A Vergilian Ekphrasis
in Vida’s Christiad 1

Wolfgang Polleichtner (Ruhr-Universität, Bochum)

This paper’s purpose is to show that Marco Girolamo Vida adopted the goal of his ekphrasis of the pictures featured in the temple in Jerusalem in 1.582-724 of his Christiad from a series of ekphraseis from Vergil’s Aeneid.

To that end, I will compare Vida’s use of ekphrasis in the passage mentioned above with the corresponding passages in Vergil’s Aeneid, esp. 1.453-93 (also 6.20-33) and 8.626-728. Due to the fact that the themes that both authors chose for their passages are quite different, my comparison will naturally focus on narrative strategies. To limit the length of the paper, I will restrict myself to the narrative strategies as far as the setting of the respective ekphraseis, their position within the greater framework of the respective scenes, and the inferences that can be drawn from these observations.

Much has been said and written about the ekphrastic passages in Vergil’s Aeneid. In the course of my paper, I will, of course, take stock of the results of previous discussions on ekphrastic scenes in Vergil’s Aeneid, but they will not be at the center of the paper. Vida’s ekphrasis, on the other hand, has been largely neglected by scholars. Since Mario Di Cesare (Vida’s Christiad and Vergilian Epic. 1964) dealt with this ekphrasis, nobody seems to have ventured to take the comparison with Vergil further than Di Cesare did. His discussion is restricted to a largely formal comparison of the design of the respective ekphraseis in Vida (there are two more in his Christiad, but these can be left aside for the purpose of this paper) and Vergil, but did not talk about the similarities that can be detected in terms of the teleological function that both Vida and Vergil give their pictures.

This interpreting of pictures at the temple in Jerusalem is, of course, a story that cannot be found in the bible. Vida’s addition can be easily explained. Vida conflated the history of the Trojan War that Aeneas found at Carthage’s temple with the history of the Roman people that Aeneas could not interpret when he put the weight of his shield on his shoulders. This point is important, since Vida explicitly points our attention to the fact that nobody before Christ could understand what these pictures in the temple in Jerusalem were supposed to mean. Vida retells the history of creation with Christ as its end. Vergil, however, intends to describe the history of the Trojans and future Romans (also cf. the context of the Aeneas’ visit to the future site of Rome at Aen. 8.310ff.) whose catalyst is Aeneas. In his dialogue with Vergil, Vida has found the one true hero that also can interpret signs correctly and therefore surpasses even Aeneas. This ties in with other features of Vida’s poem that have been detected earlier. E.g., in Vida’s eyes, Rome’s history is not at its end with the Romans. In more than one way, Jerusalem’s pictures are a supplement to the Aeneid and vice versa, both in terms of content and in terms of narrative.

At the same time we need to make sure that Vida really modelled his ekphrasis on Vergil. This can be shown very briefly by pointing at the only occasionally occuring parallels with the shield of Achilles (Iliad 18.483-608) and other epic ekphraseis. Vida found what he needed in Vergil, nowhere else.