Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

94 Grainne O’Hara Belluomo
also makes sure that his foray into the comedic genre is full of references to
other works in the cannon of ancient farce. The possibility that that the moniker
semihominis is partially intended to call to mind the satyrs of earlier Greek and
Roman comedy is made significantly greater by the clear references to Sophocles’
own satyr play Ichneutae (“The Trackers”). This play also deals with the
theft of a special bunch of cows, although in Sophocles’s comedy the pilfered
herd belongs to Apollo, not Hercules, and the thief is the young god Hermes.
Apollo enlists Silenus, father of the satyrs, promising him a handsome reward if
he finds his cattle. With the help of a chorus of satyrs, Silenus embarks on his
mission, which is complicated by Hermes’ rather brilliant strategy. After following
bovine tracks to several dead ends, the chorus remarks, “as Zeus as my witness,
the tracks turn around and go backward” (Ich. 120). In Virgil’s version of
the great cattle heist, Cacus employs the exact same trick:
And these, that there might be no tracks pointing forward, he dragged by their
tail into his cavern, and, with the signs of their course thus turned backwards,
he hid them in darkness. (Aen. VIII.209-211)
By referencing Sophocles’s play, Virgil places the Cacus episode firmly within
the generally light-hearted satyr tradition. The cartoonish, if not disturbing,
image of a raging Hercules also fits quite well into Virgil’s mini-homage to the
satyr plays since, traditionally, the genre constituted a sort of carnivalesque
mythology that offered up traditionally revered gods and heroes as objects of
ridicule.
The extreme violence in the Cacus episode does not serve to undermine its
comedic nature. In fact, the outlandish sadism that concludes the episode only
pushes the whole Cacus affair further into the realm of parody. But Virgil went
even further to portray the bloodshed in this episode in a ridiculous light. By
drawing on Plautus’ tradition of over-the-top brutality, Virgil manages to maintain
the comedic undertones of the Cacus episode even as he raises dark questions
about the nature of heroism and its complicated relationship to violence.
The chaotic portrait of Hercules hurling himself headlong at Cacus in the smoke
filled cave—he throws himself into the fire with a headlong leap” (Aen. VIII.
256-257)—resembles a scene of similarly disorganized violence in Plautus’s
Aulularia in which Euclio beats Strobulius, a slave, whom he calls, “Oh you
most beatable rogue, do you even ask, you not a thief but a triple thief” (Aul.
636). Despite the fact that Euclio cannot prove any theft, he continues with the
rather sloppy beating. Here again Virgil forces us, through his use of comedic
allusion, to question Hercules’s actions. Enraged, he pummels someone for
stealing from him what he himself has claimed as spoils from someone else.
This does not exactly fall under the traditional banner of heroic behavior.
It is possible that this allusion to Aulularia is merely incidental. However,
a much more overt reference to Plautus makes it clear that Virgil was absolutely
trying to call to mind the works of the famous humorist. In Book VIII of the
Aeneid, Cacus meets a bloody end wherein Hercules corripit in nodum com-