The belt is “familiar” to Aeneas he recognizes it instantly and, from this part, constructs a whole: an absent, “luckless” Pallas for which the “luckless” belt stands. The reader cannot see a whole Turnus as Aeneas himself cannot, for his fixation on the trophy is an exercise in reduction and focus: he reduces the masculine body of war to an accessory. Aeneas’s whole and present armored body legitimizes his status as founder of Rome and conqueror. As an object that memorializes and justifies violence, the belt of Pallas looks backward and forward in a way that the epic itself does, but the past (and the absent subject of Pallas) can only be accessed through the fragmentary or the partial. Here, however, memory and mourning are transformed into violence. Like the military paraphernalia paraded in Sidney’s funeral, Pallas’s belt encourages memory and mourning in response to a past death in battle. But it also looks backward it is a memorial of Pallas and of Aeneas’s “brutal grief.” The spoil marks both death and the bereaved subject’s response to death. It is thus a forward-looking object that assures the creation of a new and glorious nation. This spoil is the source and justification of Aeneas’s violence, the only reason the text provides for this act of cruelty and destruction that the project of nation-building demands. Like Pallas’s belt, objects in these plays are indeed situated in particular ways, and as these situations change, so too do the objects’ meanings. His interest in the “situation” of an object resonates with Shakespeare’s Plutarchan Roman plays, which engage with what happens when an object’s “situation” changes-whether this situation is its physical location or its ownership or both. The “act of attention” (emphasis mine) to which Nabokov alludes is active, but his image of “sinking into” the history of an object is disturbingly passive: the subject is overcome, or overwhelmed, by the act of concentration. Its history, or the narratives that subjects attach to it, is the source of its destructive power and its power as a memorial. The belt’s violent history inspires “rage,” “wrath,” and an act of violence in the present moment. Aeneas’s encounter with Pallas’s belt inspires this very process. Vladimir Nabokov notes that, “When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the very act of attention may lead to our involuntarily sinking into the history of that object.” Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), 1. The spoil tells a story about “the boy / whom Turnus had defeated, wounded, stretched / upon the battlefield, from whom he took / this fatal sign to wear upon his back,” and this story-if not Pallas himself-is embodied in the object. This spoil transforms a present subject (Aeneas) into an absent subject (Pallas) associated with or embodied in the object or spoil in question and, in so doing, both renders him present and reminds Aeneas, and the reader, of Pallas’s absence. This line also underscores the belt’s power to construct and deconstruct subjects and to confuse the boundaries between them. Aeneas’s assertion that, “It is Pallas who strikes …” points to the transformative power of this material object. His eyes “ in this plunder,” and he demands of Turnus, “How can you who wear the spoils of my dear comrade now escape me?” The sight of this object transforms Aeneas into Pallas it alters his subjectivity and compels him to avenge Pallas’s death not as himself but rather as the victim-as Pallas. Aeneas recognizes the belt instantly the “familiar studs” flash in the sun as Aeneas flashes in his full armor. Alen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam, 1961), 330–1. i nsigne) of Turnus’s past victory over Pallas. spoliis) or trophy, and an “emblem” or “sign” (L. Virgil describes this crucial belt as a “memorial of brutal grief” (L. It is only when Aeneas notices a particular object-the “luckless belt of Pallas” that hangs on Turnus’s shoulder-that he resolves to kill his antagonist. In spite of his rage, aggression, and readiness to fulfill his charge to found Rome, Aeneas finds himself moved by Turnus’s plea for his life and hesitates to strike him down. At the end of Book 12 of Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas is described as “stetit acer in armis” or “ferocious in his armor,” a colossal and threatening force, a man prepared to meet Turnus in battle.
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