^roceetuncsjs
of the Virgil JSo. 9
1969 - 1970
i
PROCEEDINGS OF THE VIRGIL SOCIETY
1969-70
(Editor: H.MacL. Currie, M.A., Queen Mary College, Mile End Road, London, E.l.)
Contents Page
Lectoribus Editor
Lecture No.93 'Myricae' by Mrs. C .G r iffit h s , M .A.
Lecture N o .91 "Virgil and the Heroic Ideal' 20 by Brian Morris, M.A,,D.Phil.
Lecture No.95 'Virgil and H.G.Wells : Prophets 34 of a New Age' by H.W.Stubbs, M.A.
Lecture No.93 'Nescio Quid Maius* 53 by Dr. D.W.Vessey, M.A.,Ph.D.
Lecture No.97 'Virgil Unpunctuated' 76 by Prof. G.B.Townend, M.A.
Article 'The Georgies and Mark Antony* 86 by Prof. R.G.Tanner, M.A* .
Book Reviews 106
Lithographically produced and distributed for the Virgil Society by H.W.Walden & Co.Ltd., 18 Station Approach, Clapham Junction, S.W.ll.
Lectoribus Editor
Once more we acknowledge with gratitude a generous grant from the British Academy towards the publication of this issue of The Proceedings.
And on the subject of finance, we must report a recent decision of the Council, in view of ever mounting costs, to RAISE the ORDINARY ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION to 12/- from January 1st, 1971. This step, though much regretted, is certainly necessary. At the A.G.M.. in 1967 the Council sought and obtained leave to increase at its discretion the annual ordinary subscription up to a limit of 12/6. For three years we have held our hand, but circumstances now force the new rate upon us. We hope that members will understand the situation and duly note the change, making the required alteration to banker's orders. The life subscription remains the same at 7 guineas. ii
We look forward to hearing our President, Professor F.H.Sandbach, F.B.A., addressing us on February 20, 1971. His subject will be 'Some Translators of Virgil'.
We offer our congratulations to the distinguished Virgilian, Mr.W.A,Camps, upon his election to the mastership of Pembroke College, Cambridge, Members will recall his paper to the Society in 1968. Last year there appeared his useful and interesting introduction to the Aeneid.
The second Jackson Knight memorial lecture, 'On translating Poetry', delivered at Exeter University on March 7, 1969, by the poet laureate, Mr. C.Day-Lewis, is now published and is obtainable from the Abbey Press, Stert Street, Abingdon, Berks., at 5/- per copy. Mr. Day-Lewis ranges widely from Sophocles and V irgil to th e moderns and ends with his own version of a few stanzas from Valery's 'Cimetifere marin', offering en route many acute and illuminating observations on the problems that face the translator of poetry.
Lastly we salute all members at home and abroad, thanking them for their continued support.
OFFICE-BEARERS
Hon. Secretary : F.Robertson, M.A., Faculty of Letters, The University, Whiteknights Park, Reading, Berks.
Hon. Treasurer : J.D.M.Preshous, M.A., 28 Mill Lane, Earley, Reading, Berks.
Editor, The Proceedings : H.MacL. Currie, M.A., Queen Mary College, London, E.l.
Chairman of Council : Dr. A.J.Gossage, M.A., King’s College, Strand, London,W„C.2. V.S. Lectures, No. 93
MYRICAE
Text of a lecture read to the Virgil Society 18th October, 1969.
by Mrs. Carlotta Griffiths, M.A.
The Augustan Age in Latin literature, witness any handbook, begins with V ir g i l 's Eclogues. Ages, of course, whether contemporary or posthumous creations, have to be treated circumspectly; they may only be labels which conveniently codify a rather tiresome continuity, particularly at the outer edges. Are there then any reasons why Virgil's Eclogues should belong to the poetry of the Augustan Age rather than to Republican or more precisely Neoteric poetry? Chronologically, after all, these poems were written between about 44 B.C. and 38 B.C., when the Pax Augusta was hardly even in sight. True, the same poet went on to write two of the most important and representative works of the Augustan Age, but that is not quite relevant to our question, in spite of a natural reluctance to chop a poet in two: would the Eclogues still belong to Augustan poetry if Virgil had died in 38 B.C.? On the face of it, the choice of pastoral as a genre is a purely neoteric one. Thus, if the Eclogues really are a new poetry, we should try to explain not only how Virgil's poetry differed from that of the neoterics in spite of his choice of genre, but also why he chose to develop that particular genre; there were after all plenty to choose from, as Eclogue VI testifies. These have long been absorbing problems, and I must immediately state that I shall not, because I cannot, offer a comprehensive review of them, much less any proper solutions. What I shall try to do in this paper is to explore some of the language which Virgil uses to describe poetry in the Eclogues, and to see if this can tell us anything about Virgil's conception of pastoral and what he was trying to do with it. As so often with Virgil, every point seems to grow out of another and it is d iffic u lt t o d e c id e where one could logically begin, and so it is perhaps best if I abandon logic and start with the question which happened to lead me on to this inquiry.
Eclogue IV begins with three solemn statements in the first person:
Sicelides Musae, paulo maiora canamus. non omnis arbusta iuvant humilesque myricae. si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae.
Though this is perhaps the least debated passage in the poem, it is rather odd. Virgil invokes Theocritus' Muses only to invite them to do something quite un-Theocritean, to sing in a loftier strain. Not everyone, he says, likes trees and lowly tamarisks, that is, humble bucolic poetry, as we have been told ever since the ancient commentators (Philarg. ad loc. id est humiliora carmina c f . Serv. ad V I . 10 nam per m^ricas et nemora bucolica s ig n ifica t) . Now in the next line, some critics take silvae to be distinct from arbusta and myricae, representing Virgil's loftier pastoral as opposed to his lowly Theocritean pastoral. Three objections militate against this view: it suggests that Virgil could refer metaphorically to 'loftier pastoral' as a pre-existing recognisable option; secondly, in the preface to Eclogue VI, where again - 2 -
Virgil speaks in the first person about his poetry, both silvae and myricae are used and no such distinction is possible; but most important, it does not seem to me to make sense to say 'not everyone likes X; if we sing Y, let Y be worthy of a consul'. Logically, si canimus silvas must have concessive force: 'not everyone likes pastoral; if (though) I write pastoral, let it be (such as to be) worthy of a consul'. In fact, I think that this line presents us with the same paradox as line l: consuls in the woods are as odd as Theocritus’ Muses singing lofty poetry. Virgil is, I think, intentionally mystifying the reader as to what is going to follow; it is to be something new, a reconciliation of what at first sight would appear to be opposites.
Now if we look more closely at Virgil’ s metaphor in these lines, it seems quite natural that arbusta and silvae, and nanus (V I.11.) for that matter, should stand for pastoral, just as reges et proelia (VI.3.) stand for epic; they are at least the general background, if not the main subject, of Virgil’ s pastoral poetry. But why myricae? It seems strange to mention a specific plant, and only one, unless it has some specifically relevant associations. As far as I can see, no one other than Virgil uses tamarisks as a literary symbol, not even Calpurnius or Nemesianus, which suggests that they did not understand it. Moreover, in spite of the vast range of literary metaphors developed by the Hellenistic poets and the Romans after them, names of plants to stand for ^ifferent types of poetry is not one that seems to have been much developed; in Meleager's preface the plants are merely associated with individual poets and mostly without any discernible symbolism or even relevance. The only exception might be the contrast between the oak and SfaKvia GeajJ-Oq)dpOQ in line 10 of Callimachus' Aetia prologue, but this depends on Housman's conjecture 6p0vatthe beginning of the line, and even if true it would be borrowing a ready-made symboliinr frap fable (cf.Babrius 36). So although it may be natural that a plant should be used to symbolize pastoral poetry, there is nothing in the tradition of literary metaphor to help us explain why Virgil should have chosen myricae in particular. Nor does Theocritus help us very much, I think. Tamarisks appear in two places, 1.13 and 5,1 0 1 , but the line is in fact the same: XCT.av'T£<; TOC'tO af TTe ^upTx-at . In the first case Thyrsis tells the goatherd, in the second Comatas tells his kids, to come ’here by this sloping knoll and the tamarisks'. Neither the repetition of the line (see Gow on 1.106), nor the fact that in the first instance Thyrsis is inviting the goatherd to come and pipe by the tamarisks, is really a sufficiert explanation of Virgil's choice of tamarisks as a symbol. Exactly the same could be said of line 106 of the first idyll, fnveC 6pue<; xv^etpo^ a £ 61 xaAiv poupeOvxt ajidveoct a.e\ioacu which we find again at 5.45 describing a place to sit and have a singing contest. On the face of it xuxeipoc the galingale (latinized by Varro R.R.3.16.13), more humilis than the tamarisk and equally associated by Theocritus with singing-contests between shepherds, metrically equivalent moreover, would have been just as good a choice. However, it might be argued that unlike Xi3iceip0£, Theocritus' ^ivpTxai appear early on in the first idyll, in a typically pastoral context and on their own, and so impressed themselves on Virgil's mind, and that this is a sufficient explanation. This - 3 - may well be so, and, as the old commentators used to say, si cui placebit, non pugnabo.
Nevertheless, I think we should at least try to discover whether myricae could have had any other associations for V irg il which might have influenced his choice, bearing in mind how often in the Eclogues we find ideas and allusions which cannot be traced to Theocritus. Now the tamarisk is quite a common plant in the Mediterranean, Theophrastus frequently mentions it though he does not give it particular treatment. It appears already in Homer, and indeed Theocritus must have got it from the list of trees at _I_1.21.350, for the scansion myricae only appears there before him. Its uses are miscellaneous, from building Egyptian boats in Herodotus to weaving sandals for Hermes in his Homeric hymn. They appear to have no very special characteristic, not even that of being particularly humilis. But in his note on our passage Conington says that the tamarisks 'were . moreover sacred to Apollo, who was called |-tupixaro£ and JJ-Uf ix i voc, being represented with a branch of one in his hand, so that they are naturally associated with poetry here as in 6 .1 0 , 1 0 .1 3 .' This is misleading.- . The evidence behindthis statement is a very interesting passage of Nicander, Ther.612 foil.. In the course of a complicated recipe, Nicander says you should xaf M-upt,'xr)<; Aa^oto veov icavaxftpxea Qdpvov, M-dvTiv £vC ^cooCai yepdoM-tov, ^ tv ’ atcoAXcuv (iavToouvac KopoxatTcx; eOfixa/To xaJ Ge^iv dv 6 pwv.
'take a young frond of the tamarisk that bears no fruit, an honoured prophet among mortals, which Apollo of Corope endued with prophetic properties and authority over men.' (Gow). Let me say straight away that this passage, together with the scholion on it, constitutes *tfre entirety of our evidence, as far as I have been able to discover, for the association between Apollo and the tamarisk. Mor|over, the association is localised, it applies to the Apollo of Corope, and the scholiast adds, on the authority of a poem by Alcaeus, that it was also true of the Apollo at Lesbos, but it is not just common knowledge about Apollo. So we should first note that if Virgil's myricae are supposed to recall Apollo, the allusion for him, as for Nicander, is a learned one in the hellenistic vein; none the worse for that, but we must recognize it as such. More important, the tamarisk is sacred to Apollo of Corope not as god of poetry but as god of ^ prophecy: it is a ^avxtc; (and the personification is a striking one) , Apollo has endowed it with JiavTOauvat , the arts of divination. Not that I want to put poetry and prophecy into water-tight compartments, the whole purpose of this paper is to do just the opposite; but I would emphasize that if the Nicander passage interested and influenced Virgii in his choice of myricae as a symbol, it was because of their association with prophecy: their association with poetry would be his own.
Now of course it may be a pure coincidence that the Nicander passage is the only extant reference to myricae which gives interesting enough connotations for it to justify Virgil’s choice of the plant as a symbol. Though it is perfectly reasonable to suppose that Virgil had read Nicander, we have to admit that he gives us no hint that he is in fact thinking of 4 -
Nicander here (Virgil’ s latinization follows the Theocritean scansion). I would suggest, however, that the Nicander passage had already been picked up by a pastoral poet before Virgil, and was therefore a little more likely to have been influential. The argument for this hypothesis is admittedly precarious and complicated. I give it here for what it's worth. At A.A.I .747, Ovid says 'if you hope that your best friend will leave your girl alone, you may as well hope that tamarisks w ill bear fruit, and look for honey from the middle of a river.' :
si quis idem sperat, iacturas poraa myricas speret et e medio flumine mella petat.
We have here a couple of adynata of a rather recherche kind, unlikely to have been invented out of the blue. The adynaton-theme 'Let X plant bear (inappropriate) fruit' is, naturally enough, a peculiarly pastoral one, and we find both this and honey in a river in a series of adynata at Theocritus 5.124 foil: A. 'I^iepa &v0’ tfdaxcx; petxu) ydXa, xa? t-5 6e , xp£0t, ofv'jj 7top There was at the time some discussion about Ota as it had been conjectured into Haner by Ptolemy Euergetes no less (Schol.e.ad Theoc.5.125, Athen. 61c). In addition the scholiasts comment : at OV poTCXVT) XL£ hoT tV ttxap9tcc and dveuXXtd z t o i KavxeXfo; ttxapxa. When Virgil imitates this passage, he takes the same two elements as Ovid in spite of the change of speaker, and of course changes the plant (III.89): mella fluant illi, ferat et rubus asper amomum. Why should Ovid have chosen myricae as the barren plant? Now myricae again appear in a sel-ies of adynata at E.VI11.52 foil.: * nunc et ovis ultro fugiat lupus, aurea durae mala ferant quercus, narcisso floreat alnus, pinguia corticibus sudent electra myricae .... We know from the context that the passage which Virgil principally had in mind here was Theocritus 1.132 foil., but again there are no myricae in that passage; granted that he may have invented the ’amber’ conceit as a variation on ’bearing fruit/flowers’, it is unlikely that he and Ovid quite independently brought myricae into an adynaton. Nor is it likely that Ovid is here drawing from Virgil, simplifying what Virgil had first expressed in an elaborate form and conflating it with a different passage of Theocritus. While it is of course Virgil's constant technique in the Eclogues to conflate different pastoral elements from Theocritus and elsewhere, this would be rather surprising in the Ars Amatoria. A common source seems the most probable solution. What kind of common source? I would guess it was a poet imitating Theoc.5.124 fo il, who shied off the controversial oiTa and substituted 'let tamarisks bear fruit' (with the Theocritean scansion, of - 5 - course). This would then have been borrowed whole and plain by Ovid, picked out, embroidered and conflated by Virgil. Why should he have chosen tamarisks? Perhaps because as he was looking for a barren plant he remembered Nicander's xaC nvptTx-nc \a£oio veov Aavaxapxea 0dp.vov The assumption that the tamarisk is barren is an essential condition for its presence in the adynaton, yet the Nicander passage is (I think) the only one in extant Gr^ek literature that suggests this, for the good reason that it isn’t true. Nicander himself probably did not mean this: exact syntax and comparison with th e similar context at Serenus Sammonicus 480-1 nec non iungenda est utero nova virga myricae would suggest that he meant 'a branch which has never born fruit’ , not 'the tamarisk that bears no gyuit'. But -'Cavaxap'^T)^ is hapax legomenon, probably a coinage in fact , and as such open to interpretation for a hellenistic poet, who might construct an adynat on on the basis of it...; How much of the context in Nicander, the prophetic element, this poet may have included in his adynaton, even I would not care to guess, perhaps none. All I am trying to argue here is that there is a little independent evidence to suggest that a pastoral poet had already picked up Nicander's tamarisk description, making it more likely that Virgil would remember it or be led back to it. Leaving this labyrinth of conjecture, I will return to my main point. It is at least a possibility that Virgil chose myricae as a symbol because they implied not only pastoral but also prophecy. Why should he do this? And first of all, have we any other evidence that Virgil wanted to associate his pastoral with ideas of prophecy? After all, if the link was at all important to him, he would hardly confine it to a single learned allusion, even in a key symbolic word. One could of course answer that Eclogue IV as a whole is "large enough testimony to Virgil's interest in linking pastoral and prophecy,®a But it is not clear why he should have written and included such a poem as Eclogue IV in his pastoral collection unless some affinity between the idea of prophecy and pastoral was already in his mind. Now it has long been noticed that it is Virgil in the Eclogues who establishes the word vates in the sense of ’poet’ . It does not matter for oir purposes whether Ennius in the famous lines (ann.213 foil.) scripsere alii rem versibus quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant intended vates to mean ’poets’ or ’prophets , soothsayers' or both; nor whether Virgil in adopting the word to mean 'poet' was actually reverting to an ancient usage or merely thought that he was. What does matter is that in Virgil’s time vates currently meant 'prophet', and the meaning 'poet', whether old or new, had to be explained: Varro (L.L.7.36) says antiquos (-qui edd.) poetas vates appellabant, and in both the occurrences of vates in the Eclogues (VII.2E—8, IX,32-4) we find poeta syntactically parallel in the - 6 - same sentence, as a kind of gloss to put the reader on the right lines of interpretation. So Virgil is here deliberately innovating. The importance of this innovation for later Augustan poetry, a new concept of the poet's function, which.might be rejected but could not be ignored, has been amply illustrated. The vates is the serious poet of the high style, involved in public issues. Propertius, for instance, first uses the word in the programmatic poem 11.10, addressing Augustus (19-20) : haec ego castra sequar; vates tua castra eanendo magnus ero: servent hunc mihi fata diem! This would seem to be that natural implication c£ the word: the poet-prophet must be a dignified figure with a responsibility towards society. But what did Virgil mean when he first introduced the idea inthe Eclogues? Pastoral is after all deductum carmen, nor was there yet atf poetically decent alternative (Annales Volusi ...). Let us look more carefully at the more explicit of the two passages where Virgil uses the ward (IX 32 foil.): et me fecere poetam Pierides, sunt et mihi carmina, me quoque dicunt vatem pastores; sed non ego credulus illis. This being arte allusiva, it is important t o remember the model, Theocritus 7.37 foil. . Moto&v xaxvp£>v OTO|j.a, xtVS A-trov^i- K&vxtQ d o i 66 v ftptOTOv* 06 x a x u ’^ettiifc 06 Adv. As usual it is tie modification rather than the borrowing which is really significant. The two clauses have been made syntactically similar so that we have the two juxtaposed objects, poetam and vatem (the latter emphatically placed at the beginning of the line in e^^mbement) . By comparison with vates, poeta has the air of a Fremdwort. This impression is strengthened by localising the muses as Pierid es. Finally, the general k & v i c q has become the specific pastores, who again have strongly Roman associations. The result of these changes is that Virgil is saying something quite different from Theocritus. Theocritus is here concerned to align pastoral on the Callimachean side of the debate against epic (cf. vv. 45-50); In Virgil the Callimachean, neoteric alignment is taken as basic (notice that Virgil in no way rejects the poeta cf. X.70.), but pastoral is very subtly distinguished from this as containing a further possibility expressed in Latin terms; and that possibility lies in seeing a prophetic element as integral to the pastoral ideal and hence to pastoral poetry. Later, as we have seen, Virgil's vates was extracted from the firmly pastoral context (N.B. the close collocation vatem pastores) and associated with the more elevated genres of poetry, especially epic. This fact is indicative of the ambiguous literary standpoint which Virgil's pastoral presented, but what it reveals is a reaction: it should riot make us forget that initially vates is not an isolated forecast of the Aeneid but an integral part of the Eclogues, and needs to be explained as such. 7 - I think there is another aspect of the language which Virgil uses about poetry, which, though less clear-cut and less obvious than the introduction of the new word vates, nevertheless tells something of the same story. Eclogue VI begins : Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere versu nostra neque erubuit silvas habitare Thalea. cum canerem reges et proelia ...... canerern La Cerda comments: opponit hoc praecedenti ludere. est alterum heroicum, alterum bucolicum. This is merely derived from the context, but the point is worth investigating. ludere is not of course specifically bucolic; it is a typically neoteric word for composing poetry in a lighter vein - hestemo, Licini, die otiosi multum lusimus in meis tabellis .... Moreover we know, as La Cerda could not, that the preface to Eclogue VI echoes Callimachus' rejection of epic in the prologue to the Aetia, almost the sacred text of Alexandrianism in Rome. So ludere in the first line must be polemical, and opposition to canerem is in the context inevitable. Now at first sight this is rather odd, because Callimachus in his prologue emphatically uses the verb det'&etV to describe his own poetic activity (fr. 1.29, 33) and canere ought to he its equivalent. Why does Virgil, in imitating that very p r o l o g u e ,canere to describe the poetry of the opposite camp, heroic epic? I think the answer must be that canere had connotations in Latin quite different from those of detT&etV in Greek; connotations which a poet as sensitive as Virgil to the native reverberations of words could not ignore. The 'basic' meaning of the two words is of course 'to sing'. But would the associations of singing be the same for a Roman as for a Greek? For a Greek, singing begins with fifjviv the word when it comes to be used by V irg il, are quite different. Originally in fact, the word seems to mean not so much to 'sing* as to make a loud, and therefore usually public and formal, noise, whether the subject be a person or an instrument. Thus tubae canunt, bellicum or classicmn canere, receptui canere, for giving signals in battle, bucina canit of the night watches. More important, as we saw above, cano is from very early on the appropriate word for hymns: Dianam pueri integri puellaeque canamus is the only certain instance where Catullus uses the word int he first person. Other typicall^formal contexts in which we find cano are weddings, funerals and triumphs. Frequently too, cano means to 'proph^|^: the gods, oracles, the parcae, oscines aves, and vates all canunt. Of course the word is also used meaning simply to sing a song; the point is that for the Romans song is much more closely associated with public, religious and social life than with poetry. Nor is this surprising; Roman poetry (pace the Lays of Ancient Rome) was essentially literary right from the beginning, based on books both for its inspiration and for its diffusion, even though poets might give recitals of their works as well. And so we find that even when cano is associated with poetry, the emphasis is on the recital, not on the content or composition. All the instances in Cicero, for instance, imply either by the context (e.g. epulis) or by.lj^e mention of an instrument, that performance and not composition is meant. This is not to say that the Greek d e i 6 etv never exerted any influence on the development of cano, the question is when, and how much. The only instance of the weird in Ennius refers to the vates, but it may be that in spite of this (because of the Greek usage and because as an experimenter he could not afford to be as nice in his choice of words as later poets) he used the word either in his own person or in Homer's in the Dream at the beginning of the Annales: both Lucretius (1.112) and Propertius (3.3.7) use cecinit of him withreference to the Dream. At any rate, when Lucilius uses it, it is the word for epic in the context of a recusatio as it is in Virgil: (620-1) hunc laborem sumas, laudem qui tib i ac fructum ferat: percrepa pugnam Popili, facta Cornell cane. The only other poet who uses the word in a properly literary sense before Virgil is Lucretius; here we find it in a semi-formulaic phrase of the Greek poets (2.600 = 5.405 = 6.754), once of poets generally but with Greek epic in mind (5.327), once as we have seen of Ennius, and twice of his own task in the course of his exposition (5.509, 6.84). He nowhere uses it in the contexts where he is talking of his poetry, where he has a variety of other expressions: pangere versus or carmina (1.25, 5.8, Ennian) pertexere dictis (6.42; condere carmen (5.1.) It looks as if Lucretius picked up the literary cano from Ennius, but shied off using it emphatically of his own poetry because it was connected with the narrative poets of myth and legend, whom he is concerned to refute (2.644-5, 5.406, 6.753-5.). It may be no more than chance that there is no instance of cano in the miserable fragments - 9 - of neoteric poetry before Virgil; but I think it is significant that Catullus only uses the word in contexts which fit its Latin associations: apart from the hymn, we find it in a wedding ( 6 2 .9 ) , of Attis' ecstatic utterances (63.11, 27) and of the Parcae prophesying (64.383); he never uses it meaning just to compose poetry, in spite of the wealth of literary discussion in his work. I think we can conclude from all this that while the Latin poets were of course perfectly aware of t he Greek use of deifSeiv they hesitated to use cano as its equivalent because they could not help feeling in it the reverberations of formal religion and prophetic song which the word had, and continuedt o have, in Latin, in spite of increasing Greek influence. So it is not after all surprising that in the context of a recusatio Virgil should choose cano to represent high-flown epic. But if this is typical of the neoteric position, we must recognise that the Eclogues as a whole, in which cano occurs another 18 times, must have had a rather peculiar resonance for Virgil’s readers. Of course the shepherds and Silenus are supposed to sing their songs, not metaphorically but out loud, and to that extent the use of cano is obvious and natural. Moreover there is no doubt that in the Eclogues Virgil was trying to follow Theocritus in creating a peculiarly musical poetry, and a number of different verbs play their part in contributing to this effect. In Theocritus jxeXc'^etv and OX>pi£et. V are typically pastoral alternatives to detdetV . Virgil had largely to create alternatives: so he vocalises meditor, which originally meant to think out, practice or reflect; he transfers modulor from its rather technical literal sense of tuning or adjusting, to the broader meaning of composing songs, with carmina as object, so that again after him the word came to be associated with poetry. He also wins canto for poetry; it had none of the solemn associations of cano, it usually applied to professional singers who were of dubious respectability anyway, andtended towards pejorative meanings, like cantilena. Virgil never uses it outside the Eclogues, and never of himself, but his shepherds invested it with a new lyricism (cf. esp. IX.64-5, X.31-3) so that later it was frequently associated with poetry and indeed Horace can start his Roman Odes with Musarum sacerdos / virginibus puerisque canto. Nevertheless I think it is important that it "is cano, with its particular background of associations, which we find gently transferred from the shepherds to V irgil himself, sometimes with the fiction that Virgil is a shepherd while composing the Eclogues (X.70-1). haec sat erit, divae, vestrum cecinisse poetam, dum sedet et gracili fiscellam texit hibisco but also strongly in propria persona - Sicelides Musae, paulo maiora canamus. A similar heightening of tone may also have been felt in the frequent re-echoing of the word carmen through the poems, well over 40 times, often repeated within the line. The Romans connected the word with Carmentis the prophetic goddess, and it had many of the same prophetic and magical associations as cano. It seems that Ennius had tried to substitute poem a for it, witiout great success. But it is indicative that Catullus for instance only uses - 10 - carmen in the longer poems, while poema and versus are used in the lighter poems. I do not think it is being over-subtle to believe that Virgil was aware of these shades of meaning, and that he expected his readers to be: precisely in this group of words, we find that it is Virgil in the Eclogues who reawakens a number of ancient usages, which then become common after him. Thus in VIII 67-70, carmina is used in the sense of 'spells’ , only attested before him in the XII Tables; similarly at V III.71 cantando is used absolutely meaning 'by casting spells', extending an association found in Cato's de agricultura and once in Lucilius. It is Virgil who finally brings back the long-exiled Camenae (III.59 and Catal. 5.11-12) and connects them closely with his pastoral: alternis dicetis: am ant a lt e m a Camenae (c f . Hor. Sa t.1 .1 0 .4 5 ) and the Camenae were of course connected with carmen and cano (Varro L.L.VII.27). And, though this is not uncommon, it is interesting that he does use carmen to mean simply 'a prophecy' (IV.4 .). And let me repeat that cano is the appropriate word for the vates. We of course have to discover the connotations of these words from scanty references in a fragmentary literature: for Virgil the words would bring their echoes with them, perhaps indefinably; the importa^Jgpoint is that it was words with such echoes that he chose to emphasize. If the above is correct, it may not be illegitimate to conclude that as he was writing the Eclogues Virgil was concerned to enlarge and ennoble the idea of poetry by using language which was fraught with ancient religious and prophetic reverberations, a language which was moreover deeply rooted in the earliest Roman tradition. It need hardly be said that the association of prophecy and poetry, in itself, is clearly to be found in early Greek literature, and Virgil would of course be aware of this. Moreover the kind of prophecy involved is not exclusively concerned with the future. Hesiod's Muses, like Calchas ( 1 1 .1 .7 0 ) , are the ones who know (Theog.38) xa 'r’Wv'ta t<£ % ’ £oo<5neva *P<5 T ’ fedvaa And so Virgil says of Proteus (G.IV.392) novit namque omnia vates, quae sint, quae fuerint, quae mox ventura trahantur. (19) It is a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the world, which gives the prophet both authority and responsibility among men. Nicander's tamarisk, if you remember, receives from Apollo not only piaV'tOOUVat but also dvfipcOV. But although this idea of the poet-prophet who is important to the community is a very old one, it had by V ir g il's time long lost any meaning even in Greece; Aristophanes is already pointing this out in the Frogs (e.g.1418 foil.). The Alexandrian poet depended on the powers that be for patronage, but his responsibility is limited accordingly, even when he borrows semi-prophetic language from Pindar: (Theoc.17.115) Movodo>v 5 ’vKo different position, and Catullus like Calvus takes an interest in political events, but still for him the poet is the learned artist who is if anything at loggerheads with the establishment: Vivamus mea Lesbia atque amemus, rumoresque senum severiorum omnes unius aestimemus assis. We are so delighted by the impetuosity of Catullus the lover, that it's easy to forget that this is also the political attitude of Catullus the poet, a declaration of independence for his values and his poetry. So what is newf in Virgil's Eclogues is not only that he dwells on political themes in a genre which was not traditionally concerned with politics; he also suggests that the poet's activity is integral to the community and bound up with i t : when the community is shattered by the brutality of war, poetry is destroyed with i t : sed carmina tantum nostra valent, Lycida, tela inter Martia, quantum Chaonias dicunt aquila veniente columbas. (IX.11-13.) The prophetic doves of poetry lose their power, a helpless prey to the eagle of war. Again, poetry is a part of the peace and security which Tityrus receives from his god ( 1.6 f o i l .) 0 Meliboee, deus nobis haec otia fecit .... ille meas errare boves, ut cernis, et ipsum ludere quae vellem calamo permfsit agresti. while Meliboeus, uprooted in the dislocation of war, says: carmina nulla canam. Now it is often said that Virgil raised Theocritean pastoral to a higher plane, to a new dignity and more Roman involvement with political issues. This is doubtless objectively true, but it suggests that Virgil' innovations were intended as a response to Theocritus, a case of aemulatio within the genre, as if Virgil in the first place decided (or was fated?) to write Theocritean pastoral, and then found that certain changes were necessary, including a new idea of poetry. It seems to me more likely that Virgil in the first place wanted to express a new idea of poetry and that, after experiment no doubt, he decided that pastoral would be the best vehicle for it, for reasons which we shall try to see later. In short, I think that when Virgil in the Eclogues presents us with an archaic prophetic idea of poetry, a poetry vitally involved with the community, this is, however subtly, polemical; a polemic not against Theocritus so much as against the poets of his own time, the neoterics. Let me say straight away that I am not for a moment suggesting that Virgil rejects the neoteric achievement: that he admired it and absorbed its lessons down to the tiniest detail is indisputable, and his sympathy with many of its aims is evident in everything he wrote to the end of his life. It was after all the poetry with which he grew up. So what was his attitude to neoteric poetry? It seems reasonable to suppose that if an answer is to be found anywhere, we should find it in Eclogue VI. As we saw, the poem opens with what seems to be an unambiguous declaration of faith in the neoteric code, - 12 - the Callimachean instructions from Apollo adapted to suit pastoral, but with the same emphasis on unpretentious refinement, deductum dicere carmen, and (golden line '.) agrestem tenui meditabor harundine musam; and here alone in the Eclogues, Virgil uses ludere of his own poetry. The main part of the poem is taken up, as has been shown, with a list, poetically elaborate of course, of typically neoteric (hellenistic) themes. They are presented to us as the poetry of Silenus, who first appears inflatum hesterno venas, ut semper, Iaccho, but by the end of the paragraph has been transformed into an Orpheus figure, whose song casts a spell over the wild beasts and the trees, and he begins his song just as Orpheus did in Apollonius' Argonautica. Nor is it just the subject-matter of his song which recalls neoteric poetry; the loose concatenation of myths, the allusive and selective manner of referring t o them, the 'inset' narrative, the emphasis on psychology and emotion, the Dichterweihe, as well as many minor stylistic features, perfectly convey the characteristics of neoteric poetry as if it had been developed from Callimachus to Catullus and probably Gallus. And in fact Silenus* song is by no means new, it is omnia, quae Phoebo quondam meditante beatus audiit Eurotas iussitque ediscere lauros. Phoebus singing to Hyacinthus, an exquisitely hellenistic scene. There can be no doubt, then, that the poem is a tribute to neoteric poetry, a token of admiration for its achievement. I would suggest, however, that it does not follow from this that the poem represents Virgil's own poetic aims. It remains a fact that Virgil did not himself write any poetry of the kind which he so perfectly describes: it was not he who wrote- a Hylas or a Ciris. And I do not think that to describe a kind of poetry is the same as to compose i t . If Virgil devotes an Eclogue to describing a kind of poetry which he never wrote it would be at least strange that admiration should be his only motive. I think it was not only admiration, but also regret: that while he ranged himself wholeheartedly on the side of the neoterics in their loathing for the uncouth and bombastic, in thejr concern for perfection, that while he realised that no poetry could successfully ignore what they had achieved, he nevertheless felt, rightly or wrongly, that the day when poetry could concentrate on a private world of strange and fascinating myth had come to an end. In Eclogue VI, Silenus continues his song cogere donee ovis stabulis numerumque referre iussit et invito processit Vesper Olympo. Why invito ? Heyne explains: quod caelum aegre ferebat, nocte ingruente carmen finiri. At the risk of sounding fanciful, I would suggest that Virgil too, aegre ferebat carmen finiri, but for him that song, however beautiful, was no longer enough. Perhaps there is some slight support for this idea in Eclogue IV. It is of course clear that Eclogues IV and VI form a pair, linked by their positions in the book, by their divergence from even a minimal pastoral form, probably - 13 - also in date. Whatever Eclogue IV as a whole may mean, towards th e end of the poem Virgil seems to suggest what the ideal poetry of the future is to be like: o mihi turn longae maneat pars ultima vitae, spiritus et quantum sat erit tua dicere facta'. spiritus and tua dicere facta imply some kind of epic; in a neoteric context one would expect this to be followed by a withdrawal, on the lines of 'but alas I am only a shepherd and must sing a deductum carmen' . Instead, what follows is absolutely positive: non me carminibus vincet nec Thracius Orpheus nec Linus ...... Even the great poets of Greece, who both appeared in Eclogue VI, will not defeat him. What follows this is even more surprising: Pan etiaxn, Arcadia mecum si iudice certet, Pan etiam Arcadia dicat se iudice victum. It seems that the new poetry, which is to be in ways like epic, is nevertheless not to be incongruous with Arcadia, it is not opposed to Arcadia in the way one would expect epic to be opposed to pastoral, as it is in Eclogue VI. Precisely how Virgil imagined this new poetry is indeed mysterious; but it is clear enough that it lies beyond the limits of the poetry described in Eclogue VI. And if it is true that Virgil is already in the Eclogues introducing the idea of a prophetic poetry, the poetry of the vates, then it is hard to resist the conclusion that the poetry of the future will be a development of this, and hence a development of a pastoral idea, of Arcadia. Arcadia as a 'spiritual landscape' for pastoral was Virgil's creation. A great deal has been written on the sources which may have inspired this idea: Polybius' description of the Arcadians' love of music (IV.20), the story of Evander and his colony of Arcadians bringing the cult of Pan to the Palatine, the passages of Lucretius where a bucolic landscape is sketched (4.580 foil., 5.1379 foil.), the poems of Anyte of Tegea and perhaps other Greek bucolic epigrams; the sheer remoteness of Arcadia andthe fact that its most important god was Pan, god of the shepherds and inventor of the syrinx; it is always very hard to say what might not have influenced V ir g il, and it is indeed highly probable that several different factors contributed to one complex idea. All I shall attempt to do here is to see whether Virgil's Arcadia, given these associations, can be related to the idea of a prophetic pastoral poetry. It would perhaps be foolish even to look for an explicit statement of such a relationship in poems as elusive and deliberately ambiguous as the Eclogues; at any rate, I can only offer a rather loose association of ideas which is admittedly speculative. - 14 - It is probable that already bY^Y^1*^ 1 ' 8 time there was some debate about the origin of pastoral poetry; the most popular theories which have come down to us refer to historical or mythical events at Sparta, Tyndaris or Syracuse as the starting point for bucolic poetry, encouraged perhaps by the idea that Doric was its natural dialect and by the fact that Theocritus was a Syracusan. But there is one account which we know interested Virgil because he echoes some of its language, and that is Lucretius 5.1379 - 1411. Lucretius is explaining how men came to learn singing and playing by imitating birds and observing the sound of the wind through reeds. This * ( ) theory of the origin of uouchxt) can indeed be traced back to Democritus; but Lucretius in his description highlights the pastoral context of the invention: inde minutatim dulcis didicere querelas tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum, avia per nemora ac silvas saltusque reperta, per loca pastorum deserta atque otia dia. And so the poetry of these primitive shepherds appears not simply as the earliest poetry, but specifically as bucolic poetry: agrestis enim turn musa vigebat. ( vt1398): far from being invented at any one time or place, pastoral poetry is the primeval poetry of early man. Now already in the time of Herodotus there was discussion about who were the oldest people and Arcadia became one of the claimants. When Apollonius Rhodius wants to convey the extreme antiquity of Egyptian Thebes, he does so by saying that the only other people in existence were the Arcadians. True, they were not living in a flourishing city like the Egyptians, they ate acorns up in the mountains. But they had been there since before the moon, K^.01-VOl they were called (A.R.4.263 foil.). We do not know exactly how far back this tradition goes, except that it is pre-Aristotelian, but what is important for us is that it was popular in the Alexandrian period (cf. also Call. fr. 191, 56., Lyc. 482), and indeed the works of Hippys of Rhegium which was the reputed source of the idea have been thought to be a forgery of the late 4th or early 3rd century. Anyway, there is no need to doubt that Virgil would have been familiar with the idea, even though our earliest testimony in Latin is Ovid (Fasti 1.469, 2.289). Therefore if Virgil wanted to give a name to Lucretius* primeval shepherds, it would be natural for him to call them Arcadians. And of course although the Greeks never, as far as we know, credited the Arcadians with the invention of pastoral poetry, there was a tradition that Pan, their 'most ancient and most honoured god' (Dion. Hal. 1.32), had invented the Syrinx, its most typical instrument, and he is very much the shepherds' god in Theocritus although none of the poems ard set in Arcadia. Pan was on occasion a prophetic god; Pausanias (8.37.11) tells us that near Lykosoura (which incidentally was the most ancient city of all 'the first that the sun saw, from which the rest of mankind learnt to build cities' Paus. 8.38.1.) there was atemple of Pan where 'it is said that in even more ancient times this god would give oracles' through the nymph Erato, sane of whose oracles Pausanias read. There are a few other references to Pan as a prophet, notably the story that he taught Apollo the mantic art, but it certainly was not one of his main characteristics. Therefore, as far as the Greek tradition goes, all that Virgil really gained by making his shepherds Arcadians was a closer connection - 15 - with the shepherds’ god, and an aura of extreme antiquity, suggesting that pastoral poetry was the poetry of the earliest men, a poetry which only they really knew - soli cantare periti, Arcades. But of course Arcadia had strong associations for the Romans as well. Already in the 3rd century, the story of Evander and his Arcadians emigrating to the West was integrated with the history of early Rome, Evander it was who settled on the Palatine h i l l . As an Arcadian, Evander*s chief god was Pan, transtulit Evander silvestria numina secum. It was said that he founded on the Palatine a festival of Pan Lycaeus which was the Lupercalia, the festival of Faunus. In Ovid's account (F.2.267 foil.) we find the pre-lunar antiquity of the Arcadians, their primitive simplicity of life, their arrival in Lggium with Evander and the identification of Pan with Faunus, all combined. How many of these connections could have been in Virgil's mind when he wrote the Eclogues, it is very difficult to say. In particular, the account in Aeneid VIII may be very misleading. In a heroic epic context, Evander can indeed lead a life of austere and virtuous simplicity, but he cannot with any historical or literary appropriateness be directly associated with an absolutely primitive pastoral life, he must have an army to send and a sense of mission as Romanae conditor a r c is . And in fact Virgil there clearly distinguishes three periods in the history of Latium before Evander's arrival; first (VIII.314 foil.) haec nemora indigena Fauni Nymphaeque tenebant gensque virum truncis et duro robore nata, quis neque mos neque cultus erat ...... * , This is the age corresponding to Lucretius* early shepherds who invented song, the silvestre genus terrigenarum (5.1411), and Virgil's description is very similar to Ovid's description of the Arcadians (F.2.291 foil.). After them, says Evander, came Saturn andt he golden age, then a decolor aetas of war, and finally himself. Similarly, in Aeneid VIII the prophetic Faunus cannot be identified with Pan Lycaeus of the savage Lupercalia, indeed Virgil reduces Evander's connection with this to naming the Lupercal cave, and Faunus becomes the father of Latinus. I would ^suggest that when Virgil wrote the Eclogues his idea of Evander's Arcadians would have been less historical and more like that which we find in Ovid, a primitive pastoral people living not after but among the native fauns and nymphs, a people whose silvestria numina were not only Pan, the Satyrs and Naiads but also Silvanus, Pales, the Camenae and the Fauni, and perhaps he already connected Evander with Carmentis. Virgil does not, like Ovid, identify the Roman gods with the Greek but unites than in one community, thus keeping the individual associations of each, though he might transfer their external characteristics. This world full of all kinds of woodland spirits had already been sketched by Lucretius, in language very similar to the passages mentioned earlier. At Book IV 572 foil., Lucretius scientifically explains why strange reverberations and echoes may be heard in uninhabited places; but, he says, haec loca capripedes satyros nymphasque tenere finitimi fingunt et faunos esse loquuntur ...... - 16 - and simple peasants imagine they hear Pan wildly piping, fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam. Now although Lucretius mentions the satyrs, nymphs and Pan, it was actually the Latin Fauni whose special characteristic it was to utter sounds in the woods, sounds which were moreover thought to be prophetic. In Enniuggthe Fauni are linked with vates, and Varro derives their name from fari. The Fauni represent nature talking directly to man; of all the country deities to whom Virgil appeals at t he beginning of t he Georgies, it is the Fauni who are agrestum numina. In Theocritus it is only the mythical Daphnis who is directly in touch with gods and nature. In the Eclogues, Naiads and Nymphs bring flowers for Alexis, the shepherds Chromis and Mnasyllus join with a Naiad to capture Silenus, all nature stops to listen to the songs of Damon and Alphesiboeus, Virgil himself sees pan,' non canimus surdis: respondent omnia silvae. Lucretius’ genus agricolum hear, like a distant echo, the mysterious music of Pan and the Fauni which for the Romans was prophetic; in Virgil's Arcadia the shepherds share in that music, which is at once song, magic and prophecy, and embodies their ideal. Now Lucretius gives an interesting reason for the peasants' fancies: cetera de genere hoc monstra ac portenta loquuntur ne loca deserta ab divis quoque forte putentur sola tenere. The presence of the gods is reassuring because, as is well known, the gods desert mankind when corruption and wrong-doing prevail. This was the theme which framed Catullus' Peleus and Thetis, a poem which we know Virgil studied deeply when he wrotethe Eclogues, because Eclogue IV echoes not only its language but even its rhythms and verse-technique. When Jupiter himself consents to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, of mortal and goddess, Catullus exclaims: (64.22 foil.) o nimis optato saeclorum tempore nati 4 heroes, salvete, deum genus'. Then in the strange coda tothe poem this is the moral which is drawn (64.384 foil.): praesentes namque ante domos invisere castas ■ heroum, et sese mortali ostendere coetu, caelicolae nondum spreta pietate solebant. The blissful age when the gods attended Peleus’ wedding, when gods would cane to the aid of heroes in battle, gives place to an age of civil war arri moral perversion and the gods turn away. This moral is to say ttie least surprising when we look back over the poem as a whole. The felicia carmina of the Parcae predict a life of heroism for Achilles. But witnesses to that heroism will be the Phrygian plains running with Trojan blood, the mothers broken with grief mourning their sons slain by Achilles, the Scamander cuius iter caesis angustans corporum acervis alta tepefaciet permixta flumina caede, - 17 - and the brutal sacrifice of Polyxena alta Polyxenis madefient caede sepulcra described in great detail over two stanzas. The Greeks do not even have a moral claim, for Agamemnon is referred to as periuri Pelopis tertius heres. If this is the heroic past with which the gods were pleased to associate themselves, the moral that Catullus draws is ambiguous indeed, and the ambiguity is if anything increased by the story of Theseus and Ariadne, who after all belong to the same heroic age. Virgil doubtless understood Catullus' poem better than we can, but precisely what he thought about it we shall never know. I would only suggest that Catullus demonstrates, as in a way Ecloguie VI also demonstrates, that poetry on mythological themes could not then offer a political alternative, it could not provide an ideal world for a sophisticated man to contrast with the actual world. The Alexandrians had further developed the use of myth as a vehicle for exploring individual psychology, but this very realism reduced its capacity to provide a relevant ideal. Even when a poet takes such liberties with heroic myth as Callimachus did in the Hecale, the moral of the story (how far Callimachus expressed it we in any’ case do not know) is that humble poverty and devotion are as worthy as great deeds or even more so. As a comment on heroic poetry this is a tour- de-force; if we were to seek in it a comment on Ptolemaic Alexandria we would be disappointed. For Callimachus, the only possible form of po£sie engag^e is panegyric. When V irgil came to write the Eclogues, in an Italy torn apart by civil war, all that myth might offer beyond the private world of emotion and character would be what we find in Catullus, a prototype of the brutality of war, which could by then be no more powerful that the actual horror around. I think that one of the reasons why Virgil chose to write pastoral was that the convention it provided was tied to no one place or time, to no one individual or story, but to the idea of a community, the community of shepherds. No other genre could offer such a thing. In Virgil this community is given a name, Arcadia; its origins lie beyond computable time, it contains gods and men, past, present and future, and yet it is not a world of portents and great events, only of rustic tasks such as all shepherds do, in peace and harmony ‘with nature; and it lives for its poetry. Of course it is a dream, but it is not the safe dream of the escapist; it may be a dream of timeless ideals, but it is a dream for Italy in the civil war. The shepherds' countryside is ravaged, they are silenced and dispossessed; only in Rome, now, can Tityrus find praesentis divos to save him, but he is alone, the community could not be saved even by Menalcas' poetry, and for Meliboeus there is only exile. Through the very beauty of the dream we are made to realize all the more clearly en quo discordia civis produxit m iseros, and this is indeed a new poetry. NOTES I would like to thank Miss M.E.Hubbard and Professor A.D.Momigliano for generous and helpful criticism of this paper. 1 . So J.H.Voss, Marx (NJbb.I .1898.p.11 1). Conington, Holtorf; only Voss is consistent enough to read sunt for s in t . It is in any case unlikely that sllvae should be used for a specific and unprecedented symbolic - 18 - contrast, given its vast variety of senses in the Eclogues, cf. Cartault Etude sur les Bucoliques p.454 foil. la. Miss M.E.Hubbard points out to me that roses and ivy appear with different Muses at Prop.3.3.35-6. Roses are already associated with poetry by Sappho fr.55; for the ivy cf. Hor.c.1.1.29 and Nisbet-Hubbard ad loc. Neither plant, however, is as specific or as odd as the tamarisk. 2. Both in Theophrastus (1.9.3, 1.10.4.) and in Pliny (16.80) the tamarisk is included in the lists of trees, not in the lists of shrubs that follow. 3. There seems to be no evidence for ^IVptxiVQCas an epithet of Apollo: Conington is diluting La Cerda's note on X.13 (quoted by Voss), which in turn is a corruption of an earlier note; Germanus Valens on IV.2. has it right. 4. A busy oracle in late hellenistic times, see L.Robert, Hellenica V, p .16 foil. 5. Also in Nicander, fr. 85, of the cabbage; of the bay, Anth.Epigr.GrYlII ed. Cougny V I.122, cf. Pap.Mag.Gr. ed.Preisendanz I.p .26. Note that the bay, prophetic plant par excellence, and the tamarisk are associated by Virgil, X.13 ilium etiam lauri, etiam flevere myricae. 6 . Perhaps he knew that certain types of tamarisk produce manna, though the only ancient reference to this is Hdt.7.31. 7. My argument depends on the.likelihood that the adynata in Virgil and Ovid derive from a Greek poetic source, given the contexts. There was a Roman belief that the tamarisk was an arbor infelix: Pliny (13.116, 24.67) triesto reconcile this belief with his scientific source (cf. Diosc.1.87) and similarly at 16.108 he adds to Theophrastus' list of barren trees(3.4.2.) the tamarisk and, the alaternus; the latter we know from Macrobius (Sat.3.20.3.) was one of the arbores infelices listed by Tarquitius Priscus, so perhaps the tamarisk was as well (cf. Thulin, Die etrusk. Disziplin, III.p.94 foli.). Strictly speaking the characteristic of the Etruscan arbor infelix was not barrenness but dark leaves or berries and connection with the underworld (tamarisk as funeral plant Leonidas of Tarentum A.P.V I.298 = HE 2307, explained by Schol. Lucan. 9.917) but given the root sense of infelix the confusion is natural (perhaps the quotation of Cato in Paul.Fest.p.92 was orginally intended to point a distinction? ) Presumably Serv. auct. and Philarg. ad IV.2. also derive from this tradition, and perhaps Coripp.6.572 who mentions steriles myricae together with the oleaster, called infelix by Virgil (G.2.314). I have sd far been unable to discover the source of St. Jerome's remarKable comments on the tamarisk ( ad Esai.17.1-3 Corp.Christ.p.183, 268, and refs, there given, cf. Isid.17.7.49.) At any rate, if Virgil knew of this tradition, his choice of the plant as a symbol is very weird indeed; i f he did not know of i t , it cannot explain his and Ovid's adynata. - 19 - 8 . Cf. also in Nicander, all hapax : XavaepyiK, rtavaxi; 11 oc , 7tavaXUTl<; , Aavaicacxoc. 8a. If I am right in my interpretation of IV.2-3, the fact that E.IV is prophetic does not exclude prophetic associations for the myricae: the distinction between this poem and humiles myricae lies in the wish sint consule dignae; humbld prophecy may be raised to a cosmic and Roman thane, and to an epic tone. 9. For discussion and full bibliography see W.Suerbaum, Untersuch. zur Selbstdarstellung alterer romischer Dichter, Spudasmata XIX, Hildesheim, 1968, p .257 foil, and Index III s.v. Dichter-Terminologie. 10. J.K.Newman, The Concept of Vates in Augustan Poetry, Coll. Latomus 89, Bruxelles, 1967. 11. Note that fecere also emphasises the Greek etymology of poeta, cf. A.P. XI.127 (Pollianus) : (the Erinyes) a " ae *CH0D0l ■JCOl'HT^v and see R.Scarcia, Latina Siren p.29 n.18. 12. This point (valid also for the interpretation of Lucilius 620) is ignored by J.K.Newman who argues (Latinitas 13. 1965 p . 86 foil.) that canere was rejected by Ennius and became 'quasi poetarum novorum t e s s e r a ': to my mind the only evidence really supporting this would be Valgius Rufus fr.2., but this is surely influenced by the Eclogues, cf. fr.5. 13. Cf. Strabo 1.2.6., Schmid, Der Atticismus III.p.229. So dicere can translate both dei&SlV and XeY£* 14. In PI. and Ter. only canto is used for singing, always of professional girls or tibicines. If canam is the right reading at Cat.65,12, the context is mourning, cf. Cic. Arat.147 Baehr., Prop.2.34.90. Even in the Augustan period, hymns (Hor.c.1.10.5., 4.6.37., Prop.3.15.41., Tib. 1.7.13,27., 0v.F.3.260) and triumphs (Hor.epod.9 . 18., c.4.2.47., Tib.2.5.118., Ov.Am.1.2.34) remain prominent contexts, in spite of increasing use of the word in a literary sensej^ even the latter refers in the vast majority of cases to heroic themes (e.g. Hor.sat.1.10.43., Prop.2.1.19,28,31.) or with mock-heroic tone (Prop.3.3.48., Ov.am.1.1.24.) A notable exception to this is the repeated tu canis at Prop.2.34.67,77., significantly of Virgil's Eclogues and Georgies, cf. Valgius Rufus fr.2. 15. For prophetic cano see TLL III.271-2. 16. E .g . C ic . de orat. 2 .3 5 2 . 17. Cf. also Ov.Trist.2.423. 18. For an interesting discussion of L iv y 's use of carmen and vates see F.Altheim, Gesch. d.lat. Sprache p.452 foil. - 19a - 19. Cf. also Plato Rep. 392d, 617c. 20. This point is well put by K.W.Gransden, Arethusa 3.1970.p.109: 'The exceptional nature of Virgil's fourth or messianic eclogue lies in the fact that it looks forward to a time when the pastoral w ill be the truly heroic. The tone and language are epic; the vision is pasto ral.' 21. The evidence is conveniently collected in C.Wendel, Scholia in Theocritum Vetera, Prolegomena. 22. Vors. 55.B.154 D-K. cf. Chamaeleo fr.46 Wehrll. 23. Jacoby, Fr.Gr.Hist.554.F.6.7., Lyr. adesp.985 PMG ed Page. 24. Apollod.1 .22., Schol. in Pind.Pyth.hyp., cf. Nonnus 14.90. 25. Plut. Aet.Rom. 76 directly connects the Arcadians as with Evander. 26. So in the Aeneid (7.81-2) Faunus us purely a prophet with an oracle. Calpurnius in his first ‘ Eclogue makes simpler and more explicit; this connection between pastoral and prophecy which I think is implicit in Virgil; there Faunus, identified with P*n (v.9), in a pastoral context, is the giver of a great national prophecy. 27. I am indebted to the interpretation of Catullus 64 by Mr. John Bramble, who very kindly sent me the typescript of his paper due to appear in PCPhS 196.1970. - 20 - V.S. Lectures, No. 94 VIRGIL AND THE HEROIC IDEAL Text of a lecture read to the Virgil Society, 15th November, 1969 by Brian Morris, M .A ..D .P h i l . I nearly called this paper "The regal nature of the devil's friar?", because many of the amateur musings I want to present can be focussed in a few lines from Georgg Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda. They form the epigraph to Chapter 49, and although they appear to be a quotation from a poet they were in fact written by the novelist herself: Ever in his soul That larger justice which makes gratitude Triumphed above resentment. 'Tis the mark Of regal natures, with the wider life, And fuller capability of joy:- Not wits exultant in the strongest lens To show you goodness vanished into pulp Never worth 'thank you' - they're the devil's friars, Vowed to be poor as he in love and trust, Yet must go begging of a world that keeps Seme human property. George Eliot is epitomising an opposition, central to the strategy of her novel, between the regal-and-visionary nature, exemplified by Deronda himself, and the ungenerous, untrusting, self-absorbed character of Grandcourt. Something cf the subtlety of her exploration can be glimpsed in the opening words of the fchapter itself: 'Deronda, in parting from Gwendolen, had abstained from saying, " i shall not see you again for a long while: I am 1 going away," lest Grandcourt should understand him to imply that the fact was of importance to her'. The novel is seriously concerned with anatomising the contrary human impulses towards, on the one hand, a vision of the larger justice which transcends resentment, and, on the other, the reductive, protected, walled-in consciousness of safety which breeds and often ensures success in life. George Eliot decides, at the end of the novel, that vision should live and that parsimony should perish, but in the long course of coming to that conclusion she has many discoveries to make about the recesses of the visionary nature and the heroic life. In Chapter 55 she says: But were not men of ardent zeal and far- reaching hope everywhere exceptional? _ the men who had the visions which, as Mordecai said, were the creators and feeders of the world - moulding and feeding the more passive life which without them would dwindle and shrivel into the narrow tenacity of insects, unshaken by thoughts beyond the reaches of their antennae. - 21 - It is because I see Virgil's Aeneas as containing within himself both the creating, feeding vision, and the narrow tenacity of the insect that I want to suggest him as the most complex attempt in ancient literature to represent the truths of the heroic nature. I shall not compare Aenea^^ with Odysseus, because Theodore Haecker has already brilliantly done so; I shall try, rather, to look at a character as he is allowed to develop in what seems to me a totally non-dramatic way. Whatever he may be, Virgil's Aeneas is certainly not a "character unfolded in action*. Perhaps we may sharpen this sense of the anti-dramatic by attempting to distinguish between heroic character and heroic function in Virgil's presentation of Aeneas. We may approach the Aeneid with quite primitive expectations about heroic character, expectations which have to do with superhuman strength, valour, and physical prowess. If so, our first view of Virgil's hero is disturbing. He quails before Aeolus* storm in Book I, and wishes himself dead: 0 terque quaterque beati quis ante ora patr^g^Troiae sub moenibus altis contigit oppetere. 1.94-6. His brief, complaining speech is set in the context of Juno's anger, and Neptune's placating zeal, so that the emphasis falls on his humanity, his weakness, his inability to control events or elements. He cannot say to the sea "Peace, be still", and he cannot even summon up gods who will. Yet, as Book I develops, Aeneas does two things which set the course of his functional heroic development. They are not in themselves dramatic, or symbolic, but they become symbolic by later accretion, and they may stand in Book I as proleptic instances of developing themes. *At line 180, when he and his companions are safely ashore, Aeneas climbs a hill: Aeneas scopulum interea conscendit et omnem prospectum late pelago petit, Anthea si quem iactatum vento videat Phrygiasque biremis, aut Capyn, aut celsis in puppibus arma C aici. navem in conspectu nullam, tris litore cervos prospicit errantis. 1.180-5. Three things are significant here: Aeneas is alone, withdrawn, deliberately isolated in order to survey the situation; he is given a personal, particular vision, foreshadowing the future, and guaranteeing a heavenly interest in all his concerns; and he is directed towards a religious activity, which will turn the vision into accomplished fact. These three things, only dimly visible in this first instance, foreshadow the theme of Visionary Guidance and Religious response which is to run through the epic like a thread. The second significant action comes less than twenty lines later when Aeneas makes his first public utterance (his first speech is virtually soliloquy), and its tone is crucial. There is no heroic assertion in it, no emotional appeal. It is a low-toned assurance that all will yet be well (though you c an 't see it at present), and it rises to its only emotional peak in the last line: - 22 - durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis. 1.2 0 7 . "Endure, and hold yourselves in". This bleak exhortation is the first statement of a theme which becomes eventually the moral basis of the entire epic: the ethical imperative of Endurance, Perseverance. One need not seek far for parallels to enforce the quality of these embryonic statements of theme. Aeneas' vision of the stags from the peak is not unlike the Mosaic vision from Pisgah - a warrant from God that the Promised Land does exist, and that the wanderers are on the true road to it. It is a vision which only the Leader is given, it is a part of his function as guide and mentor to see such visions and to interpret them. Similarly, the theme of Endurance in Obedience might be illustrated from the whole range of Christian experience, from Jesus down through all the Saints. It is a version of the Christian commonplace that "he who shall endure to the end shall inherit a crown of l i f e " , and of the much wider and older truth that Perseverance is necessary to establish perfection. The thematic development of the poem depends upon the development of an understanding of Aeneas' function as a hero: his visionary, vatic, and interpretative role, as opposed to his exemplary and hortatory role. Another explicatory analogy may help to discriminate the two Aeneases. In Shakespeare's Henry V King Henry, disguised, visits his soldiers in the dark, onthe night before Agincourt, and he realises the responsibilities of rule: Upon the King'. Let us our lives, our souls, Our debts, our careful wives, Our children, and our sins, lay on the King'. We must bear all. 0 hard condition, Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel But his own wringing'. What in fin ite heart's ease Must kings neglect that private men enjoy'. I V . i . 226-33. In Book I of the Aeneid, although the reader has the assurance of heaven's interest after the prophecy of Jupiter, Aeneas has not. He has prayed, he has sacrificed, but he has no assurance of acceptance, and so, while his comrades sleep, and the gods debate ... pius Aeneas, per noctem plurima volvens .... 1.305. Aeneas lies awake, pondering and watchful. This is more than the distinction between the public and the private man, the person and the office. It contains the distinction which Shakespeare explores, but it goes further. Aeneas is not only pius but he is nate dea. He has moral human qualities, but he also has a special relationship with the divine. The problem of Aeneas* heroic nature is essentially a problem of consciousness. It is the same issue as that which perplexed so many nineteenth century theologians and historians as to Jesus' sense of his sonship to God the Father. Either this knowledge is certain, and thus it indemnifies all human activity, or it is not. Where there is postulated a single, omnipotent, omniscient Deity the problem is acute. But in V ir g i l 's world this is not the case, and the problem does not imperiously demand solution. The Gods are manipulators of the human action, - 23 - but since they themselves are subject to the decrees of an inscrutable Fate neither their action nor their disclosures are ultimate or irreversible. Consequently Virgil may allow Aeneas a special insight into the ways and purposes of the gods without the implication that this would create certainty in the mind of Aeneas. Neither vision nor insight is enough. Aeneas' heroic function is established by these qualities, which he possesses and his fellows do not, but his heroic character must be forged, developed, and asserted by other, human means, and this is the purpose of what we may call the "surface-narrative" of the poem - a long process of preparation and education by suffering, wandering, loving, and fighting. ( C\ Brooks Otis has taught us to distinguish properly between the "plainness and directness" of Homeric epic and the "emphatic" attitude of »_rgil to his material, but the distinction can be pressed, I think, to allow us to inspect Virgil's psychological exploration of the heroic nature more closely. The real contrast is not between Aeneas and Odysseus, but between Aeneas and Milton's Satan. The intensity with which Milton invests the character of Satan in the first three books of Paradise Lost has led many critics in the past to declare that Milton had inadvertently made Satan the "hero" of his epic. Such statements, of course^ betray a very inadequate view of the heroic nature, but the debate about 'who is the hero of Paradise Lost?" bedevilled Milton criticism in the first half of this century, and led a critic like C.S.Lewis to demonstrate how Milton systematically degrades Satan "from hero to general, from general to politician, from politician to secret service agent, and thence to a thing that peers in at bedroom or bathroom windows, and thence to a toad, and finally to a snake". This was necessary, but it was crude. Milton himself makes his vision of the heroic nature very clear in the opening of Book IX, with specific reference to classical epic: I now must change Those notes to tragic - foul distrust, and breach Disloyal, on the part of man, revolt And disobedience; on the part of Heaven, Now alienated, distance and distaste, Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given, That brought into this World a world of woe, Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery, Death's harbinger. Sad task*, yet argument Not less but more heroic than the wrath Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused; Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long Perplexed the Greek, and CythereaTs son; IX.5-19. Despite the complicated antithesis of "distrust” , "revolt", "disobedience" and "anger" "rebuke" and "judgment" which belongs to the "surface-narrative" of Paradise Lost, the true heroic issue, as Milton states it, is the relationship between Maui and God: the "alienation" is tragic, the confrontation heroic. It is this insight into the basic, ultimate nature of the heroic - 24 - which Milton shares with Virgil. The heroic nature is one which can bear contact with ultimate reality, and can translate the will of God into human action and utterance. The surface narratives of Paradise Lost and the Aeneid go in quite contrary ways, of course, and this tends to obscure the crucial link between the two poets. Milton is concerned with the Fall of Man, and the terms of his myth are established straight away: Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree ...... 1.1-2. Disobedience is the heart of the matter, "first" in time, and "first" in importance. Virgil, on the. other hand, is very little concerned with Sin. T^e Aeneid might well be called "the epic of Obedience", and at the very centre of the poem, in Book VI, the nature of heroic obedience is most fully explored. The theme is stated in the opening lines. Aeneas, in his "piety" seeks Apollo's temple and the Sybil's cave. Deiphobe warns him against the distractions of art, and advises him to offer sacrifice. The response is immediate: talibus adfata Aeneas (nec sacra morantur iussa viri) Teucros vocat alta in templa sacerdos. VI.40-1. In this small instance the point is made that knowledge and vision must be paid for by obedience: the way to wisdom lies through d iscip line. As Book VI progresses the theme is developed on a larger scale. Both the quest for the Golden Bough and the burial of Misenus are examples of the Obedience which the hero must give in order to obtain the guiding vision. The contrast between Milton’ s "Satan ana the Virgil's Aeneas is enforced by the parallel between Aeneas and Milton's Christ in Paradise Regain'd, where the persistent, prayerful obedience of Christ is the central, vindicating value, and the poetic means of asserting his divinity. This, together with the fact that in Book VI and elsewhere Aeneas ' every act is prefaced and controlled by prayer, creates a tension peculiar to the Aeneid. Aeneas' heroic function seems to be at war with his heroic character. His separateness from his companions, his religious obedience, his unexpres«ive, uninspiring speech, all these are the reverse of the heroic characteristics we expect. Marlowe's Tamburlaine, for example, is closely in touch with his followers, rebelliously disobedient to all kings and gods, and his "winning words" are always irresistibly persuasive. He is a traditionally "heroic" character. But he has no function to perform; he stands for nothing beyond himself. The non-dramatic quality of Aeneas' development is enforced by a study of the other characters in the epic. Although there are some nine hundred names mentioned in the Aeneid there are only three fully realised figures apart from Aeneas: Anchises, Dido, and Turnus. It is true that there are countless brilliant sketches, cameos, miniatures, but only these three are developed in depth, and only they significantly affect the thought and stature of Aeneas himself. We may perhaps consider them as the three "temptations of Aeneas, if we use the word in its widest sense to imply "proving” and "testing" rather than "luring". The functions of Anchises are to keep - 25 - Aeneas aware of the past he must re-create in Italy, to establish the importance of the family as a unit, when the normal familial setting is denied (notice that in the early books there are three generations on one ship), and to act as the seer, the interpreter, and the liturgist for the entire community of wanderers. These are all functions which Aeneas himself must eventually take over, to which he must be educated, and in which he must be proved, so that the very significant exchanges between father and son at Troy, at Crete, or on the high seas, enact in a stylised way the education of Aeneas. And just as, in the psychology of any family unit, the son assumes leadership on the father's death, so Aeneas takes over and cherishes the function of Anchises, so carefully prepared and unambiguously stated in the early books. There are many ways of looking at Book V: the funeral games may be seen as an expiation for the sins of negligence committed in Book IV; or as a period of re-creation and preparation for the warfare of the later books; but there is a sense in which they are a deliberate occasion for Aeneas to assume his father’ s role. Aeneas acts here as the community's priest, he intercedes, and he organises. In quite a new way he 'represents his people. It is most significant that he himself takes no part in the games. His developing heroic role has nothing to do with athletic prowess. His function is to control these exhibitions of skill or pcwer, to approve them, and to perform the kingly task of awarding prizes and distributing gifts. As Book V ends, with the sacrifice of Palinurus, "unum pro multis", it is Aeneas the father who takes over the helm: cum pater amisso fluitantem errare magistro sensit et ipse ratem nocturnis rexit in undis, multa gemens casuque animum concussus*amici. V.867-9. We may realise from this symbolic situation hew much more deeply Aeneas has assumed control, and we may recall with surprise tiiat he hasn't actually done anything worth talking about for almost a thousand lines. Just as Anchises "tempts" Aeneas in his understanding of heroic leadership, so Dido tempts him in the double sense. Not only is she a physical temptation to lay aside the harph task imposed upon the Trojan exiles and to prefer ease to honour, but she enforces upon Aeneas an understanding of the relative importances of the human and divine worlds which he inhabits. There is a comparison and a contrast with Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Antony realises much earlier than Aeneas does that These strong Egyptian fetters I must break Or lose myself in dotage. I.ii.113-4. He fails to free him self, and the outcome is tragic in both human and political terms. Aeneas triumphs over the fleshpots of his particular part of the North African coast, and, so Virgil's art creates it, we feel that he triumphs without any of the agonising that Antony endures. Human sympathies are directed firmly towards Dido - naturally enough. But if we read Book IV alertly I think we discover one of the heroic values which Virgil is at pains \ - 26 - to assert: the quality I can best describe in George Eliot’s phrase as "the narrow tenacity ofthe insect". Amidst all the positive, intense, colourful distractions of Carthage there is an iron core of principle running through the Book. I have the sense that if one examined it carefully it would have to do with negatives, with negative syntactical patterns. I have in mind things like Jupitfer's words to Mercury, which are later repeated to Aeneas: si nulla accendit tantarum gloria rerum nec super ipse sua molitur laude laborem, Ascanione pater Romanas invidet arces? quid struit? aut qua spe inimica in gente moratur nec prolem Ausoniam et Lavinia respicit arva? naviget: haec summa est, hie nostri nuntius esto. IV.232-7. There is something in that "naviget" ; this is persuasion, not command, Jupiter and Mercury may create an awareness of the heroic values, and the visionary future, but the assertion of them must be an act of the human will, and by opposing the will of the gods with all the human values and beauties of Carthage V irgil sets up a genuine and powerful enemy. It is inhuman, narrow and mean of Aeneas to act as he does. He crawls away like ai insect. He crawls away with the tenacity of a hero. The temptation represented by Turnus is prolonged, but conceptually much simpler. He is perpetually inciting Aeneas in Books VII to XI to act before his time. The later books of the Aeneid are centrally concerned with the struggle between physical and spiritual„heroism in the figure of Aeneas. Milton understood this predicament even better than Shakespeare. In Samson Agonistes, when Samson faces the challenge of Harapha (a combination of Old Testament Philistine with Restoration bully-boy) the Chorus comments or, his victory in these words: 0 , how comely it is, and how reviving To the spirits of just men long oppressed, When God into the^ hands of their deliverer Puts invincible might, To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor, The brute and boisterous force of violent men, Hardy and industrious to support Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue The righteous, and all such as honour truth'. He all their ammunition And feats of war defeats, With plain heroic magnitude of mind And celestial vigour armed; .... 1268-80. But patience is more oft the exercise Of saints, the trial of their fortitude, Making them each his own deliverer, And victor over all That tyranny or fortune can inflict. 1287-91. \ - 27 - One of the most mysterious things in the Aeneid is the way in which it gradually becomes apparent through Books VII to XII, that there will be a moment when Turnus and Aeneas must confront one another finally. I find it impossible to say how we know when that moment i s ripe, when the build-up is complete, yet there is an inevitable "rightness" about the timing of it. It comes when Aeneas knows he is ready for i t . It is a matter of Aeneas' consciousness, which is assaulted, degraded, but never extinguished by the powerful ccncepts of Honour and Glory which Turnus represents. Turnus is to Aeneas as Hotspur is to Prince Hal, and we know, with inner certainty, that it is Hotspur who must perish. I would like at this point to turn to th e theme of Visionary Guidance and its effect on Virgil's portrayal of the heroic nature. The regal quality of Aeneas, which places him among the "creators and feeders" of the world, is established not by prowess nor by deeds, but by vision. It is his capacity to see what others do not, to interpret what he sees, and to act in accordance with the revealed divine will, that raises Aeneas above the level of ordinary mankind. And Virgil mediates this quality through what is essentially an image, or a pattern of images: the dreams and visions which pervade the poem. The vision of the three stags in Book I is only the first of an increasingly important series of dreams and visions, which rise to a climax in the poem, and then decline in importance. You w ill not misunderstand me when I say that Aeneas' dream in Book II is seminal. In a quite schematic way it sets out the conduct of the whole of the rest of the poem. If Aeneas remembered all that Hector said to him, if it was constantly before him, there would be no need of any other vision. Hector's instructions are clear: "fuge, nate dea", ' eripe flammis : sacra suosque tibi commendat Troia Penates. 11.293. He is commanded to seek a city for Troy*s gods, todtold he shall establish such a city after long"1 wandering over the deep. It is in obedience to this private, personal vision of the dead hero of Troy that Aeneas acts. He does not act "until he has such a sanction. As Troy is falling and Trojans are dying two visions of a different kind condition the action that Aeneas takes. At the death of Priam Aeneas is directed by a kind of waking dream: subiit cari genitoris imago, ut regem aequaevum crudeli volnere vidi vitam exhalantem; subiit deserta Creusa et direpta dooms et parvi casus Iu l i . I I . 560-3. What "rises before him" here is an image of living persons, people in need of his help and direction. "Subiit" could almost be rendered "pictured to myself". But when he is about to kill Helen, later in the same book, the vision which prevents him is of a different kind. Venus herself "appears" to him, and directs him to specific action in another direction. Her speech contains both an order and a promise. He must save his family and Troy's gods, and she w ill endow him with unique vision: - 28 - aspice (namque omnem, quae nunc obducta tuenti mortalis hebetat visus tibi et umida circum caligat, nubem eripiam ...... I I . 604-6. And this premise is immediately fulfilled in part: apparent dirae facies inimicaque Troiae numina magna deum. I I . 622-3. Even this vision of the other world does not wholly subdue the humanity of Aeneas. Such is the strategy of Virgil's exploration of the nature of vision that the last link which must be broken is the strongest. The ghost of Creusa represents the strongest temptation to rest upon purely human motivation and energy. He tries to embrace her, despite her manifest instructions to him to take care of other things. As she vanishes, Book II ends in the dawn of a new day, and Aeneas' last line is an act of resignation to the divine will: cessi et sublato montis genitore petivi, 11.804. It is almost like the conversion of the unwilling sinner. Aeneas is forced against his w ill into a new life , under new responsibilities, and he goes forth like the patriarch Abraham, in faith. But the faith, we may feel, has a fairly solid foundation. Hector, Venus, and Creusa have severally told him which way he should go, and there is no discrepancy between their instructions. We may feel that disobedience would be absurd, and that delay is, to say the least, reprehensible. And this is in part an apt response to the pressures the book sets up. Although Virgil sets up.^eneas as a visionary he does not present him as in any way imaginative. He is in touch with the infinite, but he is not in the conventional sense of the word a "dreamer". Book III-»is, in a way, Aeneas' apprenticeship as a seer. It is part of his education. His unfortunate experience over Polydorus betrays his .lack of sensitivity in this branch of his heroic role, aid it is Anchises who correctly interprets auguries, and initiates action. And even he is wrong about Crete. His error is retrieved by the "directing’’ dream of the Penates which is given to Aeneas. The vision of their eventual home is both precise and imprecise, but its immediate effect is to move them from Crete in the right direction. Perhaps the most important thing about the "Penates" dream is the way in which it intensifies Aeneas’ personal contact with the world of the gods. Virgil is very precise: talibus attonitus v is is et voce deorum (nec sopor illud erat, sed coram adgnoscere voltus velatasque comas praesentiaque ora videbar ...... I I I . 172-4. There is a growing sense that Aeneas is learning to inhabit two worlds He is visited by th e gods, and in a way almost "at home" with them. The combat of flesh and spirit in Book IV is obvious enough, and the - 29 - visions Aeneas suffers are perfectly clear in their quality and intention. But the central discovery which Virgil makes about Aeneas' heroic nature comes in his defence against Dido's accusations of faithlessness and cowardice. From a human point of view his words are incredibly weak. He has been guided from Troy by a series of visions and dreams; the gods have wrestled with him to hold him true to his divinely-sanctioned mission. Yet all he can say in reply to Dido's shrewdly argued case is: sed nunc Italiam magnam Gryneus Apollo, Italiam Lyciae iussere capessere sortes; hie amor, haec patria est. I V . 345-7. There is not a word about the dreams he has dreamt or the visions he has seen. He mentions only the ghost of Anchises as having troubled his conscience. And this, of course, is magnificently true. Aeneas cannot reply to Dido by giving her a great vision of his destiny, and a purple description of the city he is to found, because if he is true to his visions there is very little he can say about them. The gods have not given him any real, concrete detail that he could communicate to others. His vision exists only within his own consciousness. I take this as an example of the marvellous and notable restraint of Virgil's art. Where he might so easily have yielded to the temptation to indulge in a dramatic display he has refrained. Aeneas does not assert the "usual" heroic qualities and rant at Dido as she rants at him. He speaks only the truth, as far as he can express it, and it is not the whole truth (as we know), because the whole of Aeneas' truth is beyond words. As a primitive "Homeric" hero this restraint diminfches his stature; as the new, spiritual, visionary, Virgilian protagonist it raises it immeasurably. His reward canes, of course, in Book VI, where faith is turned into sight and what was until then a glorious but indistinct vision is clothed in historical detail and given names. Yet before Anchises' prophecy there is a significant moment in Virgil's development of his hero. The Sybil's prophecy has been given and heard ("obscuris vera involvens"), and Aeneas finds nothing strange in it: nan ulla laborum, o virgo, nova mi facies inopinave surgit; omnia praecepi atque animo mecum ante peregi. V I.103-5. This is the first real idea we have been given of any concept of imagination in Aeneas. Throughout the poem he has been guided and directed by others - usually gods. His reaction to the Sybil's prophecy is a strange and ultimately unsatisfactory moment in the'poem, because it comes as a surprise. Virgil gives us no evidence for assuming that Aeneas "keeps all these things and ponders them in his heart". He is not given to wonder; he has no creative imagination. He is given such visions as are needful for his immediate purposes, and they do not spontaneously generate others in his mind. Nevertheless, it is in Book VI that the final, fulfilling vision is granted. Aeneas' education as a seer and prophet is complete, and he is granted the future. - 30 - It is important for us to remind ourselves that the prophecy of Anchises in Book VI is, from Aeneas’ point of view, strictly a vision. Yet it differs from his previous visions in that it gives him not only an aim, but a guarantee. From this point onwards, Virgil's hero has a warrant for the worth of all he does. The risk is gone, the uncertainty past,.he has the gnosis, the secret knowledge which validates all his actions. This ought, of course, to rob the epic of any further interest, and in the view of some critics it does. Perhaps I can best indicate why I feel this is a totally false judgement by suggesting that Aeneas' achievement of saving knowledge in Book VI is analogous to the Christian achievement of saving Grace. 'Grace, in Christian theology, is essentially the free gift of God, unmerited and unearned, but bringing with it both salvation and the burden of Christian duty. The great vision of the future glory of Rome is "given" to Aeneas in precisely this way. He does not earn it by his virtue, it is given to him for a purpose. The knowledge brings with it a great burden. To know the details of t h e future removes some anxieties and replaces them with others. We become increasingly conscious in the later books of the enormous burden of the heroic role, and the weight of this divine responsibility which weighs Aeneas down. In human terms this "specialty of rule" would be destructive, and it very nearly is. But just as the Christian is sustained in the trials and struggles of life by the consciousness, of election and Grace, so Aeneas is upheld both by the central vision he has been granted and the contingent reassurances he receives from the gods at various times. Tiber's prophecy in Book VIII, for example, is not only a much more precise time-schedule than Aeneas has had before but it tells him what to do. In the battle scenes I think it is true to say that Aeneas never makes a single decision on purely human terms. Always there is a clear omen or an unambiguous vision which gives Aeneas the right answer to the problem. • His adversary, Turnus, receives only scanty supernatural help, and in the later books there is not a sense of warfare of the gods, using men as pawns; it is a matter of watching the heaven- directed Aeneas steadily, ruthlessly, and relentlessly crushing the opposition to the divine will. Our sympathies, of course, are with Turnus, and so V irgil intends they shall be. But we know that Aeneas is right. As the struggle goes on he needs less and less guidance from the gods. It is as if he has found the straight and narrow path, and no longer requires the education or the stimulus of vision. As the vision recedes from the poem so Aeneas' heroic humanity is asserted. He becomes the great warrior we have always heard he was, and what was always inevitable begins to take place. It is as if, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's phrase, "man has come of age" and can be left to achieve the decrees of Fate without visionary interruption. ( 10) The heroic character of Aeneas, 'then, is asserted by the development of his ability to live in two worlds - by the growth, climax, and withering of his "visionary gleam". And yet the concept of heroism in the Aeneid is not simply a matter of the educative vision. There is a sense in which the phrase "narrow tenacity" fixes on something vital in the presentation of Aeneas. He has something of the devil's friar in him. Let me remind you what George Eliot says of them. They are 1 - 31 - Vowed to be poor as he in love and trust, Yet must go begging of a world that keeps Some human property. Endurance is a heroic quality, but it is also a savagely reductive human state. One of the best modern insights into this truth is provided by Joseph Conrad's novel "Typhoon". It is a novel about the sea, and it opens with a piece of careful observation: Captain MacWhirr, of the steamer Nan-Shan, had a physiognomy that, in the order of material appearances, was the exact counterpart of his mind: it presented no marked characteristics of firmness or stupidity; it had no pronounced characteristics whatever; it was simply ordinary, irresponsive, and unruffled. The novel is concerned with the way in which Captain MacWhirr, by exercising these very qualities, brings his ship, his oddly assorted crew, and his cargo of chinamen through a devastating typoon to harbour. He knew the seaman's rules for facing the peril of a typhoon, and he simply applied what he knew, MacWhirr had as much imagination as a pint pot, but imaginatio-i would have been useless (and even a danger) in bringing a ship through a typhoon. What is needed is a knowledge of the seaman's book, and an ordinary, irresponsive, and unruffled application of those rules to the situation. Conrad's point is that such a man has great value, but he pays a price for it. To achieve this utter reliability, this rocklike endurance you must sacrifice Imagination, and Vision, and Wit, and Love and Trust. In human terms you become a beggar, and your spiritual life, if it exists at all, must exist on the charity of other people. MacWhirr, in so far as he needs human contacts at all, is parasitic upon humanity, making his gain out of another's loss. The necessity of 'Endurance in the twelve books of the Aeneid hardly needs demonstration. The concept iB more prominent at some times than at others, but ifis clearly a prized quality in Book III. Apollo makes the point early in the book: Dardanidae duri, quae vos a stirpe parentum prima tulit tellus, eadem vos ubere laeto accipiet reduces. antiquam eaiquirite matrem. 111.94-6. The Trojans are identified as "long-suffering", "much enduring", "men of endurance". They are "reliquias Danaum atque immitis Achilli", a "remnant" in almost the Hebrew sense of that word. Book III takes the hero through checks and disasters highest reared, from the Harpies and .Celaeno's curse to the Cyclops, but at the centre of this there is one scene in which the effect of trial upon the human spirit is memorably caught. When Aeneas meets Andromache, and she can scarcely believe he is alive, he replies: vivo equidem vitamque extrema per omnia duco; ne dubita, nam vera vides. III.315-6. - 32 - It is this sense of dragging on a weary life, through all extremities, in dogged pursuit of the divine decree that constitutes the Heroic Endurance of Aeneas. The relapse of Book IV makes the effort all the more painful when it has to be made. There is a grim, irresponsive quality about Aeneas' words to Dido "non sua sponte Italiam sequor". He has used Dido, he has been parasitic upon her abundant and energetic life, he has gone begging in her world of love and trust. And under the cosmic justice which overarches the moral world of the Aeneid there is a retribution to be made, and a price to be paid. The curses in the Aeneid and their out working form a moral pattern within the poem, and D ido 's curse upon the departing Aeneas, "pugnent ipsique nepotesque is paid home in the last six books. Martial virtues become crucial, the soldiers' qualities (n ) dominate, and grim survival in the face of death becomes the only hope. Evander, in Book VIII, offering Pallas to Aeneas as a trainee, lists the sparse, desirable qualities he should attain: sub te tolerare magistro militiam et grave Martis opus, tua cernere facta adsuescat, primis et te miretur ab annis. VIII.515-7. Endurance is the only thing man can oppose to adversity. And the opposition can be successful, but it demands a price in the quality of human living. Yeats, in Easter 1916, phrases it well: Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. 0 when may it suffice? What Virgil presents us with in Books VII to XII is the slow recession of individual personality. All those qualities which had marked out the heroic stature of Aeneas - his filial observance, his obedience, his creating, feeding vision, are eroded by the demands of War, and personality dwindles to the iron, irreducible core, where he who endures, inherits. The moral point which Virgil is making, on this massive scale, is that Heroic qualities are very expensive. Aeneas is drained of his life in these last books, and Rone is built at his expense. The sense of superhuman effort over a trivial death with which Book XII ends would be hard to parallel in any literature, and the sense of exhaustion at the end suggests that all that matters is that Turnus must die before Aeneas: ast illi solvuntur frigore membra vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras. XII.951-2. And there's an end of i t . There is no more to say. The artistic problem which Virgil solves in these last books is that of fusing a vision of the moral and spiritual degradation of Aeneas with an equally convincing account of his physical, heroic assertion. The solution, I think, lies in the brilliant development of the religious (and especially the liturgical) spirit in the Aeneas of the last books. In the midst of the carnage and the Mood Aeneas gradually assumes the priestly, intercessory role for his people, as well as the role of the champion. He is heroic both as King and Priest. - 33 - But the religion he represents is not the ecstatic, vatic, visionary faith, but rather a formalised, ritual, almost bureaucratic pattern of observance. The quality this creates is perhaps best seen in Aeneas' great prayer in Book XII, before he goes to battle: esto nunc Sol testis et haec mihi Terra precanti, quam propter tantos potui perferre labores ...... X I I . 176-7. and so on. It is almost a piece of diplomatic negotiation with the gods. It is like mothing more than the patriarchal prayers of the Old Testament, or Jacob's bargain with God. The poem comes to rest in the exhaustion of Aeneas as father of his people, and in a sense of formalised, institutionalised religion as the final, enduring and triumphant value. The Heroic Ideal is as fragile as the hero's body; heroism will grow old, and cold, as the heroic man himself ages, but (to return to George Eliot’ s phrase with which we began) the Larger Justice, which only the gods understand, stands unmoved for ever. NOTES 1. There is a direct line here to the novels of Henry James, and their exploration of a tyrannical self-consciousness which exists together with an oppressive awareness of the complexity of other people. 2. The chapter "Odysseus and Aeneas" from his Virgil, Father of the West is reprinted in Virgil: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Steele Commager (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), 1966. * , 3. All quotations from V irgil are from the Loeb edition, with translation by H.Rushton Fairclough. 4. It is at its most acute in the Martyrs, at its most prolonged in a figure like St. Bernadette de Lourdes. 5. This point is well made by R.D.Villiams, in his article in the Proceedings of the Virgil Society 1965-6. 6 . See Virgil; A Study in Civilised Poetry (Oxford) 1964. 7. C.S.Lewis, A Preface to ’Paradise Lost1 (London), 1942. 8 . Wendell Clausen acutely describes Aeneas as "profoundly melancholy, half-paralyzed by fate". See his Interpretation of the Aeneid in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, LXVIII (1964), revised and reprinted in Virgil : A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Steele Commager. 9. It i s worth noting that Aeneas hardly ever mentions his dreams and visions to anyone else. His heroic development is essentially a secret and inward process. 10. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (London, - 34 - Fontana Books), 1959, especially pp. 163-6 which epitomise much of Bonhoeffer's thinking. 11. Cf. Horace, Odes, III.2. V.S. Lectures, No. 95. VIRGIL AND H.G.WELLS : PROPHETS OF A NEW AGE Text of a lecture read to the Virgil Society 17th January, 1970. by H.W .Stubbs,M .A. Reading, in print, the papers read here by some of my predecessors, I feel a certain apprehension and embarrassment. Deep as is my respect and affection for our Founder, the author of Roman Vergil, I have not followed him far along the paths of specialized Virgilian scholarship, and I certainly cannot reel off the strings of names, medieval and Renaissance and modern, Italian and German and Dutch, which seem to come so readily to the mind and the tongue of my fellow-votaries. Perhaps I may claim more sympathy when I say that I intend to deal equally cavalierly with the corpus of scholarship, research and criticism which has accumulated round the second name in the title of my talk; apart from the Master himself-, I w ill quote as few names as possible ---- partly, indeed, because I know so few myself, but partly, too, because I know how irritating it can be for an audience to sit through the repetition of ill-known and half-heard names from the byways of literary criticism. As one great scholar has said, we should read more of the classics themselves, and less of what other people have written about the classics. So I hope you w ill be indulgent to me if I say as much as possible about the men, and the works, we will be dealing with; and^js little as possible about the great men who have dealt with them before me. Some of my listeners may have been startled by the paradox of the title; the gentle dreamer compared with the bouncing extrovert, the timid tradionalist compared with the self-confident revolutionary, the man who venerated Roman institutions and^the man who compared a Roman augur to a cannibal from the Neanderthal Age. Some of my listeners may, indeed, feel that Wells himself is not so modern a figure as all that; to them, beyond expressing polite disagreement, I will only say that if they care to listen, and simply to compare two great figures of literary history, I will be quite contented. To my own contemporaries and to the ultra-modernists alike, however, it will be clear, after a moment's thought, that at least the two men had it in common that they were the prophets of a new age; and perhaps the thought of a few more moments w ill have shown them that the two men also had in common the task of remoulding traditional themes and patterns to carry a new message -- - 35 - singing, as one of them put it, the songs of a bare Boeotian countryside through the streets of Roman towns; and that they both had, not only a deep interest in science as it was presenting itself to their contemporaries, but also a keen feeling for the joys and sorrows of humanity. Most great ■en have shared this feeling: Homer did, Shakespeare did, Milton did; some, like Dickens, and Gissing, and perhaps Victor Hugo, have made it their chief stock-in-trade; some, like Plato, and Stendhal, and Shaw, seem to have been completely devoid of it; others, like Villon, and Swift, and Orwell, have chosen to conceal it under humour, or satire, or indignation. Today, I hope to treat those themes roughly in order, a s they come. Virgil, in his own words, spoke of "pascua, rura, duces".^S o m e of us have heard Benjamin Farrington pointing out that this does not mean ■imply Eclogues, Georgies, and Aeneid (though that is certainly its primary meaning). In a rather deeper sense, it means that Virgil began with the Eden-like innocence of rural life, a child’s eye view of the world, in which "their loves,.else their sheep, are all that do their silly minds so busy keep" ; then he moves to the more serious business of ploughing the fields, working for one's living, sustaining the world by one's own exertions; finally, to the still sadder part of the primeval curse, the responsibilities of government and leadership in peace and more particularly, alas, in war. Those of us who are familiar with Dum^zil’s theory of a tripartite structure of society -- and I remember here with respect that most distinguished Virgilian, the Jgte Professor H.J.Rose, who held Dum^zil and all his works in detestation --- may notice that there is one term lacking here; there are workers and warriors and rulers, but there is no priestly caste; those who are not represented are those whom the author describes as "pii vates et Phoebo digna locutj". Perhaps the reason is the same as the reason why there are no temple buildings in the New Jerusalem; the Lord is Himself among them: si monumentum requiris. circumspice. But in any case the division is not, of course, clear cut. The Eclogues are not exclusively pastoral;, as well as pascua, they have segetes, and they have plenty of hard^W*; there are also duces. There are duces, too, in the Georgies, and passages of tender pastoral escapism; in the Aeneid itself there As domesticity and relaxation, though it is oftea a will-o’-the-fisp, a temptation, or at best a jam that existed . . yesterday but will certainly not exist tomorrow unless it is fought for. Wells treats the same themes, but with even more intermixture. His pascua are, I think, the land of the Kippses and Pollys, the victims of circumstances, with their loves and bewilderments, their strange confrontations with a world they never made, a world which changes, like Proteus, as they try to grasp it; with their dim feeling, too, that the world might be a better place than it is, that it could be made, and should be made, a better place than it is. Wells' rura are, perhaps, his didactic'works, his Science of Life and his Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind, and innumerable smaller treatises. His duces are perhaps fully blazoned out in the fanfare of his Outline of History and his Shape of Things to Come, but they appear throughout the whole corpus of his prophetic vision. And I hope to show that, in petty detail and in grand outline alike, his vision is shaped to a startling extent . by the Anglican Christianity which, in its cruder form, he delighted to satirize; - 36 - a discipline, perhaps, which had penetrated even deeper than Hellenism had penetrated Virgil, and had tinged his thought even more brightly than any mixture of It a lic Etruscan and Celtic ritual and belieJ^ijiay have infused the thought of the young Maro, holder of a priestly name. Virgil's earliest essay in the apocalyptic is, of course, his Messianic Eclogue. Here we see a strange blending of many themes in one pattern. There is a touch of Hesiodic cosmogony; Stoic theories of a cyclic pattern in history are emended by an odd Platonic suggestion that Time may occasionally be allowed to run backwards (an idea odder than any of the adve^^jes of Wells’ Time Traveller, though Lewis Carroll once toyed with the idea*; oriental doctringg of world-age^each with its evolvj,|g Zeitgeist are filtered through Greek, Etruscan, and Hellenistic thought; we can also sense the feeling that, as our founder once put it , "we a ^ g ^ iv in g in one of the most unpleasant ages to live in -- a Heroic Age ; above a ll, and animating the whole, we find a passionate desire to,shot of all the ancient evils and to live, at last, in peace and happiness. It has been said, quite correctly, that medieval, and later, attempts to interpret this Eclogue in a Christian sense are based on a misunderstanding of Virgil's imagery and an ignorance of the extent to which this kind of thought was familiar to Virgil's contemporaries (and it must be admitted that scholars themselves share this ignorance, even if they often choose to illuminate it with brilliant flashes of imagination). It has also been said, with rather less insight, that the whole poem is a string of cliches, and that the aspiration for world peace is on a par with the prophecy that maritime commerce w ill cease, and that shg^P w ill grow vermilion fleeces to eliminate the need for Levantine imports. With respect, that is NOT SO. In our own apocalyptic times, some of us have used the imagery of Judgment Day without seriously expecting to hear Michael's trumpet drowning the voice of the air-raid sirens; Hebrew prophets foretold a national revival by^gg^aming that the Lord would make dry bones live, rise, and praise His Name; Greek peasants under the Turkish domination used to say that Turkish magicians had turned Christian Greeks into stone, and that the marble statues scattered round the country and in the ruins of ancient cities would come to life ag^g^ when the Turks had been driven out of the country and their spell broken. A new Israel, and a liberated Greece, have fulfilled these prophecies, though not literally, and it is perhaps unlikely that the prophets expected a literal fulfilment; similarly, Virgil uses traditional poetic imagery to express the contemporary hopes and fears which, he so fully shared. He spoke of a new Trojan War and a new Achilles, meaning surely that there would be a few more wars before the end, but (as Horace put it even more clearly) in the East, thank God, and not in Italy; wars which, sad though they were, would bring wealth and glory to Italy, not massacres and evictions. Another Argo would cleave the main, and prosperity would follow, even if we are given at the same time the rather inconsistent hope that we will be done with the dangers and discomforts of seaborne traffic, and the false values of an ostentatious society. (It may be noted that the "conspicuous consumption" of Ro^gi^ society, the ostentation which was neither productive nor, as Carcopino has pointed.owt, even particularly comfortable, arouses no enthusiasm in Virgil at all). Life, as the song of World War I had it, would be Eden; when V irg il says this, all that he really means is , that Italy w ill be peaceful and prosperous again. - 37 - But this is not 'V i r g il 's only apocalyptic, even in 3| ^ Ec 1 ogues. In the fifth eclogue, the strange and obscure myth of Daphnis, the Sicilian culture-hero, is pressed into service with reference to the apotheosis of Caesar (an odd parallel), but perhaps there have been odder in our own day?); in the first eclogue, the deification of a prospective world-ruler is oddly amalgamated with the hopes of peasants waiting for protection and of slaves saving up far their manumisgion. The4*hole prophetic vision is scrutinized more closely ih the sixth and eighth books of the Aeneid; but in all the passages I have mentioned we can see fate moving towards a better scheme of things, typified by the birth of a blessed Child and the growth of a new generation, as of new and exuberant vegetation --- a Frazerish image, perhaps, though Rose was right us against looking under every acanthus-bush to see an Eniautos Daimon. Wars and human wickedness, ont he whole, were the evil forces that stood in the way of the coining liberation; how does this compare with the Wellsian view? Wells himself admitted his debt to Shelley though he misquoted him, on the title-page of "in the Days of the Comet"; Shelley's debt to Virgil is obvious (I have quoted part of it already); but Wells' enemies, and Shelley's, are not quite the same as Virgil's. Shelley's enemies are the men of Peterloo (i t is sadly ominous that a long and detailed apologia has just been written for them); Wells' enemies were, broadly speaking, the Establishment: that is the squirearchy, the dead hand of tradition, and above all the vast forces of human stupidity. (We often feel in his earlier works, and sometimes in his later ones, that it would not matter so much being governed by business men, or even by squires, if only they were intelligent and efficient; sometimes, also, we see a rather Dickensian, or Orwellian, sympathy for old-fashioned rural society, in the junketings at Iping before the Invisible,Man appeared, or did not appear, there, and in Tono-Bungay.) But there are also the dark forces of human nature; Wells has sometimes been accused of overlooking these, especially by those who saw him simply as a starry-eyed prophet of inevitable betterment. Of .these dark forces Virgil is very conscious indeed. It has fairly often been said that the wildness of King Latinus' Italy paralleled the wildness of the declining Reman Republic, just as the noble, but doomed, Priam assumed.in. death the stature and attributes of the noble, and brutally slain, Pampeyj, that the land which produced the unbrigled violent!a of Turnus and the barely describable beastliness of Mezentius needed a touch of Trojan discipline, as well as Aeneas' pietas, to civilize it. Now, this civilizing mission of Aeneas is no sick euphenism; it has nothing in common with the apologia of a tyrant who makes the railways run to time -- doubtless, if there had been railways in Mezentius' Etruria, they would have been admirably organized. Aeneas' mission is what Virgil had been pleading for, and continued to plead for: pacisque imponere morem, in a country where the4gjiling Tarquins and the revolutionary Brutus could alike be called superbi. Similarly, Wells, though a believer in liberty, had no illusions about its dangers. In When the Sleeper Wakes. Ostrog, the revolutionary leader, overthrows the oligarchy, but iiposes a dictatorship of his own, and the story ends with a new revolution trying to unset him. In The Time Machine, and in A Story of the Days to Come, social problems have long be|g solved, but the solution itself has led to the enslavement of the masses,in a picture as grim as anything imagined by Orwell or by Jack London. In The Invisible Man, the emancipated scientist - 38 - Griffin is so emancipated that the whole organized forces of society have to get together to suppress^ Nor are the revolutionary masses idealized. In A Story of Days to Come, they are simply brutish and violent, but in The Time Machine they have reverted to cannibalism, and in The Island of Dr. Moreau they areeven more revolting -- revolting in hoth senses; uncouth at the best of times, they revert to the purely, and repulsively, bestial when the hand of God — in this case, God is Dr. Moreau -- is removed from them. In The Outline of History the message is spelt out clearly: "The English gentleman of the closing decades of the eighteenth century read Gibbon's third volume and congratulated himself that there was henceforth no serious fear of the barbarians, with this new barbarism growing up, with this metamorphosis of his countrymen into something dark and,, gasper ate in full progress, within an easy walk, perhaps, from his door". This is not to say, with some recent critics, that Wells' thought was fundamentally pessimistic; his gloomiest visions were simply extrapolations of the present (the Eloi and the Morlocks alike are very 1890ish figures), and a happier, perhaps more veridical, vision is shown in Men Like Gods, in Things to Come, and earlier in The Food of the Gods. The latter, indeed, has some very interesting sub-plots; the scientists' plan for human betterment is, of course, resisted by the British Establishment, represented chiefly by a politician called Caterham, but before the human beneficiaries can reach their superhuman maturity (and it is interesting that they include a German Princess -- Wells sometimes, in his earlier woiks, shows an odd trust in German progressives, even crowned ones) there are scenes of mixed horror and humour, which remarkably enough succeed, when he describes them, in avoiding bathos; beetles and flies, nettles, rats and wasps, grow to vast dimensions, and need old-fashioned heroism to stop them. How right Wells is, there. What, after all, was Hitler but a giant rat, bred in filth, with monstrously sharp teeth? What is Enoch Powell but a giant wasp with spectacular mobility and a deadly sting? * ' Later, In the Days of the Comet shows a slightly different change in the human situation. There is a general reconciliation, following significantly upon an apocalyptic experience, which has some resemblapce to the cataclysms in a shorter and less,^gll-known piece palled The Star; it may be noted that some years later, and with no acknowledgment, Cpnan Doyle envisaged a similar increase of public virtue after a similar cosmological disaster, when he ended The Poison Belt with a suggestion that the former social evils are ...-...... ff 11 " ——— || passed away, and we all pay our slightly increased contributions gladly — 0\}st as Sherlock Holmes in His Lagt Bow sees the harsh winds of World War I blowing away much that is evil. All these are, of course, applications of the traditional Christian, and pre-Christian, theme of Through-Tribulation-To- Glory; th^r are the World-Fit-forrHeroes idea, so often, and so logically, derided by economists, but in fact, to a large extent, verified by experience. It can, I think, be agreed that, however, brutally people treated each other in the 1920s, the swords of scorn did not divide quite so savagely as they hvd done in the 1900s. Before we trace Virgilian, and Wellsian, themes more closely to their literary archetypes, we might do well to take a quick look at their Utopias. What in fact will Wells' men do when they are like Gods? What will go on in Virgil's world when it has been pacified by a father's virtues? This question has been thrown at Wells by sceptics, mainly by clerical - 39 - C 58) ones, but the answer is fairly simple. Wells sees the comwor man enjoying comfort and h e a l t h -- loose clothes, pjLgyty of games and Laths, comfortable shoes instead of ill-fitting boots -- and clean, beautiful surroundings. The 6lite, sometimes criticized as i f it had been an Orwellian Big-Brotherhood, will, if we may judge from Men Like Gods, spend their time in research and experiment; in fact, very much as University staffs, and other happy public employees, spend their time today. (We may, perhaps, toce an embarrassing similarity to the kind of sinecures that Dickens criticized so fiercely; but at least the picture is preferable to Dickens' summum bonum, which seems to have been^a life, like Mr. Pickwick’ s aftgg^his retirement from an unspecified "business", with no work to do at a l l ) . ' V ir g il shows us a similar Empire-building 6lite in power, and the common man living under hiw own vine and his own fig-tree, occasionally perhaps unearthing vast relig|.of the Civil Wars as he continues his agelong task with the curved plough. It may be unlikely that Virgil really believed his own implication, that later generationg^would be Lillip u tian s, "wondering at enormous bones in excavated tombs"; this is, I think, one of his double-takes. He really means , . "We are now living in a Heroig4Age. Just as Spartans in the sixth century, 1 3~' and Athenians in the fifth, found enormous skeletons in Mycenaean doroe- graves, so our descendants will fitfd, and wonder at, the relics of our own contemporaries; forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit". We should not forget that Thucydides, too, speculated about the possible deductipgg. and errors, that might be made by archaeologists in the remote future. As to the treatment of traditional themes: we have all been told that in his Eclogues Virgil imitated Theocritus, in his Georgies Hesiod and (of all people) Aratus; in his Aeneid the Odyssey for the first half and the Iliad for the second. Most of us have’ probably felt with some exasperation, "What a civilization it must have been, with so little self-confidence that it always had to’imitate' something else", and we may have gone off with the thought that the Romans were always consciously archaizing, living in a self-created world of Victorian Gothic. If so, we were only believing what we were taught; but in fact it is simply no^gtrue. Virgil useg^as Wells uses, traditional pg|terns; there are quotations, misquotations, a few astonishingg^^wle^s, some plagiarisms that are direct, some that are slily allusive, and a few in-jokes for the cultured reader, as when Virgil borrows a phrase which Ennius „ applied to Hannibal’ s elephants and applies it to a column of warrior ants. } As we have seen, the pattern of the Eclogues is Theocritean, but the stories are contemporary; the Georgies have some of Hesiod’ s manner and much of his subject-matter, but there is little of Hesiod's robust pessimism and nothing to correspond with his attacks on contemporary figures (though sane contemporary iudices might have put on the wig prepared for Hesiod’s "gift-devouring Kings"), and, above all, they were written for a totally different purpose. The Aeneid may not in itself be as good a story as the Iliad or the Odyssey, but it certainly does lead somewhere, which the Homeric poems, at least in a historical sense, do not. The second half of the Aeneid may be less.inspiring than the first (though Jowett was contemptuous when people said so) and certainly Virgil’ s strategy and tactics are like the zoology in the Swiss Family Robinson (Homer’ s occasional vagueness about cremation or inhumation, throwing-spears or stabbing-spears, round shields or tower shields, are nowhere in comparison) but, notwithstanding a few borrowed battle-scenes and similes, the whole thane is different. We may sometimes forget (though Horace did not) that the Iliad - 40 - js NOT a full epic description of the Trojan War; it is, with some supplements, a tale about the Wrath of Achilles, a quarrel between an arrogant stupid king and an independent-minded subordinate. There is nothing of that in Aeneas' Italy inough V irgil does echo Homer's sympathy for a gallant, but doomed, enemy. Nor is there all that much of the Odyssey in the first half. Homer's Necyia, for all its sombre magnificence, is so oddly tacked on that many scholars have thought wrongly in my opinion, that Odysseus' journey was not really necessary and the whole episode later addition (Page, indeed, thinks it is at least three later additions); Virgil’s „ 7 Underworld, though it too has inconsistencies which appear under close scrutiny, is a magnificent climax and a keystone of the whole story. Unlike other parts 01 the Aeneid, incidentally, it can be enjoyed on many different levels, as Homer can. For schoolboys, it is a magnificent ghost-story; for Dante, it is an archetype for a splendid, but totally different, catabasis; for Dryden, it gives the opportunity a sly dig at William of Orange and the revolutionaries of 1688. But, though the Aeneid is certainly nc» mere imitation, Virgil does, like Wells, and like most good authors, make full use of traditional themes, giving them his own twist. We have the Descent into the Underworld, the Man from Over Sea, the Quest for Immortality, or its equivalent. We have the Temptress who tries to keep the hero^way from his Destiny (though she, like the smaller she-villain Eriphyle, is played for sympathy). These themes were probably not new when they appeared in the Epic of Gilgamesh, nor were they out of date when they were given a new twist by H.G.Wells. But Wells and Virgil alike used them in ways in which, I think, they had never been used before. It is not, I think, generally known (at least, I have never seen it stated) that the plot of Kipps is virtually the same as that of a novel called Ten Thousand A-Year. written in 1841 by Samcel "Warren, a novelist and M.P., who has been described as "a kind of right-wing Dickens". Warren's anti-hero a small shop-assistant played for laughs which are not always very friendly, comes into a fortune through the good offices of a casual acquaintance, sets up as a country gentelman, falls in love with a lady above his rank in life, has4 grotesque embarrassments, loses his money, and ends up in a madhouse. Wells virtually retells the same story, with more sympathy and a happier ending. Similarly, the attempted abduction of Florence Dombey, and the grim warnings of "poisonous effluvia" from the slums, reappear in The Time Machine, where Weena and her friends are threatened with even ghastlier abductions, and where the strange towers and mineshafts of the Morlocks cause so much embarrassment when the narrator asks questions about them that he assumes that they must be "connected with the sanitary apparatus of these people". But there are archetypes far older than Dickens or Warren. (83) A Research Student of mine has just written a fascinating thesis on Catabatic Themes. He suggests that the archetypal science-fiction story shows a Hero descending into the Underworld, fighting a Dragon, meeting the ghost of a parent or ancestor, and obtaining the Fruit of Immortality. Here, facts are too strong for fiction; the Hero is not alig| today, so, if he won the Fruit of Immortality, he must have lost it again. Just so, Mr. Fotherin^g^j The Man Who could Work Miracles, has to lose his supernatural powers, and the man who is given the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge by - 41 - an Armenian refugee whom he has met int he train has to throw it away when he sees two girls of his acquaintance who would be shocked to see him eating, or even carrying, a juicy fruit in^g^yiic (Eve, Pandora and Dido, you will notice, in late-Victorian dress). Immortality can, of course, be partly rationalized. It may become gold, as with Jason, or with the First Men in the Moon; it may become wisdom or spiritual insight, sometimes of a rather terrifying kind, as for those who go down into the Cave of Trophonius and never smile ggain, or for Gulliver who never recovers fran his experiences with the Yahoos, or with Prendrick, who reacts in much the same way when he comes back from Dr. Moreau's island to the Victorian London which so resembles it. Or one may get a guide to the future, like the Time Traveller, or like Aeneas himself; or one may simply be given constructive advice, as when Odysseus is warned to take security precautions when he returns to Ithaca, J or when Aeneas is told "quo quemque modo fugiatve feratve laborem" . Sometimes, as in Jason’ s case, the theme may be fused with the realities of contemporary exploration, and there may be not only a crock of gold, but a Princess. She may be a helpful Princess, like Medea or Nausicaa, or a balef^^ne like Circe or the Laestrygonian Queen who "looked like a mountain-peak", or a well- meaning but dangerous one like Dido or Calypso, or like the Isobel Rivers who ruins the hero’ s career in The New Machiavelli. (It is an odd coincidence that P.C.Wren should have chosen the same name for the charming but rather vapid heroine of Beau Geste; less odd, that Orwell should have taken the name of Verrall, the smug brute of an aristocrat in The Days of the Comet, for the equally smug brute of an aristocrat in Burmese Days). Sometimes the Princess has to be left behind or lost on the way, through the exigencies of the plot, like Nausicaa again, or Dido, or Weena in the Time Machine Other themes of death and resurrection are treated in A Vision of Judgment, where a treatment which Byron had used simply to show thg^ George III had been, on the whole, a well-meaning old buffer and Southey was an unmitigated ass, is used as a pleg for the abandonment of humbug and an increased mutual understanding, a message which was to be partly realized by the discoveries, or pseudo-discoveries, of Freud and his successors; in A Tale of the Last Trump, where simple people, of Kipps' status, suddenly find themselves the instruments of apocalyptic events; in Wh,en the Sleeper Wakes, where we find a theme which goes back through the legends of Barbarossa and Holger Dansker and King Arthur sleeping in their underground caverns, to t^g greatest, and perhaps the earliest, Burial and Hesurrection legend of all. These are, of course, not the only borrowings. The first version of the Time Machine was an untypical, and vilely-written, jeu d’ esprit called The Chronic Argonauts; in case the debt to tradition was not clear enough, the leading figures are called R.Nebogipfel (i.e. Moses) and, thing upon thing, the Reverend Elijah Ulysses Cook. (A similar figure turns up as Dr. Maydig in The Man who could Work Miracles). The message getsrather tangled, indeed, and the future, in which the hero is in trouble for "the abduction of a ward in the ypWUfO03" 311(1 "several assaults on public officials in the years 17901 and 2", seems disappointingly like the present. There is less confusion in The First Mm in the Moon, which opens with a quotation from Lucian's Icaromenippus (we may wonder where the Greekless Wells had, at that time, come across that not much publicized dialogue, as distinct from ggr better known Vera Historia) and there are also touches of Swift, Kepler, and even - 42 - Philolaus. The film of Things to Come has strong touches of Isaiah and St. John the Divine, as well as more recent echoes frcm Russia; the Invisible Man.is^.simply an extension of the fable of Gyges* Ring in P ;ato' s Republic (incidentally, the text has nothing to support recent suggestions that Griffin had been driven mad by the agony of his transformation; he had lost all family affectiygg^ and driven his father to suicide, long before he became in v is ib le ), and G riffin is the Superman Gone Bad, a kind of Holy Terror, whereas Dr, Nebogipfel, and Dr. Cavor, and the Giant Children in the Food of the Gods, are supermen who remain uncorrupted, or who are at least played for sympathy. The War of the Worlds is something more than one prophecies of invasion and calamity which were so common at the time. Not only is there a sadly veridical prophecy of a totally heartless enemy with genpcidal aims, later perhaps to be supported by a collaborationist milice, but there is, as in France in 1940, a total collapse of the establi* ed authorities. The Army fails, and it is significantly a private soldier who Plffifj net very effectively it would seem, a literally Underground Resistance; organized religion fails (the American film of 1952 avoids this, and makes the refugees find sanctuary in a New York cathedral), but Destiny it s e lf — 511(1 'there is an explicit reference to the Destruction of Sennacherib. This book has no superman, but there is one in The Island of Dr. Moreau; even he, howgyer, is dwarfed by the situation. Wells openly admits his debt to Comus (and, by implication, to the Odyssey). and the echoes of Swift, whom in his childhood he found "strong meat", are obvious; but there is more to it than that. Why do the deformed creatures sit in a circle listening to "The Law", and chanting their responses to it? Most critics have supposed that^ells is borrowing from Kipling, and thinking of the Law of the.Jungle; but surely there is a more homely parallel. Kagarlitski seems to see an adumbration of the rhythmical applause, and the chanted slogans, associated with mass meetings in Stalin’ s Russia, where orators, including Stalin himself, recited liturgical-sounding formulae and received hysterical applause; but what are we reminded of when we hear of vetoes publicly recited ("Not to eat flesh or fish — THAT is the Law") interspersed with the response "Are we not Men?" Surely, most of us will recognize the practice, unfortunately obsolescent in the more with-it churches of today, by which the Ten Commandments are read out in the early stages of the Communion Service, and the humble worshippers pray aloud for grace ^and strength to keep them. Indeed, the narrator in his Epilogue explicitly compares.Monkey-Preacher to the fashionable spellbinders in London pulpits; less explicit is the suggestion that the preachers, in their humble measure, are doing their limited best to make men better than their animal nature, and that the liberating Prendrick, who assumes that Dr. Moreau is deliberately degrading them when he is really trying to improve them, and urges them to break away from Dr. Moreau's domination, is making a mistake which is to° many sincere revolutionaries, and which usually ends in total disaster. And why, indeed, is the doctor called Moreau? It is a French name, and French scientists, like French detectives, were commonplace in Victorian fiction, but the name mtins little enough in French (I had always taken it to mean Cod, with the implication that the doctor was cold-blooded, but it really denotes a horse's nose-bag, which is irrelevant to the story); it is really a bilingual pun, perhaps a subconscious one. Dr. Moreau, like Dr. Nebogipfel, is a Man of the Future -- the Man of Tomorrow. - 43 - Of course, Wells was not the first moralizing science-fiction writer of his century; but how distressing much earlier Victorian science-fiction is. (Modern space-opera is, of course, no better, nor are the old experiments in mysticism and fancy writing which came in with the nineteen-sixties; Wells himself neatly described much of it when he said "anyone can invent human beings inside-out, or planets shaped like dumb-bells, or a gravity which repels -- though even Wells' negative examples are more intriguing than the best writings of lesser men; I would dearly like to read a novel about human bein^ inside- out) . Even Jules Verne, who denounce^g-G.Wells for using a stuff called Cavortte which had not been invented (as Kingsley Amis once pointed out, this is rather like the complaint made by the man in the lunatic asylum, that the beef doesn’ t taste like mutton today) has plenty of incident but cannot draw credible or interesting characters, and his adventurers spend most of their time making epigrams, like Kipling's Bandar-Log,^§8) that a problem is solved when one has made a witty remark about i t . Compared to Wells, Verne is as moonlight unto sunlight, as water unto wine. Wells' novels, straight and scientific alike, shew a vigour which is lac^J^e in his predecessors. Orwell has pointed out that Wells was a real liberator; he was on our side, not, as most novelists were, on the side of the stifling father-figures. Nor did he stand among contemporary popular novelists, with their coy jokes about young love, their apalling snobberies, their stage Irishmen and their comic Cockneys, their polysyllabic humour and their irrelevant allusions, .w^gN would never say "Ireland" when they could say’the green isle adjacent"; 7 even the kindly and hilarious Wodehouse seemed to share our elders' inexplicable predilection for cricket. Rather similar, I suspect, was the reaction of the audience in archaic Greece when Homer soared above the level of his predecessors, who may have narrated more thrilling events but had nothing of his charm and compassion; so did Shakespeare rise above his predecessors, who may read better in the story but, as theatre, are not in the same street with him; so, certainly, did Virgil, crj^jyized by the Bavius and the Maevius^y| ' his day as a frivolous neologist, but bravely championed by Horace and triumphantly vindicated by the final verdict of the public; who included, we may be glad to say, the teaching profession, ancient and modern. We have seen what is Wells' secret; what, then, is Virgil's? Our M25) Founder once said to me, rejecting an implied criticism by Benjamin Farrington* "tJobody in their senses would read the Aeneid for the story; still less would anyone in their senses take it as a description of what actually happened". Virgil does, indeed, lack the gift that was possessed by Homer, and Orwell, and Swift, and Wells above all, of writing something that is acceptable an several different levels. The Aeneid is a fine poem and an admirable foundationTj.ggend, and it is admirable for "example of life and instruction of manners", and it is a treasurehouse of beautiful passages and exciting episodes, but on the whole the Odyssey is a better story; just as Theocritus' peasants (not to mention his townspeople) are more realistic than Virgil^g^. shepherds. But even apart from the obscurities of Theocritus' Doric, I suspect that most of us like the Eclogues better than the Idylls, and it might be as well to see just why this is so. One scholar has recently suggested, sljg|j:ly adapting an idea of Robert Graves', that Virgil never really grew up. The loves and hates and - 44 - tears of the Fifth Aeneid, as well as those of the Eclogues, perhaps may not fit the world of working farmers, displaced persons, and serving soldiers; but they are admirably appropriate for the closed world of a happy and welj-run preparatory school. Now, Tennyson loved Virgil "since his day began", that is, presumably, since at about the age of six; I myself did not meet the pious Aeneas until I was ten, when I had the great good fortune to be introduced to him by L.A.G,Strang, and found that his adventures on the coast of Africa beat Rider Haggard hollow. A year later, I followed him into the Underworld, and about the same time I discovered the Eclogues,. end. was delighted by them. Here were people who threw apples at each other, who were disappointed to be 8W|q|° the nets while their best friends were out^g^ront chasing the boars, who wrote poems to comDefcg. with each other and were foolishly jealous when they were outclassed, who sidetracked elderly and alcoholic teachers into telling them all about the creation of the world and the odder stories in Greek mythology. It was lovely. It 18 lovely. And about the same time I discovered H .G .W e lls. Corydon loves someone who is inaccessible: so did Mr. Polly, so did Kipps -- though Kipps, luckier than Corydon, did find a more suitable companion and live happy ever after; so, too, did Willie Leadbold, in The Days of the Comet. Meliboeus and Moeris lose their farms, as Mr. Polly loses hjggjob; in a happier vein, Alphesiboeus will imitate the dancing satyrs, as might well have been done by any of the cheerful rustics at the Flower Shows in Mr. Britling's Essex or at the Invisible Man’ s Iping. (In Wells' novels it is often brilliant summ|gg. as when Thestylis makes her garlicky salad for the weary harvesters). There is a joy and freshness about Virgil, and about Wells, as there was about the Impressionists; as one of Wells' friends said, "The world was old and sad, my friend, but you and I were gay". There was youth; there was a tender sympathy for human joys and sorrows; there was discipline too,( and hard work in plenty, "conquering everything with its ruthlessnesB", but there was, throughout it all the visionary gleam. That gleam.often shines out, like the Golden (^ 39) Bough, in the darkest depths of the wild wood. It flashes out at Marathon, it blazes in Aeschylus; its message rings triumphantly in the.Old Testament, where wolf and lamb lie down together on the Holy Mountain, and boldly in the New, where the songs of the New Jerusalem are heard above the strangely modem stridencies of overcrowded inns, fussy.bureaucrats, and labourers in vineyards arguing about their differentials. Our own literary tradition has shewn it gleaming through the strange imagery of Spenser, shining bright and clear in Mij.tan, illuminating B um s and Blake and Shelley. V ir g il, though not particularly young when he wrote his greater poems, has, like then, a particular message to youth; his message is doubly appropriate when it presents itself to yout£ approaching the breakthrough into the strange world of threat and pronise that comes with liberty, and to mankind on, or beyond, the threshold of bewildering discoveries when "the walls of th^jmrld dart asunder and one sees what goes on through the whole of Space". The same message, in its fundamentals, comes from the tender V irg il and the robust W ells, from the modest goose ox Mantua and from the ugly duckling of Bromley. I would have liked to say much more -- to deal, perhaps, with the literary convention of romantic love, and t£e way these two authors treat i t ; with their use of personal names, and the associations which they imply; the development of Virgilian themes in theatre and art, and the strange uses to which Wells has been put on cinema and on television -- but - 45 jam sumroa procul villarum culmina fumant, ^ 144) maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae. NOTES 1. Some, however, may be mentioned in a footnote. Bergonzi, The Early H.G.Wells, 1961; Brcme, H.G.Wells: A Biography, 1951; Hillegas, The Future as Nightmare; H.G.Wells and the Anti-Utopians, 1967; Kagarlitski, The Life and Thought of H.G.Wells, (tr. by Moura Budberg, 1966); Orwell, Wells, Hitler and the World State (1941, published in Collected Essays, 1961, and el*«w h»re); Ingvald Raknem, H .G .W ells and his C r it ic s .n .d . 2. Outline of History, pp. 240-2, 244. 3. Georgies III 176. 4. Georgies II 475-482; _cf. Eclogues VI 31 sqq. 5. First cited by Donatus, quoted in the Introduction to Page's commentaries; see also Jackson Knight, Roman Vergil, 44. 6 . In a paper read to the South-Western branch of the Classical Association, March 8 , 1957. 7. Milton, Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity,_stanza VII. 8 . Expressed with particular vigour in Journal of Roman Studies, 1947, pp. 183-6, and repeated in Folklore, 1959, p .255; Dum^zil*s vigorous reply to the former criticism may be found, I believe, in the Introduction to his Loki, 1948. 9. Revelation, xxi.22. 10. E.g. Eclogues II 10 sq., V 36-9. 11. Notably Georgies I 466 sqq., II 166-72, IV 210-8. 12. Especially II 485 sqq. 13. E.g. Ill 15-18 (Thrace), 104-115 (Crete); cf. also IV 99 sqq. 14. IV 105 sqq. 15. II 453-7. 16. VI 86-95. The Cambridge scholar who recently used this passage as an incitement to xenophobia would have done well to consider VII 270-1, XI 112, XII 834-40. - 45 - 17. E.g. in The Wonderful Visit, The Story of the Last Trump, and the inept clergymen in The War of the Worlds and The Day s of the Comet. 18. On this theme, see Jackson Knight, jog. cit. 37. 19. Primarily of course from Works and Days, 110-21; see also Rose, The Eclogues nf Vergil, Sather Classical Lectures 1942, pp. 176-7, 184. 20. Politicus, 269 c. 21. This idea is treated more than once in Sylvie and Bruno. 22. Plato, loc.cit. and Republic, VIII 546. 23. Best expressed in Plutarch, Sulla, vii, 4-5, and cf. Rose, op.cit. pp. 175-6, 189-90. For the psychological effects, see Robert Graves, Steps, 308 (reading, however, 'Aztecs' for 'Incas'). 24. The most easily accessible information on Cyclic Theories in Stoicism may be found in Robin, Greek Thought pp. 348-9, and references. 25. In a paper read to the Exeter branch of the Virgil Society, November 16, 1942. 2G. Eclogue IV 9, 12-13, 37-47. 27. E.g. by Rose, Folklore 1959, p.255. 28. Ezekiel xxxvii. * ' 29. I have been unable to find the source of this attractive legend, and would be grateful to any philhellene who could inform me. 30. Eclogue IV 35-6. 31. E.g. Odes I xxi 12-16, cf. ii 21-4, IV v, xiv, & c. 32. Eclogue IV.34. 33. _Ib. 37-8, cf. Georgies II 461 sqq. 34. Daily Life in Ancient Rome, 1941, pp.33-5, 40-1. 35. Georgies II 461-5, 505-6. Since Virgil never seems to show the slightest interest in private ostentation (as distinct from useful public works, e.g. ib. 161-4) we may take this as something more than the mere simple-life cliche suggested by Horace, A .P .197, and satirized in Epodes ii. 36. See Knaack, Pauly-Wissowa IV, pp.2141-6. 37. Rulers as different as Charles I and Woodrow Wilson have compared - 47 - themselves to Jesus Christ; national enemies, and even domestic opponents, have commonly been compared to Satan. Government spies penetrating revolutionary organizations, and renegade revolutionaries, have regularly been compared to Judas Iscariot. 38. Rose (The Eclogues of Vergil, pp. 45-7, 228) has tried to make coherent sense, or its equivalent, out of this passage, citing, among others, Leo, Hermes 1903. Whether an Italian slave was likely to have a small farm as his peculium, and might hope to save enough of the profits to buy his liberty, is a question which can more easily be answered by experts on Roman law and Roman agriculture than by myself. 39. Especially from 755 onwards. 40. The dynamic, progressive imagery on the Shield in VIII 626-729 can be contrasted to the static portrayal of contemporary existence on the Homeric and Hesiodic Shields of Achilles, and to the moralizing, sub specie aeternitatis use of prophetic art on the Temple of Mars in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, lines 2030-8. 41. Rose, op.cit. pp.209-10. 42. Scientific Romances, p.817. There is a rash of capitals unauthorized by the original, and the earth 's "winter weeds" have become a "Winter Sk in ". 43. Walmsley, Peterloo: the Case Reopened, 1969. 44. E.g. by Orwell, Collected Essays, 165. 45. E.g. by Jackson Knight, op.cit.137, 172. Cf. also Otis, Vergil: a Study in Civilised Poetry, p.317. 46. See Servius on Aeneid II, 555-7, and Knight/ op.cit.302. 47. Aeneid VIII 485-8, quoted in the Times, Old and True, 28 April 1945, p.6 . See also Gage's astonishing elaborations on this theme, Huit Recherches sur les Origines Italiques et Romaines, 1950, pp. 17-8. 48. Aeneid VI, Page's note, and Knight, op.cit. 303-4. 49. Short Stories, pp. 50-3, (Time Machine) , 763-4 (A Story of the Days to Come) 50. The Iron Heel, passim. It is interesting to compare London's prophecy with the actual state of mid-century America. 51. Short Stories, loc.cit. , especially 778. 52. Outline of History, 452. 53. A surprising account of constructive idealism is attributed to the German military establishment in The War in the Air, 1908; for similar views - 48 - among contemporary English progressives, see S k i d e l ^ , English Progressive Schools, 1969, pp.86-7. 54. For the idea of "large drones with stings", see Plato, Republic, VIII 552d. For the use of xenophobia as a political weapon, see also Xenophon, Hellenica III iii.21, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta (Malcovati) 144, with Badian's analysis, Foreign Clientelae, 1958, pp.187-8. 55. Short Stories, pp. 644-55. 56. Published 1913; In the Days of the Comet was published in 1906. 57. Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, p .1086. 58. Notably Owen Francis Dudley, in Human Happiness and H.G.Wells, 1936, 59. This Misery of Boots, a Fabian pamphlet published in 1907. The "misery" there described has been largely abolished by the general adoption of shoes for outdoor use; should this be attributed to the increasing preference for comfort as against ostentation, or to the general improvement in road surfaces, foretold in Short Stories 734? 60. This point is particularly emphasized by Orwell, op.cit.pp.64-5, 70-1. 61. Georgies I 493-7. I have not heard of this prophecy being fulfilled anywhere except at Maiden “Castle in Dorset. 6 2 . Page gives no authority for his statement ( loc. c i t ., commentary) that "it was the general b elief of the ancients that the race of man was continually deteriorating' (that is, physically as distinct from morally, as in Horace, Odes III vi.46-8); though such a view may be extrapolated from such lines as Iliad V 304, XII 383, 449, & c. 63. Hdt. I 68, esp. paragraph 3. ' 64. Plutarch, Cimon, 8 ; Theseus, 36.2. 65. Thucydides, I x.l. For an amusing fulfilment of this prophecy, see Rhys Carpenter, Folk-tale, Fiction and Sage in the Homeric Epic, 1946, p p .50-2. 66 . E.g. (among many) Eclogue X 8-9, based on Idylls I 66 sqq. 67. E.g. Aeneid IX 264, where Virgil seems to forget that the Arisba of I liad II 836 sqq. was in Trojan territory. 68 . Most notably, Eclogue VIII 58, based on a gross misunderstanding of Idyll I 132. ---- 69. E.g. Aeneid VI 460, from Catullus LVI 39; Knight thought he detected an echo of Lucretius IV 1264-5 in Aeneid IV 551. - 49 - 70. Servius on Aeneid IV 404. 71. Works and Days, 263-4. Virgil does, of course, criticize some late- Republican types in Georgies II 502-12, and Page cites various contemporary figures whom Virgil might have been envisaging; but, insofar as any social criticism is intended, Virgil is clearly attacking the old Republican system and, by implication, praising Octavian. Does "urbem" in line 505 mean Rome, as Kennedy thought, or is V ir g il, like Aeschylus Agamemnon 472, expressing a distaste for wars of conquest under any circumstances? 72. Jowett is said to have snubbed an undergraduate who timidly expressed this opinion; I have not been able to check the source of this story. 73. Epp. II ii.42, cf. I i 11-14. 74. The comparison between Aeneid XII and Iliad XXII is interesting; Aeneas (940 sqq.) is clearly more tender-hearted than Achilles. Turnus, for obvious reasons, cannot have a w ife and child to arouse our sympathy, but he has a loving sister; Aeneas' anger, significantly, is not aroused by the memory of a lover killed by the chance of war, but by the thought of a premising young life uselessly lost. 75. Especially Page, The Homeric Odyssey, pp. 221-51. Unitarians, who usually admit some interpolations (e.g. Flacelifere, A Literary History of Greece, 33; Kirk, The Songs Of Homer, 212, 236) da not seem to have noticed that Odyssey XIII 383-4 can only refer back to XI 406-434. 76. Page, op.cit. 25, 38, 44, 47. * 77. A visitor to the site of Ctfmae will notice vaguenesses and inconsistencies in the topography; the details of reincarnation are obscure, and it is not clear whether the lovers,the suicides, the culture-heroes, or even the damned, are to go thBough the process of purgatory and rebirth described in the Platonic passage which begins in line 723; the inorganic lines 743-4 are an inconsistency within an inconsistency. 78. Lines 608-9 are rendered by Dryden (J.ines 824-5) "They who brothers' better claims disown, Expel their parents, and usurp a throne". 79. Contrast 446-7, where Eriphyle is simply a woman unhappy in love and motherhood, with Odyssey XI 326-7, where she is a kind of super-Delilah. 80. For the conventional interpretation, see Knight, Cumaean Gates, 18-21, and references; a different order of events is given in the Penguin translation, especially pp. 63, 97-9, 102-5, 113-4. 81. Dombey and Son, chapter VI. Dickens makes the abduction temporary, and gives a decorous, if far-fetched, reason for it; but to any contemporary who knew anything of the Victorian underworld, abduction would inevitably suggest the white-slave trade. For the idea of infection spreading from - 50 - the Victorian slums, see chapter XLVII. Cf. House, The Dickens World, 217. 82. Short Stories, pp. 57, 60, 63. In the-recently-produced film of The Time Machine, it was simply suggested that the Eloi, conditioned to go underground at the sound of an air-raid siren, voluntarily presented themselves for forced labour in underground factories; a relic of wartime controls rather than an extreme development of laissez-faire capitalism. 83. R.J.Clark, The Katabasis: a Vergilian Treatment of a Recurring Theme, 1969. 84. Clark, op.cit. pp. 3-4, 72-3, 157-165, on the unavailing search for immortality. Short Stories, p. 818. 86. Ib. pp. 401-2. 87. Scientific Romances, 549, 584-5. 88. Gulliver's Travels, Part IV, chapter XI _ad fin. 89. Scientific Romances, pp. 180-2. 90. Odyssey XI 441-3, 445-6; Clark, op.cit. 34-7. 91. Aeneid VI 892; Clark, op.cit. 186-7. 92. Odyssey X 112-3. i)3. Alldritt, The Making of X?eorge Orwell, 1959, suggests that Orwell chose the name Verrall because it resembled the word "virile". In fact, the English (unlike the American) pronunciation shows no great similarity, and Orwell*s Verrall is only marginally, if at all, more virile than Orwell's hero; for Wells and Orwell alike, Verrall's advantage comes 4 solely from class and wealth. - To the present writer, his name suggests the French verrou (an obstacle, conceivably a phallic symbol), verrere, a sweeping away, and, at least in Orwell's case, Verres, an oppressive provincial administrator. 94. Short Stories, pp. 109-114. 95. Byron, Vision of Judgment, especially stanzas 45-6 (George Ill’s p e r s o n a l qualities); cf. also 71, 106; 66-83 (parodying Southey's section Y), 86, 96-9 (describing Southey's own merits as a poet and politician). 96. Short Stories, 114. 97. lb. pp. 587-604. 98. Wells himself admitted that the Sleeperwas the common man (for a modern twist, see Frederick Pohl, The Age of the Pussyfoot, where the Sleeper’ s - 51 - earnings are also enormous, but have been eaten away by inflation). Roman Catholic critics have suggested that the Sleeper symbolizes Christ and his corrupt agents symbolize the Church hierarchy. There is room for a detailed study on the use of resurrection-legends to symbolize the aspirations of oppressed communities (cf. notes 26-9 sup.); for a comparatively light-hearted modern example, see L'Enfant du M£tro, Madeleine Truel, Paris 1943, as analysed by Clark, op.cit. 267-8). 99. Printed in Bergonzi, op.cit. n.l sup. . pp.187-214; for later developments, see Clark, op.cit. 256-7. Wells himself felt embarrassed by the title (Experiment in Autobiography, 309); the style is typical of Victorian humorous writing at its polysyllabic worst. 100. Bergonzi, op.cit. 203. 101. Lucian, Loeb edition, vol.II p. 269, quoted in Scientific Romances 455. 102. . Somnium, written in 1634; two modern American editions were released in 1965 and 1967. 103. See also Wust, Pauly-Wissowa XVI 77-8; Philolaus, Diehls Fragmente der Vorsokratiker I 404, Freeman, Pre-Socratic Philosophers 226. 104. Released in 1936, and frequently repeated on television. Civil War, complicated by pestilence, raged through the 1950s and 1960s, and one of its most graphic scenes showed ragged troops charging forward wearing, rather puzzlingly, Russian sheepskin hats. The author and director were probably working on the analogy of the Russian Civil Wars which had followed the Russian collapse in World War I . 105* Republic II 359 d. 106. Kagarlitski, op.cit. n.l sup, p.60. 107. Kagarlitski, op.cit.201-2, gives a pr6cis of The Holy Terror which makes the hero seem remarkably like Stalin, even to the extent of leading his people to victory and being dexterously eliminated in time to prevent him giving orders for a general massacre of the Jews. 108. On this theme, see I.F.Clarke, Voices Prophesying War. 15)66; now available in paperback. 109 • Scientific Romances, p.434. 110. Op.cit.434-5 (underground). It is sometimes assumed (e.g. by the BBC, in the serial version produced c.1950) that this man is an officer; but he is explicitly said to have been a private, pp. 346, 351, 429 sqq. 111. Op.cit.p.445. - 52 - 11 • °E .cit.p .115, "their Comus rout". 113. Tono-Bungay, 17. 114. In fact, Kipling's Law of the Jungle (Second Jungle Book, p.29; is neither a grotesque parody nor, as is sometimes supposed, a glorification of violence; it expresses a very reasonable compromise between the rights of the individual and the demands of society. 115. Kagarlitski, op.cit.53-4. Stalin's liturgical-biblical style was noticed by several contemporary observers; e.g. Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 1938, pp.266-7. 116. Rendered, unfortunately, as "Aren't we human?" by Kagarlitski's translator, op.cit.53; presumably she did not take the trouble to check the original. II7* Scientific Romances, 181. 118. Op.cit.117. On "the breakdown of the Inherited Conglomerate" see Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 192, quoting Murray, Greek Studies,67. Cf. also Georgies I 199-203. 119. Bergonzi, op.cit.157-8. 120. The Jungle Book, pp.51, 67, sqq; this common description of the Bandar-Log is not Kipling’ s own, but it certainly fits the description given in The Jungle Book, 51 sqq. 121■ Collected Essays, 165. 122. This particular horror comes from Dehan, Between Two Thieves, 1912; a powerful story vitiated by the kind of style the Fowlers fought against. 1*23. See Marx, Pauly-Wissowa III, pp. 151-2. 124. A.P. 53-6; cf. Epp.II i 64 sqq. 125. Science and Politics in the Ancient World, 1939, pp.200-1. 126. Article VI, Book of Common Prayer, referring to the Apocrypha. 127. The reader may consult, with amusement or sympathy, the examples of mistranslations given by an anonymous "Examiner" in Greece and Rome, V .3 2 . 128. Jasper Griffin, addressing the South-Western branch of the Classical Association, 26 November, 1965. 129. Stanza 10 of "To Virgil", printed at the end of the introduction to Page's commentaries. 130. Eclogues III 64-5. 131. Ib. 74-5. - 53 - 132. Eclogues III, VII, VIII passim. 133. Eclogue II 39. 134. Eclogue VI 13 sqq. L A.G.Strong was as inspiring as Virgil's Silenus, and as easy to sidetrack, but I never remember him other than sober. 135. Eclogue V 173. 136. Eclogue IV 10-11. 137. G.K.Chesterton, dedication (to E.C.Bentley) of The Man Who was Thursday, 1908. 138. Georgies I 145-6. 139. Hdt. VI 109., 3, 6 . Not necessarily a vaticinium post eventum, any more ^han Churchill*s forecast of "sunlit uplands in 1940. 140. Isaiah lx v i. 17-25, and passim. 141. Matt. xx. 12; a remarkably mundame image for so magnificent a theme. 142. Lucretius III 16-7, fairly clearly recalled in Georgic II 490-2. 143. Eclogue IX 36, and Servius' note. 144. Eclogue I, 82-3. V.S. Lectures, No. 96. NESCIO QVID MAIVS Text of a lecture read to the Virgil Society 21st February, 1970. by D.W.T.C.Vessey, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S.A. The purpose of this paper is not- to follow jy the footsteps of Juvenal's blue-stocking by measuring Virgil against Homer, nor to discuss the.various problems involved in Propertius' reference to Virgil's works in 2.34. It will not venture into the vexed problem of the unity of that poem, nor into the arguments that seek to identify Lynceus with Varius Rufus. Its aim is to elucidate certain literary allusions and attitudes in the elegy, which exercise, it is hoped, will place Propertius' laudation of Virgil in its proper perspective. For the foundation of my argument, it is necessary to turn to book 1 of Propertius, for in poems 7 and 9 we find the poet dealing with a theme which is - 54 - clearly related to that of 2.34. The three elegies have been discussed together4by Walter Wimmel, whose analysis provides a vital basis for my own work; but it will be seen that my attitude diverges from his on several points. It i s fortunate that in 1 .7 and 9 we are faced by fewer problems than in 2.34. In the latter elegy Wimmel has.detected "den schmerzhaften Einschnitt, den Verlust von Unmittelbarkheit" which affected Propertius as he became involved, whether as witness or as protagonist, in the new outlook of the Restored Republic. I should prefer to say that in 2.34 Propertius gave a more detailed and serious treatment to a theme which he handled only frivolously in the Monobiblos, a collection of amatory poems in which literary discussions could have but little place. Yet 1.7 and 9 have, in my view, a greater theoretical basis than Wimmel recognises. These two elegies are a pair within the careful structure of the first book. They are both addressed to one Ponticus; there can be little doubt that this name, like Lynceus in 2.34, is factitious.^yd there is no need to believe that Propertius had a real person in mind. In addressing Ponticus, Propertius, in a playful manner, argues that epic poetry is totally useless, if the poet falls victim to amor. Ponticus, we are told, is composing a Thebaid, dealing with arma ... fraternae tristia militiae (7.1-2), with the campaign of the Seven against Thebes. Propertius, half-flattering, half-ironical, tells Ponticus: atque, ita sim fe lix , primo contendis Homero (sint modo fata tuis mollia carminibus) ... (3-4) But his promise, like those of Holy Vrit, has its premiss: the fates would have to be mollia (in contradistinction to Ponticus' epic) if he was to rival Homer. Part of the humour lies, of course, in the fact that mollis (here purposely placed next to carminibus) was an adjective which Propertius liked to apply to his own poetry. (&) If the poem was not molle, then fate would have to be. Propertius continues by contrasting his love-elegies with Ponticus* epic: Propertius says that his fama and nomen rest simply cm pleasing his docta puella - his works w ill be read by the neglectus amator who w ill profit from hearing about the poet's troubles. But, should Ponticus fall in love, his epic will be quite valueless: longe castra tibi, longe miser agmina septem flebis in aeterno surda iacere situ; et frustra cupies mollem componere versum, nec tibi subiciet carmina serus Amor. (17 ff.) The lover must ooncentrate his energies on mollem versum: epic is useless, as Ponticus will learn if he falls under the spell of a late love. In these circumstances, it comes as no surprise to find in poem 9 that Propertius' prognostications have been proved right: Ponticus is in love, the irrisor if. humbled. Triumphantly the elegist asks him: quid tibi nunc misero prodest grave dicere carmen aut Amphioniae moenia flere lyrae? plus in amore valet Mimnermi versus Homero: carmina mansuetus lenia quaerit Amor. (9.9 ff.) - 55 - Ponticus should forget all about his Theban epic, tristes illos .. ,libellos (13) and write the sort of poems a mistress likes to hear. Proper'"us utilises two associated antitheses: grave carmen and lenia carmina, Homer and Mimnermus. The genres are named, their representatives set in opposition. That this dichotomy looks back, in general terms, to Hellenistic literary disputes, and especially to Callimachus’ Aetia-prologue, is clear enough, but more detailed conclusions can, I think, be drawn. The clue is to be found in the fact that Ponticus is represented as having selected the Theban War as the subject of his epic. This is not chosen simply as a typical example of the theme of a grave carmen. To understand its significance, we must glance back into Greek literature and in particular to Antimachus of Colophon, author of the most celebrated epic poem on the war between Eteocles and Polynices. The history of his reputation is of intrinsic interest and it is necessary, if we are fully to understand Propertius' poems to Ponticus and Lynceus, to sketch what we know about it . According to a fragment of Heracleides Ponticus preserved by Proclus, it was though the efforts of Plato that Antimachus' works were preserved for posterity; the philosopher is said to have, sent Heracleides to Colophon -id XOlTinaTa OUXXeE.at a 00 dv5pO<;. UOJ Because of this, Proclus opined that Callimachus and Duris of Samos were foolish to maintain that Plato was no judge of poetry. P la to 's views on poetry are, of course, as famous as they are stringent, and Bernhard Wyss has discussed the reasons why Antimachus ( 12) may have recommended himself to the severe tastes of the author of the Republic. Cicero tells us that Plato’ s view of Antimachus was not shared by his fellow- citizens, except Demosthene| who loyally adopted the view: Plato .... mihi unus instar est centum milium. Whether popular or not, whatever the basis for such tales may be, Antimachus' poems were transmitted to Alexandria and there became the centre of learned controversy. Apart from illud magnum volumen, the Thebaid, Antimachus' best known work was the elegiac poem Lyde, written, so the story runs, after the death o^Jj^s mistress as a tribute to her memory and to console himself on his loss. The Lyde collected together.a large number of legends, presumably round a central theme, that of tragic love, and its influence on later writers has probably been in general underestimated. It was certainly a work of originality, transitional in its methods between the 'old' and 'new' elegy and a founder of the tradition of narrative elegies so popular among the Alexandrians. Callimachus, however, had a low opinion of the Lyde and in a famous judgment dismissed it as 7;ax$ YP^^CL xaC 06 T o p o v . 0 8 ) it is also likely that he attacked Antimachus in the prologue to the Aetia, in which he set out his influential poetic manifesto in face of criticism. But others in the Hellenistic era held the Clarius poeta in higher esteem. Hermesianax, for example, listed Antimachus in his catalogue of his predecessors from Orpheus down to Philitas, referring to his composition of the Lyde in the following terms. Yowv A ’ £vex\iaa/to fiiff-A-ovc £ p a c . Asclepiades also oposed the Callimachean dictum, asserting that the Lyde was in fact £l>vdv MOUOCOV (21 ) and Poseidippus, linking and - 56 - contrasting the work with the Nanno of Mimnermus, Antimachus* predecessor and compatriot, calls the former cptXepaOTOC and the latter ouxppuiv, Callimachus' judgment was dutifully echoed byXg^ullus who, in writing a laudatory elegy on his friend Clnna1s Zmyrna, said: parva mei mihi sint cordi monimenta sodalis , at populus tumido gaudeat Antimacho. That there Is a relation between the epithet tumidus and Callimachus’ words TCCLX^ Ypd|J.|J.a i s o b v io u s , ju s t as th e words p arva m onim enta r e f l e c t the prejudices of the poet of Cyrene.agd his followers, summed up in the aphcrisra (leya fUpXcov |ieya xaxov . It does, however, seem probable that Catullus had the Thebaid in inind here, and not the Lyde, for it presents a more natural contrast with Cinna’s Zmyrna. Callimachus, if he disliked the Lyde, must have had an even lower opinion of the Thebaid, which he would have, regarded as an example of that hated genre t 6 x o i ’ifi.a x i x u x X t x d v . It is not necessary to take at its face value Catullus' assertion that the populus delighted in Antimachus' work; what evidence we have does not point, to any great love for Antimachus among the Romans. It is clear that Catullus is merely echoing Alexandrian sentiments and is using the name Antimarhus paradigmatically as the prime representative of a type rather than with any special or individual reference to him: he is an example of the stuffy, long- winded, turgid poetry which Callimachus and Euphorion detested and which the cantores Euphorionis also natumally condemned. They were cofeerie-poets, and the worst abuse they could direct against their opponents was that they were esteemed by the profanum vulgus. Such leaned poets had no time for 7tdvaa x d 6T)>idai,a. it seems plain that Callimachus had used the author of the Thebaid as a weapon in,a larger feud with his contemporaries, among them Apollonius of Rhodes. Apollonius was influenced by the Thebaid evidently made a careful study of it when composing the Argonaiticon. Only a relatively small number of critical opinions on the work of / ntimachus remain and they all present a generally uniform view. Dionysius cf Halicarnassus classified him wit^ Pindar and Aeschylus as a representative 01 x^c aiaxrjp&c apf-iovcac . Elsewhere Dionysius comments: * A ’" i u a xoq 6 1 i'xpovxiosv e u T o v i 'a c xat dycovt ax 1 xfj<; tpaxutrice x .j ‘ aoD ouvrjQour: x ^,q e f a X X a y f j c . (^ 0 ) This judgment is paralleled by that of Plutarch, who compares the epics of Homer and Antimachus: the latter’s poetry, in his view, may have^ox^v x a t zSvov but nonetheless £xBe 3 i a 0M.ev0 Lc xa£ xaTaiovoic Soixe,^ whersas in Haner fiexd xf\c &XXti<; dvvdiiewc x a ^ xdpixoQ x p o c e O T L x6 6 o x e i v xai‘ pafit'j.c; d^etpyao0ai. Antipater, in his elegiac tribute to Antimachus mentioned the 63pi;xov dxafiaTOU OTCXOU ’Avni,(jxi>ptciA reader, he says, would appreciate Antimachus ei Tdpov oScic £XXaxe?» £aXoiT<; tAv dyeXaoacv Cxa el t&v dTptxxov xaC dve^paxov dxpuTtiv &XXcuc (iaieat . This is obviously another counterblast to Cal^jyachus* viewpoint and Antipater goes on to rate Antimachus second to Homer. This was the place accorded to him in the canon of epic writers as established by most Hellenistic critics. - 57 - This honourable position was preserved for him by Quintilian, who commented in the tenth book of the Institutio: in Antimacho vis et gravitas t-t minime vulgare eloquendi genus habet laudem; sed quamvis ei secundas fere grammaticorum consensus deferat, et adfectibus et dispositione et omnino arte deficitur, ut plane manifesto appareat quanto sit aliud proximum aliud secundum. ^331 ig a harsh criticism and plainly derives from that of Dionysius, who was a source for this part of the treatise. There is virtually a communis opinio in these citations: despite his faults, Antimachus was conventio^g^y compared with Homer and was awarded the second place in the epic canon. We must now return to Propertius. In 1.7 and 9 he is giving assent to Alexandrian literary ideas and it is my opinion that Ponticus, as the supposed author of a Latin Thebaid, stands in place of Antimachus, the author of the Grcek Thebaid. After these preliminary investigations, it is possible to understand more fully the allusions in these two poems, which were to be expanded and clarified in 2.34. (1) It will be remembered that in 7.3-4 Propertius suggested that, given the favour of destiny, Ponticus would contend with Horner for first place among writers of epic (primo contendis Homero. 3), that is for the supreme position in the canon. Though Antimachus is not directly mentioned, he must surely have been in the elegist*s mind. By becoming a Roman Antimachus, author of a La**n Thebaid. Ponticus may well, like his Greek predecessor, be rated second to Homer, who is primus among epic writers. But this, of course, is said in irony, as Propertius, the poet of love and follower of Callimachus, rejects the epic genre in favour of mollem versum. (2) When Ponticus falls in love, he learns tha^ a line of Mimnermus is more valuable than a line of Homer. The naming of Mimnermus is important, for it identifies Propertius with a particular literary school. I have already noted that Poseidippus contrasted the ouxppoouvr] of Antimachus of Colophon with the tpi XepCLO'Tl a of Mimnermus of Colophon. According to Callimachus and other3gellenistic writers, Mimnermus was the eupeTT^or founder of elegiac poetry; as Horace remarked in the Ars Poetica.^the controversy relating to the true auctor of elegy was still sub iudice. Callimachus’ opponents asserted that Mimnermus was not the eupETT]^ at all, advocating the claims of Callinus or Archilochus - and we may surmise that Antimachus too had an honoured place in their elegiac stemma. But to Propertius there is no doubt: he takes up his stand behind Callimachus in proclaiming Mimnermus as his earliest predecessor, as the true auctor of the love elegy; so in 1.9.11 he juxtaposes the auctor of epic, Homer, with the auctor of elegy, Mimnermus, and assures Ponticus that the latter is a far better model for a man in his predicament. The view is indeed partisan. Callimachus esteemed Mimnermus highly, acknowledging him as a forerunner of his own work; conversely, he rejected and scorned Antimachus, who, in truth, had as good a claim, or even a better one, to be the precursor of Alexandrian elegy. For if the Thebaid was an ancestor of the Argonauticon of Apollonius of Rhodes, so was the Lyde,quite as much the Nanno, a forerunner of Callimachus and the other Hellenistic elegists. But it was Antimachus* fate to become part of the Hellenistic poetomachia, and the critical tradition spread to Rome under the influence of the novi poetae. - 58 - The Thebaid of Antimachus was a perfect example of the grave carmen, the product of an Ci.'6o'tT|pA<; 7CCHT)TT)£, whereas Mimnermus' poems were mollia. In the Ponticus poems, Propertius restates the Alexandrian dispute in which Antimachus figured and in which his poetry was unfavourably contrasted with that of Mimnermus. Antimachus may have been second to Homer, but what use was he in the lists of love? Ponticus was little more than a name on which to hang this thane. The Alexandrian controversy rested on literary and stylistic questions, but Propertius views it in different, more introspective terms; whereas Callimachus and his associates considered Antimachus in the light of their discussions and theorising on the nature, fora and aim of poetry, Propertius - unlike Catullus - concentrates on the emotional inadequacy, the lack of relevance which Antimachean poetry has for the poet of and in love. (3) The implication of this is surely that, if Pouticus, the Roman Antimachus, is setting out to rival Homer, so Propertius is rivalling and emulating Mimnermus: Propertius envisages that Roman literature is able to equal Greek and to establish its own canons, but he does not believe that this can be done in the epic genre. He clearly establishes the kind of poet that he seeks to b e ;.h e is compelled to be a slave to dolor rather than to his ingenium (7.7). If Ponticus is subdued by serus Amor, then he too, like the neglectus amator, will be compelled to recognise Propertius' merits: turn me non humilem mirabere saepe poetam, tunc ego Romanis praeferar ingeniis. (7.21-22) Before he learns the power of love, the epic poet Ponticus is able to designate Propertius as a mere humilis poeta, one capable of producing poems only in the humble, lesser genre of elegy - certainly not a rates. The elegist admits freely at this stage that the impulsion for his work does not cane from ingenium - that was the possession of poets in t he greater genres: those who restricted themselves to the Callimachean jxouoTj Xex^aXer) ,42\ had to rely on ars, for to Callimachus poetry was above all a Texvt) • f£ §)this reasari» asserts of Callimachus that ingenio non valet, arte valet. Propertius, in book 2, claims that Cynthia herself was the origin of or the substitute for his ingenium, an idea that he may have derived from Gallus. of whose writing Martial remarked: ingenium Galli pulchra Lycoris erat. It was only later that Propertius, boldly and without hesitation, laid claim to his own ingenium. Not so in 1.7. Quintilian, it will be remembered, asserted that Antimachus, whatever his merits, was totally lacking in ars - the implication is that such good qualities as he possessed were derived from ingenium; he was not a craftsman-poet, the ideal of the learned Alexandrians. But, Propertius boasts, Ponticus will ultimately realise that the despised elegist, the humilis poeta, is of greater value than the Romana ingenia, that is, as Friedrig^.Solmsen has rightly said, than "the recognised poets of the grand manner.” Horace, in the Ars Poetica, argued that both ingenium and ars are needed by a poet; but in 1.7 Propertius takes a different view: he is prepared to allow the epic writers their claim to ingenium; but he asserts that his own poetry, the lesser genre, the product of experience, of dolor, is more suited to the needs of the age. Once again, we notice how Propertius takes a subjective and personal line in his literary argument, opposing ingenium not with ars, but - 59 - with dolor. He is the magnus poeta of love (7.24) and PonticuE is warned not to despise his poems: tu cave nostra tuo contemnas carmina fastu .,.(25), This fastus summarises the attitude of the epic writer for the poet of the minor genres, the successor of Mimnermus. But, the elegist asserts, his position, not that of Ponticus, is truly the only tenable one. (4) There is one more phrase which we should not overlook. In 7, Propertius tells Ponticus that, when the love-god strikes him down, he will abandon his epic in tears: longe castra tibi, longe miser agmina septem flebis in aeterno surda iacere situ .. (18-19) As Propertius is drawing general conclusions fran a particular situation, it is clear that here he expresses his own view of the state of epic-writing. Epic lies in aeterno situ; its day is over, its dominance past. It is probable that the phrase accurately describes the fate of Antimachus' Thebaid. Certainly when the perverse tastes of the Emperor Hadrian led him to prefer Antimachus to Homer and to attempt to revive interest in him, even to the extent of composing libros obscurissimos in the Antimachea^4gj;yle, we are told that most people had never even heard the name Antimachus. There is no reason to suppose that the situation was very different in the days of Propertius. The neglect into which the Thebaid had fallen was an example, a warning. But we need not make the reference so explicit. It is epic generally that the elegist sees as pass£. By falling in love, Ponticus becomes a man of his time, a time when highfalutin' poetry was in aeterno situ. In 1.7 and 9, Propertius' attitude is immutable: the dichotomy is complete, the two attitudes irreconcilable. Bearing these conclusions in mind, we can now turn to 2.34. For the purpose of this paper, I am disregarding ||a, i.e ., lines 1-24, which, unlike Wimmel, I believe to be a separate poem. In 34b, Propertius is addressing Lynceus, who is another Ponticus. Like Ponticus, he has fallen into the grip of seros amores (25; c f.1.7.20, 26). Like Ponticus, Lynceus is envisaged as a poet who has devoted his energies exclusively to the greater genres, and the elegist is delighted that at last he is compelled to recognise the power of love. Lynceus is now forced to admit that his philosophical learning and his cultivation of the bards of old are no help to him in his p a s s io n : quid tua Socraticis tibi nunc sapientia libris proderit aut rerum dicere posse vias? aut quid Erecthei tibi prosunt carmina lecta? nil iuvat in magno vester amore senex. The first distich, in my view, simply implies an interest in moral philosophy and cosmology; Socratici libri are not merelv,_Jhe Platonic dialogues but, as Enk puts it, "libri de philosophia agentes"; Lynceus is a man who has spent his time in abstract speculations, which are valueless in magno amore. There is no need for us to discuss at length the identity of,jt}je poet referred to in 29-90. The main contenders are Homer and Aeschylus; unlike Wimmel, I - 60 - favour Aeschylus and believe that the reference to Aeschyleo . . coturno at 41 strengthens, rather than weakens, the identification. The words vester senex suggest a poet whom Lynceus especially esteemed and used as a model, and it is Aeschylean tragedies that, in 41, he is said to have been writing. It is possible that Propertius had in the back of his mind the famou~ story at the beginning of Plato's Republic, in which another Athenian dramatist, elderly Sophocles, characterises love as a "frantic and^gavage master" and expresses his delight at being freed from its tyranny. Lynceus the tragedian, now in advanced years, has by contrast ccrae.||^e to a realisation of love*s power and is "mad with love" (insanit, 25.) There is no escape from the tyrant, philosophical or otherwise. The essence of the lines is clear enough: now he is in love, Lynceus will have to reject his severe interests and his pursuit of the greater genres. A change of state must produce a change of style. Propertius immediately suggests an alternative: tu satius memorem Musis imitere Philetan et non inflati somnia Callimachi. (31-2) Lynceus must now follow the example of Philetas and Callimachus, who were, after Mimnermus, the auctpr of the elegiac genre, the two principal names in the canon of elegists. The word somnia refers, of course,.to the famous dream described by Callimachus in the first book of the Aftia, which was to inspire Propertius to high-flown fantasies in book 3. ^ Non inflatus is descriptive of the style of a humilis poeta, of the author of mollia carmina. Its opposite is tumidus, the epithet applied by Catullus to Antimachus, the typical exemplum of the Brand style rejected by Philitas, Callimachus and their Roman successors. This recommendation to Lynceus is related to the earlier advice to Ponticus that Mimnermus would be of more value than Homer. In addressing his poems to men who are supposed to have fallen in love Propertius is deliberately objectifying a literary argument: the emotional fact of amor is to lead Ponticus and Lynceus to a change of poetic genre and style, to convert them to the Callimachean faith. This subjective justification for the Alexandrian viewpoint is of course different from the polemic that gave it birth. But it is true to add that in general the ancients failed to distinguish between an author's st'yle and his moral/ethical values, his life- form. Style was the man, and so it is not totally unexpected that Propertius frames essentiaixy literary ideas in terms of emotional events. A man's 'humour', as the Elizabethans called it, would predicate a great deal about h i s a r t . In the lines immediately following, Propertius lists certain themes unsuitable for a follower of Philitas and Callimachus (33 ff.). He does not say directly that Lynceus had already written on those themes, although he may imply it by the introductory formula nam rursus licet ... referas (33): the primary implication is that it would do Lynceus no good if he were to retraverse such popular epic subjects. The themes that he lists fall into two halves, each of four lines. The second half, despite textual difficulties, refers unambiguously to certain episodes in the war of the Seven against Thebes (that is, the same legend on which Posticus was said to be writing his grave - 61 - carmen) : Adrastus and the famous horse Arion at the funeral of Archemorus, the disappearance of Amphiaraus into the Underworld, the destruction of the impious Capaneus. These references present no problem. Lines 33-36 are more vexatious. I believe that commentators have been correct in seeing allusions to incidents in the history of Hercules; 33-34 clearly enough refers to the struggle between the river-god Achelous and Hercules for the hand of Deianira. In 35-36, like Roths|gin, Butler/Barber, et al., but pace Shackleton-Bailey and Boucher, I envisage an allusive but comprehensible glance at Hercules’ shameful love for Omphale, Queen of Lydia, with which Propertius had some fun elsewhere. As Butler/Barber summarise the lines: "Propertius warns [Lynceus] that, though he writes on the deeds of g|rcules or of the Seven against Thebes, neither will help Mg. in his love." The elegist insists that such trita vatibus orbita must be eschewed: Lynceus will have to cease from writing ^g3^he grand style and turn to the lesser genres, become in fact a humilis poeta. If he does not, he will be no safer than Antimachus or Homer: desine et Aeschyleo canponere verba coturno desine, et ad molles membra resolve choros. incipe jam angusto versus includere torno, inque tuos ignes, dure poeta, veni, tu non Antimacho, non tutior ibis Homero: despicit et magnos recta puella deos. (41 ff.) The direct mention of Antimachus immediately reminds us of 1.7 and 9, and it assists in drawing out the full significance of lines 32-46. Lynceus is urged to give up writing verse in Aeschylean tragic vein and turn to molles choros. Mollis requires no explanation, for we have met if before. The style of Aeschylus was its antithesis, severe, hard and grand. As has been mentioned, Aeschylus was linked with Pindar and Antimachus by Dionysius as an example of Tfj<; avOTTipSc ap|iovia<; . In fact he represents in tragedy what Antimachus stood for, at least theoretically, in epic. Lynceus has been \jsing Aeschylus as a moael, ana in 44 Propertius terms Lynceus dure poeta. The adjectivg has two nuances. First, Lynceus has been durus in his rejection of love; but he has also been durus in his literary productions. Durus. as an opposite to mollis, is a suitable equivalent for the Greek sJ-t0XT |(,04 and so the term durus poeta is a rendering of the Greek au 3 TT)p6<; TtotTHT^, the kind of poet Plato (the admirer of Antimachus),^gd said to be necessary in his ideal state to write about the virtuous man. Lynceus, before falling in love, had been a durus poeta, his philosophy, his style, his subject-matter ana his genre all attuning with his severe attitude. But now he must change and cultivate th e fi.oOoa Xe'fl.'taXer), rejecting his former literary allegiance. He must learn to shape his verses angusto torno, that is to compose the type of poetry favoured by non inflatus Callimachus. Propertius had already used the two adjectives durus and angustus in a similar context. In 2 .1 ., making a personal recusatio to Maecenas, he remarked: sed neque Phlegraeos Iovis Enceladique tumultus intonet angusto pectore Callimachus, nec mea conveniunt duro praecordia versu Caesaris in Phrygios condere nomen avos. (39 fl.) - 62 - The contrast is identical: Callimachus* angustum pectus is mcLoured against the duri versus of epic, which Propertius asserts he is incapable of writing. The allusion to Antimachus and Homer together in 2.54.45 is immediately illuminated when we remetaber that they were the two names which headed the epic canon as established by Alexandrian grammarians. Propertius balances Homer and Antimachus against Philetas and Callimachus: that is, the epic canon against the elegiac canon. However distinguished an epic writer Lynceus may become, the same will hold good for him as fcr Ponticus: he will still find his achievements useless when faced by love. The direct mention of Antimachus is to be related to 35 ff., in which Propertius had listed some of the more famous episodes from the Thebaid. This balance helps us to understand why the Hercules legends are mentioned in 33-36. The allusion is, I believe, to the Heracleia of Panyassis, which was conventionally placed third in the epic canon. Unfortunately we know little of this epic (even less about Antimachus' Thebaid), but it seems inevitable that panyassis dealt with the struggle between Achelous and Hercules; as for the hero's enslavement to Omphale, I can only agree with Professor Huxley, in his recent discussion of the Heracleia, that "we may surmise that the half-Karian Panyassis relished the Lydian episode above all, and delighted to tell how his hero submitted to menial tasks imposed by a barbarian and a woman.” It may well be that Panyassis* account of this legend included an ecphrasls on the Maeander- perhaps at similar length to Antimachus* notorious description of Teumessus. We are now better able to appreciate the development of ideas in the poem up to this point. In warning Lynceus to reject epic themes, Propertius progresses through the canon in reverse order: Panyassis, Antimachus, Homer. They do not present viable models for the situation in which the durus poeta now finds himself. He must now consider the tastes of a recta puella ( * the docta puella of 1.7) and .turn to poetry in keeping with the precepts and practice of Philitas and Callimachus. So far the argument, though more schematic, detailed and theoretical, is basically the same as that of the Ponticus-poems.^ But from 47 we move into a new departure in Propertian literary ideals, in which the eulogy of Virgil is the culmination. In 47-58, we have what is virtually a defence of.^gopertius* own position. He sets himself up as a praeceptor arooris, and maintains that Lynceus must learn from him how to' deal with his new state. Propertius compares him to a bull being tamed for the plough: sed non ante gravi taurus succumbit aratro, cornua quam validis haeserit in laqueis, nec tu tam duros per te patieris amores: trux tamen a nobis ante domandus eris. (47 ff.) The language is subtle. Lynceus must learn to endure the yoke; the sometime author of serious poetry must submit to the gravi aratro; he, the durus poeta, must now learn the meaning of duros amores. Purus and gravis, both epithets that could previously have been applied to Lynceus' poetry and tc his way of l i f e , are ntn paradoxically applied to the new burdens he must bear. Formerly trux, he must learn a new way of life and a new literary fora from Propertius, the lover-poet. Lynceus* whole life-style is subtly inverted. The elegist gives the reason. Girls have no interest in cosmology, astronomy, eschatology - 63 - or divine law (51 ff.), questions with which Lynceus had earlier been involved. The stern philosopher must now look at Propertius and learn from him : aspice me, cui parva domi fortuna relicta est nullus et antiquo Marte triumphus avi, ut regnero m ix ta s in t e r c o n v iv a p u e lla s hoc ego. quo tibi nunc elevor, ingenio. The elegist establishes his own Lebensform; he represents himself as neither possessing wealth (the characteristic aim of the ordo equester, to which Propertius in fact belonged) nor an atrium lined with distinguished imagines (like a noble senator) - but he has a regnum among the girls, at thg. banquet. The verb is not without irony; while rejecting the Roman career, Propertius has not failed to attain a domination, indeed a despotism, in his own chosen provincia. And as a final irony he asserts that he gained this through ingenium, which Lynceus scorned and denied. The verb elevor takes us back to Ponticus whose pride in his own work was of no avail when love struck him down and when he was forced to admire and bow to the humilis poeta whom he had previously slighted. Lynceus, like Ponticus, had been disposed to deny Propertius ingenium, the possession of poets in the greater genres. Now Propertius is able to turn the tables and make a humorous but justifiable claim to it. It was an ingenium that produced results: even the durus poeta must recognise t h a t . At this point Lynceus ceases to play any further part in the poem. He has served his purpose. A single couplet bridges, perhaps rather tenuously, the first part and the second. In itself it is revealing, double-edged. mi lubet hesternis posito languere corollis quem tetlgit iactu certus ad Qssa d e u s . (59- 60) These lines, which recall common motifs in symposiastic epigram, can be understood fully only by considering their dual purpose. They continue the thought of 57-58, but they also serve to introduce the laudation of Virgil. Propertius expresses his contentment with his own way of life; but he has no alternative, for the god has "stricken [him] with aim unerring even to the bone." But, as we have seen, the elegist objectifies literary concepts by the language of love. Bound to his own proper regnum among the girls, Propertius is bound also to the lesser genre, to the Callimachean viewpoint. I see in the words hesternis ... corollis more than a simple, if not trite, referende to night-long revelry; Propertius' life-style and its literary counterpart, so forcibly expounded to Ponticus and Lynceus, is now a thing of yesterday. Propertius knows this, but he cannot escape,' for he has no talent and no inclination to change. The god has struck him once and for all. The reason why the elegist is forced to make this volte-face is revealed in 61 ff., in which Virgil enters the scene, compelling Propertius to a modification and re-alignment of prior arguments. He does not reject them in toto, for they still possess a substantial measure of validity, But they cannot be expressed in the absolute terms previously applicable. It is not inappropriate for Lynceus to vanish at this point. His position has been destroyed by Propertius’ - 64 - arguments, and Virgil's new achievement makes any counterdefence impossible. In lines 60-66, Propertius salutes enthusiastically the birth of the Aeneid. The first two distichs specify something of the content of the new e p i c : Actia Vergilio custodis litora Phoebi Caesaris et fortes dicere posse rates, qui nunc Aeneas Troiani suscitat arma iactaque Lavinis moenia litoribus. The detailed arguments regarding these lines I leave aside. The essential meaning is clear enough. Virgil is working on an epic in which the present is linked with the past, Ca^gar Augustus' victory at Actium with the arrival of Trojan Aeneas in Italy. The point is important, and to appreciate it we must glance briefly back to the recusatio, with which Propertius commenced the book. There the elegist, in terms familiar enougi to us, maintained his own inadequacy to handle epic themes. Had he been capable of it, he assures Maecenas, his subject would - hardly surpisingly - have been the achievements of ‘Augustus, in whichhls patron's name would necessarily have been prominent. In 19 ff., Propertius catalogues certain themes that would not have been his choice even if he had been an epic writer: thenar of t he Titans canes first, then Thebes - both subjects of ancient epics; then canes the Fall of Troy, which is Homer's glory; Propertius adds Xerxes' expedition against»Greece, which had been the subject of the Persica of Choerilus of Samos. After these Greek topics, the elegist adds certain events from Roman legend an^7g, history, recalling the epics of Naevius and Ennius and their successors. In this comprehensive disclaimer, Propertius is of course adhering to Callimachean ideas - the themes are those which the Alexandrians had rejected as tedious and outworn; as for the Roman subjects, such epics had been completely spurned by the novi poetae, whose heir Propertius claimed to be. All these, then, are conventionally rejected; but Propertius, in theory, envisages an epfc which would be suitable for his time, even if he was not the man to compose it - an epic that would recount the deeds and wars of Augustus, culminating with the battle of Actium (25 ff.). Propertius' own Muse is too slight, he is too much of a Callimachean to attempt such a task, to seek to trace Caesar's name back to his Trojan ancestors (39 ff.). In this section of the recusatio, the elegist gives a comprehensive survey of the principal types of epic before his time. First there is the ancient mythological epos, represented by the Cyclic Poets, by Homer and their successors (including Antimachus); second, the historical epic, inaugurated by Choerilus of Samos. On the Roman side there are the annalistic and patriotic works of Ennius and Naevius. Condemning these, Propertius seems to imply that the kind of epic that is required is one that combines history and panegyric - but the precedents for such an undertaking were discouraging. The attempt of the other Choerilus, of Ia s o s ,e u lo g is e Alexander's achievements in epic verse had been a notorious failure. No Callimachean, no doctus poeta in the tradition of Catullus and Calvus, could seriously see any future in such a task. That is how the matter stands in 2.1. Maecenas' desires are paid lip-service, but Propertius holds fast to his literary faith. But in 2.34 a different picture emerges with the mention of Virgil. - 65 - Virgil has, Propertius implies, found a formula which solves the problem posed in the first poem of the book. His epic, now in construction, combines all previous forms. It will recount the triumphs of Augustus, and trace his name back to his Phrygios avos. But it stands also on the Homeric tradition, for its central subject is taken from legend, indeed is linked with the Trojan story itself. It is also the heir, obviously and completely, of the moral and patriotic epic of Rome, of Naevius and Ennius. The subject is complete, drawing within itself all the various forms of epic which, since Homer, had so signally failed and which were vigorously condemned by Callimachus. The new epic fulfils a need of the time, but it does more than that: it is a supreme work of art, and re-establishes the greatest of all the poetic genres as a valid possibility. In 65-66, Propertius inserts a couplet which is the first instance of an idea that became a topos. Tgj lines, cast in the form that Curtius has called the UberbietunRsformel, ,g2\ 316 truly memorable and were quoted in isolation in later anthologies. But to remove them from their context is to strip them of their real significance aid to transform them into a piece of vapid flattery, unworthy of Propertius and of Virgil. cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Grai. nescioquid maius nascitur Iliade. Familiarity should not breed indifference to the complex ideas that have led up to this exclamation of approval, this tribute to Virgil's greatness. The linking of Virgil with Haner only later became a convention, virtually without significance, anu we snould not allow whit was to come to blind us to what the elegist is really saying. Virgil's Aeneid is to rival and perhaps replace Homer's Iliad as the best of epics; Rome has at last produced a poem that merits the first place in the canon. All other- writers are left far behind, for it is with Homer, primus Homerus, that Virgil is contending. The distich contains a dual comparison. Virgil is contrasted with both Lynceus and with Propertius himself. Lynceus and Ponticus, the heirs of Antimachus, Panyassis and the like, liave failed utterly: they can be exposed on Callimachean principles; Propertius himself had already done so. But the conclusion to be drawn from Propertius' strictures an Ponticus and Lynceus was that there could be no future for the greater genres and that the only feasible path was that taken by the elegist himself, the humilis poeta, the successor of Mimnermus, Philitas, Callimachus. The Aeneid has first of all demonstrated That tne epic has its place in contemporary literature and, in addition, has finally discredited previous attempts to revive it; but its advent also necessitates a restatement of Propertius' own position, a rethinking of his most deeply-felt principles. Hew could this situation arise? The arguments of Callimachus, as expressed in the Aetia-prologue, were sound and unanswerable; Propertius was in no doubt about that. And yet he was faced by the fact that a friend and confrere in the Maecenas coterie was engaged in writing a jj.eY& PlPXtOV. Lines 67 ff. explain and rationalise the phenomenon. - 66 - Properties moves straight from the Aeneid to the Bucolics. Virgil had commenced his artistic career with the lesser genres, in fact, with poems written in imitation of Theocritus, whose allegiance was with the Callimachean school. It is notorious that Propertiyg' references to the content of the Bucolics are not strictly accurate; but there is reason and method in the apparent incoherence. Propertius views and describes the bucolic poems of Virgil entirely as poems of love, expressing, in pastoral form, the same themes that the elegist used in his cwn writings. Propertius has stressed to Ponticus and Lynceus that amatory poetry, mollia carmina, must henceforward be their concern; it alone possesses relevance and validity; they are compelled to recognise the truth of his statement when they are struck down by passion. Bound to their moral austerity and high-fliwn literary aims, they have been humiliated by a power greater than themselves. Virgil, however, did not fall into the sane error. He commenced with the poetry of love and only later turned to epic. Expressed in another way, Virgil started his career as an orthodox and committed Callimachean, dealing in the lesser genres, accepting the importance of amor; only after that beginning, did he graduate on to something larger. In consequence, he did not fall into the trap in which Propertius, triumphantly, had seen the proud Ponticus, the arrogant Lynceus enmeshed. It was only through the acceptance of criteria close to Propertius’ own that Virgil had been able to contemplate an Aeneid. After the Bucolics, the Georgies: Propertius devotes to them a single distich, in which he identifies Virgil as the heir of Hesiod, echoing Virgil's own words (77-78; cf. Georg.2.176). In undertaking such a task, Virgil had not stepped outside Callimachean territory. Hesiod was held in the highest esteem by the learned Alexandrians, and Battjades himself had enthusiastically hailed the didactic poem of A ratu s.^^F u rther, Propertius' own love-poems had a didactic aspect. But the Georgies stood in direct contrast to the pompous philosophical and cosmological poems that Propertius had attributed to Eynceus. Didactic poetry was, no doubt, a higher genre than elegy or bucolic, but it could still be undertaken without abandoning basic poetic ideals, without becoming a durus poeta. Propertius concludes the section with two lines that make the point absolutely clear: tale facis carmen docta testudine quale Cynthius impositis temperat articulis. (79-80) The epithet doctus asserts Virgil's connexion with a party, a creed. Under no circumstances could it be applied to Ponticus or Lynceus. It places Virgil in the tradition of the novi poetae, of the Roman Alexandrians. Virgil’s position is validated by his unimpeachable background, his doctrinal soundness. The Aeneid had been commenced only after its author had established himself as a doctus poeta in the lesser genres. But what of Propertius himself? How is his position affected by the birth of the Aeneid? He has successfully authenticated Virgil's past credentials, linking him, by origin and principle, withthe school of Callimachus. Lines 81-84 are redolent with difficulties and commentators have disagreed radically on their proper interpretation. It would be rash - 67 - to sail lightly on troubled waters or to believe that a personal view can escape the rocks on which other, and stronger, vessels have foundered. To state my own opinion briefly, and without over-confidence, it appears to me that in 81, Propertius turns from Virgil back to himself, asserting that love-elegy has still a defensible place in Roman literature. non tamen haec ulli venient ingrata legenti. sive in amore rudis sive peritus erit ... Tamen implies a contrast, a change of subject; surely haec applies not to Virgil's works, but to the elegies of Propertius himself? In addressing Lynceus, immediately before the Virgil passage, Propertius had indicated his value as a praeceptor amoris, and, at the same time, as a teacher of style and genre. This position he still keeps. Love-elegy can co-exist with epic; it is still needed, on exactly the same basis that Propertius had previously used to justify it. He caps this claim with a distich, cgqmlex and debatable, best, perhaps, avoided by all but the most audacious. It calls to mind Virgil's own lines in the Ninth Bucolic (35-36), contrasting ... swan and goose, poet and poet: jnec minor his anjmis. ut sim minor ore,'j~canorus anseris indocto carmine cessit olor. (83-4) This much can be said. The reference to indoctum carmen is to verse not founded on Callimachean theories, the sort of poetry, in fact, which Lynceus had been writing. Propertius, I believe, confidently asserts that the validation of the epic by Virgil certainly does not compel him to retract the literary views he has expressed to Lynceus. Far from it. They are confirmed. Virgil is a doctus poeta: the writing of an epic does not link him to the duri poetae - nor does a recognition of the virtues of his work force Propertius to abrogate his own ideals. Propertius' belief that he has still a defensible position in literature is farther justified in the lines that end the poem. They are cast in the OcppaytC “ form, in which the poet is named, sealing the authenticity and provenance of his work. Propertius lists his predecessors in the poetry of love and proudly claims his place in a^well-developed and organic tradition. Varro of Atax, after completing his translation of Apollonius (an occupation, perhaps, which was a little suspect) redeemed himself by turning to erotic subjects; Catullus too has reached the heights of fame; doctus Calvus could hardly be omitted; Gallus takes his place with his elegies of love (85 ff.). Each poet is named, and with them the object of their love. To all these poets, Propertius stands as heir: Cynthia quin etiam versu laudata Properti - hos inter si me ponere Fama volet. Ths catalogue is, of course, that of the Roman Alexandrians; Propertius wishes to be enrolled inter hos, that is, to find his place in what is now a Roman canon, fit to be matched with the Greek. Virgil has rivalled Homer: but in love-poetry too Rome may claim a tradition to match that of Greece. This bold assertion is developed by Propertius in books 3 and 4. In the - 68 - first and third poems of book 3, Propertius identifies himself so closely with Philitas and Callimachus that it comes as no surprise to find in book 4 that he, when expressing his intention.|g. produce Roman Aetia, uncompromisingly assumes the title Romanus Callimachus. In the third and fourth books, Propertius has lost all his diffidence, not hesitating to speak of his own ingenium, envisaging himself not as a follower btft as an equal to Philitas and to Callimachus. 3.1 deserves what must be a cursory and partial glance. The poem contains.^in ideas and imagery, many echoes of Callimachus’ prologue to the Aetia. Invoking Callimachus and Philitas in sacral language, Propertius presents himself as more than merely an heir: primus ego ingredior puro de fonte sacerdos Itala per Graios orgia ferre choros. (3-4) The elegist asserts his claim to be regarded as primus, that is as of the Roman elegy founded on Callimachean principles, and, no less, as cupex f\$ first in the Roman canon, which now stands weighed againstQthe Greek and not found wanting. Echoing an image of Callimachus himself, Propertius adds: quo me Fama levat terra sublimis et a me nata coronatis Musa triumphat equis, et mecum in curru parvi vectantur Amores, scriptorumque meas turba secuta rotas. (9 ff.) The occurrence here of the noun scriptores should not pass unnoticed: only in 2.34 and in this passage does Propertius use the word. As Virgil in the epic, so Propertius in elegy outstrips all rival’s.* Scriptores, Roman and Greek, vield place to Virgil - not less do th^y follow Propertius' triumphal car. The elegist specifies the reward that he is to receive: mollia Pegasides date vestro serta poetae: non faciet capiti dura corona meo. (19-20) Once again the now familiar antithesis of mollis and durus. Propertius' garland is that suited to the author of mollia carmina: the dura corona he leaves to others. Finally, he does not scruple to draw a comparison between himself and Homer: nec non ille tui casus memorator Homerus posteritate suum crescere sensit opus: meque inter seros laudabit Roma nepotes: ilium post cineres auguror ipse diem. (33 ff.) The claim is audacious. Propertius, the 'Homer' (or auctor) of Roman elegy, will one day enjoy a fame no less than his. Rome has achieved its own literary triumphs; Virgil has rivalled, even excelled, Homer in epic, Propertius has established and perfected the Callimachean elegy in Rome. The two claims are not in contradiction but in counterpoise. What Virgil has done for epic, Propertius has achieved for tte lesser genre. It is a double validation of a personal and a national achievement. 69 - We have travelled far from the studied diffidence of the Ponticus elegies, even froiu the bolder assertions in 2.34. The belief that Rome had produced a poet not inferior to Hamer perhaps increased Propertius* self-confidence, his belief that it was possible for his countrymen to shed any sense of inequality with the Hellenic literary tradition. To take up such an assertive stance was to reflect, if not to support, in literature-, the aspirations of Augustus and Maecenas, the programme of the Restored R e p u b l i c . In 2.34, Propertius reveals his concern with the notion of literary canons. The Alexandrian grammarians had established them for Greek literature. But, to the Romans, the question naturally followed: was it possible for their own literature to produce works of art that would stand comparison with, and even improve upon, the finest that Greece could offer? The Romans admittedly 'imitated' the Greeks, but it is basic to a true understanding and practice of imitatio that the imitator should seek to improve upon his model. Quintilian succinctly expresses the notion: one shoyld, h^Qi|sserts, through imitatio, seek priores superasse, posteros docuisse. It was as if Rome had received a challenge from Greece; author would be set against author and, after a judicious weighing of the evidence, the better would achieve the palm. We are famili|g*enough with the concept of a competitive agon among individual authors, but it was also felt collectively to exist betweeh Roman literature and Greek. Quintilian, for example,was to make this idea the basis of his comparative survey of literature, in which he balanced the achievements of his own people against those of Hellas. In 2.34 Propertius makes a proud claim, and one that attunes well with the confident, almost euphoric, atmosphere of the early principate. Virgil, he says, is producing an epic which is maius than the Iliad. The two epics are placed beside each other. Virgil has met the challenge and, Propertius maintains, he will be found the better. He will henceforward stand first in the epic canon, that is in the canon of the greatest of all literary genres. It was a triumph for Rome - and more, for the Rome of Augustus, for the coterie of Maecenas. As I have already remarked, the comparison which Propertius makes became a commonplace - and one that lived on long after Rome itself had fallen. It was to be universally accepted that Homer and Virgil stood on a parity as first in the epic canons of their languages. Out of the many instances of the idea, I select one on which to close: it is taken fran the Laus Pisonis, 230 ff., a passage in which the Maecenas circle is commemorated and praised. The author of the panegyric refers to Virgil in the following w o r d s : ipse per Ausonias Aeneia carmina gentes qui sonat, ingenti qui nomine pulsat Olympum Maeoniumque senem Romano provocat ore .... It is difficult to believe that the eulogist did not have the words of Propertius in mind. Romano provocat ore: the notion of the racial emerges clearly from the phrase. The same thought had prompted Propertius' salutation of the Aeneid. Virgil alone had challenged Homer. Epic was no longer in aeterno situ, for it had been reborn - but not as Ponticus and - 70 - Lynceus had sought to resuscitate it. The idea that Ponticus might challenge the primacy of Homer could only be expressed humorously, as a warning. But now, a poet was writing an epic which could, without irony, be measured against Homer. It was an epic acceptable on Callimachean hypotheses, for it had grown from them. It was far divorced from the discredited failure of Antimachus of Colophon and his successors, whose placing in the canon indicated their distance from, rather than their closeness to, the master. Propertius makes his tribute as a friend and as a colleague. To himself, he reserved a position in a lesser genre. Balanced against each other, he saw Virgil and Homer, Callimachus aid Propertius. Roman literature was vindicated and fulfilled. NOTES 1. Juvenal 6.436-7, 2. The literature on all these questions is extensive; I refer only to the most recent and, to me, most useful studies. On the references to Virgil's works at 68-76, see L.Alfonsi, 'Properzio e Virgilio’ , RIL 77 (1943/4), 459 ff.; H.Paratore, 'De Propertio Vergiliani carminis iudice', Miscellanea Properziana (Att. dell. Acc. Prop, del Sub.-As. 5 .5 .£l957j), pp. 71 ff.; J.P.Boucher, Etudes sur Properce (Paris,1965), pp. 279 ff. 3. On the question of the unity of 34a and 34b, see note 49 below. On Lynceus and Varius Rufus, F.Nencini, 'Properzio e Vario Rufo', MC (1935), 119-20; J.P.Boucher, 'L*oeuvre de L.Varius Rufus d'aprfes Properce 2.34’ , REA 60 (1958), 307-22 (and, tftude, pp. 298 ff.); L.Alfonsi, 'La elegia 34a del II libro di Properzio e il poeta Lynceo’ , Maja 15 (1963), 270-77, presents a judicious summary. 4. W.Wimmel, Kallimachos in Rom (Hermes; Einzelschriften, Heft 16 ^Wiesbaden, 19603 ), PP. 202 ff. 5. Wimmel, loc.cit., p,203. 6 . On the structure of book 1, see O.Skutsch, 'The Structure of the Propertian Monobib1os', CP 58 (1963), 238-9; B.Otis, ’Properius' single book', HSCP 70 (1965), 1-44. 7. Panticus is mentioned by Ovid, Tristia 4.10.27, but clearly witti Propertius 1.7 and 9 in mind. Cf. H.Bardan, La Litt 6rature latine inconnue 2 (Paris, 1956), pp. 26, 28; Boucher, op.cit. , pp.271-2. 8 . Mollis is in fact a favourite word of Propertius; it occurs at the following places, in a variety of senses: _1.3.7, 12, 34; 5.8; 6.31; 7.4, 19; 11.14; 14.1; 17.22; 20.22; 2.1.2; 3.48; 4.11, 22; 12.24; 19.23; 22.5, 13, 23; 26.6; 28.16; 33.40; 34.42; 3. 3.1, 18; 9.57; 10.6; 11.20; 15.14, 29; 17.33; 4. 3.44; 6.5,“71; 7.52, 80; 9.49; 11.18. Cf., out of many examples, Horace, S .1.10.45; Ovid, Trist.2.307; Statius, Silv.1.5.29 and see R.Pichon, De sermone amatorio apud Romanos elegiarum scriptores (diss. Paris, 1902), p . 6 and s.v. mollis. - 71 - 9 . For the fragments of Antimachus, see B.Wyss, Antimachi Colophonii Reliquiae (Berlin, 1936). 10. Heracl. Pontic., fr. 91 Voss, ap. Procl. in Plat. Tim.1.21c (1.90.20 Diehl) = Wyss, test. 1. 11. ibid. : Callim., fr.589 Pf.; Duris, fr. 83 Jacoby. 12. Wyss, op.cit., pp. xl-xli. 13. Cicero, Brutus 51. 14. Plutarch , Cons, ad Apoll. 9.106b. 15. Cf., e.g., A.Couat, Alexandrian Poetry under the first three Ptolemies (trans. J.Loeb p_.ondon 1931 J ), pp. 66 ff. 16. G.Luck, The Latin Love Elegy (Londcn, 1959), p.25, rightly remarks: "it seems that (Antimachusj actually created this particular kind of narrative elegy. . E.F.M.Ben*cke, in his unfinished work, Antimachus of Colophon and the position of women in Greek poetry (London, 1896), though over-imaginative, is still in some respects useful. Cf. also, C.Sessi, ’Antimaco e sua Lide’ , CN 7 (1911), 125-132; U.v.Wilamowitz, Hellenistische Dichtung (Berlin, 1924), I, pp. 101 ff.: T.Sinko, Antymach z Kolofonu jako prekursor uczonei poezji hellenistyczne 1 (Sprawozdania Polsk. Akad. Um. Krakow, 46.6 1945 ). 17. See further note 38 below. 18. Callim., fr. 398 Pf. = Wyss, test. 6 . 19. See R.Pfeiffer, ’Ein neues Altersgedicht des Kallimachos*, Hermes 46 (1928), 302 ff.; A.Barigazzi, *Mimnermo e Filita, Antimaco e Cherilo nel proemio degli Aitia di Callimaco*, Hermes 84 (1956), 162-182; M.Puelma, 'Kallimachos-Interpretffitionen’ , Philologus 51 (1957), 90-100, 24 7- 2 6 8 . 20. Hermesianax, fr.2, 41-2 Diehl = Athenaeus, 13.519a. 21. Asclep., AP 9.63 = Wyss, test. 14. 22. Poseidipp., AP 12.168 = Wyss, test.15. Cf. T.B.L.Webster, Hellenistic Poetry and Art (London, 1964), pp. 56 ff. 23. Catullus 95, 9-10: the end of 9 is missing, and a.variety of supplements have been suggested, of which I have, with Kroll, but without conviction, selected the Aldine (sodalis = Cinna): cf. C.Fordyce, Catullus: A Commentary(Oxford, 1961), p.385. There is no need to separate these lines from therest of the poem. 24. Callim., fr. 465 Pf. 25. Callim., AP 12.43: see L.P.Wilkinson, CR n.s.17 (1967), 5-6. - 72 - 26. ibid., 4. 27. The influence and effect of this controversy have been well discussed by B.Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civlised Ppetry(Qxford, 1964), pp.2-40; 396-405. (For a critical view of Otis, however, cf. J.K.Newman, Augustus and the New Poetry Brussels, 1967 , pp.261 ff .). 28. See Wyss, op.cit. , pp. xlviii-il; the notion that Apollonius wrote a formal treatise on Antimachus (see 'Wyss, fr. 158) must be abandoned: see R.Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford, 1968), p .146. 29. Dion. Hal., de imit. 2.2 = Wyss, test.25. 30. Dion. Hal., de comp.verb., 22 = 'Wyss, test. 24. 31. Plutarch, Tim. 36 = Wyss, test. 29. 32. Antipater, AP 7.409 = Wyss, test. 27. 33. Quintilian, Inst.Or. 10.1,53. 34. Cf. J.Cousin, 'Etudes sur Quintilien I (Amsterdam, 1967, repr.), p.551. 35. Cf. also, Proclus, in Plat. Tim.l.l9e = Wyss, test. 37. 36. See, on this, especially, M.Puelma, *Die Vorbilder der Elegiendichtung in Alexandrien und Rom', MH 11 (1954), 101-116. 37. Horace, AP, 77. . 38. Cf. Newman, op.cit ., p . 3 7 3 . 39. Callimachus* attack on the Lyde does not imply that he denied all importance to it in the development of narrative elegy - in fact, his remark indicates that there was a general recognition of its position. T.B.L.Webster, op.cit. , p.59, brings out the partisan nature of Callimachus' viewpoint: " ... why did Kallimachos attack the Lyde, which seems to have been revered by Philitas and Hermesianax as well as by Asclepiades and Poseidippos? He regarded it as long and obscure rather than short and fine. A possible reason is that Apollonius wrote on Antimachus" but see n»28 above "and based Argonautika to same extent on the Lyde" stylistically his epic was influenced rather by the Thebajd, although the Argonautic legend figured in the Lyde: Wyss, fr. 58 "Kallimachos decided to exclude Antimachos from the roll of short and fine poets." Cf. also Pfeiffer, op.cit. , p.96: "if anyone can be regarded as a precursor of the poets and scholars of the ^ ars of transition to the Alexandrian age, it is Antimachus of Colophon.' 40. Cf., Newman, op.cit., p.375. - 73 - 41. Callim., Aetia 1.24 Pf.: see on XeXTC 5q E.Reitzenstein, 'Die Entwicklung des Wortes 'keX'ZOQ zur Stilbezeichnung der Alexandriner' , Zur Stiltheorie des Kallimachos, Festschrift R.Reitzenstein (Leipzig and Berlin, 1931), esp. pp. 36 ff. 42. Callim., Aetia 1.17 Pf. 43. Ovid, Amores 1.15.13. 44. Martial 8.73.6: cf. Luck, op.cit. pp. 43-44. 45. See F.Solmsen, 'On Propertius 1.7’, AJP (196 ), pp.83-4. 46. ibid., 82. 47. Horace, AP 408 ff. 48. Spart., Vit. Hadr., 16 » Wyss, test. 32; Dio. Cass., Exc. Xiphil., 69.4 « Wyss, test. 31. 49. Wimmel, op.cit., pp. 202 ff.; cf. also, P.J.Enk, Sex.Propertii Elegiarum Liber II (Leyden, 1962), 11.433 ff.; R.E.White, 'The Unity of Propertius 2.34 and 3.20', Laudatores Temporis Acti: Studies in Memory of W.E.Caldwell (ed. M.F.Gyles and E.W,Davis, Chapel Hill, 1964 ), pp. 63 ff. : contra, esp., P.W.Damon and W.C.Helmbold, 'The Structure of Propertius, Book 2*, UCSCP 14.6 (1952), 238 ff. 50. Enk, op.cit., p.440. * . 5l„ See Enk, op.cit., pp.440-1. 52. Plato, Republic 329b ff. 53. On love as madness in Roman elegy, see, inter al., A.W.Allen, ’Elegy and the classical attitude towards love’ , YCS 11 (1950), 253 ff. 54. The text here is highly unsatisfactory; see Enk. op.cit. . pp.442-444. 55. On the elegiac canon, cf. G.Luck, ’Scriptor Classicus’ , Comp.Lit. 10 (1958), 150-58. 56. See Aetia 1, fr.2 Pf. 57. See Boucher, op.cit., pp. 173 ff. 58. Cf. Otis, op.cit., pp. 26 ff. 59. D.R.Shackleton-Bailey, Propertiana (Cambridge, 1956), p .133; Boucher, REA, 1958, 310. 74 - 60. Propertius 4.9.45 ff.: cf. E.Leffevre, Propertius Ludibundus (Heidelberg, 1966), pp. 92-94; W.S.Anderson, 'Hercules Exclusus*, AJP 85 (1964), 1-12; H.E.Pillinger, 'Callimachean Influences on Propertius Book 4 '» HSCP 73 C1969), 171-199, at 182 ff. 61. H,E.Butler and E.A.Barber, The Elegies of Propertius (Oxford, 1933) p . 2 5 8 . 62. Statius, Silv. 2.7.51: cf. Callim., Aetia 1. fr. 27-8 Pf. and Lucretius 4.1. 63. Cf. J.K.Newman, The Concept of Vates in Augustan Poetry (Brussels, 1967), pp. 86-7. 64. On this sense of durus, see Pichon, op.cit. , p .136. 65. Plato, Republic 398a. 66 . Cf. also 3.1.19-20. 67. Cf. J. van Ijzeren, 'Vindiciae Antimacheae', Mnem. 56 (1928), 281-2. 68. See Quintilian 10.1.54, 69. For such fragments as we have, see G.Kinkel, Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta I (Leipzig, 1877), pp. 253 ff. 70. G.Huxley, Greek Epic Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis (London, 1969) , p . 1 8 7 . 71. Cf. Aristotle, Rhet.3.6.1408a; Wyss, op.cit. p.ix and frgs. 2-9. 72. Cf. A.L-iWheeler, 'Propertius as praeceptor amoris*, CP 5 (1910), 30 ff.; E.Burck, 'Romische Wesenzuge der Augusteischen Liebeselegie' Hermes 80 (1952), 186-7. 73. On this idea in 1,1, cf., esp, J.Fontenrose, 'Propertius and the Roman career', UCSCP 13.11(1949), 371-378. 74. The text is clearly disturbed; I have adopted Housman's convincing emendation. 75. The translation of H.E.Butler in the Loeb edition. 76. Cf. L.Alfonsi, 'Di Properzio II, 34 e della protasi dell’Eneide’ RFIC 73 (1944), 127. 77. On the Gigantomachia, cf. Callim., Aetia 1 fr.1.20 Pf. and Boucher, op.cit. t pp.305-6. 78. On this, see Enk, op.cit., p.20. - 75 - 79. ibid., p.21. 80. Cf. the remarks of Otis, op.cit. , pp. 16-18, 396-7. 81. E.R.Curtius, Europaische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern, 1948), pp. 169 ff. 82. See Buecheler/Riese, Anthoi. Lat. l.i.no.265. 83. See the discussion in Boucher, op.cit. , pp. 280 ff. 84. Cf. Couat, op.cit. pp.96-7. 85. Callim., AP 9.507 (= Ep. 27 Pf.). 86 . For a review of scholarly opinion, see Enk. op.cit., pp. 460 ff. 87. Cf. Wimmel, op.cit., p.212 and Enk, op.cit., pp. 461-3; Enk’s criticisms of Wimmel are sound enough but his own view is hardly more convincing. The text is hopelessly corrupt; for an attempt to defend the MS reading, see Alfonsi, RIL 1943/4, 7-8. Boucher, REA 1958 attempts an explanation on the basis that Lynceus = Varius Rufus (cf. also, E.Bickel, Symb.Osl. 28 [l950j , 17 ff. ; F.Nencini, 'Properzio e Vario Rufo*, MC 1935, 119-20). Certainty is not possible, but I am guided by two convictions: (1) Tamen in 81 must mean that here Propertius reverts to speaking about his own work, after the Virgil passage (cf. the remarks of Wheeler, CP 1910, 31): (2) Propertius is re-affirming his own poetic viewpoint and again rejecting the work of such authors as Lynceus, who is not a doctus poeta. Thus olor = Propertius; anser = Lynceus; indocto carmine - the poetry of such as Lynceus.- Damon and Helmbold, loc.cit. , 240, wrote: 'It is difficult not to believe that the whole quartrain is interpolated." But, assuming the unity of 24b, a bridge passage is certainly required here. 88. Damon and Helmbold, loc.cit. p.238: lines 59-94 are "a OtppaYlTc;- poem advertising in a very unusual way, the author and his connexions with the literary world." 89. Propertius 4.1.64; for an excellent investigation of the significance of this claim, see the paper of Pillinger (note 60 above). 90. See, e.g., Boucher, op.cit., pp. 170 ff. 91. Callim., Aetia 1.25 ff. Pf. 92. We do not fail to notice the appearance of the epithet sublimis, with its literary connotations: the opposite to humilis. 93. On the concept of canons, cf., e.g., J.D.Claussen, Quaestiones Quintilianae (Fleckeisen Jahrb.Suppl, 1873 ), pp. 339 ff.: 76 - G,Steffen, De canone qui dicitur Aristophanis et Aristarchi (diss, Leipzig, 1876); O.Kroehnert, Canonesne poetarum scriptorum artificum per antiquitatem fuerint (digs. Konigsberg, 1897); Christ-Schmid, Gr. Literaturgeschichte , II, pp. 22-23.; Luck, Comp.Lit. 1958. 94. Quintilian, Inst.Or.10.2.28 fin. 95. Cf., e.g., A.Guillemin, 'L'imitation dans les literatures antiques', RBL 2 (1924), 35-57 and L*Originality de Virgile (Parts, 1931), pp. 125 ff.; M.Hugi, Vergils Aeneiis und die hellenistische Dichtung (Berne, 1951), pp. 19 ff., excellently exhibits the principle in relation to Virgil. 96. Quintilian, Inst.Or.10: on epic, 85 ff.; on elegy, 93^ on satire 93 f.; on tragedy, 97; on comdey, 99 ff.; on historiography, 101 ff.; on oratory, 105 ff.; on philosophy, 123 ff.: cf. Cousin, op.cit. , p . 5 8 7 . [Some portions of this paper have been based on my article "The Reputation of Antimachus of Colophon", to appear in Hermes .J V.S. Lectures, No. 97. VIRGIL UNPUNCTUATED Text of a lecture read to the Virgil Society, 21st March. 1970. by Professor G.B.Tpwnend, M.A, For seme months now we have had Professor Mynoi^ s new Oxford text of Virgil. With qji author whose manuscript tradition has been so strong from the start, whose ancient codices can for the most part be read with considerable ease and satisfaction, a new edition can hardly hope to mark a new epoch. Mynor's main contribution in his apparatus criticus has been to take account of a number of important MSS from the ninth century - not so much in the hope of discovering fresh readings or of obtaining authority for old ones, as for clarifying the history of the text after the great period of Mediceus and the rest. Hjs. main divergencies from Hirtzel, his predecessor in the OCT series, appear to occur where a superior understanding of Virgil’ s method, or a greater mastery of textual criticism, has enabled him to reject readings which can fairly be described as ill-advised. My awn interest, when I opened the new volume, was perhaps peculiar. I looked, in fact, not so much at the wcrds as at the punctuation. This is sometimes a field in which an editor’s idiosyncracy shows itself to the full, and in which a fresh survey of the MSS, rather than of previous printed editions, may le a d t o s i g n i f i c a n t c h a n g e s . T h e ch anges and r e t e n t io n s I found in Mynoife's text were interesting, if not striking. - 77 - In my own paper, which appeared in Classical Quarterly in February I was concerned to raise the whole question of the legitimacy of editorial punctuation in Lucretius as well as in Virgil; but I confined myself almost exclusively to those places where a sense-break occurs at the end of the fifth foot of the hexameter. In the present paper, while fittingly restricting myself to Virgil, 1 intend to take a rather wider view of the problem, employing Mynorfs text as my starting-point. A certain amount of recapitulation will be necessary. Our knowledge of Latin literary texts before the fourth century is surprisingly small, and the palaeographical evidence for punctutation is scanty. We have relevant fragments, apparently from the first century A .D ., of two prose works. First there is a very small fragment from an anonymous account of the Macedonian wars, in which one can at least distinguish a sort of elevated comma marking what appears to be a period. Next, a small piece of Cicero's second Verrine, badly broken at the beginning of each line and not at all easy for an amateur to decipher. Most easily distinguishable is the letter K in the third line, following the mutilated word conlocaret, which we know formed the clausula of a period. In addition, the scribe has used two signs, / and / quite indiscriminately, to represent commas. ' ' Next comes our one good example of a text in verse - the eight fragments of the anonymous poem on Actium, decisively dated between the year of that battle and the destruction of Herculanem just over a hundred years later - certainly during the period when Virgil's poems were being widely reproduced for the market. Here we have a curious period-mark at the end of one line; and further on in the same fragment, while there is nothing to mark the end of the period in the penultimate line, the beginning of the next sentence in the last line is indicated by an entirely different symbol. Minor pauses (commas or colons) appear at the end of several lines, in the fora of an oblique dash, resembling one type of comma just noticed in the Verrine fragment. It should be noticed that at the one place where the reader might expect help from punctuation, there is nothing at all: 'pars inlita parva veneni ocius interemit laqueis pars cogitur artis'. >It is not difficult to see that laqueis must go with what follows; but in a text so fully marked the lack of a mark here is curious. , From these examples (and apparently no others) R.P.Oliver in T.A.P.A., lxxxii (1951) pp. 241-2, argued that down to about the end of the first century A.D. Latin literary texts, unlike Greek, were regularly punctuated; but that after that period punctuation fell out of use, to be restored only during the fourth century. The date of this 'astonishing regression', as Oliver properly calls it, would not of course be hard and fast. Certainly we have two fragments from Herculaneum (that is, before 79) of an oratorical work in which the experts are satisfied that there was no punctuation. Apparently not much later is the Servius Tullius fragment from Oxyrhyncus, with words clearly divided but no diier marks. But even without examples of this sort we should suspect Oliver's conclusion, if only because of the striking lack of uniformity in his three texts. Of the three texts, each has a distinct way of indicating a period; the apostrophe of the de Belis; the K of the Verrines; and the curious marks, two of them, in the Carmen Actiacum - this is what Oliver \ - 78 - describes as 'uniformity'. The inference may more convincingly be drawn that there was no accepted method of indicating phrasing, Had no common practice of punctuation at all, in the first century as in the fourth. This is precisely the conclusion we are forced to adopt when we consider the evidence for Virgil's text in the earliest extant codices and in the commentaries of Servius, from about the end of the fourth century or the beginning of the fifth. For example in the Schedae Vaticanae-Berolinenses or Codex Augusteus, which Mynors nav dates to the fifth century, though others have placed it in the fourth or even earlier, there is no punctuation at all, and the words are not even divided. In those of the great codices which possess some sort of punctuation, it plainly aoes not belong to the same date as the actual text. In the Schedae Sangallenses one can see the comma inserted above the line (there is no space between words) at various places where our texts now print a comma. Likewise in the Mediceus, which Turcius Rufius Apronianus Asterius, consul in 494, informs us that he himself punctuated, evidently many years after it was written, one can observe the erratic series of points he has just managed to squeeze in at various places. It is clear that the subsequent punctuators of these finely-written texts felt that they had an entirely free hand to insert these marks; and so does Servius in his numerous notes on the interpreting of Virgilian phrasing. He often quotes previous discussions of these problems, usually from not long before his own time; though there are rare examples from Asper, dated by Mynors to the third century, and even to Probus, in the first. If punctuated texts of Virgil had been available, as Oliver holds, down to about 100 A.D., I do not believe that all knowledge of the original phrasing - Virgil's original phrasing - should have been lost without trace. Certainly Quintilian (i.8.1), writing at precisely the crucial period, indicates that correct phrasing - 'ubi claudatur sensus, ubi incipiat' - is a thing the young scholar learns by study and example, and not by simple reference to a marked text. Texts might be appropriately marked by a teacher precisely for the purpose of assisting young men to read; and presumably Oliver's three texts, with their private systems of punctuation, belong to this class of schoolbook, leaving no trace in the common MS tradition. It is a sad thought that our own texts are all schoolbooks, not texts for adult reading. I remarked in my article that. Aulus Gellius, in the middle of the second century, was never concerned to discuss punctuation. In fact, a colleague has pointed out to me that in xiii.31 he does recall the interesting case of a pretentious scholar who both mispronounced words and 'sententias intercidebat*, so as to make nonsense of a text; though the text in question was Varro’s Menippea, hardly so familiar as Virgil. But Gellius, while discussing so many details of philology, certainly never considers it his business to discuss actual questions of punctuation. There are two possible explanations. Either there was a valid tradition of reading the poems, in direct descent from the poet himself (although neither Quintilian nor Suetonius nor Gellius suggests as much, and Servius has no knowledge of the existence of such a tradition at any time); or, as I think, more likely, the poet arranged his words in such a way that a contemporary, or a later reader in the same cultural traditxm, would know almost at sight how a passage ought to be read. Education such as Quintilian describes would play a part in training this power of reading; but it seems unlikely that, in order to read the Aeneid the young scholar would need to listen to an enarratio, or - 79 - reading with comment, of the entire poem. That this educational tradition must have been interrupted to some extent by the cultural hiatus of the third century is to be inferred by the gross lack of sensibility exhibited in many of Servius' suggestions. Yet Cassiodorus, (Inst. i.9 and 12) in the sixth century, can still refer to 'distinctiones saecularium literarum' as a technique which some might learn at school; while those who did not have this advantage would require the 'cola et commata' with which S.Jerome, a contemporary of Servius, and writing for relatively uneducated people, had so thoughtfully adorned his Vulgate from the first. In short, when Servius or Asterius was faced with a text of Virgil, he evidently felt he had at least as free a hand as Mynors has - or more so, because Mynors at least is used to the printed texts of Hirtzel and others, and can hardly forget it. Servius' decisions are often absurd, and he supports them with even more absurd arguments - and his arguments never, I believe, include reference to the natural run of the words. This is a pity, for even so late as the late fourth century we might expect Servius' ear to be a better guide than our own. Evidently not. At all events, he is so much of a grammarian that he does not even contemplate appealing to anything so remote from quasi-logical argument. Where we can make a real advance beyond Servius, in addition to scholarly study of Virgilian usage, is to recognise the relevance of trying to read his lines as naturally and responsively as readers would in the century after his death: not depending on intrusive markings in the text, but allowing the words to lead us by themselves. This may be a remote possibility, but I submit that it is not a meaningless one. Now let us see how Mynors appears to be operating. He is certainly not bound by the dubious traditions of the late Empire. At Aen. v .389-91 where we read 'Entelle, heroum quondam fortissime frustra tantane tam patiens nullo certamine tolli dona sines?', Servius and Donatus, with the punctuators of Mediceus and Palatijius, take frustra with the following line. They are almost certainly wrong, as Ribbeck and R.D.Williams have argued. Moreover, this woyld be one of those breaks before the sixth foot, which always require sane special explanation. Mynors, like Hirtzel, puts a comma at the end of the line. Neither Oxford editor acknowledges the old view in his apparatus. It is certainly noticeable how little Mynors is concerned to register his own policy- in these matters. I find only five explicit references to punctuation in his whole apparatus, all referring to the ancient commentators. Three of these belong to the first three Eclogues, as if the editor began on a policy of which he soon wearied; one occurs at Aen.ii.433, one at vii.533, both of which I shall discuss in due course. Mynors never refers to the punctuation of the ancient codices; nor does he draw attention to his departures from Hirtzel's text. 'At Aen.v i.857-8, 'hie (Marcellus) rem Romanam magno turbante tumultu sistet eques sternet Poenum Gallumque rebellem', Hirtzel puts a comma after sistet, Mynors after eques. Servius has nothing there; most editors agree With Hirtzel. Norden showed how in fact Virgil avoids breaks at the trochaic caesura, and his evidence seems decisive here; Mynors assumes that we have read our Norden. In addition, I think Virgil's practice of opening a new phrase in asyndeton with a verb confirms the rightness of Mynox^' s decision. Likewise at viii. 90-1, Hirtzel followed Heyne and a hint in \ - 80 - Palatinus with 'ergo iter inceptum celerant. rumore secund. iabitur uncta carina' . Servius, again with no note at all, presumably equated line and sentence, as Macrobius does some years later when he cites line 90 as a unit. Coningtan does the sane, and now Mynors, without comment. This phrasing is natural and right. Other things being equal, pauses are more likely at the end of lines than elsewhere; and there is nothing in line 90 or in what follows to justify breaking the run of words after celerant. The ancient editors followed the sane coeamonsense principle at vii.37, 'nunc age qui reges Erato quae tempora rerum quis Latio antiquo fuerit status', giving a steadily increasing tricolon, of one word, two words, three words, not counting the verb, which adds further weight to the third and strongest member. Peerlkamp inserted one of the most arbitrary breaks in the whole of the text when he attached rerum to status to produce a familiar prose cliche - too familiar and too prosaic, surely, for Virgilian verse. Quite apart from that, Peerlkamp, and Henry after him, never considered how a Roman reader could have known that he was supposed to separate such a natural, if unusual, phrase as quae tempora rerum, especially in the cadence of the line. Yet Hirtzel followed Peerlkamp, with acknowledgement. Mynors does so without admitting the possibility of an alternative and without, I suggest, listening to what he has written. With better justification, Mynors quietly inserts a comma in v .80-81, 'salve sancte parens iterun,salvete recepti nequicquam cineres'. He is in fact following a fairly sensible note by Servius, as Heyne and Wagner also did; Hirtzel, with Ribbeck and with the support now of R.D.Williams, punctuated after parens. The decision depends only marginally on the sense, especially since the adverb must to same extent be understood with both imperatives. Henry believed that the run of the line was better with 'salve sancte parens, iterum salvete', and Williams concurs. . I wonder if this is simply a predilection for a sense-break at the third-foot caesura; I wonder whether a reader of the first century would naturally make a pause at the same point; I wonder what lies behind Mynors's decision. If he is ever influenced by Servius, we may have an explanation of his apparatus at ii.432-4, 'testor in occasu vestro nec tela nec ullas vitavisse vices Danaum et si fata fuissent ut caderem meruisse manu'. Here both Oxford editors have a comma after vices, so that Danaum goes with manu. Hirtzel notes that vices Danaum is found vulgo; Mynors that it is found in Servius (as it is in Mediceus). His reason for citing Servius here when, as so often, his view is rejected, is presumably because Austin rejects Hirtzel for the vulgate, rightly pointing out the difficulty of taking Danaum away from vices and attaching it to manu. Austin might have emphasized more strongly the sheer improbability of removing Danaum also from t ela (the weapons being unquestionably Danaan, whatever may be said of the hazards), unless directed by unusually forceful punctuation. Sometimes Mynors's reticence is puzzling. At viii. 532-3, there has long been uncertainty about the meaning of 'ne quaere profecto quern casura portenta ferant'. The old tradition, with Servius, took ’ne quaere profecto’ together. Hirtzel, striking out the comma which many editors placed at the - SI - end ofthe line, remarks: 'correxit Ladewig, ut profecto sit participium’ - a comma after quaere would have made his interpretation clearer still. Mynors has no comma and no note, In fact Ladewig's rejection of 'ne quaere profecto' may be justified not merely by the fact that it is a curious use of t he adverb, for which scholars can find no real parallel, but by Virgil's failure to employ profecto as an adverb anywhere else at all. The break at this point in the line is still odd, and can be justified only if it is felt that a first-century reader would at once recognise that 'ne quaere profecto' could not be an epic phrase, and that profecto must be taken as dative with ferant. Mynors may have been influenced in his decision (whatever his decision was) by the fact that he prefers to take 'ego poscor Olympo' together in the next line, where Hirtzel had attached Olympo to the following phrase as an ablative. Certainly the break at this point in two successive verses, as Hirtzel has it, would be extraordinary, to an extent which Virgil never appears to admit. By contrast, it is curious to find Mynors for once using punctuation to clarify what could hardly be ambiguous, at i.737, 'primaque, libato, summa . tenus attigit ore'. He could hardly be saying more clearly 'libato is to be taken as ablative absolute and not, as you might have thought if you were very foolish, with ore' . This is so unlike his usual practice that we must conclude that he has inadvertently reproduced a feature of Hirtzel’s text, where punctuation is consistently more prescriptive. Now it is of course impossible for the editor of a plain text such as the Oxfcrd Virgil to explain his reasons for printing a particular reading, whether of letters or of punctuation. Normally he will not change the accepted wording, unless he is a philological autocrat like W.M.Lindsay, without explanation in his apparatus criticus. Mynors patently does not consider that traditional punctuation, whether of the fourth or of the nineteenth century, has any authenticity - of course it has none - and it is only remarkable that he does notice the ancient commentators as often as five times, whether to follow them or not. His unmatched mastery of Latin usage in general, and of Virgil's in particular, qualifies him uniquely to determine how the liges ought to run; and repeatedly he gives better guidance to the reader than wast o be found in his predecessors, even if he sometimes seems to ignore genuine disputes which have engaged scholars from Servius to Hirtzel at least, preferring to let the reader make up his own mind. Libato, mentioned just now, is a rare instance of paternalism. Often, though, when he does indicate a preference, it is difficult to work out his reasoning. Having completed my study of breaks before the sixth foot for CQ, I waited curiously to see how often Mynors would turn out to have reached opposite conclusions. His acceptance of 'quae tempora, rerum quis Latio antiquo fuerit status' at vii.37-8 still puzzles me; and so does the similar phrasing of 'quid Thesea, magnum quid memorem Alciden* at v i.122-3. But it is not for an editor to justify his ways in this sort of matter. Those who have read my discussion of these and similar passages in the Quarterly will recall my general conclusion concerning the punctuation of Virgil at least: that in so far as his text was for several hundred years intended to be read without pointing, as Virgil left it, the words somehow spoke themselves, falling into their proper phrases as a result of their - 82 - actual arrangement one to another; and that only a gradual decline in the reading of epic during the third and early fourth centuries led to a real need for scholars like Servius and Asterius to produce texts of the sort we are familiar with, intended for those to whom Virgilian language is fundamentally alien - as it was, I conjecture, even to such a writer as Claudian. I still believe that it should not be difficult to read all but a very small number of Virgil’ s lines without needing to employ a punctuated t e x t . There is a dilemma here, no doubt: to read with understanding we need to know Virgil’s language and style intimately, by reading his works; by reading his works we inevitably learn to accept the phrasing prescribed by Hirtzel or Mymors or whatever text we have been using. I have tried the experiment of reading Mynors right through as if no stops were there - as if I were a young Roman of the second century first looking into Virgil’ s Aeneid, allowing the sentences to sort themselves out as they must. Naturally it was difficult to ignore the periods and commas in the print; no less Bignificant, I had read it all before and could not forget how I had been taught to construe over the last forty years. However, it struck me how very seldom one could really get it wrong. If you try the test for yourselves, you will find this to be true. Even in Virgil, as in Lucretius and Catullus, the line is a natural unit, and there is a certain predisposition for the sense of a line to be self-contained to a considerable extent. When it is not, as continually happens in 'Virgil, the lead-on is pretty clear, and a firm break within a line is almost always heralded by a word which could not possibly be a continuation of the previous phrase. For example, in the opening lines of Aeneid iv I note the following: 'multa viri virtus animo multusque recursat gentis honos. haerent infixi pectore vultus verbaque' - the new verb leaves no option. Or ’degeneres animos timor arguit. heu quibus ille iactatus fatis quae bella exhausta canebat'. First the interjection, then the emphatic quibus .... quae in anaphora. And in 22-3 'solus hie inflexit sensus animumque labantem impulit. Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae* - again and again it is a verb, emphasized by its initial position, which determines the phrasing, wihtout need for hesitation; though one notes that it is necessary for the eye to have noticed impulit, so as not to end the sentence at labantem. So far as actual breaks between sentences are concerned, there is hardly any real ambiguity in the whole of Virgil. In my paper on the fifth-foot break, I was hesitant only about Georgic iii, 500-02, of the horse: 'demissae aures, incertus ibidem sudor et ille quidem morituris frigidus aret pellis et ad tactum tractanti dura resistit'. Given that pellis is feminine, and cannot go with the masculine adjective frigidus so as to allow et ad tactum to be the start of an entirely new member: yet _et continually stands second in the sentence, and it is as easy to make a break after aret as before, especially since there is always the tendency for a sentence to end with the line. Nevertheless, the sense is ultimately superior with the break before aret. I should still prefer not to think that the reader needs to indulge in considerations of 'Which gives the more satisfactory sense?' before he can read the passage. In the end, I think R.G.Austin is right in insisting that it is a matter of rhetorical arrangement. He has suggested to me that we have here a recognisable tricolon, with predicate opening each member in turn: 'demissae (sunt) aures; incertus - 83 - (est) ibidem sudor (and then the parenthetic addition about the cold sweat characteristic of the dying); aret pellis et ... resistit'. If we were more familiar with the use of these common rhetorical features, we might be more confident that we should all read these lines correctly at sight. Most of the other problems concern minor pauses, usually commas. I reckon that there are about seventy places in all Virgil’ s work where a comma can be or has been significantly inserted or removed, including seme extraordinarily silly examples thought up by Servius or his predecessors. Far the commonest of the problems occur where a word stands between two phrases in such a way that it can be taken equally with either. Some of these we have noted already, particularly the two parallel examples in Aeneid vii.37 "quae tempora rerum quis status' and vi. 123 'quid Thesea magnum quid memorem Alciden'. Here, as I have argued, only firm conventions of punctuation can separate the last word of either line from what precedes; yet, as Henry and others have argued, status has a considerable claim on rerum, and Alcides (Hercules) deserves the epithet magnus somewhat better than Theseus does. In fact, the debated word in each example is to be taken apo koinou, both with tempora or Thesea, to which both rhythm and rhetorical balance attach them, and with status or Alciden, as sense may suggest, however secondary a consideration sense ought to be in this respect. Likewise, there is a whole series of lines, especially in the Georgies, where the central word is patently apo koinou, as i.453, ’caeruleus pluviam denuntiat igneus Euros* ii.446 'viminibus salices fecundae frondibus ulmi*, or iii.165 *dum faciles animi iuvenum dum mobilis aetas*. We tend in cases like this to assume that the common word belongs with the preceding phrase and is understood with the following. Hirtzel, with delightful inconsequentiality, punctuated the first and third examples in this way, the second the other way round. We might do better to dispense with commas altogether in such places. In a slightly different way, Aen.vi.358, 'paulatim adnabam terrae iam tuta tenebam’ allows, as Servius noted, a break either after terrae, making it dative with adnabam (such as the verb surely needs) or before, making it partitive genitive with tuta, as the alliteration suggests. Here the run of the line gives little help, unless there is really anything in the preference for third-foot caesura for a sense-break; but if the phrasing is intentionally ambiguous, and terrae is somehow apo koinou dative and genitive, it is still difficult to see (or hear) how Virgil himself can have read the line so as to leave the problem open. Or would he read it differently on different days? Again v.262, * don at habere viro decus et tutamen inarmis' was punctuated in Palatinus and Mediceus after viro, attaching the dative to donat, where it must to seme extent belong, even if huic has occurred as indirect object three lines before. Both Oxford editors print a comma after habere, attaching viro to decus et tutamen. I should rather regard the distinction as meaningless either way, and leave the ambiguity open. Equally idle is the quibble over i i .294-5, *his moenia quaere magna pererrato statues quae denique ponto*. Magna here qualifies moenia in any event, whether as part of the main clause moenia quaere or of the relative clause quae statues. It does not appear to affect sense or delivery. Hirtzel's comma after magna, anticipated by Medicaus, is as unnecessary as the point inserted after quaere by a later hand in Augusteus. Mynors, I am happy to see, has neither. Only line-structure - 84 - seems to justify Mynors's comma at the end of iii.433, 'si qua est Heleno prudentia vati, si qua fides'. Rhetorical balance may suggest that vati belongs rather with si qua fides, and Servius reasonably remarks 'in homine prudentia est, in vatibus fides'. But that is a scholar's argument, not a consideration for the reader of an unpunctuated text, who cannot be expected to pause beforethe end of the line, unless rhetorical economy is more important than one would have supposed. A little more tricky, as again requiring a camqon word to masquerade as two different cases, is ii.48, 'aut aliquis latet error equo ne credite Teucri'. Most editors have felt that credite requires equo as dative more than latet does, presumably as ablative. Servius and the Medicean prefer equo ne credite; Servius Auctus, with Tiberius Donatus and apparently the Palatine, prefers latet equo. It may be natural and acceptable to read the line wifliout indicating a break at all. Two lines in the eleventh book seem genuinely puzzling. In 18 Aeneas is exhorting his men: 'arma parate animis et spe praesumite bellum'. At first sight, the verse is a complex chiasmus: noun-verb-ablative, ablative- verb-noun, with et as a simple link. Yet the Oxford texts both have a comma after arma parate, and leave the_et to join simply two ablatives, forming in effect a hendiadys, 'with hopeful hearts'. This is excellent sense, certainly. Indeed could Virgil have intended 'arma parate animis' as a complex phrase, as Donatus paraphrases it, 'arma sint in animis vestris', and as Ribbeck and Conington believe? In fact, that is what the poet has written,and I do not see how anything but editorial directives could prevent us from reading the line accordingly. Again, in 359, Drances is urging Turnus to give up the war: 'cedat ius proprium regi patriaeque remittat'. The Oxford texts separate cedat as 'let him. yield’ from ius, leaving the noun as object exclusively to the second verb, from which it is removed, with both datives regi and patriae linked by -que. The rhythm is not un-Virgilian (compare 'unam, quae Lycios’ at i.113), but the comma seems arbitrary, when cedat ius regi makes so natural a phrase. Perhaps the double of alliteration of 'proprium regi jsatriaeque £emittat' is to be taken as an element in favour of welding the last four words together.' I cannot help thinking that the question ought not to have been asked in the first place, far less answered so magisterially as by the insertion of a comma. Finally, a familiar crux from the fourth book, repeated twice within forty lines, as Juno arranges the liaison of Dido and 'Aeneas: ’speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem devenient' (124). Forty lines further on the meeting takes place, with deveniunt. It is normally assumed that dux Troianus is Aeneas, although hehappens to be so described nowhere else, and there are of course plenty of parallels for the postponed _et, as Pease shows in his note on the passage. Quinn (Virgil's Aeneid, p.40) is not the only critic to recognise that et may be taken as a normal link, leaving dux with Dido, so that she has priority in effecting the union. Dido is certainly dux in i.364, ’dux femina facti', and again alliteration may be significant. Aeneas will then be simply Troianus, as he is twice elsewhere, although only in the vocative. The balance of probability is almost complete - the ambiguity presumably intentienal, unless the unusual break at the end of the third foot (speluncam Dido dux), in actual conflict with third-foot caesura, can be taken - 85 - as a pointer to connecting 'dux et Troianus'. No ancient scholars, and very few modern, appear even to have recognised the problem; which incidentally is not to be solved by any normal sort of punctuation. Provided we are prepared to accept ambiguities of this sort, particularly the type depending on a word shared between preceding and following phrases, the number of real problems is extraordinarily small. So far as I can make out, there are no genuine pitfalls in the Eclogues, unless you count 'ab love principium Musae' at iii.60 as a possible vocative, rather than as genitive singular (a suggestion of Servius which Mynors exceptionally thinks worthy of a mention in his apparatus); and line 102 of the same poem: 'his certe neque amor causa est vix ossibus haerent’ . Here Aelius Donatus apparently took 'neque amor causa est' as a parenthesis, as word-order suggests, leaving his as an archaic or rustic nominative plural, like hisce in Plautus and Livy. Hirtzel accepted this, except that he followed Stephanus in emending to hi, judging that only failure to recognise the parenthesis had given rise to his. Mynors prefersthe vulgate, with the awkward postponement of neque to third place. I think I should rather accept the correction of his to hi than juggle with punctuation. The Georgies contain the puzzle of aret pellis, which probably ought not to puzzle us at all; and perhaps another at iv. 78-9, of the bees: 'erumpunt portis; concurritur aethere in alto fit sonitus magnum mixtae glomerantur in orbem'. Mynors surprisingly takes aethere in alto with fit sonitus; although the paradox of battle being joined in mid-air might be thought to give priority to 'concurritur aethere in alto', which after all comes together asthe second half of a single line. And of course the noise of battle is heard in the same place as the battle has been joined. I should prefer to label this one apo koinou. In the Aeneid, I have been struck by the different incidence of problems in different books. This may be rather a subjective impression; but in book iii, for example, I am puzzled only by line 546, 'praeceptisque Heleni dederat quae maxima rite Iununi Argivae iussos adolemus honores'. How can the reader tell that rite is to be taken with the following line, as sense probably requires? In the Quarterly I could suggest only that the ritual feeling of the foilowinr line might somehow attract the adverb; but I remain uncertain. Equally, in book ix 1 hesitate over nothing except lines 60-1, where Tumus is on the prowl like a wolf: 'cum fremit ad caulas ventos perpessus et imbris nocte super media tuti sub matribus agni balatum exercent'. Traditionally there is a break at the main caesura in 61, attaching the indication of midnieht to wolf rather than lambs, though the hour is in fact the same for both. Certainly there is nothing to check the reader as he passes on from wind anc’ rain to the darkness of midnight; and then tuti e£fective-Iy marks the new sentence with its emphatic change to pjural from the solitary singular cf :ht marauder. Probably not & real problem. Again, book x has nothing mors difficult than 22S-», vigilas:?e r.ec.-i gens Aenea vigila et vs]is inmitte rurientis'. Both Oxforc. editors have decided to end the question after Aenea, rather at the end of the ?. j . e . - 86 - I should be more inclined to take the end of the line as the easier break, supporting this with the progression from the polite address deum gens to the more urgent Aenea to introduce the exhortation to action. As I read It, there will be an entirely different tone-pattern to Aenea according as we make the question end there or not - Aened? (rising) or Aenek (falling). Can we assume that Latin inflexion was the same? Finally, book xii has in my opinion no difficulties of this sort at all, and not even any genuine ambiguities. It occurred to me that xii also has only a single unfinished li©e, and might well claim to be a demonstrably well-polished book, in case one might consider that difficulties of phrasing indicate relatively incomplete work. Unfortunately the three books which I have suggested boast only a single problem apiece have six incomplete lines each. So much for an effective correlation between supposed tokens of polished work. I still find it interesting that xii, with all the problems seen by contemporary critics in the emotional colouring of the death of Tumus at the close, approaches so closely, in one respect at least, to the standard of the unquestionably completed earlier works. I am sometimes inclined to think - not always - that some at least of the passages which I regard as real stumbling-blocks to the reader are signs of imperfection which the poet might have removed if he had lived longer. The coherence of Virgil's phrasing seems to be one feature of his organization of words - of the perfection of his rhetoric, if such a phrase may safely be used before this Society - which raises him above other poets. He may not be easy to translate - sometimes he is simply impossible, if he contains as many actual ambiguities as I have suggested, quite apart from those in other categories - but he is probably about the easiest of Latin poets to read - read aloud, of course. One day I imagine myself settling down to read through a totally unpunctuated text of Silius Italicus, or Claudian, or Corippus, just to see whether their phrasing falls into place as easily as Virgil's. I should be surprised if it does; although even Corippus seems to be so soaked in Virgilian rhythms that he may have acquired something of this mastery at the same time. The trouble is that I cannot imaging where we are to find such virgin texts of these poets as I have suggested, not to mention the time to read through them and the zeal to do so with the necessary attention to possible errors. If any of my audience have the leisure and the inclination, together with the requisite unfamiliarity with the works of these epic epigojii, I gladly bequeath the task to you; and await your findings with interest. THE GEORGICS AND MARK ANTONY Scholars are wont to see in the Georgies the first fine flowering of the literary partnership between Virgil and Maecenas his patron. In this spirit T.E.Page, relying on Georgic 1.2, offered long ago a typical statement of this orthodox position. "it was at the request of Maecenas that he composed the four books yf the Georgies, written between 37 B.C. and 30 B.C. and dedicated to him." Again in 1939 Ronald Syme advanced this traditional explanation in a modernised form. "Maecenas hoped to employ Virgil's art in the service of Caesar's heir ...... But the poet was reluctant, the patron too wise to insist. Yet something might be done. It was folly not to - 87 - exploit the treasures of erudition that Varro had consigned to public use; if not the national antiquities, then perhaps the land and the peasant. Various books on agriculture had newly appeared ...... But Virgil intended to compose a poem about Italy, not a technical handbook: he wrote about the ^ country and the life of the farmer in a grave, religious and patriotic vein.' Furthermore, it has been an accepted scholarlv^ruism that these four poems were composed "with slow and elaborate care". Indeed, as Page remarks, "if we allow seven years for their composition we get an average of less than a line a day". Though we may choose to accept Drjr^en's evaluation of the Georgies as "the best poem of the best poet" it is strange that its composition should have proved so tardy. Here a comparison is not without interest. The Aeneid was begun immediately after the completion of the Georgies in 30-29 B.C ., and was apparently finished in its present shape when Virgil departed from Greece in 20 B.C. Thus a total of 9896 verses was composed over ten years - at most - or roughly at a rate of 990 verses a year. But if we consign the whole period from 37 B.C. to 30 B.C. over to the composition of the Georgies, we find that in this case 2188 verses were written in seven years, or 313 verse per year, which is less than one third of the rate of progress with the Aeneid. It can of course be argued that thejDet's skill increased as he became more practised in his metre and technique. On this view one might maintain that 2188 verses were composed between 37 B.C. and 30 B.C., while a further 4755 were written over the next seven years down to 23 B.C. when Aeneid I-VI may well have been read in its entirety on the. famous occasion when Octavia swooned at the mention of her dead Marcellus. Finally, then, one would maintain that the last three and a half years of the poet's life saw the composition of the concluding 5141 verses of the Aeneid. Against this assumption of progressive acceleration stands, however, the attested fact of the poet's failing health in the last*years of his life. We are thus left to conclude that there is sane oddity latent in the low output recorded for the years 37 B.C. to 30 B.C. Altogether, then, we may reasonably suspect that far more than our surviving 2188 lines were written in these seven years, but that there were delays or changes of plan in the work, and that therefore revisions, excisions, and insertions are intrinsically likely to have occurred. Bearing such possibilities in mind let us now review the whole structure of the Georgies. THE PATTERN OF THE POEM Book 1 1 - 2 3 . An outline of the subject and invocation to the Gods of Tillage. 24 - 42. The invocation of Divus Iulius. 4 3 - 4 9 Soil preparation. 5 0 - 7 0 Soil properties and climate as factors in cultivation • 71 - 100 Rotation, fallowing, and burning of stubble. 100- 117 Irrigation and drainage of fields. 118- 159 Pests; and the moral purpose of Jove making men earn bread by toil 160- 175 The tools and implements of a farmer. 176- 202 Protection of barns and threshing floors from vermin. Tendency of plant strains to decay. - 88 - 203 - 23 0 The stars as markers for the farmer's calendar. 231 - 2 56 Value of the twelve signs of the Zodiac as indicators of seasons. 2 57 - 2 75 Winter tasks on the farm: draining, ditching, maintenance, storage. 276 - 2 8 6 Farmers must eschew unfavourable lunar phases. 2 8 7 - 2 9 7 Certain tasks are best performed by night. 29 8 - 3 1 0 Winter is the time for hunting and relaxation. 311 - 334 Graphic description of storm damage: cf. Lucretius, I, 271-94. 33 5 - 3 5 0 To avoid trouble we should watch the sky and sacrifice to Ceres. 3 51 - 4 2 3 Jupiter himself provides men with numerous signs of weather. 4 2 4 - 4 6 0 An explanation of the use of sun and moon in weather forecasting. 4 6 1 - 4 8 8 The numerous portents of Caesar's death. 4 8 9 - 4 9 7 The disasters of Philippi were all the fruit of Caesar's murder. 4 9 8 - 514 A prayer to all the Gods to help Octavian stop the Civil War. Book I I 1 - 9 An invocation to Bacchus. 10 - 21 The distinguishing marks of self-sown and hand-planted trees. 22 - 34 Methods of hand propagation: suckers, layers, budding, grafting. 35 - 4 6 Invocation of the favour of Maecenas. 4 7 - 6 0 Improvement of trees by cultivation and pruning. Otherwise they tend to return to sterility. 61 - 72 Labour essential to results, and sterile stocks will support fruitful grafts. 73 - 81 The techniques of grafting and budding. 8 2 - 108 List of species of fruit trees and vines. 109 - 135 The ecology of various tree species in varied regions. 135 - 176 The praise of Italy. 177 - 2 25 A consideration of soils best suited to olive and vine. 226 - 2 5 8 Tests for heavy and light soils, and for sweet and sour earth. 25 9 - 2 9 7 Proper procedures for planting out vines and support trees. 298 - 3 1 2 Features to avoid in vineyards: wrong aspects, hazel trees as supports. Do not graft olive trees on oleaster. 31 3 - 34 5 Transplant in spring or autumn. The excellence of springtime. 346 - 3 5 3 Transplanting procedures to protect roots. 354 - 361 Cultivation and protection of young plants. 3 6 2 - 3 7 0 Pruning young shoots. 371 - 39 6 Repair of fences and exclusion of goats from vineyards. The proper veneration of Bacchus with games, plays, goat-victims. 3 9 7 _ 4 1 9 Annual tasks of the vineyard. 4 2 0 - 4 2 5 Advice for olive culture. 4 2 6 - 4 5 8 Proper culture of other trees. 4 5 9 - 4 7 4 Benefits of farming in wartime. 4 7 5 - 4 9 9 The poet's regret at not having become a philosopher. 50 0 - 51 2 The worries of statecraft. 5 1 3 - 5 4 2 The delights of country life. Book I I I 1 - 11 Invocation of Pales and Virgil's dream of poetic fame. 12 - 48 The praises of Caesar Octavian. 4 9 - 71 Selection of brood dams and best ages for breeding cattle. - 89 - 72 94 Similar precepts regarding mares and stallions. 95 122 The selection of an appropriate sire for the required breed. 123 137 A stallion should be well-fed to arouse ardent passion: mares breed better if kept poor before conception. 138 156 The proper care of animals in foal or in calf. 157 178 Rearing of calves: culling for sacrifice, breeding, or work. 179 208 The training of young horses for warfare or racing. 2 0 9 241 Segregation of sexes desirable to conserve energy. 2 4 2 283 Power of love among all creatures. cf. Lucr. I. 1-43: Soph. Ant. 781ff. 284 293 Transition to sheep and goats. 294 338 Shelter for these beasts: avoid footrot in sheep: south aspect for goats. Best hours for pasturing both. 33 9 383 The pastoral life in hot desert and cold steppe lands. 384 393 Production of good wool: avoidance of lush pasture. 394 403 High milk yield from ewes and goats. Segregate kids and lambs. 404 414 Value of dogs for hunting and herding. 4 1 5 439 Precautions for dealing with snakes. 4 4 0 463 Treatment of scab in sheep. 46 4 477 General proneness of animals to illness. 4 7 8 560 Great cattle plague of Noricum: cf. Lucr. VI, 1090-1286. Book IV 1 7 Invocation of Maecenas. Bees are significant. 8 50 Siting and design of the hive. 51 67 Attracting a swarm to settle in the new h iv e . 68 102 Battles between ri.val kings. Methods of resolving them. 103 115 Prevention of future conflict and planting flowers nearby - to entice the new swarm to work. 116 148 The old gardener of Tarentum: his flowers attracted the bees. 149 218 Co-operative practice, collective property. The Social excellence of bees in the hive. 2 19 228 Bees exemplify Stoic view of mind as pervasive rational fire. 2 2 9 250 Collection of honey and correct care of the hive. 251 314 Procedures to be adopted wh'en plague strikes the hive. 3 1 5 414 Aristaeus pioneered the method. He appealed to Cyrene. 4 1 5 452 Aristaeus and Cyrene find and cath Proteus, who knows a cure. 4 5 3 529 Proteus explains that Aristaeus incurred pollution through Eurydice*s death while he was pursuing her for rape. The tale of Orpheus’ vain pilgrimage to Hades is told in explanation. 5 3 0 547 Cyrene advises her son how to placate the dead couple. 548 558 Aristaeus performs the required rites and then secures new bees by the method of bougonla described earlier. 5 5 9 566 The poet wrote ths Georgies at Naples while Octavian was waging war by the Euphrates. THE FOURTH GEORGIC The above summary serves to emphasise one conclusion. Despite some digressions, the first three Georgies are actually devoted to their avowed t o p ic s . - 90 - But once we turn to the fourth book we enter a different artistic and intellectual climate, where theme and continuity largely elude us. Indeed, the whole structure of the fourth book seems odd and disjointed once one ceases to be drugged by the exquisite magic of its verse. Let us survey its subject matter as it stands. Broadly, 1-115 are concerned with a proper site for the hives and how the farmer must deal with disputes between the rival queens, or kings, as Virgil imagines them to be. However, in 116-48 the poet at once digresses to his wish to write about gardens and tells the story of the old gardener of Tarentum, whose splendid flowers incidentally attracted bees. Then we find 149-218 extolling the co-operative practice and concept of collective property exemplified among bees in a hive, whilst in 219-28 Virgil suggests that the bees exemplify the Stoic notion of the soul or mind or celestial fire as a substance pervading all living creatures. Thereupon we have a discussion of the proper method of collecting honey and the correct care of the hive in 229-50, while 251-315 sketch out the procedures to be followed when a plague strikes the hive, concluding with an account of the Egyptian method of breeding a new strain by spontaneous generation from the carcase of a flayed steer. Thus far we might feel that the claims advanced for a new and distinctive tone in the fourth Georgic appear entirely baseless. But Virgil follows his account of the Egyptian practice with a long and irrelevant tale of its origin. Servius informs us that this passage, extending from 315-558, was inserted to replace a panegyric on the poet's friend and literary colleague, Cornelius Gallus the Prefect of Egypt. As the disgrace and suicide of Gallus occurred in 26 B.C., this change would have represented a revision of a published poem. But granting the truth of the Servian tradition, a long hymn of praise to Gallus as poet and as administrator of Egypt would have had no more relevance to the skills of the apiarist than the present digression about Aristaeus has. This passage relates that Aristaeus appealed to his mother the nymph Cyrene when all his bees had died. She advised him to seek out Proteus, bind him,and keep him thus constrained through all his many metamorphoses. If he could achieve this, Proteus would reveal the source of his woes. This then is the content of 315-414. In 415-52 this plan is put into effect, Aristaeus being assisted by his mother. From 453-529 Proteus explains how Aristaeus had incurred pollution through his amorous pursuit of Eurydice. In this explanation the sad tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is related in some detail. Then in 530-47 Cyrene advises her son how to placate the dead couple. Next, in 548-58 Aristaeus performs the rites which have been stipulated and then secures new bees in the way advised. Finally, 559-66 inform us that the poet wrote at Naples whilst Caesar was fighting in the East. In conclusion, then, we find that barely half of the fourth Georgic is directly concerned with the avowed subject of the poem - the keeping of bees. Indeed, an apiarist will find only the most' tenuous links between his industry and the substance of 116-48, 219-28, or 315-566. This means that a total of 290 verses out of 566, or more than half the poem, has no valid connexion with the theme. PATRONS AND POLITICS Much scholarship and intelligence has been expended on modern Virgilian criticism. None the less there is a remarkable lack of unanimity about basic - 91 - elements. M.Perret insists that the great achievement of the Georgies is the assertion of the moral worth of labor: Professor Brooks Otis maintains that the coupling of the term improbus with the noun shows that labor is a pejorative label for an activity which has no value except in a context of cosmic harmony. The real trouble is that too much valuable and sensitive work tends to be vitiated by a basic dishonesty: our tendency to assume that Virgil means what he says whenever this assumption suits our argument and to assume that he does not whenever his statements prove inconvenient to our hypotheses. In reference to Georgic IV, Professor Otis is moved to remark: "in the poem (1-7) the dual aspect of the subject is emphasised: it is light and slender as the bees themselves, but it is also concerned with high matters of politics and social life ... And it is very duality that determines the peculiar tone and mood of the Book." However, in the face of a promise which the poet appears to leave unfulfilled, the same critic adopts a very different tone. In discussing the digression on gardens in the same Georgic, he remarks: Virgil has deliberately framed this 'digression' as a self-avowed praeteritio ... This is, of course a rhetorical pretence. Virgil had no intention of devoting more space to gardens." A possible clue to the composition and plan of the work or' - to its early redactions is thus peremptorily discounted on grounds of _a priori convenience to the argument of the critic. Yet Professor Otis is a sensitive and perceptive Virgilian scholar with many valuable insights. However properly Otis and other scholars as different as Jackson Knight and Le Grelle may applaud the structure, balance and numerical symmetries of the Georgies as we have them, our previous consideration of the fourth book suggests that this polished and elaborate final draft is not the original form of Virgil's poem. Recent scholarship has tended to play down the role of Asinius Pollio as Virgil's patron. Indeed Brooks Otis follows Bardon in viewing him mainly as a fellow-poet and placing him in original Maecenas-group" that included Varius, Virgil and Horace. However, Jackson Knight assesses the matter in fuller social perspective. 'Servius has a tradition that Virgil wrote in Pollio's honour through gratitude to him for pleading with Octavianus against the confiscation of Vergil's first home. At this time, however, Pollio was no longer governor of Cisalpine Gaul. Nor was he likely to have been on good enough terms with Octavian. He was closely associated with Antonius, whose brother Octavianus was besieging about this very time. Vergil's friendship with him was rather literary than practical. He addressed him in the fourth Eclogue because he was consul in that year, and all the more freely since Octavianus and Antonius were to be reconciled. However, it is quite probable that Pollio introduced Vergil first to Maecenas, who then, unless Vergil met the future emperor independently, introduced him to Octavianus." Elsewhere the same critic observes: "Vergil addresses Gaius Asinius Pollio in two Eclogues, the Eighth and the Fourth. In some sense he dedicated the Eclogues to him. They were written at his command, (14) Vergil says, and he must accept them, for he is their end and their beginning." On the other hand Wilkinson sees Pollio as a political neutral after his Dalmatian triumph of October 39 B.C., and as devoting all his energy to writing tragedies and a history of the civil wars. Yet the same critic concedes that, "although Octavian was 'Divi filius', Antony was still at this - 92 - stage thisT dominant'£riumvii\." . 't /So when.on the, same page he assures us that By 39/38'bbtn Virgil arid. Varius had become part of Maecenas' circle we must avoid hindsight in interpreting the meaning of any such association. As in fact Maecenas negotiated the Treaty of Misenum, he had as good a motive as Pollio who arranged the earlier Treaty of Brundisium for urging his poet friend to celebrate the deeds of Antony. Not until 36 B.C., when Agrippa defeated Sextus Pompeius and Octavian deposed Lepidus, was there any doubt that Antony was the senior Triumvir in every respect, and indeed his clear primacy was generally accepted until his Parthian failure became evident in 34 B.C. Even if Maecenas was now Virgil’s sole patron, as Wilkinson believes, he would not have judged it prudent to permit his poet to ignore Antony until the divorce of Octavia made an open breach, while he would scarcely have approved expressions hostile to Antony until Actium was safely won. But we are still free to ask whether Maecenas had already become the sole patron of Virgil when he joined the Etruscan's literary group. Pollio remained a uir consularis et triumphalis even in his retirement, and he enjoyed the respect of Octavian as well as the friendship of Antony. Did he in fact remain Virgil's patron until 34 or 33 B.C.? This consideration raises a further question, no less important. In such circumstances, was Pollio perhaps intended to be the recipient of the dedication, not of the Eclogues alone, but also of our presumed first draft of the Georgies as well? If so, even though the original draft might have tried to keep a political balance between the two colleagues and kinsmen, it was more likely to have lavished praise on Antonius than on Octavianus his junior partner. Later, after Octavia's divorce and the Donations of Alexandria, the official rupture between Antony and Octavian in 33 B.C. could readily have enabled Maecenas to bring pressure on Virgil to adhere to the supposedly patriotic faction of Octavian. Once Actium was won, this loyalty could have been required to take the form of replacing all reference to the earlier victories of Antony with the praise of Octavian and the insertion of Maecenas' own name as the poet's patron in place of the now enigmatic Pollio. Thus would be created the Georgies as we have them. So when Jackson Knight, relying on the evidence of 1.2, III.41 and IV.2, declare^gf the poet of the Georgies, "it was, he says, the command of Maecenas", the revision rather than the original could well have been meant by Virj^l. Again, though Wilkinson advances a milder interpretation of iussa, the phrase tua, Maecenas, haud mollia iussa could well be a complaint, not perhaps against the choice of subject matter, but rather about this obligatory revision which has been inferred. Now, if this view has any substance, it ought to be possible to substitute Pollio for Maecenas in the three other contexts where the patron is addressed. But the practice of 'Virgil himself in Eclogue III, vv. 84, 86 and 88 must warn us that the last syllable of Pollio is long, and therefore is always elided before a following short vowel to permit the use of the name in dactylic verse. Thus, if Virgil had to write "Pollio amat" or "Pollio et ipse" to secure a dactyl in the Eclogues, we must cto the same kind of thing in any attempted reconstruction of lines from an original draft of the Georgies. Moreover, any such proposed alteration should serve to clarify rather than to obscure the argument of the passages where the change is made. We cannot presume to reconstruct what Virgil perhaps wrote, nor need we claim that our - 93 - lines will have a poetic merit comparable with those they displace. They are re-written simply to demonstrate the possibility of an earlier version. Now we may turn to 1.1-3: the received text reads: quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram uertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere uites conueniat .... Names apart, we already have a problem in this text. Ploughing in spring was, of course, universally advocated by ancient authorities. But regarding the proper time for planting young vines beside their supporting trees we find considerable vacillation. Here we may quote Wilkinson with benefit. "Columella preferred autumn if the climate was dry or warm, and if the terrain was either poor and arid plain or lean and steep hillside. Theophrastus reports some arguments for autumn, though generally favouring spring. Virgil mentions autumn only to return immediately to spring, whose praises he is poised to sing." From his practice in 11.315-22 it is therefore clear that Virgil is in two minds about vine planting, and will be considering, not the agreed fixed season, but which of two possible seasons gives dependable results to the grower. The use of bene and melius by Martial in the sense of ’appropriately' is found in Epigram IV.xiii; 3-5: :am bene rara suo miscentur cixmama nardo, Massica Theseis tarn bene uina fauis; nec melius teneris iunguntur uitibus ulmi, This suggests that quo (sidere) bene iungere uites conueniat might have answered appropriately to quo sidere terram uertere (conueniat) in the present context. Bearing in mind the rules regarding elision of the final syllable of Pollio, one might venture to suggest this reconstructed verse: 4uid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram iertetfe, Pollio, _et ulmis quo bene iungere uites conueniat . We do not seed to assume that Virgil wrote this jerkier line full of diaereses, for which the best that can be claimed is that it reflects the effort of ploughing heavy soil or taking an awkward decision! It is enough for our purpose to show how Pollio might have been introduced. Next, we must turn to Book II. 39-41, where Maecenas again is invoked’ Tuque ades inceptumque una decurre laborem o decus, o famae merito pars maxima nostrae, Maecenas, pelagoque uolans da uela patent!. If Virgil had already published any work dedicated to Maecenas while he was still engaged on the Georgies, then it is no longer extant and the ancient critics have observed a conspiracy of silence about it. Also Dio simply refers to Maecenas as ’a man.of. equestrian rank’ in the on* place where he finds mention before Actium. So, even if he were the poet’s praesidium, the minister could hardly yet bf» called on either count faroae pars maxima nostri . - 94 - But on the score of Eclogue VIII. 6-13 this phrase would surely have been a peculiarly appropriate tribute to Pollio. Perhaps, then, Virgil wrote in the presumed first draft of the Georgies something rather like this: tuque ades inceptumque una decurre laborem, o decus, o famae merito pars maxima nostrae, Pollio, et ipse uolans pelago da uela patenti. Here again there seems a stylistic gain from introducing ipse in v.41. Further, uolans, which suggests the winged victory, is most appropriate in addressing an imperator who had celebrated a triumph. Finally, we have an exhortation to Maecenas at the start of IV. protinus aerii mellis caelestia dona exsequar. hanc etiam, Maecenas, aspice partem: admiranda tibi leuium spectacula rerum magnanimosque duces totiusque ordine gentis mores et studia et populos et proelia dicam. Here too the military qualities of bees seem more likely to interest the renowned commander Pollio than the unwarlike Maecenas. With very slight changes these lines can also be referred to Pollio: protinus aerii mellis caelestia dona exsequar. hanc minimam mihi, Pollio, et aspice partem: admiranda tibi leuium spectacula rerum. magnanimosque duces totiusque ordine gentis mores et studia et populos et proelia dicam. (IV, 1-6) Here too there is a more natural logical connextion between minimam and the leuium spectacula rerum of the verse following than we find between leuium and the etiam of the received text. If Pollio really remained the poet’ s patron when he began the Georgies, then we might expect that his earlier draft would have tended to take the part of Pollio's friend Mark Antony in the growing civic tension of the decade. Now Jackson Knight remarks of Messala, another friend of Virgil'g^"he went to serve with Antonius, whom Vergil never liked, in the East." However this verdict is based on the text of Virgil as we have it. Can Virgil really have disliked Antonius strongly if he wrote Eclogue IV in honour of the anticipated birth of a son to Antony and Octavia, as both Syme and Jackson Knight himself believe? It is equally possible that Virgil was simply forced to disown Antony in a revision of his poem-imposed on him by Maecenas. In rather similar vein Brooks Otis remarks on a possible view of Georgic IV. "The contrast between the two kings in 91f., one insignis et ... clarus; the other uncouth in his sloth (desidia) and trai^yg his broad belly, may suggest Actium, the contest of Octavian and Antony." Indeed, it may: but it might also suggest Philippi, where Antony played a soldier's p^g^while Octavian skulked in the marsh with the excuse of an ill-omened dream. So the interpretation of any allegory present in these lines might equally well - 95 - have first been intended to glorify Antony and deride Octavian. If we believe the lines were written just after Agrippa had done Octavian's fighting for him at Naulochus in 36 B .C ., then our second possibility becomes extremely attractive. If on the other hand we agree with the general opinion of scholarship and consider that the lines were written during 30-29 B .C ., then Otis' interpretation is no doubt persuasive. THE PRAISE OF ANTONY This discussion compels us to question the origin of the panegyric passages in praise of Octavianus Caesar. Were they originally written in honour of Mark Antony? The passages in dispute are I, 24-43 and 466-516; II 161-4 and 170-2; III 10-48, and IV 559-66: a total of 124 lines. The extracts from Book I refer clearly to events subsequent to Actium and can therefore be excluded from the present consideration. Indeed, vv.466-514 seem coeval with Horace, Odes 1,2- but this is not the time to pursue the interrelations of Horace, Virgil and Maecenas. On the other hand, II 161-4 and 170-2 seem to relate to the events of 37 B.C. - the year when Virgil's gradual Caesarian 'conversion' is likely to have begun. In the latter part of 37 B.C. Agrippa was busy constructing the Lucrine harbour, so Virgil could not have composed II 161-4 before this date. But if the praise of Italy in the second Georgic dates from 37 or 36 B .C ., when Octavian was locked in a life-andtsdeath naval struggle with Sextus Pompeius, then vv. 170-2 must be a later addition, or else they have been re-written at a later date to apply to Octavian, who never went near I n d i a . et te, maxime Caesar, qui nunc extremis Asiae iam uictor in oris imbellem auertis Romanis arcibus Indum. T.E.Page is typj^al of editors in describing imbellem Indum as "any inhabitant of the East." But there is an alternative to referring this passage to the vanquished at Actium. In 37 B.C. Antony was busy preparing to avenge Carrhae. The negotiations at Tarentum in that year delayed his actual departure till 36 B.C. His strategy envisaged a campaign directed at Parthia through Armenia and Media rather than through Mesopotamia, where Crassus had already tried.and failed so disastrously. The title Dionysus Omestes in which he delighted may have led Virgil to compare him with the mythical Dionysus who conquered India, and whose legendary exploits inspired the efforts of Alexander in that regifcn. Further, as the pirates of Aden were not broken by Roman sea power till 2 B.C., it is conceivable that a secure land route for the rich trade with India was actually one of Antony's Parthian objectives. In short the subject matter of 170-2 can be made consistent with the date and political climate of the Lucrine constructions if we assume that the lines were originally composed in reference to Antonius: Scipiadas duros bello et te, maxime Marce, qui nunc extremis Asiae iam uictor in oris imbellem auertis Romanis arcibus Indum. - 96 - Again, if III 10-48 referred originally to Antony's eastei*. .:ars, we could solve an interesting puzzle. As Syme points out, there was actually very little to the vaunted Augustan settlement of the East after Cleopatra's death, at least not so much as to justify Res Gestae 27 or Georgies 11.171, III. 30 or IV. 560 ff. Pollio, Virgil's original patron, remained Antony's friend to the last. Though he refused him2^ d at Actium, he washed his hands of the Caesarian cause with firm disdain. One is left with the thought that Virgil's first draft may well have contained a list of Antony’s sizeable victories over eastern foes between 40 and 37 B.C, and that this tribute to the old patron's friend may well have been hastily reworked after 31 B.C. to suit the vanity of the new patron's friend. This list perhaps confronts us in III 10-33. A feature of the Parthian invasion of Syria and Asia Minor in 39-37 B.C. was the success of Antony’ s legatus Ventidius in ejecting the Parthian nominee Antigonus from the throne of Jerusalem which Antony and Octavian had awarded to Herod the Idumaean in 40 B.C. Furthermore in 38 B.C. the arrival of Herod with his forces enabled Antonius to complete the capture of the besieged town of Sagg^ata on the Euphrates, which was Antony's main personal success in this war. Virgil sings : ( I I I . 1 2 ) : primus Idumaeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas. Referring to Caesar Octavianus this adjective ma^ 2^5f* i n Pa6 e' s words, "merely an epitheton ornans and by no means in place, " but if it had originally referred to Herod's part in the victory of Antonius at Samosata it is very pertinent indeed. Again, though Page explains the Gan^aridum of 27 - "people dwelling at the mouth of the Ganges",^as referring to the ©riental forces who fought under Antony at Actium", the excision of the following verses 28-29 as either a later insertion or else a modification of the original draft would leave it open for the reader to construe Gangaridum as referring to Antony's suggested Indian ambitions. The mention of the gold and ivory might bear a similar implication: in foribus pugnam ex auro solidoque elephanto Gangaridum faciam uictorisque arma Quirini. \ It is now time to consider the implications of Quirini. Readers of Wilkinson's recent masterly study of the Georgies may well feel that his findings rule this ingenious interpretation out of court because of the meaning he assigns to the term Quirini here. A few pages earlier Wilkinson discusses the title in more detail: "another idea then abroad was that Octavian was a New Romulus, there being actually talk of giving him the title of Quirinus quasi et ipsum conditorem urbis". Howeverj it should be pointed out that Wilkinson's two Latin sources used the title Romulus, not Quirinus. So Florus writes ( 33 ) "tractatum etiam in senatu, Em, quia condidisset imperium, Romulus uocaretur", and Suetonius observes: "quibusdaiac^ensentibus Romulum appellari oportere quasi et ipsum conditorem urbis". Furthermore, Propertius in fact applies Quirinus as a title to Mark Antony in IV (V). 6.21-4: e rat altera classis/tenero damnata Quirino, pilaque femineae turpiter apta manu: hinc Augusta ratis plenis Iouis canine uelis signaque iam patriae uincere docta suae. - 97 - There is thus no obstacle to rendering uictoris arma Quirini as "the arms of Antony the victor” if we so wish. The following verses 30-31 add point to the identification of the original of this whole passage as a list of Antony’ s expected and already accomplished victories in the East. Niphates was a river in Armenia. Canidius had conquered that land for Antonius whilst Jerusalem #as being reduced in 37 B.C. At this very time the senior Triumvir was himself conferring with his partner at Tarentum in preparation for his own venture into Media and Parthia and for Octavian’s renewed assault on Sextus Pompeius. However, the Parthian had already met with one defeat at the hands of forces fighting under the standards of Antony. After slaying Pacorus the Crown Prince of Parthia in battle in June of 38 B.C., Antony’ s general Ventidius had retaken the whole East for Rome, and had expelled the Parthians from Roman land. Thus in the following couplet we have found another passage which may have been filched from the praises of Antony to adorn the triple triumph of Octavian: addam urbes Asiae domitas pulsumque Niphaten fidentemque fuga Parthum uersisque sagittis. Furthermore, if Virgil first wrote this whole sequence at the end of 37 B .C ., he would be anxious to celebrate the recent triumphs of two of Antony's legates - particularly when one of them was his own patron. Pollio had triumphed over the Parthini of the Danube on his return from Dalmatia in October of 39 B.C., while in November of 38 B.C. Rome had witnessed the triumph of Ventidius over the Parthi whom he had driven from Syria and Asia Minor. Thus we might interpret vv. 32-33: t et duo rapta manu diuerso ex hoste tropaea bisque triumphatas utrogue ab litore gentes. Here surely "the twice triumphed over races from either shore" of v.33 seems to suggest the jingle Parthini/Parthi provided by the names of the vanquished, first from Europe and then from Asia, in those successive years far more naturally than it could imply any triumph celebrated under the auspices of Octavian. T.E.Page was inclined to.ggsign these lines to the Actian and later Spanish triumphs of Augustus, but this interpretation is associated with his acceptance of the Servian tradition that the Aristaeus-epyllion of Book IV was inserted in place on the praise of Gallus after the latter's fall in 26 B.C. Such an opinion of course would date the completion of the Georgies after the Spanish triumph. Though Wilkinson sees the whole Georgies completed by 29 B .C ., his interpretation of w . 32-33 as referrj^g "to the Morini on the English Channel and the Bastarnae on the Black Sea" tends to push him towards the acceptance of publication in 26 B.C., and he tries to disown any such implication in his footnote. "in this same year, 29 B.C. Carrinas defeated the Morini, and M.Crassus defeated the Bastarnae, one of his objects being to recover standards lost by C.Antonius. Though these were allowed later to celebrate triumphs, in May 28 and July 27 B.C. respectively, Dio emphasises that Octavian, as sole imperator, was given credit for both victories." To this one can only reply that being given credit for victory is not the same - 98 - as triumphing over a foe - to a Roman least of all. If Wilkinson is right to take utrocpe ab litore as meaning "from either coast of Europe rather than as implying from lands on either side of the Hellespont" as was assumed above, then his explanation is a ground for dating the publication of the Georgies to 26 B.C. Howeygg. he is as firmly in favour of dating this proem of Book III to early 29 B.C. as the present writer is in support of dating it essentially to early 36 B.C. Nevertheless, in respect of this poem, Wilkinson is undoubtedly right in deducing that Virgil had been reading Pindar. Here he observes that this is the first evidence ofthe impact of Pindar on Roman literature. On the assumption of a date of 29 B.C. he remarks : "At this date Horace was just beginning to compose Odes in the manner of the older Greek lyr^.g0^oetry, and no doubt the friends would read and discuss Pindar together." This is doubtless true, but on any showing such discussion could have happened any time after Horace joined the circle of Maecenas in 37 B .C ., and the process of reading need not be delayed until Horace starts to compose in Pindaric vein. This consideration, then, is no obstacle to dating this proem to the beginning of 36 B.C. or the end of 37 B.C. But if we wish to maintain this date for the original drafting, it will follow that vv, 28-9 are not the only places where we must assume subsequent revision. The possible original text of this proem will receive fuller discussion in an Appendix, but for the present we must note that v.16 might not then be original as it stands: in medio mihi Caesar erit, templumque tenebit. While it is possible that diuos Iulius is here the subject, the full references to Antony's wars which we have discovered in the ensuing lines dispose one to think that this line was revised after 31 B.C. At the end of 37 B.C. Antonius was about to invade Parthia by way of Media, using the route through Armenia which Canidius had secured earlier in the year. Is this verse then perhaps an optimistic pfophecy regarding the ultimately unsuccessful invasion of Media upon which Antonius actually embarked a few months later in the spring of 36 B.C.? Tt so, was the original form perhaps the following: in Medos Antonius'it, templumque tenebit? With such a hypothesis, w . 10-48 may originally have promised an epic poem about the wars of Antonius and Pollio and his other officers; hence they may reiterate in wider context the earlier pledge to Pollio implicit in Eclogue V I I I , 7- 8: en erit umquam ille dies, mihi cum liceat tua dicere facta? If we grant this, it is possible that the concluding promise to celebrate the battles of Caesar is contemporary too, and^y^fers to the naval operations against the pirates and Sextus Pompeius. The revisions for which our terminus post quem was 33 B.C. would thus probably have been subsequent to Actium and included the altering of 16, the insertion of 28-9, and an insertion between 41 and 43 as we now have them which rather obscures the transition from what seems a summary of Georgic II to the summary of Georgic III. - 99 - interea Dryadum siluas saltusque sequamur intactos, tua, Maecenas, haud mollia iussa. te sine nil altum mens incohat; en age segnes rumpe moras: vocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron Taygetique canes domitrixque Epidaurus equorum et uox adsensu nemorum ingeminata remugit. The devotion to Maecenas seems here, to say the least, masochistic. the final ’Caesarian* sequence is in IV, 559-62: haec super aruorum cultu pecorumque canebam et super arboribus, Caesar dum magnus ad altum fulminat Euphraten bello uictorque uolentes per populos dat iura uiamque adfectat Olympo. However, as we have noted, Octavian never waged a war on the banks of the Euphrates, while Antonius expelled the Parthians, restored Roman governors and client kings, and finally captured Samosata on the banks of that very river. But if the passage has been revised, it establishes one of two possibilities. Either the lines were moved from an early place in the draft of Book III somewhere to the end of the whole work, or else Virgil had completed the entire first draft before the repudiation of Octavia in 33 B.C. As this would need a working rate of less than 600 lines per year, it really offers no problem. On this assumption what then was the original form of the conclusion? Perhaps something like the following: haec super aruorum cultu pecorumque canebam arboribusque, Antoniuis en dum magnus %d altum fulminat Euphraten bello uictorque uolentes per populos dat iura uiamque adfectat Olympo. In short, it can be argued that all these tributes to Octavian could have been reworked from earlier praises of Antony. THE TALE OF ARISTAEUS As we have noticed above, this huge digression puts the fourth Georgic in a class by itself. Servius reports the tale that it took the place. . of la u d e s ot Gallus after the latter committed suicide in 27 or 26 B.C. However, Brooks Otis gives compelling grounds for dating the Aristaeus episode to 30-29 B.C. But if we accept our date for the completion of the first draft as 34-33 B .C ., then indeed this tale must replace something. Now Gallus at the time of his death was Prefect of Egypt. Was the omitted section in fact the praise, not of Gallus, but of the land and social organisation of Egypt, whose monarchic tradition, complex irrigation and ^ivision of labour might be held to reproduce the excellence of the hive. The regeneration of hives by bougonia could be held to occur in Egypt because there the ox as Apis-Osiris is sacred, and because that country’ s human social organisation follows the method of bees in their hive in respects which Rome's does not. Here surely would have been implied too obvious an approval of Antony* s Egyptian - 100 - marriage for Octavian to tolerate or Maecenas to publish. The unbalan^|g^ total concentration on viticulture in Georgic II which Otis emphasises may also owe something to Antony's self-chosen "dionysiac" style it is curious that the two optimistic books, as Brooks Otis sees them, both appear in this light to be especially sympatgg^ic to Antonius. The first and third books which he finds more sombre are also more individualistic. Did the original draft perhaps mirror a decade where many Romans - perhaps including Antony himself - saw the ritualistic and authoritarian collectivi^rr of the Egyptian monarchy as preferable to the anarchy of their own republican past? The bees' date may be mean| »s a much more controversial exemplar for Rome than Wilkinson imagines. Forced then perhaps by Maecenas to discard an explanation too favourable to Cleopatra, Virgil finds in the Aristaeus legend a new aetiology for bougonia. The incorporation of the legend of Orpheus has been given many- profound symbolic meanings - perhaps it had also a political significance. Octavian declared war on Cleopatra, not on Antony. After the defeat of Actium she fled to Egypt followed by her lover. Octavian pursued in his own good time and defeated the rival forces outside Alexandria. Cleopatra simulated death: Antony stabbed himself and bade his body be brought to her tomb. On his arrival Cleopatra revealed her deceit, but he died in her arms. Refusing Octavian's terms she poisoned herself with a snake. In Georgic IV 453-530 we find an analogous history. Aristaeus pursues Eurydice who dies of snakebite the end of Octavian's pursuit of Cleopatra. Orpheus her husband descends to the Underworld to recover her - Antony carried to Cleopatra's tomb. Despit^^^ Pluto's concession Orpheus loses Eurydice again and perishes soon afterwards Antony finding Cleopatra alive but dying in her arms. In short, the Aristaeus episode can be viewed as an allegory of the War of Actiuip, but with its final ending shown in the first part of the allegory, and with the hint that Octavian might himself have felt more than a passing interest in Cleopatra's bed. When Virgil revised this part of his original draft he probably made the other modifications we have suggested at the instance of Maecenas during the same period. Thus we postulate a first draft of the Georgies with Pollio as itg patron and Antonius as its hero already completed by 35 or at latest 34 B.C. After the victory of Actium the poet then revised the work with Maecenas for patron and Octavian as its hero. However, the largest single modification, the tale of Aristaeus, is not simply subservient to the new regime. If Actium was fought and won, the Roman world, like Aristaeus' bees, was still perishing of an inner sickness. Proteus bade Aristaeus placate the shades of Eurydice and Orpheus: Virgil in effect bids Augustus similarly placate the shades of Cleopatra and Antony. Fair treatment of their supporters and genuine reconciliation offered the one formula for civic health and a restored Roman society. Such a revision involved Virgil in the wholesale attribution to Octavian of victories and achievements which had really belonged to Antonius. Donatus tells us that Agrippa was quick to stigmatise Virgil for noua cacozelia, or "a novel form of bad taste". Was it perhaps this practice which he was attacking? Thus one may possibly dare to postulate that at the prompting of Maecenas Virgil succeeded in transforming the praises of Antony into a lesson for Augustus. Viewed in this sense the Georgies would retain a distinctive political significance apart from their poetic excellence. R.G.Tanner. University of Newcastle, New South Wales. Acknowledgment: In revising the several earlier drafts of this paper I have been grateful for suggestions from Professor D.E.Eichholz of Bristol and from my Newcastle colleagues Rhona Beare and W.D.Ashworth. I have also benefited greatly from a frank and lively discussion of the paper with Professor C.M.Wells and his colleagues at Ottawa, and from the criticism and advice of my dearly- valued friend A.G.Lee of St. John's College, Cambridge. NOTES 1. P.Vergilii Maronis: Bucolica et Georgica (Macmillan, 1898), p.vii. 2. R.Syme: The Roman Revolution, Clarendon Press, 1939, pp. 253-4. 3. T.E.Page, op.cit., p.xxiii: cf., L.P.Wilkinson, The Georgies of Virgil, p p .6 9 - 70. 4. T.E.Page, op .cit., p.xxii-i. 5. J.Dryden, Dedication of his translation to the Earl of Chesterfield. 6 . Donatus, 47. 7 . or "Do not use oleasters to support vines" - see Wilkinson, op.cit., p . 2 4 8 . 8 . Jacques Perret: The Georgies (in Virgil edited by S.Commager, pp.32-5). 9. Virgil, A Study in Civilised Poetry, p .157. 10 . op.cit., p.181. 1 1 . o p . c i t . , p . 1 8 4 . 1 2 . op.cit., p.31. 13. W.F.Jackson Knight: Roman Vergil (2. ed.) Penguin, 1966, p.75. 14. ibid., p.74. 15. Wilkinson, op.cit., p.39. ibid., p.63. op.cit. , p.49. ibid., p.249. Dio Cassius, 49.16. o p . c i t . , p . 8 3 . op.cit., p.62. op.cit., p.183. Veil. Pat. II, 70.1. Virgil: Bucolics & Georgies, p.259. Jackson Knight, op.cit. , p.24. cf., Wilkinson, op.cit., p.162. R.Syme, The Roman Revolution, p .301. ibid. p.291. Josephus, Bell. Iud., 1.321-3. Page, op.cit. , p.291. ibid., p.293. Wilkinson, op.cit. , p .169. ibid. , p.163. IV.12.66 (2.34). A u g . 7 . Postgate prefers the reading Teucro. op.cit., p.294. op.cit. , p.169. ibid. p .170. ibid., p.166. ibid., p .167. But see the Appendix, which decides in favour of treating these verses as a remodelling of three earlier ones done in 29 B.C. - 103 - 42. Above, p.10. 43. ad eel. X., i. 44. op.cit., pp. 408-13. Wilkinson (op.cit., p,117n) tends to agree. 45. Thus for different reasons I agree with Wilkinson (op.cit., pp.111-2): "Otherwise we may guess that a few lines about Gallus occurred a propos of Egypt at 287-94." 46. op.cit., p.165-6. 4 7 . o p ,.c it 00 op,.c it 49. Wilkinson, op.cit. , pp. 175-182. 50. It is of great significance for this allegorical interpretation that Virgil appears to offer an original version of the Orpheus story. See Wilkinson, op.cit., pp.116-117. APPENDIX : THE PINDARIC PROEM OF GEORGIC III. As observed above, Wilkinson has drawn attention to the influence of Pindar on this passage, and the evidence in favoug of dating its first draft to early in 36 B.C. has already been presented. In our earlier examination we have athetised vv. 28-29 and v.16 as •4. either added or reworked, and have expressed some doubts about the date and original shape of vv. 46-48. If Antonius is the theme, then the Britanni of v.25 also become suspect, even though Oct^vian perhaps was contemplating their conquest in 34 B.C. Such a mention is natural in a work written in 29 B.C. in the wake of Carrinas' victory over the Morini, for, as Caesar himself had noted, they occupied the parts of Gaul closest to Britain: "in Morinos proficisciturquod inde erat breuissimus in Britanniam traiectus" (B.G.IV.21). This circumstance may equally have inspired Virgil's contemporary reference in 1.30: "tibi seruiat ultima Thule". However, if the proem of III was originally devoted to dreams of Antony surpassing the victories of Alexander, then some Indian tribal name should replace Britanni here - particularly as some contact between Indian and Greek stagecraft is argued by the very Sanskrit word for a stage curtain, Yavanika. No doubt the plays Virgil envisaged as being performed at his festival were the tragedies which his patron Pollio had lately retired t o w r i t e . In dealing with the obviously subsequent reference to Actium in 28-9 we must remember that any reference to a flooded river would be as fitting in regard to India as it is regarding Egypt. Moreover, if we read Curtius' Historia Alexandri, we find that the main difficulty Alexander met during his march into India was in crossing the great rivers of the Indus system in the - 104 - Punjab, and that he had to devise secti onal i sed boats which could be carrmi on waggons from river to river: illi quia plura l'lumina superanda eraul , sic iunxere naues; ut solutae plaustris uehi possent rursusque coniungi (V III.10.3). It is therefore likely that any original of Virgil’s 111.2b-1.} would mention the Indus rather than the Nile and a bridge of boats rather than naval trophies. Thus we might suggest for v.29: Indum ac nauali luctantem ponte reuinctum. In the case of v.25, Pliny, H.N., V I:20: "nouissima gente Gangaridum Calingarum: regia Parthalis uocatur", may suggest a solution. If Antony is to rival Alexander he must sail down the Ganges as once the Macedonian had sailed down the Indus. Therefore, if like Alexander he is to be deified in his lifetime and to receive a festival in his honour as the Ptolemies had done at Delos, then the dwellers at the mouth of the Ganges should appear depicted in his ritual. Hence one might venture to replace Britanni with Calingae. Next verses 34-6 require discussion. These are generally deemed to refer to the Trojan forebears of Aeneas and the Julian house who also find mention in Aeneid VI, 648-50 - and in this version of 29 B.C. such is of course the case. But if the reading offered by some MSS for Propertius IV (v).6.21 is correct, and his text described Antony's fleet at Actium as "Teucro damnata Quirino", then perhaps Antony also laid claim to a Trojan.gedigree at this time, for his mother was Julia, a lady of the Caesarian house. This fact in itself could justify the list of Trojan worthies for his honour as much as for O c t a v i a n 's, since the latter likewise owed his blood connexion with the line of Aeneas to his mother’s having also been born a Julia. Caesar's adoption apart, Octavian stood no closer to the blood of lulus t?han did Mark Antony. In addition to the title Dionysus Omestes, Antonius also claimed other divine associations. According to Plutarch he resembled the statues of ^ Hercules, and his family in fact claimed descent from Anton, son of Hercules. This tradition would undoubtedly have been a spur to any ambitions to rival Alexander in India. When the latter arrived in India he is said to have been saluted as the third son of Zeus to invade the land: "igitur Alexandro fines Indiae ingresso gentium suarum reguli occurrerunt, imperata facturi; ilium tertium Ioue genitum ad ipsos peruenisse memorantes; Patrem Liberum atque Herculem fama cognitos esse; ipsum coram adesse cernique". If Alexander is to be surpassed, it must be done by one who is both the new Dionysus and the heir of Hercules: Antonius the praesens Hercules and heir of Anton. Whether the invidia infelix of 37 refers to Sextus Pompeius or perhaps to Agrippa and Octavian is a hard question, and, as Wilkinson observes, the term is a Pindaric commonplace anyway. After these preliminaries, we shall hazard a reconstruction of the putative proem for the third Georgic of 36 B.C. primus ego in patriam mecum, modo uita supersit, Aonio rediens deducam uertice Musas; primus Idumaeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas, et uiridi in campo templum de marmore ponam propter aquam, tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat Mincius et tenera praetexit harundine ripas. - 105 - in Medos Antonius it, templumque tenebit: illi uictor ego, et Tyrio conspectus in ostro, centum quadriiugos agitabo ad flumina currus. cuncta mihi Alpheum linquens lucosque Molorchi cursibus et crudo decernet Graecia caestu. ipse caput tonsae foliis ornatus oliuae dona feram. iam nunc sollemnis ducere pompas ad delubra iuuat caesosque uidere iuuencos, uel scaena ut uersis discedat frontibus utque purpurea intexti tollant aulaea Calingae. in foribus pugnam ex auro solidoque elephanto Gangaridum faciam uictorisque arma Quirini, atque hie undantem bello magnumque fluentem Indum ac nauali luctantem ponte reuinctum. addam urbes Asiae domitas pulsumque Niphaten fidentemque fuga Parthum uersisque sagittis; et duo rapta manu diuerso ex hoste tropaea bisque triumphatas utroque ab litore gentis. stabunt et Parii lapides, spirantia signa, Assaraci proles demissaeque ab Ioue gentis nomina, Trosque parens et Troiae Cynthius auctor. Inuidia infelix furias amnemque seuerum Cocyti metuet tortosque Ixionis anguis immanemque rotam et non exsuperabile saxum. interea Dryadum siluas saltusque sequamur intact os; uocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron Taygetique canes domitrixque Epidaurus equorum, et uox adsensu nemorum ingeminata remugit. b o x tamen accingar praesentis dicere pugnas Herculis, et nomen fama tot ferre per annos Antoni prima quot abest ab origine Marcus. We may well ask why a temple for Antonius should be built in the territory of Mantua. First, it was the poet's homeland. Secondly, it was in Cisalpine Gaul, Gallia Togata across the Po. In 42 B.C. it had been agreed that all this territory should be incorporated in Italy, but the Antonian Asinius Pollio was its governor for the present. The War of Perusia followed, and Pollio played the role of peacemaker at Brundisium in October of 40 B.C., becoming consul for the remainder of the year. Thenceforward the Transpadane region was treated as part of Italy. Did Antony perhaps insist on this enfranchisement of all lands north of the po at this time? If so, it would be a further reason to set the poetic temple in his honour in this district. If these suggestions above deserve any attention, they raise the possibility that the political and military aims of Antonius have been minimised and misinterpreted by his conquerors. R.G.T. - 106 - NOTES 1 . op.cit., p.166. 2. above, pp. 19-24. 3. op.cit., p.168. 4. Plutarch, Antonius, 2.1. 5. ibid., 4.1. 6 . Q.Curtius, H.A., 8.10.1. 7. op.cit., p.170. BOOK REVIEWS P. VERGILI MARONIS OPERA recognovit R.A.B.MYNORS. Oxford Classical Texts. Clarendon Press,1969. pp.xvi + 452. 90p.(18s.) net. "After nearly seventy years of frontline service", says the cover jacket of the new Oxford Text, "the plates of the old one are worn out” . They can hardly be said to have lost face before the text itself. Sir Arthur Hirtzel was a scholar of poor natural judgment. He was easily seduced by fashionable German novelties (profiferred by Ladewig and Deutieke, Hoffman and Guthling). He venerated his great predecessors, like Bentley and Madvig, with so little discrimination that he often laid them under contribution when they were patently "aiming in haste at the wrong target". It was high time for a new edition, worn plates or no. Professor Mynors brings to his task a lifetime's study of manuscripts and the problems of textual transmission: it is here that we look first for a new contribution; and if, after a long cool look, we find an improvement in presentation rather than a gain in knowledge, we must remember the unique position of Virgil among classical authors. The intense interest taken in him from the time his literary executors published the Aeneid has caused his text to be the best attested of classical authors; but that same interest produced such a brisk traffic in comparing MSS and collecting variants, that it is extremely difficult to distinguish different streams of the tradition. Of the eight primary MSS of Virgil, three (M,P and R) are reasonably complete, five (A,B,F,G and V) are fragments only. None has been recollated for the new edition, and it is unlikely that any new information of value for the text would have come to light after the monumental labours of Ribbeck and Sabbadini (and the important corrections of H.R.Fairclough in TAPA 63 (1932) 205-29 and M.Geymonat in Memorie dell'Istituto Lombardo 29.3 (1966).) All eight MSS were dated by Sabbadini to the fourth or fifth century; for five of them (A,B,G,P,V), however, Mynors inclines to a later date within this range - 107 - than Sabbadini. The relationship between them is still unknown. The text depends essentially on M, P and R, but P has lost thirty two folia and R seventy seven. Hirtzel (praef.v) drew attention to the intimate relationship between R and the Bern MS a, and Sabbadini (praef.27) to that between P and Guelferbytanus Gudianus lat. 2 .70(Y ) 'which he used where P was defective. Mynors takes the next rationalising step, and having verified the descent of a and y from R and P (after correction) respectively, uses them as suffects where their ancestors are defective (anji they now appear in the rubric of "MSS available" at the beginning of each section of the apparatus). Completely new ground is broken in the new edition with ninth century MSS. Professor Mynors has been active in Paris - and in Bern too. In these two places are concentrated most of the nine MSS whose readings are now reported for the first time (a,b, and c had been used by Ribbeck, and p, of the late eighth century, by Sabbadini). Mynors detects a fagily likeness in a group of three of them (d,h,t) and in a group of four (a(a ), e,u,v), but the laborious work which might prove a family connection has not been undertaken. The unanimous or majority consensus of ninth century MSS (excluding y) is, for the sake of brevity, designated (0 ; and here, "in no few places" says Mynors, the genuine text is better preserved than in the primary MSS. The pulse quickens. Hirtzel (praef.v, note 2), cited thirteen places where "truth or probability" seemed to him to be preserved by the minuscule MSS (not exclusively ninth century). Of these readings, five are not considered true by Mynors (Aen.1,455; 6,609; 10,673; 11,654; 12,221); three are already to be found in the Servian commentary (Ecl.l, 12; Aen.1, 193; 9,455); one (Aen. 8,244) is discovered to be the original reading of M; one (Georg; 2,22) is supplied by Y as suffect for the defective P. Two only survive (Aen.9,657 and 11,382). When we turn to Mynors' own apparatus for the first half of the Aeneid, we discover fourteen places where the reading accepted in the text derives from (a) minuscule MS(S). If we discount spelling confusions (de/di-, Aen.2,398; 6 ,734J propior/proprior Aen. 3,531), and readings anticipated by the Servian commentary (Aen. 2, 387; 6,20), we find only two which depend on ninth century MSS ( A e n . 6 , 96; 6.801; add, if one can have an "authentic" reading in a spurious line, Aen.6 , 242). This is a depressingly small gain from the ninth century MSS, and no gain for the text of Virgil (both readings were known to and accepted by Ribbeck). But, granted that true ninth century readings are few in number, what of their status? Mynors reminds us that the scholars of this age of the Carolingian renaissance were learned; he adds that they almost certainly had access to ancient MSS of Virgil now.r.lost. We are invited to believe that here we may perhaps be viewing the sparse but precious relics of a lost Virgilian Atlantis. We might be persuaded by just one example of a true reading unlikely to be within the conjectural ability of a Carolingian scholar (who may well not have read anything in his life except in Latin). It seems doubtful whether any such can be found, or whether the nine MSS used for the first time can teach us anything except that a small number of easy corrections were communicated by scholars to their friends in the ninth as in any other century. MSS later than the ninth century are deemed by Mynors unable to contribute much, because they are so full of, amongst other things, corrections. - 108 - If anyone should think that a correction made after the ninth century is less valuable per se, he has only to consult Mynors' apparatus to the first half of the Aeneid to be disabused. Five readings (at Aen. 4,217; 5,522; 5, 573; 6,254; 6,900) are adopted for the text from recentiores (as compared with the two, mentioned above, from ninth century MSS). (An interesting casualty of the embargo on post-ninth century MSS is the Prague MS ( A ), now discovered to be two centuries later than was thought). As regards the apparatus criticus: ( 1 ) the most notable change, as remarked above, is in the reporting of ninth-century MSS; in Aen. 8 , fo r instance, there are seventeen such readings (from ninth-century MSS alone) , of which none is a serious contestant against the accepted reading, and none is ever likely to appear in any text. (2) Details of primary MSS misreported by Ribbeck (and so by Hirtzel) are corrected (e.g. the schedae Veronenses rescriptae (V- begin for Aen . 8 at line 14 not line 15; at Aen. 8 , 115 fatus is the reading of P, not of R ). (3) The apparatus is usually but not always helpful in citing the reference to the similar passage elsewhere in Virgil which is the probable source of a variant reading. So e.g. at Aen. 8 , .527 increpat, we can be fairly sure that the ninth-century intonat derived ultimately from Aen. 9, 709. But that variant was already known to Servius, and such interchanges had no doubt already taken place in the text before the date of our primary witnesses. So if, eight lines before (Aen. 8 , 519) , we had been informed that nomine Pallas (Moj Servius) is also the ending of line 121 of the same book, we might be less inclined than Mynors to prefer nomine munere (PRb). (4) The indirect tradition (citations chiefly by grammarians, lexicographers and commentators) is much more fully documented. There are some interesting sidelights on the transmission: a variant in the primary MSS was already known to a scribbler at Pompeii three centuries or so earlier (Eel.2, 56); papyri of the fifth century reveal (as papyri often do) a corruption of the truth preserved on parchment (at e.g. Aen. 4, 459). There are however some inaccuracies: e.g. Aen.8,581 is cited by Servius on Aenc9,480 not 9, 482). (5) Not least important for the user of a selective apparatus is the elimination of the unconsidered trifles picked up by Hirtzel (of the type cumulatu.n munere mitt am Kloucek, Aen. 4, 436), and the incorporation of important and good suggestions, sane .promoted to the text for the first time. In the quality of the text itself, the taste and judgment of its editor make it a great advance on the old OCT. Protests against Hirtzel's edition have intermittently been made. Most notably, in their editions of Aeneid II and IV, and III and V respectively, Professor R.G.Austin and Mr. R.D.Williams together registered a total of thirty one disagreements (from minor orthographic matters to crucial questions of reading and punctuation) with the old OCT; in sixteen cases the reading they would have preferred is preferred also by Mynors. In A e n . 8 I note the following changes. ( 1 ) The punctuation of lines 90, 532 and 533 is undoubtedly correct and a return to sanity. (2) Different readings are adopted at 108 and 223 (both certainly right), 512 (probably right), 75 (uncompelling), 519 (probably wrong). (3) In four places Mynors agrees with Hirtzel where, although delicate problems are involved, a change would arguably have been for the better (lines 205, 555, 633, 672). (4) Two conjectures are adopted for text (211 raptor Wakefield; 588 _it Markland) , neither is indispensably required, both are what one would wish Virgil to have w r i t t e n . - 109 - Other noteworthy conjectures adopted for the text occur at Aen.3, 683i. (Heinsius and Nisbet); Aen. 5, 505 (Slater, recommended by Mackail); Aen.9,579 (Housman), Aen. 10, 366 (Madvig); Aen. 11, 173 (Bentley); Aen.12, 218 (Schrader). In these places the text ails seriously and Mynors adopts the best remedy available. The editor's duty is to present an intelligible text wherever possible, and even if he thinks that a certain conjecture falls short of absolute certainty, it is better to accept it (especially in a "standard" series) than dither on an obelus. Both the obeli in Hirtzel’s text have now disappeared (Aen. 7, 543, and 10, 186); a new one, the only one, has appeared at Aen. 2, 587, where the text depends not on the primary MSS of Virgil, but of Servius). (The Helen episode of Aen. 2, 567 - 588 is printed in the text as is customary. This was the right thing to do while the battle over its authenticity still rages. It was even more right to relegate the prefatory verses Ille ego qui quondam ... to the preface; whatever their origin, nobody sensitive to epic tradition could want the Aeneid to begin with anything but Arma virumque) . Nothing is said in the new OCT's preface about orthography (not even the usual perfunctory remark about being above such things). The briefest explanation of why e.g. the primary MSS' (-) uo- (in e.g. uolneret, diuora) is standardised to (-) uu-, and of why the terminations of Greek proper names have sometimes Greek and sometimes Latin forms, would have been welcome. It is a comparatively unimportant matter, but of interest to students of sound- patterns and sound-effects. A few misprints hit the eye (apparatus at Aen. 6 , 898; text at Aen.4, 91-2); hopefully they will be corrected in an edition bound to be used by many examining boards. * • The above remarks must be regarded not as a review but as a record of first impressions. A work of this size and importance has to be lived with. It shows every sign of improving with acquaintance. Bedford College, London. P.T,EDEN. George E. Duckworth: VERGIL AND CLASSICAL HEXAMETER POETRY: A STUDY IN METRICAL VARIETY. (University of Michigan Press, 1969. Pp. ix + 167, $7.50). Flexibility of the texture of t he hexameter verse is produced by the variation of a number of features. Professor Duckworth has selected the choice of spondee or dactyl in each of the first four positions in the verse and made a statistical study of the incidence of the resulting sixteen variants of the verse-form. He excludes from consideration verses with fifth-foot spondee - an omission which can be justified by their rarity and the added complexity of statistics if such verses were admitted. More attention is paid to Vergil than to other poets, and the Vergilian hexameter is taken as the peak of Latin hexametric composition, but Duckworth has also considered the rest of - 110 - hexameter poetry, from Ennius to Claudian, with not inconsiderable labour and care. It is his intention to obtain a statistical index of the choices of Latin poets and thus to produce a "finger-print" of the style of each poet. Such a characterisation is of interest in itself and should, if accurate, greatly assist the solution of problems of disputed authorship. Part I of the book, together with appended statistical tables, is devoted to the exposition of the statistical basis and findings; the longer Part II draws on these data to illustrate a history of the development of the Latin hexameter. General interest will be more speedily aroused by his discussions in the second part of his work (which also is the easier part to read). Using his statistical studies, he takes the hexameter of Early Latin to be less Homeric than the Augustan hexameter. He gives to Cicero a prominent place in the development of the hexameter, for, if we accept his premises, Cicero’s verse represents an advance on Lucretian technique in the direction of Vergilian technique. Horace is shown to have developed his hexameter technique continually, although Duckworth is properly modest in claiming only a secondary importance for metrical arguments in assigning a late date to the Ars Poetica. Regrettably, such caution is not always evident. In considering Vergil, he is able to distinguish the 'Messianic* Eclogue IV from the remaining eclogues on metrical grounds alone, and he offers reasons for concluding that Aeneid X-XII did not reach the same stage of revision as the preceding nine books. He considers in some detail the metrics of the Appendix Vergiliana and concludes that the Culex and Moretum are probably works of Vergil's youth, whereas the Ciris and Dirae are definitely non-Vergilian and the Aetna is probably a work of the second quarter of the first century A.D. Amongst post-Augustan poets, he finds two distinguishable tendencies: the imitation of Vergil, whose followers have a more spondaic hexameter; and the imitation of Ovid, with hexameters of greater dact.ylic content. But his conclusions spring from his earlier statistical exposition, and this requires rather fuller examination. It is not clear to what extent Duckworth believes the selection of variants to have been under the conscious control of the poet. He does not discuss this question at all, but there is sane unevenness throughout his work since at times he considers that he is dealing with something unalterable (hfence his finger-print analogy) and at times he shows what he clearly thinks to be conscious development in individual poets. Unfortunately, the lack of decision here casts doubt upon one of the uses of the statistical tool - the detection of forgery: for if the variation considered is subject to close control, it can only be used for the detection of poor forgers. Moreover, the ascription to the poet of complete control leads one to seek literary rather than mathematical conditions of differentiation, as Duckworth himself does when he allows his own literary sensibilities to obtrude (to the reader’s advantage) in Part II. Whatever the cause, the statistics adduced, and the statistical tables assembled with such care, do demonstrate differences between poets and within the work of individuals. It is indeed useful to have assembled comparative tables of variation in the hexametric composition of a large number of poets. It is useful too to have indicated some of the contextual restrictions on the repetition of an identical pattern in successive lines (R ), or after an interval - Ill - of one or two lines (NR) . Duckworth shows that in the case of R and NR there are notable differences in the sensitivity of poets to the repetition, illustrated most clearly by the variation of homodyne and heterodyne in the fourth foot. In the Aeneid, Duckworth finds that Vergil introduced a change of stress in the fourth foot where the metrical pattern was repeated in 45 per cent of cases, whereas a change of fourth-foot stress in successive lines elsewhere is found only in 37 per cent of cases. His comparative tables show that Catullus notably lacked this sensitivity. It is here that Duckworth is at his best, since he is able to demonstrate a structurally significant variation which is also clearly motivated and statistically assured. But here too the disadvantage of concentration on one variable becomes obvious. Duckworth is by no means unconscious of other variables, but the complexity of statistical data which took account of all variables seems to have led him to leave them aside. Thus he has little to say about the phrasing of verse and caesurae, and little to say about the localisation of word types, except the post-caesural molossus which produces fourth-foot homodyne and spondee. The author's principal efforts are directed to the establishment of the percentage of occurrence in all verses of the poet's most common variant of the sixteen possible, of the cumulative percentage of the four most favoured patterns, and again of the eight most favoured patterns. His principal, although not sole, instrument of further analysis is the percentage of the first eight patterns. He is thus able to make simple direct comparisons between poets. But one must doubt the real validity of the selection of the first eight, which is a purely arbitrary choice. It is nowhere demonstrated that there is a significant break between the relative frequency of the eighth and ninth patterns in a single poet, let alone in all, and thus the criterion is blunter than it need be. If each pattern occurred randomly, each should occur (over an infinite number of verses) in 6.25 per cent o*f lines. In this context, the occurrence in the Aeneid of the favourite pattern (dsss) in 14.39 per cent is obviously significant, occurring 2.3 times as. often as in a random sample. But further than this, one really needs some index of the absolute occurrence of each other variant, so that a real profile of the work of each poet may be observed. From this, it should be possible to select, not the favourite four or eight patterns in frequency, but those patterns, however few or many, which occur with significant frequency, and also those which fail to occur so clearly that their absence is significant. Such an enumeration must, of course, make comparison between poets rather more complicated than Duckworth's solution, since it is not certain that we shall find the same number of significant patterns in each poet. It is moreover open to the objection that a non-mathematical criterion of significance must be introduced: for patterns five to eight in Vergil Duckworth's figures show us an average frequency of 6.46 per cent, suggesting a clustering of variants close to the random sample index of 6.25 per cent; it is highly probable that inspection would not reveal a cut-off point for significance on statistical grounds alone. Sampling error should also be considered, and the author has made no allowance for this in his work. The statistical validity of the study of the parameters of variation within arbitrarily selected passages of sixteen lines appears sounder: Duckworth considers how many different variants occur in each section of sixteen lines, where the theoretical maximum is sixteen, and produces average numbers per sixteen-line unit for each poet. The resulting index is a useful guide to - 112 - the flexibility of poets. As a whole, this book may stimulate sane interesting discussion of the development of the hexameter form, and it provides a useful starting point towards a closer mathematical study of Latin poetry. However, in my opinion, it is as yet insufficiently refined in its approach to statistical methods to command canplete assent, and the author seems to regard figures in themselves as significant. Yet the book must be carefully studied by any scholar wishing to consider in future the modes of variation of the Latin hexameter. Queen Mary College, D.W.BLACK. L o n d o n . VIRGIL : THE VOYAGE OF AENEAS by D.A.S. John and A.F.TurberfieldfMacmillan, 15s.Od.) The Voyage of Aeneas is a new translation of Aeneid 1-6 by two Classics m a s t e r s . The Introduction (23pp.) gives the usual information about Virgil's Life and Works, etc. The translation (147 pp.) occupies over half the volume. Divided into paragraphs, with frequent headings, this is very readable. Even the most common passages have an uncommon ring (e.g. "here also they shed tears for suffering"). The Notes (81 pp.), all on subject matter, explaining the allusions, are very full, and could perhaps be compared with those in Pope's Homer. The three maps are adequate, if somewhat crowded. ir The Index (disappointingly) is confined to proper names mentioned in the notes, but actually gives cumbersome references to the translation. With many new translations of Virgil, the reader often feels "i have read this somewhere before". This translation has an air of unfamiliarity, and should go down well e.g. in courses demanding a knowledge of Latin Literature in Translation. A translation of Books 7-12 on similar lines would be welcome. D.W.B. LAND OF THE EAGLES by Kenneth McLeish. (Longman, 18s.Od..) . Mr. McLeish has already published one version of the Aeneid under the title The Story of Aeneas (Longman, 8 s.Od.). Land of the Eagles was specially written for younger readers (age 11-14). Basically it is a much-condensed retelling of the Aeneid in chronological - 113 - orcier from the Wooden Horse to the Death of Turnus. But to gain immediacy it is told in the first person by lulus (Ascaniu.s) , who is imagined to be 14 when the story begins. The volume is divided into three "books" - "Troy" (i.e. Aeneid 2), "Carthage" (i.e. Aeneid 1, 3 and 4), and "The Land of the Eagles" (i.e. Aeneid 6-12). Thus, in spite of the title, only one third of the action takes place in Italy. To suit his purpose, Mr. McLeish makes several changes (e.g. Anchises is killed in Carthage, Aeneas discovers Dido's death before he leaves) and several cuts (e.g. the whole of book five and most of book six). The supernatural is minimised - there is no visit to the Underworld and no personal appearance of the gods. The story is well written, and the map and illustrations (by Graham Humphrey) add interest. A volume eminently suitable for the school library. D.W.B. AENEAS, SICILY AND ROMS by KARL GALINSKY. Princeton University Press and O.U.P., 1 9 7 0 . £ 6 . THE GEORGICS OF VIRGIL : A CRITICAL SURVEY by L.P.Wjlkinson. C.U.P.,1969. £4. THE NATURE OF ROMAN POETRY by Gordon Williams, O.U.P. Paperback, 1970. 10/-. Mr. Galinsky's book considers the visual data from antiquity concerning the legend of Aeneas. Valiait warrior, accomplice in the abduction of Helen, fugitive from burning Tioy or founder of Rome, Aeneas in all his roles appears in ancient sculpture anr wall painting, on coins, vases, lamps, mirrors and gems. Mr. Galinsky examines how far Aeneas was a familiar character to the Greeks and Romans, what qualities in hiin commanded admiration, and how his legend was employed in imperial propaganda. At the same time he looks at what is known of the legend in the literary, historical and religious traditions of antiquity. The book is remarkably well illustrated. As an illumination of the background to the Aeneid this work will prove very valuable. On Aeneas in Virgil, Galinsky suggests that the poet was not simply working upon an already crystallised characterisation but actually helped to form the image of ’pius Aeneas' . Considerable space'is given to discussion of the legend's background in Sicily, Etruria and Latium, and of the adoption of this foundation legend at Rome. The last chapter compares the Venus and Aeneas reliefs of the Augustan Altar of Peace as the culminating development of the legend in art with Virgil’s epic, the corresponding poetic culmination. Not the least interesting feature of this book is its demonstration of how compelling a figure Aeneas was to the ancient imagination. We have known for long that Mr. Wilkinson was meditating a work on 'the - 114 - best poem of the best poet'. The long wait has been worth it. This full- length study, the first such on the Georgies in English, correctly sees the purpose of the poem to be not so much the instruction of farmers as the delight of readers. It is the first poem in the whole of literature in which the chief source of pleasure lies in description. The literary, philosophical, political and agricultural aspects of the poem are carefully treated, and there is an excellent chapter on the Nachleben of the Georgies. Rounding off the book are seven appendices, the second of which treats with proper scepticism the ’numerical schematism’ which tws been obsessing some scholars, while the fourth gives a good conspectus of recent literature on the problem of the Aristaeus epyllion (more fully discussed on pp.108-120). Wilkinson suggests that Virgil would have thought an aition for ’Bugonia' a suitaDle ending for a poem on bees, Aristaeus a suitable hero for this aition, and epyllion a suitable form for it. The poet would have looked for a contrasting story to inset in his epyllion, but why Orpheus was chosen is a matter for speculation, as is also to what extent the Orpheus passage or the Aristaeus epyllion carries symbolic meaning for the interpretation of the Georgies as a whole. It is good to have this book. What we now need is a full-dress commentary in English. Last year we reviewed in these pages Gordon Williams's Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry. This year we welcome the paperback version in abbreviated and simplified form. Every sixth-form library should acquire a c o p y . Queen Mary College, H. MacL. Currie. University of London.