What is the literary effect of an Ablative Absolute?

Question

I'm analyzing Book 4, lines 129-139 for my final in Virgil's Aeneid:

Oceanum interea surgens Aurora reliquit.
It portis iubare exorto delecta iuventus;
retia rara, plagae, lato venabula ferro,
Massylique ruunt equites et odora canum vis.
Reginam thalamo cunctantem ad limina primi
Poenorum exspectant, ostroque insignis et auro
stat sonipes, ac frena ferox spumantia mandit.
Tandem progreditur, magna stipante caterva,
Sidoniam picto chlamydem circumdata limbo.
Cui pharetra ex auro, crines nodantur in aurum,
aurea purpuream subnectit fibula vestem.

I was reading a commentary to gain some insight into what I should write, and all it does is mention an ablative absolute's existence -- "iubare exhorto" -- without explaining the effect of the literary device. Does the ablative absolute add a feeling of interjected excitement, rather than a droning dependent clause? Does it have some other effect on the flow of the passage?

Answer 1

As the beginning of an answer: I doubt that anything can be said about the general literary effect of an ablative absolute, prescinding from other contextual considerations. The ablative absolute is extremely versatile and common.

The ablative absolute is syntactically separate from the rest of the sentence and often is more concise than an equivalent phrase in a dependent clause. This allows it to be interjected at unexpected places for a literary effect. What that effect is, though, varies with context.

In your example from the Aeneid, iubare exorto interrupts the flow of the sentence because it is placed between the predicate (it portis) and the subject (delecta iuventus): this contributes to the sense of "preparatory buzz" for the early-morning hunt.

Vergil is a master of his craft, and it's impossible to reduce literary effect to rules. ("Ah, now when I write my rival Aeneid, all I need to do is add ablative absolutes to convey a sense of urgency!") Word choice--such as the unusual iubar, -is--contributes to an overall effect that can't be reduced simply to grammatical constructions.