Il lessico della follia in Virgilio: demens, dementia

This paper examines Virgil’s use of demens and dementia. Alongside usages in part traceable to previous attestations of the term, in Virgil’s works a ‘demens’ character is who commits, either thoughtlessly or unwittingly, a single deed which leads him to disaster. Accordingly, dementia is the ‘blindness’ which suddenly takes possession of an individual’s intellectual faculties and makes perish out of fault (Misenus), disobedience (Orpheus, Pandarus) or sheer recklessness (Privernus). This connection between an ‘error of judgment’ and ruin is comparable to the effects of the Homeric ἄτη, and it is exploited to create complex narrative situations: in some instances, ‘dementia’ equates to a form of ‘ignorantia fatorum’, a failure to interpret events through the divine perspective and to act accordingly (Dares, Turnus, Diomedes, Numanus). This is also the case of Dido and Lausus, whose tragic demise is not, however, caused by a fault or misjudgment but by a morally due act.