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Concordia
The opposition between concordia (concord) and discordia (discord), and their personifications Concordia and Discordia—a dichotomy made use of by Virgil in the Aeneid—becomes, for late antiquity Roman poets, "something of an obsession".[1]
- ^ Hardie, pp. 4, 48.
References
Prudentius, Preface. Daily Round. Divinity of Christ. Origin of Sin. Fight for Mansoul. Against Symmachus 1. Translated by H. J. Thomson. Loeb Classical Library No. 387. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1949. ISBN 978-0-674-99426-3. Online version at Harvard University Press.
Sources
Ancient
- 3.25
- Of the temple of Concord erected by a decree of the Senate on the site where so many riots and massacres had taken place.
- Certainly it was a matter of great refinement, the decree of the Senate whereby a temple of Concord was built on the very spot where the fatal battle of the mobs was joined, where so many citizens of all ranks had fallen, in order that this witness to the vengeance meted to Gracchus might strike the eyes and goad the memory of those who addressed the assembly.2 Surely, though, this was but a mockery of the gods, to build a temple to that goddess who, had she been in the body politic, would not have allowed it to collapse torn by such great dissensions? Or perhaps Concord was to blame for this crime, because she had deserted the hearts of the citizens, and she deserved the penalty of being shut up in that shrine as it were in a prison.
- If they wanted to suit the shrine to the historical background, why did they not rather erect on that spot a temple to Discord?3 Or is there any reason [cont.]
- 2 This great temple to Concord, not the first in Rome, was probably built soon after 367 b.c., and what Opimius did was to restore it—see Platner-Ashby, Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (London 1929), 138–40.
- 3 See Plutarch, C. Gracchus 47.
- why Concord should be a goddess, but Discord not, why we should not employ Labeo’s distinction and view one as a good goddess, the other as an evil one?1 He seems to have had no other evidence than that he noticed in Rome a temple dedicated to Fever, as well as one to Health.2 By this analogy therefore a temple should have been founded not only to Concord, but also to Discord.3 Thus the Romans to their peril chose to live under the menace of so evil a goddess unplacated, and never reflected that the tale of Troy and its destruction begins with the resentment of Discord. You know, of course, that when she was not invited with the other gods, she contrived to set three goddesses disputing by placing before them the golden apple. Hence the quarrel of the deities, the victory of Venus, the kidnapping of Helen and the destruction of Troy. It follows that if she was perhaps offended because she of all the gods had obtained no temple in the city, and was therefore already upsetting the state with such great tumults, she may well have been far more fiercely aroused when she saw erected a temple to her adversary on the spot where that slaughter—the spot where her handiwork, that is—had taken place!
- When we have our fun with such inanities, ...
- 1 See above, 2.11.
- 2 See above, 2.14.
- 3 Discord is personified frequently in Virgil, e.g. Aeneid 6.280, 7.702.
Against Rufinus 1
- 30
- Discord, mother of war,
- Book 7
- fr. 10 [= Probus, Commentary on Virgil Ecl. 6.31]
- Ennius too calls it this in the Annals:
- the warrior maiden Paluda1, of hellish body born,
- to whom showers and fire, spirit and weighty earth are equal
- 1 Presumably the Fury’s name, perhaps from paludamentum, “a commander’s cloak” (so Varro, guessing), or from palus, “swamp” (Skutsch, tentatively).
- Ennius too calls it this in the Annals:
- fr. 10 [= Probus, Commentary on Virgil Ecl. 6.31]
- 1 Servius’ note identifies the poet in question as Ennius. Skutsch 1985, 402–3, citing Varro, Ling. 5.165, associates the “portals of War” with the Ianus Geminus; cf. Liv. 1.19.2.
- 211–225
- Νὺξ δ’ ἔτεκε στυγερόν τε Μόρον καὶ Κῆρα μέλαιναν
- καὶ Θάνατον, τέκε δ’ Ὕπνον, ἔτικτε δὲ φῦλον Ὀνείρων.
- [214] δεύτερον αὖ Μῶμον καὶ Ὀιζὺν ἀλγινόεσσαν
- [213] οὔ τινι κοιμηθεῖσα θεῶν τέκε Νὺξ ἐρεβεννή,
- [215] Ἑσπερίδας θ’, αἷς μῆλα πέρην κλυτοῦ Ὠκεανοῖο
- χρύσεα καλὰ μέλουσι φέροντά τε δένδρεα καρπόν·
- καὶ Μοίρας καὶ Κῆρας ἐγείνατο νηλεοποίνους,
- Κλωθώ τε Λάχεσίν τε καὶ Ἄτροπον, αἵ τε βροτοῖσι
- γεινομένοισι διδοῦσιν ἔχειν ἀγαθόν τε κακόν τε,
- [220] αἵ τ’ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε παραιβασίας ἐφέπουσιν,
- οὐδέ ποτε λήγουσι θεαὶ δεινοῖο χόλοιο,
- πρίν γ’ ἀπὸ τῷ δώωσι κακὴν ὄπιν, ὅστις ἁμάρτῃ.
- τίκτε δὲ καὶ Νέμεσιν πῆμα θνητοῖσι βροτοῖσι
- Νὺξ ὀλοή· μετὰ τὴν δ’ Ἀπάτην τέκε καὶ Φιλότητα
- [225] Γῆράς τ’ οὐλόμενον, καὶ Ἔριν τέκε καρτερόθυμον.
- Night bore loathsome Doom [Moros] and black Fate [Ker] and Death [Thanatos], and she bore Sleep [Hypnos], and she gave birth to the tribe of Dreams [Oneiroi]. Second, then, gloomy Night bore Blame [Momus] and painful Distress [Oizys], although she had slept with none of the gods, and the Hesperides, who care for the golden, beautiful apples beyond glorious Ocean and the trees bearing this fruit. And she bore (a) Destinies [Kers] and (b) pitilessly punishing Fates [Moirai], (a) Clotho (Spinner) and Lachesis (Portion) and Atropos (Inflexible), who give to mortals when they are born both good and evil to have, and (b) who hold fast to the transgressions of both men and gods; and the goddesses never cease from their terrible wrath until they give evil punishment to whoever commits a crime. Deadly Night gave birth to Nemesis (Indignation) too, a woe for mortal human beings; and after her she bore Deceit [Apate] and Fondness [Philotes] and baneful Old Age [Geras], and she bore hard-hearted Strife.
- 1.4.60–62
- and it would not be like breaking up:
- When foul Discord’s din
- War’s posts and gates of bronze had broken in,
- where, even when he is dismembered, you would find the limbs of a poet.b
- b The passage cited is from Ennius and refers to the temple of Janus, which was opened in time of war. It is imitated in Virgil, Aen. vii. 622.
- and it would not be like breaking up:
- Preface 1.2–6
- Erebus Aether. ex Nocte et Erebo Fatum Senectus Mors Letum
- †Continentia Somnus Somnia <Amor> id est Lysimeles, Epiphron
- †dumiles Porphyrion Epaphus Discordia Miseria Petulantia
- Nemesis Euphrosyne Amicitia Misericordia Styx; Parcae tres, id est [line 5]
- Clotho Lachesis Atropos; Hesperides, Aegle Hesperie †aerica.
- Smith & Trzaskoma translation:
- From Night and Darkness came Fate, Old Age, Death, Destruction, Strife,* Sleep, (i.e., the body relaxer*), Dreams, Thoughtfulness, Hedymeles, Porphyrion, Epaphus, Discord [Discordia], Misery, Petulance, Nemesis, Cheerfulness [Euphrosyne], Friendship [Amicitia], Pity, Styx; also three Parcae, namely Clotho, Lacheis, Atropos, and the three Hesperides (Eagle, Heperia, Eritrea*).
- § 0.2 ... From Night and Erebus: Fate, Old Age, Death, Dissolution, Continence, Sleep, Dreams, Love — that is, Lysimeles, Epiphron, dumiles [?} Porphyrion, Epaphus, Discord, Wretchedness, Wantonness, Nemesis, Euphrosyne, Friendship, Compassion, Styx; the three Fates, namely, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos; the Hesperides, Aegle, Hesperie, aerica.
- 92
- JUDGMENT OF PARIS: Jove is said to have invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis all the gods except Eris, or Discordia. When she came later and was not admitted to the banquet, she threw an apple through the door, saying that the fairest should take it. Juno, Venus, and Minerva claimed the beauty prize for themselves. A huge argument broke out among them. Jupiter ordered Mercury to take them to Mt Ida to Paris Alexander, and bid him judge. Juno promised him, if he should judge in her favour, that he would rule over all the lands and be pre-eminent wealth. Minerva promised that if she should come out victorious, he would be bravest of mortals and skilled in every craft. Venus, however, promised to give him in marriage Helen, daughter of Tyndareus, most beautiful of all women. Paris preferred the last give to the former ones, and judges Venus the most lovely. On account of this, Juno and Minerva were hostile to the Trojans. Alexander, at the prompting of Venus, took Helen from his host Menelaus form Lacedemon to Troy, and married her. She took with her two handmaids, Aethra and Thisiadie, captives, but once queens, whom Castor and Pollux had assigned to her.
- Discordiam vero ac Seditionem quis ad sacras nuptias corrogaret, praesertimque cum ipsi Philologiae fuerint semper inimicae?
- Indeed, who would correct discord and sedition at the sacred wedding, and especially when they themselves have always been enemies [to Philology?] ?
- 124.271–295
- [Eumolpus:] " ... The trumpets blasted in quavering tones, and Discord with disheveled hair raised her Stygian head up toward the gods of heaven. On her face blood had clotted, tears ran from her bruised eyes, her teeth covered in rusty scales were eaten away, her tongue was dripping with decaying matter, her face beset with snakes, beneath her torn clothes her breasts writhed, and in her bloody hand she waved a quivering torch. Leaving behind the darkness of Cocytus and Tartarus,160 she went forward in search of the high ridges of the proud Apennine, (280) from where she could see all the lands and coasts, and the armies streaming over the whole world. She spewed forth these words from her maddened breast: ‘All nations, take up arms now and fill your hearts with fire, take up arms, and hurl torches into the hearts of cities. Whoever hides from the fray will be lost; let no woman delay, no child, no man wasted by old age; let the earth itself quake and the shattered houses join the fight. You, Marcellus,161 uphold the law. You, Curio,162 stir up the rabble crowds. You, Lentulus,163 do not slow down the god of war. (290) You, divine Caesar, why are you a laggard in your arms, why do you not break down the gates, why do you not strip the towns of their walls, and seize their treasures? You, Pompey the Great, do you not know how to defend Rome’s citadels? So, seek out the alien walls of Epidamnus,164 and stain red the bays of Thessaly with human blood.’ All was done on earth, just as Discord ordered it.”
- 442
- and jarring Strife [Discordia] disorders her jewels.
- 477
- Civil War [Civilis agit Discordia] makes plunder of his kin,
- 683–691
- For, when the Vices’ army was driven off, Discord had entered our ranks wearing the counterfeit shape of a friend. Her torn mantle and her whip of many snakes were left lying far behind amid the heaps of dead on the field of battle, while she herself, displaying her hair wreathed with leafy olive, answered cheerfully the joyous revellers. But she has a dagger hidden under her raiment, seeking to attack thee, thou greatest of Virtues, thee alone, Concord, of all this number, with bitter treachery.
- 705–725
- Quickly with drawn swords the whole army of the Virtues surrounds her, asking in an uproar of excitement her race and name, her country and her faith, what God she worships, of what nation he that sent her. And she, all pale with upsetting fear, says: “I am called Discord, and my other name is Heresy. The God I have is variable, now lesser, now greater, now double, now single; when I please, he is unsubstantial, a mere apparition, or again the soul within us, when I choose to make a mock of his divinity.a My teacher is Belial, my home and country the world.” No further did Faith, the Virtues’ queen, bear with the outrageous prisoner’s blasphemies, but stopped her speech and blocked the passage of her voice with a javelin, driving its hard point through the foul tongue. Countless hands tear the deadly beast in pieces, each seizing bits to scatter to the breezes, or throw to the dogs, or proffer to the devouring carrion crows, or thrust into the foul, stinking sewers, or give to the sea-monsters for their own. The whole corpse is torn asunder and parcelled out to unclean creatures; so perishes frightful Heresy, rent limb from limb.
- 9.288–289
- discordia demens
- intravit caelo superosque ad bella coëgit.
- the madness of strife invaded heaven and forced the gods to fight.
- 13.586
- Error, with staggering gait, and Discord that delights to confound sea with sky.e
- e i.e. to cause general confusion.
- Error, with staggering gait, and Discord that delights to confound sea with sky.e
- everywhere reigned bitter Hatred and Frenzy and Discord sundering the partners of the bed.
- Fit sentinels hold watch there: from the outer gate wild Passion leaps, and bhnd Mischief and Angers flushing red and pallid Fear, and Treachery lurks with hidden sword, and Discord holding a two-edged blade"
Argonautica
- 2.204
- adcelerat Pavor et Geticis Discordia demens
- [205] e stabulis atraeque genis pallentibus Irae
- et Dolus et Rabies et Leti maior imago
- visa truces exerta manus, ut prima vocatu
- intonuit signumque dedit Mavortia coniunx.
- Straightway Fear and insensate Strife from her Getic lair, dark-browed Anger with pale cheeks, Treachery, Frenzy and towering above the rest Death, her cruel hands bared, come hastening up at the first sound of the Martian consort’s pealing voice that gave the signal.
- 6.400–406
- Then with the curved blades doth discord entangle and lacerate the panic-stricken cars.1 As when fierce Tisiphone stirs Roman legions and their princes to war, whose lines on either side glitter with the same eagles and spears; their fathers till the same rural lands, and the same unhappy Tiber has sent, not to such wars as these, the chosen levies of all the countryside:
- 7.467–472
- [Medea to Jason:] "Come now," she says, "take again this crested helm which Discord held but now in her death-bringing hand. When thou hast turned the sods, hurl this into the midst of the harvest: straightway shall all the troop turn upon themselves in rage, and my father himself shall cry aloud in wonder, and turn his gaze mayhap on me."
- 6.268–
- On they went dimly, beneath the lonely night amid the gloom, through the empty halls of Dis and his phantom realm, even as under the niggard light of a fitful moon lies a path in the forest, when Jupiter has buried the sky in shade, and black Night has stolen from the world her hues. Just before the entrance,14 even within the very jaws of Hell, Grief and avenging Cares have set their bed; there pale Diseases dwell, sad Age, and Fear, and Hunger, temptress to sin, and loathly Want, shapes terrible to view; and Death and Distress; next, Death’s own brother Sleep, and the soul’s Guilty Joys, and, on the threshold opposite, the death-dealing War, and the Furies’ iron cells, and maddening Strife [Discordia demens], her snaky locks entwined with bloody ribbons.
- 8.698–702
- Monstrous gods of every form and barking Anubis wield weapons against Neptune and Venus and against Minerva. In the middle of the fray storms Mavors, embossed in steel, with the grim Furies from on high; [702] and in rent robe Discord [Discordia] strides exultant, while Bellona follows her with bloody scourge.
Modern
Bernstein
P. 16 [in folder]
- The initial phase of the battle" commences with an extended simile comparing the armies' advance to storm winds on the ocean (278-86n.). The simile marks the combat to come as Iliadic, and also prepares the reader for the subsequent interventions by the Vulturnus wind. Discordia then prompts the gods to descend to the battlefield (287-303n.). Virgil similarly sets Roman gods against a series of Egyptian gods at Actium, though naming only Anubis (Aen. 8.700-8), ...
- Beginning the catalog of deities who participate in the battle with Discordia demens (288n.) associates Cannae unmistakably with Roman civil conflict (see further section 4b). Ennius (Ann. 225 Skutsch) introduced Discordia taetra, who then enjoyed a long afterlife in Roman epic. She is one of the horrors resident in Virgil's Underworld, as well as one of the divine participants at Actium32. Discordia then appears seven times ni Lucan's Belum Civile, and Petronius includes her in his civil war parody. Statius involves her in his narrative of the Theban civil war, and Silius Scipio encounters her during his descent to the Underworld.33 In the Argonautica, Valerius drew the association between the Discordia of non-Roman peoples and Roman civil war. A simile compares the conflict between a pair of mythological Colchian brothers ot warfare between Roman legions (Arg. 6.400-6). For Flavian readers, this simile inevitably recalls the recent war of AD 69 (Bernstein 2014). Silius' Discordia, then, is at once a component of a tradition that stretched back through Virgil to Ennius, as well as an immediately relevant reminder of the tenuousness of the present peace.
- 32 Verg. Aen. 6.280-1 Discordia demens / uipereum crinem uittis innexa cruentis; Aen. 8.702 et scissa gaudens uadit Discordia palla.
- 33 Petr. Sat. 124.271-2 ac scisso Discordia crine / extulit ad superos Stygium caput; Stat. Theb. 2.288, with Gervais's note, Theb. 5.74, Theb. 7.50; Sil. Pun. 13.586-7 Discordia gaudens / permiscere fretum caelo.
- the catalog of deities commences with Discordia, the personification of civil war. By giving her pride of place, Silius draws a strong thematic association between Cannae and Roman civil conflict.
Bloch
- s.v. Discordia
- The Latin equivalent of the Greek Eris. In contrast with Concordia, D. was never more than a literary personification, and not a cult goddess. Ennius (Ann. 225f.) has D. break down the gates of war (cf. Hor. Sat. 1,460f.). According to Hyg. Fab. praef. 1, D. is a daughter of the ‘night’ ( Nox) and of Erebos. In Virgil (Aen. 6,280), she stands guard at the entrance to the Orcus; in Aen. 8,702 she appears ─ in a torn cloak ─ on Aeneas' shield amidst the tumult of the battle of Actium (cf. also Val. Fl. 2,204, and also the warmongering D. in Petron. Sat. 124, v. 271-295). In Mart. Cap. 1,47, D., alongside Seditio, is a deity of the third celestial region.
Gantz
p. 4
- Nyx's other children [besides Aether (Brightness), and Hemera (Day), produced without the aid of Erebos or any other [cont.]
p. 5
- partner, are ...
Gildenhard
[In folder]
Hard
- The children of Eris represent the many harmful and destructive things that arise from discord and strife, namely Toil (Ponos), Oblivion (Lethe), Famine, Sorrows, Fights, Battles, Murders, Manslayings, Quarrels, Lies, Disputes, Lawlessness, Delusion (Ate) and Oath (Horkos).59 This is allegory of the most obvious kind for the most part; the last two alone require further comment.
Hardie
p. 4
- Late antiquity displays something of an obsession with concordia and discordia, fueled by both historical and, now, theological rather than philosophical considerations.
p. 48
- The opposition of discordia and concordia is another Virgilian dichotomy: the Aeneid strives to write an ending to the discord of civil war that had torn apart the late Republic, as Virgil proclaims the concord of the pax Augusta.12 But the contrast of discord and concord receives heightened emphasis in late antique poetry, where it is often colored by allusion to Lucan’s civil-war epic, and to the reception of Lucan’s poetry of civil war by the Flavian epic poets, above all Statius.
- 12 On concordia and discordia in the Aeneid, see Cairns 1989, ch. 4.
p. 49
- Concord and discord are also obsessions of the Christian poet Prudentius, with reference not to the secular state but to divisions within the church, and the threat of heresy.
p. 50
- Concordia is treacherously wounded by Discordia, who has joined the ranks of the Virtues in disguise, wearing the attributes both of Allecto disguised as an aged priestess (Calybe) as she makes her approach to the sleeping Turnus in Aeneid 7 (415–19) and of the Statian ghost of Laius appearing to Eteocles disguised as Tiresias in Thebaid 2 (94–101).20 But Prudentius’s Discordia is quickly unmasked, and the verbal Babel of her self-revelation as “Heresy” is silenced by the spear that Fides drives through her tongue. Then, in a punishment that fits her crime of dividing the church through heresy, she herself is torn to pieces. Con-cordia con-sors, Concord in partnership with Faith, can now set about laying the foundations for the new temple (824–25).
- 20 Prudentius’s Discordia is also in the likeness of the Discordia (and her companion Bellona) at the battle of Actium on the Shield of Aeneas: with 685 scissa procul palla structum et serpente flagellum, cf. Aen. 8.702–3 et scissa gaudens uadit Discordia palla, | quam cum sanguineo sequitur Bellona flagello. Aeneid 7 and 8 are thus framed by Allecto and her Ennian ancestor Discordia.
p. 103
- 4 Concord and Discord: Concordia Discors
- In chapter 2 I drew attention to several late antique elaborations of the Virgilian opposition of concord and discord.
p. 105
- What has not been fully brought out is the extent to which the Virgilian shield thematizes, and sums up, the tension between concord and discord that Cairns rightly identifies as central to the plot of the Aeneid. In his discussion of the shield, Cairns draws attention to the “civil war” between father-in-law Tatius and son-in- law Romulus; to the battle of Actium, with Discordia at its center; and to the dithy- rambic and Herculean associations of the triumph, Hercules being a Cynic figure of the reconciler and bringer of concord.8 But the opposition is from the outset built into an artifact that translates the Empedoclean polarity of Strife and Love into a Roman historical narrative of war and peace,9 establishing an analogy between political concord and cosmic harmony.10
p. 106
- Diversity and unity structure the climactic scenes of Actium and triumph: in the description of the battle the division of civil war is displaced onto the chaotic diversity of the humans on one side in the battle, Antony’s non-Roman orientals (685 hinc ope barbarica uariisque Antonius armis), and of the gods who fight for them (“all manner of monstrous gods and barking Anubis” [omnigenumque deum monstra et latrator Anubis]). At the height of the battle, gods and personifications of strife and division rage, Mars, the Dirae, culminating in line 702: “Jubilant Discord strode along in her torn cloak” (et scissa gaudens uadit Discordia palla). Discordia is the Empedoclean Neikos, Strife, and she had appeared as such in Ennius’s Annals. In Virgil’s reworking of the Ennian outburst of Discordia (Annals 7) in the Allecto episode in Aeneid 7, she has become the spirit of a kind of civil war between Italians and Trojans, peoples who should, and in the future will, live together in harmony.14 And in two passages, from the first poem of Virgil’s first major work, and the last book of his epic, the line-ending discordia ciuis identifies civil war.15
- 14 Allecto “footnotes” her identity as Ennian Discordia in her triumphant words to Juno at Aen. 7.545–46: en, perfecta tibi bello discordia tristi; | dic in amicitiam coeant et foedera iungant.
- 15 Ecl. 1.71–72 en quo discordia ciuis | produxit miseros; Aen. 12.583 exoritur trepidos inter discordia ciuis.
p. 110
- In the City of God Augustine replies to the charge that the city of Rome could have resisted its attackers in a.d. 410 if only the pagan gods had been appeased, by taking the attack to his opponents, and arguing that the pre-Christian history of Rome was an interminable series of civil dissensions and civil wars, going back to Romulus’s foundational fratricide. In this, Augustine of course draws on a narrative familiar from non-Christian historians and poets of Rome. The history of discord goes back even further in Roman ancestry, Augustine notes, since the fall of Troy can be traced to the apple thrown by the uninvited Strife at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the fateful prize at the Judgment of Paris (CD 3.25). Augustine sarcastically observes that the foundation of a Temple of Concord in Rome after the Gracchan seditions was only followed by still worse outbreaks of civil strife [cont.]
p. 111
- (CD 3.25–26). The Romans might with more reason have put up a temple to the goddess Discordia.
p. 117
- FROM CONCORDIA TO PHYSICAL DISCORDIA: SPARAGMOS AND DISMEMBERMENT
- The sparagmos of Discordia in Prudentius’s Psychomachia (on which, see chapter 2) is a critical moment in the establishment of concord in the human soul and in the Christian Church. It is also a climactic moment in the poem’s thematization of unity and discordia, ...
p. 118
- To disguise herself in the guise of peace Discordia throws aside the attributes of division and of an evil multiplicity that define her as the personification of discord, and also identify her as a version of both the Virgilian Discordia and the Virgilian Allecto, herself an avatar of the Ennian Discordia. With Psychomachia 685–86 (“Her torn mantle and her whip of many snakes were left lying far behind amid the heaps of dead on the battlefield” [scissa procul palla structum et serpente flagellum | multiplici media camporum in strage iacebant]) compare both Discordia with her torn mantle at the battle of Actium (Aen. 8.702 et scissa gaudens uadit Discordia palla), and the multiple serpents and shape-shiftings, and thousand names and harmful arts of Allecto (Aen. 7.327–40).45 Once unmasked, Discordia identifies herself in a cacophony of alliteration and assonance, ringing changes on the prefix dis-: “I am called Discord, and my other name is Heresy; the God I have is variable” (709–10 Discordia dicor, | cognomento Heresis; Deus est mihi discolor).
p. 119
- Prudentius’s account of the punishment by contrappasso of the divisive Discordia alludes to the equally just, and equally horrifying, sparagmos of Rufinus, the monster of political discord, in Claudian’s Against Rufinus 2.407–27.48 The division of the body of Rufinus is fitting punishment for his division of the “body” of the eastern and western armies, when he forbids the eastern army to join the western in fighting the Goths. When Stilicho tells the eastern army that it must obey Rufinus’s command, with one voice the two armies protest, playing off dis- and con- compounds against each other: “Shall the Getae always profit by our discord? See once again the image of civil war. Why do you divide armies of one blood, why divide standards once concordant? We are an inseparable and united body” (2.235–39 semperne Getis dis- cordia nostra | proderit? en iterum belli ciuilis imago! | quid consanguineas acies, quid
diuidis olim | concordes aquilas? non dissociabile corpus | coniunctumque sumus).
p. 193
- The last of the encounters in the Psychomachia, between Concordia and Discordia, breaks out after what has seemed to be the definitive conclusion of hostili- ties once the other Vices have been defeated. Discordia is here the divisiveness of heresy, by which name the unmasked creature christens herself before she is torn to pieces: “I am called Discord, my other name is Heresy” (709–10 Discordia dicor, | cognomento Heresis). Her treacherous assault on Concordia after the establish- ment of peace is a reflection of a historical situation, the emergence of heretical
Krasne
p. 39
- I shall soon argue that this violence, in essence intended to eradicate an alternate self and even reduce it to a state of non-existence, serves as a manifestation of the civil discord that pervades the poem.24
- 24 Seal discusses several major manifestations of this pervasive civil discord,inparticular the fraternal civil war in Colchis, as well as the literary background to the conceit, in his essay in this volume, pp. 113–135. See also Stover (2012) and Bernstein (forthcoming) for recent readings of the contemporary relevance of Valerius’ heightened engagement with civil war.
Petrovicova
"Martianus Capella’s interpretation of Juno"
- ...
- Two inhabitants of the third zone, Discordia and Seditio, are not invited because they have always been inimical to Philology (1. 47 (51)).
- ...
- (51) Mart. Cap. 1. 47: Discordiam vero ac Seditionem quis ad sacras nuptias corrogaret, praeser-timque cum ipsi Philologiae fuerint semper inimicae?
Smith
s.v. Eris （*)/Eris), the goddess who calls forth war and discord. According to the Iliad, she wanders about, at first small and insignificant, but she soon raises her head up to heaven (4.441). She is the friend and sister of Ares, and with him she delights in the tumult of war, increasing the moaning of men. (4.445, 5.518, 20.48.) She is insatiable in her desire for bloodshed, and after all the other gods have withdrawn from the battle-field, she still remains rejoicing over the havoc that has been made. (5.518, 11.3, &c., 73.) According to Hesiod (Hes. Th. 225, &c.), she was a daughter of Night, and the poet describes her as the mother of a variety of allegorical beings, which are the causes or representatives of man's misfortunes. It was Eris who threw the apple into the assembly of the gods, the cause of so much suffering and war. [PARIS.] Virgil introduces Discordia as a being similar to the Homeric Eris; for Discordia appears in company with Mars, Bellona, and the Furies, and Virgil is evidently imitating Homer. (Aen.. 8.702; Serv. Aen. 1.31, 6.280.)