It would be easy to dismiss this as a remarkable story (it appealed even to Augustine), as a particularly florid instance of Stoic allegory gone wild, but it may be more profitable to contemplate, for a moment, its assumptions and implications.
vinctus autem a Iove, ne inmoderatos cursus haberet, atque ut eum siderum vinclis alligaret (nat. Se enim natos comesse fingitur solitus, quia consumit aetas temporum spatia annisque praeteritis insuperabiliter expletur. 3 Similar questions concern Schiesaro (2003b), pp. Recent work, in the wake of Brooks (1992) and Quint’s (1993) splendid essay, has focussed especially on the affective experience of the readers and their involvement in the dialectics between the teleological drive of the epic plot and its narrative complication through delays and detours. Mack (1978) remains a useful starting point. Which should be read in conjunction with Damien Nelis’ important contribution in this volume. Cicero the rationalist offers the standard text for the interpretation of Saturnus-Kronos as Time: Saturnus autem est appellatus quod saturaretur annis ex 1įreud (1929/30 = 2002), p. I mention them at the outset, however, as a reminder of how distant the Romans’ image of Time is from our scientific, rational concept, and of how important it is to extend the study of time in Virgil’s poem beyond the boundaries of socio-political and cultural time, to include what could be comprehensively defined as ‘psychological time’.3 Time, in more than one sense, does not exist if not in our perception, and recent work in the area of child analysis, for instance, makes tantalizing connections between the emergence of temporality in infants and patterns of desire and frustration. This paper will not discuss the mythological and allegorical vicissitudes of Kronos/Chronos and their cultural genealogies. We are dealing, to be sure, with a very ancient identification, which probably harks back to Orphic allegory, but acquires in Rome further implications when Kronos is translated into the shape and name of Saturn. My starting point, however, will be the equivalence established in Roman mythological thought between Kronos and Chronos, the original leader of the Titans and old father Time. The topic of ‘time in the Aeneid’ is an immensely complex one, and I can only hope to tackle some aspects of it in this paper.2 I want to look specifically here at Dido. Freud, Civilization and its Discontents1ġ. Under the Sign of Saturn: Dido’s Kulturkampf “Warum zeigen unsere Verwandten, die Tiere, keinen solchen Kulturkampf? Oh, wir wissen es nicht.” “Why do our relatives, the animals, show no sign of such a cultural struggle? Oh, we don’t know.” S.