hAp 164-197

Anchises undid her bra (lit. girdle) and took off her clothes and put them on a chair. Then, by the gods' will and fate, a mortal lay with an immortal goddess without knowing it.

At the time when herdsmen bring cattle and sheep back from pasture, then she poured sleep on Anchises, and put her own clothes on. The goddess stood in the hut, and her head touched the roof. Beauty shone from her cheeks like that of the Cytherean. She woke him up and said:

"Get up; why do you sleep? Consider whether I seem to be similar to the kind of woman I was when you first saw me."

So she spoke. When he saw Aphrodite's neck and eyes, he looked away in fear and covered his face. He begged her:

"Right when I first saw you I knew you were a god. You didn't speak truthfully. I beg you, don't let me live in weakness, but have mercy. Since no man lives with flourishing life who has gone to bed with goddesses."

Aphrodite responded: "Anchises, don't be afraid of me or the other gods; you are the gods' friend. You will have a son who will rule the Trojans and children will be born continuously from children." 

  • Aphrodite's head touching the roof recalls other divine epiphanies, particularly hDem, which has similar language. 
    • hAp 173-4: εὐποιήτοιο μελάθρου / κῦρε κάρη
    • hDem 188-9: καὶ ῥα μελάθρου / κῦρε κάρη
  • Lots of words beginning with νη- in this passage: νήδυμον (171), νήγρετον (177), νημερτὲς (186).
  • Some play here on comparison and difference; Aphrodite asks Aeneas whether she is "similar" (178: ὁμοίη) to when he first saw her, and the narrator engages in a similar game of comparison when he invokes herdsmen bringing their flocks home (~Aeneas -- where is his flock anyway?) and compares Aphrodite's beauty to that of Aphrodite herself.
  • Anchises seems mostly worried about a loss of strength (188: ἀμενηνὸν; 189: βιοθάλμιος), in contrast to the death offered to other male consorts in Calypso's catalogue in Od. 5 mentioned above. Not sure what he's imagining exactly.
  • Does Anchises appear in Homer? I think no. One could imagine that he might hang out with Priam in the Teichoscopia, but he's not there. In the Homer Encyclopedia Bruno Currie comments:
    • Whether Anchises was killed or maimed is uncertain (cf. Hygin. Fab. 94); in the Sack of Ilion (iliupersis), and perhaps elsewhere in early Greek epic, he is maimed (Soph. Laokoon, fr. 374 Radt; LIMC “Aineias” nos. 59–156; Lenz 1975, 146–149). He is to be imagined as alive and elderly during the Trojan War (Il. 17.324, despite 13.465–466; differently, Clay 1989, 199–200). His absence from the main story of the Iliad is surprising, but compare the Iliad's general reticence about Aeneas' family.
  • ἐκγεγάονται (197) is a weird form. Richardson takes as an "anomalous third-person form of the prefect ἐκγέγαα, treated as if it were a future" (244) -- seems plausible.

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