Pasiphae and Daedaius and the four panels of the door of Apollo's Temple : (Vergil, Aeneid 6.20-30)

Abstract

It has been observed and widely agreed upon that Vergil composed his Aeneid with a structure, sometimes making symmetry even numerical. It has also been shown that to understand why Vergil wrote the poem, one must depart from and be guided by Vergil’s own structure. Studies of Vergil’s structure of the Aeneid have indeed received exhaustive scholarly attention. Particular attention has also been given to appreciating the symbolism behind the Aeneid by means of the observations made on the structure of the poem. The relationship between narrative structure and symbolism is sometimes given special focus by Vergil through ecphrasis. Much has already been said about this method of symbolically adverting the reader of what will take place, and what has taken place; and of the connection between the past and the present both in the ecphrasis and between the ecphrasis and the poem or its message. Some of these ecphrases, precisely because they tend to introduce something important to come, are placed towards the beginning of a book. We are here immediately reminded of Odyssey VII, where Odysseus will meet Alcinous and Arete. Before Odysseus steps into the palace, Homer pauses for a numerically perfectly structured passage describing the garden, and another numerically structured one similarly describing the entrance to the palace. We understand what kind of people the Phaeacians were, remote from the rest of mankind, already from their horticultural and architectural activities, before we meet them.