Dissertation FINAL2.pdf - Cornell University

A clamor arises within the palace and the sound rolls about through the spacious
atrium. Lighted lamps hang from the golden, fretted ceiling and torches conquer the
night with flames.
Like the heavenly bodies, the lychni, hanging from Dido’s golden, fretted ceiling of
her palace (laquearibus), conquer the night with their flame. 91
The comparison might
be an idle one were Dido’s banqueting hall not the setting for the song of Iopas, 92
whose subject matter includes the movements of the sun, the moon, and the stars
(1.740-46). In an adaptation of this passage, Statius insists that the roof of Domitian’s
palace might be mistaken for the laquearia of the gilded sky 93 (auratique putes
laquearia caeli, 30-31). Both Virgil and Statius are drawing in turn upon a long
tradition, possibly beginning with a passage from Ennius’ Andromache, according to
which the sky is described through architectonic imagery and vice versa (92 Vahlen).
The only other appearance of laqueare in the Aeneid occurs at the beginning of
book 8: when Aeneas lies asleep on the banks of the Tiber, his troubled thoughts are
compared to the light of the heavenly bodies reflected from a pail of water:
sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen aënis
sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine lunae
omnia peruolitat late loca, iamque sub auras
erigitur summique ferit laquearia tecti.
(8.22-25)
91 Austin (1971) ad 727 observes that incensi “is a significant word; the lynchi did not merely hang
down, but were lit.”
92 Otis (1964) 240, however, plausibly maintains that the setting of the banquet is “a preparation for the
flame-lit night of Troy’s destruction;” cf. Segal (1971) 345-46.
93 Cf. also the palace of Sol at Ovid, Met. 2.1-30, with Brown (1987).
68