporary Irish writers
including Séamus Heaney (Seeing Things) and Eavan Boland (Outside
History).130 The genealogical intervention in Imtheachta results in
the creation of a marginal line for the expelled pagan
forebears, which nonetheless maintains their place in the
lineage. The idea of the outsider having a position in the
conception of the lineage of the Irish offers a view of
126 Heaney, 2010: introduction.127 ibid.128 2006: 71.129 In Martindale, 1997: 21, 23-4.130 Cox, 1997: 72-3.
35
historical understanding that enriches rather than limits our
sense of the author’s period, and it sets off many more
questions particularly given that Imtheachta is an under-
researched work.
Viewing Imtheachta’s Christian insertions alongside
Virgil’s pagan dimensions, with the marginalised native
forebears flanking, the effect can be to destabilise the
authorised genealogy, undermining its purpose and mystifying
the overall didactic goal. The author even incorporates into
Imtheachta the Irish pre-Christian goddess of battle Badb, who
appears to echo the role of Allecto by wreaking havoc among
the Trojans and Latins: “ocus ba failidh Badb derg dasachtach
ac imchosait etir in da chath sin”131 (“And joyous was red mad
War a-stirring up mutual strife between those two
battalions”). Badb played a similar role in the Táin,
implanting fear among the troops, battling alongside mortal
warriors, just as the gods in Homer and Virgil are depicted in
the mortal sphere. Edel writes that the “apparently
unproblematic coexistence of secular (pagan?) and Christian
elements … may have been inspired by the desire to treat the
inherited and imported culture as equals.”132 Furthermore,
O’Riordan identifies how the richness of Irish literature
itself provided “a panoply of gods, demigods, fabulous
creatures and heroes and villains to maintain a living
tradition into which elements from other literatures and
cultures were easily absorbed and reconstituted to fit the
literary flow appropriate to the requirements of the gaelic 131 2480-1.132 2001: 31.
36
canon.”133 The author, faced with Virgil’s pagan pantheon,
recognises parallels with Ireland’s indigenous gods. Ní
Mhaonaigh describes medieval Irish writers as weavers working
on a shared inherited fabric and cutting their cloth “with
pre-existing garments in mind. The result is a patchwork of
repeating patterns in new imaginative guises which can only be
properly assessed in an intertextual context.”134 A further
consideration is the extent to which, in the development out
of an oral tradition into a literate one through acquisition
of another language and narrative heritage, the indigenous
tradition is renewed, reshaped. And then there is the
filtering influence of Christianity effecting another layer of
complexity. The question also follows, what affect on a grasp
of Christian ideology the merging of these two pagan
orthodoxies might have?135
The combination of Ireland’s indigenous pre-Christian
gods, Virgil’s pagan gods and the underlying notion of the God
of the imported culture make for an equivocal dynamic within
the text overall. This equivocation may reflect a split
consciousness in the author through the layering of cultural
signs – the complex semiotics involved in working with a Latin
text which had entered Ireland alongside the imported
Christian-Latin culture, underpinned by deeply anchored signs
of sen-eolas (‘old knowledge’) from the Irish inheritance, within
the language. With the expansion of Romanisation, classical
texts occupied the core of the educational curriculum
133 2007: xvii.134 in Kelleher and O’Leary, 2006: 32.135 ibid.
37
throughout medieval Europe. Education was “grounded in the
study of grammar and rhetoric, designed to enable its elite
beneficiaries to speak eloquently in public as a key dimension
of their social and cultural identity and self-promotion.”136
Yet, Ireland, one of the few Western European regions not
conquered by the Romans, also retained its own customs and
institutions,137 formed out of its own mythologies and
narrative heritage, in combination with a highly evolved
system of rhetoric and one of the most sophisticated poetic
forms that has ever existed. The position of the Irish
redactor, then, in relation to these “works of classical
literature radically at variance with Christian doctrine”,138
can be seen to be more compromised perhaps, given the
resonances of his own cultural identity that the works
contain. Ambiguity would be an unsurprising choice of resort,
also considering the tendency towards encryption already
discussed as a commonly found trait of Irish rhetorical style.
Regarding tradition, “The historical sense involves a
perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its
presence,” T. S. Eliot wrote.139 In discussing the trafficking
of ancient representations of divinity a conception of
distinct unities of ideology and cultural systems, a
permanence of themes and images through time – the tradition –
is assumed140; a narrative of a divide between ancient/pagan
and medieval/Christian sensibility is one background to an
136 Gildenhard and Zissos, 2013: 196.137 Edel, 2001: 112.138 Gildenhard and Zissos, 2013: 196.139 1932: 49.140 Foucault, 2013: chapters 1-3.
38
exegesis of the Irish Aeneid. In this interpretation the
translator serves as “the locus of the registering and
interpreting of ideology”141 the arbitrator of that which is
acceptable and that which will be cast out. This view depicts
a Christian didactic purpose to preserve classical learning in
the medieval period as the primary focus generating the
choices being made by the translator. The question I have been
considering is whether such an emphasis serves to conceal the
presence of other unities. In one sense, it is satisfying to
recognise at the interstices of cultural ideologies the
character of Aeneas, with his accrued ambivalence of
significances reading like a charge sheet of ambiguity; to
discover him as a good surface on which to mirror some of the
ambiguities in the translator’s own position in relation to
his cultural inheritance, both indigenous and adopted,
languages, learning and social status. Edel writes, “Irish men
of learning made the effort to develop their inherited
tradition into a discussion partner for the imported culture,
thus rendering the archaic dynamic.”142 In discussing the music
of poetry, Eliot sets up the idea of Latin poetry’s metrical
scheme being overlaid by the presence of the Greek language to
create a pleasurable counterpoint for the listener.143 This
conception links to the dynamic involved in the overlay of
vernacular Irish, a storehouse of signs representing
signifiers of an ancient discursive formation, fused with a
literary system mediated through Christianity. The complexity
141 ibid., chapter 3.142 Edel, 2001: 34.143 1969: 20.
39
of associations emerging from such a counterpoint gives
credence to one answer to “the puzzle of Ireland’s role in the
preservation of classical learning”144: that for the Irish,
given their own cultural unities, the engagement in such a
project was a return home as well as a voyage abroad.
144 Miles, 2011: 275.
40
Appendix 1:
I am grateful for the generous support and invaluable advice I
received from Dr. Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Dr. Ingo Gildenhard,
and for the opportunity to attend ASNaC classes that was given
to me.
Irish passages from Imtheachta not included in main body of
thesis:
Page 7:
“i cath inar n-aigid, co ndorchradar leo hilar arrig-ni ocus
ar tusech ocus ar cathmiled, co ndorchradar-sum uili lendi …
acht lucht in braith nama .i. Aenias Antinor cona muintir.”35-
40.
Page 10:
“In tan tra rochuala Aenias in sgel sin, doerigh a brut hocus
a brig and, ocus a fherg ocus a gal curudh, ocus adraig a en
gaile co mbai for luamain uasa cind. Ba ferg nathrach ferg
Aenias in tan sin. Ba bruth miled ocus ba luth leomain, ba gal
curudh, ba nert niad, ba lamach laech lais. Ba handsa tra
fulung a fergi ocus frithalum a mhacomlaind in la sin.
Noimrind in tan sin amal damh dassachtach rogialla gail, no
amal leomain londbrighach.” 2565-2572.
41
Page 18:
“Tic dono etaru sin isin cath inmaethoglach an urdirc allata
ocus in maccaem ocus in mertretill ocus in rind agha ocus
imghona iarthair .i. Asgan mac Aenias meic Anachis meic Ilois
meic Trois meic Erectonius meic Dardain meic Ioibh meic
Saduirnd int Asgan isin, fer suairc sochraid seghaind
saercheniuil in mac sin, bunudh oirechus ocus ardflaith usa in
domain uili eside, ar is uada rogenetar airdrigha in domain.”
2363-2369.
Notes to page 11:
Stark similarities are seen in the rhetorical
embellishments of repetition across such examples as Imtheachta
and the Táin. This might indicate the presence of an Irish
vernacular aesthetic still buoyant beneath the medieval
ideology and rhetorical style:
Imtheachta: Nisus and Euryalus are described as “two faithful
comrades they – two youths – two heroes, two strong ones, two
darlings, two points of contest and manslaying, two pillars of
battle, and two hammers for smiting and crushing foes.” (“Dias
cumthra tairisi iadsaide in da maccaemh .i. da ainle, da tren,
da tretill, da rind aga ocus imgona, da uaitni catha, ocus da
ord esairgne ocus bruite bidbud.” 2060-2063).
Táin: Fergus describes two Ulster warriors: “Those are two
warriors, two bright flames, two points of perfection in
battle, two heroes, two combative chiefs, two dragons, two
fiery ones, two champions, two fighters, two scions, two bold
42
ones, the two beloved by the Ulstermen around their king. They
are Fiachna and Fíacha, two sons of Conchobar mac Nessa, the
two loved ones of the north of Ireland.” (‘“Ratafetammar ám
ale,” bar Fergus. “Dá ánrath sain, dá óenmuntind, dá
óenlosnaid, dá óenchaindill, dá ching, dá churaid, dá
chléthbriugaid, dá dreicg, dá thenid, dá thuidmechtaid, dá
deil, dá dána, dá dásachtach, dá threittell Ulad imma ríg.
Fiachaig ocus Fiachna and sain, dá mac Conchobuir meic Fachtna
meic Rossa Rúaid meic Rudraigi and sain.”’4474-9)
43
Appendix 2:
44
Noah
Ham Japhe Shem
Mizrai
Tros
TresPe
Picu
Apoll
Saturn
Neptu
Faunu
Latin
Magog
Partholón
Ros Ruaidhe
FergusCú
Ethn Lugh(Tuatha Dé
Balor
Lavin Aeneas
Fomorians
Luchorpáin
Horseheads
Tuatha DéDanaan
A (condensed) genealogy taken
from Imtheachta Aeniasa, Sex Aetates
Mundi, Banshenchus and Lebor Gabála
Oliv
Cain
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