Friday
Donald Trump’s greatest political skill may be using social media to spread false rumors and conspiracy theories. Most recently, he has been resurrecting a thoroughly debunked claim that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was responsible for the death of an aide eleven years ago. False stories have always been a part of politics, but Trump’s ability to amplify them is impressive.
Virgil appreciated the power of rumor, so much so that, in the Aeneid, he imagines it as a minor goddess, rampaging through the populace and causing untold damage. If he saw Trump on twitter, perhaps he would promote her to a major goddess.
We first see Rumor (Fama) at work when Dido and Aeneas make love in a mountain cave. In this instance, there’s truth to the rumor, but Virgil is less concerned with a rumor’s truth or falsity than with its ability to whip up hysteria. Hysteria is basic to Trump’s playbook of deflect-divert-distract.
Straightway Rumor flies through Libya’s great cities,
Rumor, swiftest of all the evils in the world.
She thrives on speed, stronger for every stride,
slight with fear at first, soon soaring into the air
she treads the ground and hides her head in the clouds.
She is the last, they say, our Mother Earth produced.
Bursting in rage against the gods, she bore a sister
for Coeus and Enceladus: Rumor, quicksilver afoot
and swift on the wing, a monster, horrific, huge
and under every feather on her body—what a marvel—
an eye that never sleeps and as many tongues as eyes
and as many raucous mouths and ears pricked up for news.
By night she flies aloft, between the earth and sky,
whirring across the dark, never closing her lids
in soothing sleep. By day she keeps her watch,
crouched on a peaked roof or palace turret,
terrorizing the great cities, clinging as fast
to her twisted lies as she clings to words of truth.
Virgil usually associates his goddess with the powerless–especially women—and with mob resistance. Rumor is born of Mother Earth, sister of the Titan Coeus and the giant Enceladus. Earth, in her doomed battle against the Olympian gods, produces Rumor as her final weapon, with Rumor’s evil tongue designed to counteract the divine order prized by Jupiter. Virgil associates her with the wild disorder of Bacchus and his Maenads.
For instance, when Dido hears the rumor that Aeneas is about to leave her, she resembles one of these women:
[W]ho can delude a lover?—[Dido] soon caught wind
of a plot afoot, the first to sense the Trojans
are on the move . . . She fears everything now,
even with all secure. Rumor, vicious as ever,
brings her word, already distraught, that Trojans
are rigging out their galleys, gearing to set sail.
She rages in helpless frenzy, blazing through
the entire city, raving like some Maenad
driven wild when the women shake the sacred emblems,
when the cyclic orgy, shouts of “Bacchus!” fire her on
and Cithaeron echoes round with maddened midnight cries.
Rumor strikes again after Dido kills herself:
A scream goes stabbing up to the high roofs,
Rumor raves like a Maenad through the shocked city—
sobs, and grief, and the wails of women ringing out
through homes, and the heavens echo back the keening din—
for all the world as if enemies stormed the walls
and all of Carthage or old Tyre were toppling down
and flames in their fury, wave on mounting wave
were billowing over the roofs of men and gods.
Rumor makes one more appearance when Amata, the queen of the Latins, opposes her husband’s decision to marry their daughter to Aeneas rather than to homeboy Turnus. Already crazed like a Maenad herself, she makes use of Rumor to get other Latin mothers to join her:
Rumor flies, and the hearts of Latian mothers
flare up with the same fury, the same frenzy
spurs them to seek new homes. Old homes deserted,
baring their necks, they loose their hair to the winds;
some fill the air with their high-pitched, trilling wails,
decked in fawnskins, brandishing lances wound with vines.
And Amata mid them all, shaking a flaming brand of pine,
breaks into a marriage hymn for Turnus and her daughter—
rolling her bloodshot eyes she suddenly bursts out,
wildly: “Mothers of Latium, listen, wherever you are,
if any love for unlucky Amata still stirs your hearts,
your loyal hearts—if any care for a mother’s rights
still cuts you to the quick, loose your headbands,
seize on the orgies with me!”
Mad—while through the woods and deserted lairs
of wild beasts Allecto whips Amata on
with the lash that whips her Maenads.
Allecto, incidentally, is one of the dreaded Furies, unleashed by Aeneas-hating Juno to sabotage the Aeneas-Latina marriage. Working in natural concert with Rumor, we see Allecto whipping Amata into a frenzy like boys whip a top. Compare it to Trump whipping his supporters into a furious rage, whether at a rally or through his incendiary tweets:
Wild as a top, spinning under a twisted whip
when boys, obsessed with their play, drive it round
an empty court, the whip spinning it round in bigger rings
and the boys hovering over it, spellbound, wonderstruck—
the boxwood whirling, whip-strokes lashing it into life—
swift as a top Amata whirls through the midst of cities,
people fierce in arms. She even darts into forests,
feigning she’s in the grip of Bacchus’ power,
daring a greater outrage, rising to greater fury,
hiding her daughter deep in the mountains’ leafy woods
to rob the Trojans of marriage, delay the marriage torch.
“Bacchus, hail!” she shouts.
Little is to be gained by reasoning with those maddened by Rumor and whipped up by a Fury. Aeneas can patiently explain all he wants to Dido, and King Latinus to his wife, that Jupiter’s will must be obeyed to bring about the Roman Empire. It’s like Dr. Fauci reasonably explaining to Trump’s rabid followers to wear masks and maintain social distance while their leader calls for them to do otherwise. We know to our sorrow that, once they have been instructed to “Liberate Michigan” (or Minnesota or Virginia), such people are apt to become wild Maenads.
The question currently confronting Twitter and Facebook is whether they will allow the goddess Rumor to rampage unimpeded. Will Jupiter’s vision of social order ultimately prevail or will we continue to be buffeted by the White House’s rage tweeting?
Further thought: Feel free to challenge Virgil for gendering Rumor as female–or for that matter, for depicting male leaders as rational, their female companions as emotional. Looking at our own world politics, often it is the men who are the hysterics (Trump, Boris Johnson, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro) and the women who are the grown-ups in the room (Angela Merkel, Nancy Pelosi, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern).
