Thursday
Probably it was because I had just taught the Aeneid earlier in the day, but as I watched the Democratic primary results roll in Tuesday evening, I couldn’t help but think of Joe Biden as Aeneas and Bernie Sanders as Turnus. In the battle-to-the-death that ends Virgil’s epic, Aeneas wins the day but Turnus, although he is killed, receives a substantial consolation prize.
Here’s the plot background you need to know. The omens tell King Latinus he should give his daughter to a stranger about to show up on his shores (Aeneas) rather than to hometown boy Turnus, a charismatic but volatile warrior. Turnus, needless to say, objects, as does the queen, and the result is six books of bloody warfare. By the epic’s final book, however, Latinus wants to return to his original plan. There’s been enough fighting, he points out to Turnus, and there’s enough land and wealth for everyone to live contentedly.
Turnus insists on the solitary combat, however, which for us may sound like Sunday’s upcoming debate between Biden and Sanders. A solemn pact is sworn by both sides to abide by the outcome. The Latins, however, lose confidence in Turnus, which leads them to breach the pact. Fighting breaks out again, Aeneas is hit with an arrow, and Turnus, sensing that the moment could be his, goes charging into the fray rather than attempting to hold his troops back. As a result, many more men die, the last one being Turnus himself.
If I were living in the Age of Dryden or the Age of Pope, it would not be a stretch to apply The Aeneid to modern politics. Allusions to Virgil’s epic are scattered throughout Mac Flecknoe, Rape of the Lock, and other poems, adding to the dense texture of the works. Readers raised on the classics would recognize and appreciate the references.
Pretend, then, that you are in the British 17th or 18th century as you draw the parallels. King Latinus is the Democratic electorate (Bernie Sanders calls it the Democratic Establishment) that wants a peaceful resolution to the conflict. He could be South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, who said after Biden’s convincing Michigan win, “I think it is time for us to shut this primary down, it is time for us to cancel the rest of these debates…”
Latinus makes a similar case to Turnus, telling him he’d rather see him comprising and alive than principled and dead:
Since then, Turnus,
you see what assaults, what crises dog my steps,
what labors you have shouldered, you, first of all.
Beaten twice in major battles, our city walls
can scarcely harbor Italy’s future hopes.
The rushing Tiber still steams with our blood,
the endless fields still glisten with our bones.
Why do I shrink from my decision? What insanity
shifts my fixed resolve? If, with Turnus dead,
I am ready to take the Trojans on as allies,
why not stop the war while he is still alive?
Turnus, however, insists on his one-on-one battle. The situation would still be similar to the one the Democratic Party is hoping for, however: whoever wins will get the hand of Lavinia whereas whoever loses will withdraw his claim, with Aeneas returning to a Trojan encampment in Sicily. If he wins, however, he will be magnanimous, opening his arms to the Latins as Biden on Wednesday opened his arms to Bernie supporters:
I call on the springs and streams, the gods enthroned
in the arching sky and gods of the deep blue sea!
If by chance the victory goes to the Latin, Turnus,
we agree the defeated will depart to Evander’s city,
Iulus will leave this land. Nor will Aeneas’ Trojans
ever revert in times to come, take up arms again
and threaten to put this kingdom to the sword.
But if Victory grants our force-in-arms the day,
as I think she may—may the gods decree it so—
I shall not command Italians to bow to Trojans,
nor do I seek the scepter for myself.
May both nations, undefeated, under equal laws,
march together toward an eternal pact of peace.
I shall bestow the gods and their sacred rites.
My father-in-law Latinus will retain his armies,
my father-in-law, his power, his rightful rule.
The men of Troy will erect a city for me—
Lavinia will give its walls her name.
Turnus accedes to the rules—let’s call them the rules to be followed at the Democratic Convention—and all looks promising. Then Turnus’s followers begin acting up.
There is some concern that Sanders will not be able to bring along some of his own followers, just as he failed to bring along everyone in the 2016 election. To cite one instance, African American surrogate and Sanders delegate Cornel West voted for the Green Party’s Jill Stein in the general election. Will Bernie’s troops rebel again this time if their leader calls it quits, just as Turnus’s troops do when they begin losing confidence in him. Turnus, like Bernie, may want to end the hostilities with one last glorious combat, but that’s small consolation to his followers if he loses. Here they are being urged to violate the peace pact:
Aren’t you ashamed, Rutulians, putting at risk
the life of one to save us all? Don’t we match them
in numbers, power? Look, these are all they’ve got—
Trojans, Arcadians, and all the Etruscan forces,
slaves to Fate—to battle Turnus in arms! Why,
if only half of us went to war, each soldier
could hardly find a foe. But Turnus, think,
he’ll rise on the wings of fame to meet the gods,
gods on whose altars he has offered up his life:
he will live forever, sung on the lips of men!
But we, if we lose our land, will bow to the yoke,
enslaved by our new high lords and masters—
we who idle on amid our fields!”
Stinging taunts
inflame the will of the fighters all the more
till a low growing murmur steals along the lines.
Much bloodshed follows. I noted that both Turnus and Bernie, however, get consolation prizes. While Jupiter allows Aeneas to triumph, he promises the disappointed Juno that the hero’s future empire won’t be named after the Trojans. Instead, Turnus’s Latins will get that honor:
Smiling down,
the creator of man and the wide world returned:
“Now there’s my sister. Saturn’s second child—
such tides of rage go churning through your heart.
Come, relax your anger. It started all for nothing.
I grant your wish. I surrender. Freely, gladly too.
Latium’s sons will retain their fathers’ words and ways.
Their name till now is the name that shall endure.
Mingling in stock alone, the Trojans will subside.
And I will add the rites and the forms of worship,
and make them Latins all, who speak one Latin tongue.
Mixed with Ausonian blood, one race will spring from them,
and you will see them outstrip all men, outstrip all gods
in reverence. No nation on earth will match the honors
they shower down on you.”
Sanders’s consolation is to have pulled the entire Democratic Party in a more progressive direction. Political John Stoehr of the Editorial Board explains that it only seems like the moderates have won:
Exit polls show Democratic voters want things like universal health care, higher wages, affordable housing and the rest. They want, in other words, what Bernie Sanders was selling them. They just don’t want to buy it from Sanders.
These progressive policies, he predicts, will continue in a Biden administration:
[Biden is] less candidate than vessel into which the party will pour its ambitions. I think legendary broadcaster Dan Rather was right when he said: “Joe Biden is being characterized as a ‘moderate,’ but if elected I think it might turn out that he ends up presiding over one of the most progressive administrations in American history. It’s where his party is going, and on many issues where the country is going as well.”
Some scholars believe that Turnus is a sacrifice that ensures the ultimate triumph of the Latins. Could Bernie be such a sacrifice as well, a leftwing version of Barry Goldwater, who paved the way for Ronald Reagan? Could this be a case of losing the battle but winning the war?
Of course, all this is predicated on Biden becoming first the nominee and then the president.
Further thought: In some ways, Virgil is in the same position as Chair of the National Democratic Committee Tom Perez, knowing that the Trojans and the Latins must one day reunite in common cause and hoping that not too much damage occurs before then. The following passage sums up the fears and the hopes of both men:
Now what god can unfold for me so many terrors?
Who can make a song of slaughter in all its forms—
the deaths of captains down the entire field,
dealt now by Turnus, now by Aeneas, kill for kill?
Did it please you so, great Jove, to see the world at war,
the peoples clash that would later live in everlasting peace?
Granted, equating “the world at war” with the Democratic primaries is hyperbolic, but you get the point.