Amphora? by Margaret A

A publication of the American Philological Association Vol. 1 • Issue 1 • Spring 2002 What’s in a Name? Unanswered Questions What’s in an Amphora? by Margaret A. Brucia and by Father M. Owen Lee Anne-Marie Lewis, Editors eep in the vaults of the Vatican wary of entrusting one of their deathless e are pleased to introduce the first DLibrary there rests a lordly, treasures to my mortal hands. They Wissue of Amphora, the new Ameri- venerable manuscript called the looked on me suspiciously as one who Codex Palatinus. It is the oldest manu- was in pursuit of an esthetic experience, can Philological Association (APA) out- script to contain virtually all of the writ- not a scholarly one. Well, they were reach publication. In selecting and solicit- ings of the poet Vergil, who lived out right. ing articles, we have used our mission his lifetime in Italy just before the birth But in the end, they brought the statement as our guide: of Christ. Usually, with a Latin author fourth-century tome to my assigned from antiquity, we are lucky if we have desk and carefully placed it on my This publication aims to convey the a manuscript as close to him as the assigned lectern. I was given detailed twelfth century. But with Vergil, the instructions, which I was careful to fol- excitement of classical studies to a most quoted and loved of all ancient low. My hands trembled as they broad readership by offering accessi- writers, manuscripts from the sixth and touched, my eyes misted as they ble articles written by professional fifth and even the fourth centuries have scanned, those ancient pages. The scholars and experts on topics of survived. Florence and Verona and familiar Latin lines, in beautifully clear classical interest that include litera- Sankt Gallen have some of them, but capital letters, looked out at me search- ture, language, mythology, history, the others rightly reside in Rome, in the ingly across the centuries. library of the popes. Rightly, for Vergil’s Here first were Vergil’s Eclogues: culture, classical tradition, and the greatest work, the Aeneid, is the epic of Titure, tu patulae. The words whispered arts, and by featuring reviews of rele- Rome, of its ambivalent past and its and rustled and sang in their hexame- vant books, films, and Web sites. long future. It is also an epic of spiritual ters. These are the young Vergil’s little Sponsored by the Committee on Out- fatherhood, of the pius Aeneas, the faith- pastoral poems, half set in a never-never reach and supported by the APA, ful Aeneas. So it is fitting that the land he called Arcadia, half set in the this new, semi-annual publication will noblest copies of the poem rest in the devastated Italy of his own day, a land library of the spiritual leader whom his torn apart by a century of war. The be for everyone interested in the people call father, who has sometimes Eclogues are an invitation always to read study of ancient Greece and Rome. been named Aeneas, and who has Vergil as a metaphor. In them, the Engaging and informative, this eight twelve times chosen for himself the young poet wonders, “Will our world to sixteen-page publication is intend- name Pius. And it is fitting that the heal itself, or will it give way to the self- ed for a wide audience that will Codex Palatinus lie in the heart of the destructive forces within it?” Beneath include professional classicists, pres- city it proclaims will live forever. their delicate surfaces, the ten Arcadian One year I taught in Rome. In fact, I miniatures of shepherds and satyrs and ent and former classics majors, inter- taught Vergil’s Aeneid there, to young swains dramatize a great moment in his- ested academics and professionals in American students. And that year I real- tory, a time between war and peace. other fields, high-school teachers and ized my ambition to see the Codex They all but predict the imminent birth students, administrators in the field of Palatinus. Doing so was not exactly of Christ. But we can never be sure of education, community leaders, and easy. I had to convince the serious what they mean. They are elusive and anyone with a strong interest in or librarians in the Vatican that I was, if not subtle and sad. The promise of rebirth a serious scholar, serious at least about is there in Arcadia. Death is there too. enthusiasm for the classical world. seeing the great Vergilian manuscript. And here, before my eyes as the The librarians were understandably continued on page 2 Our mission statement explains the purpose of our publication, but our one-word The Amphora and Ancient Building on Sand? Literary title reveals more. Why (besides the play on Commerce ...........................................................4 Interpretation and Textual Criticism ...........................................................10 Elpenor’s Last Exit .......................................4 AmPhorA and American Philological Associ- Film Reviews: Teaching and Reading ation) have we selected this name? “Ulysses” (1954)..................................................10 Classics after 9/11 .........................................6 As familiar to the Greek world as to the Web Site Reviews: Book Reviews: The “Dir”: An Adventure in Roman, the ubiquitous and versatile Classics and the Cinema.........................7 Imperial Biography......................................12 continued on page 3 Inside Let the Music Be Heard: The Case Guidelines for for the Oral Performance of Contributors................................................12 Greek and Latin Literature.................8 Unanswered Questions continued from page 1 cate their ambivalent sense of history. Berlioz, named for Hector, the great- pages turn, are Vergil’s Georgics: Quid and wept the world’s tears, the lacrimae est Trojan of them all, caught some- faciat laetas segetes. Instructions on plow- rerum, prophetically for them. It also thing of Hector’s Asiatic spirit in that ing, tending vines, breeding livestock, knew, this song, that the tears it wept remarkable march with its swirling caring for bees. Love of the land. A would always be inanes – insufficient. triplets. Surely he had the sound of belief that a providential power is alive Vergil’s Aeneid shaped the poetry of Vergil in his head when he wrote it. in the world, a power that needs man to Ovid and the prose of Tacitus. Augustus Vergil’s meter is fashioned from a kind work its purposes. Vergil, now in his used it as his conscience, Hadrian to tell of triplet, the dactyl. Three syllables – thirties, thinks he may have been too the future. One book of it moved Saint a long followed by two shorts, as in the pessimistic before. Rebirth is a possibili- Augustine to tears, one line of it sent names Jupiter, Romulus, Hannibal. The ty. Civilization can survive the destruc- Savonarola into monastic orders. Some dactylic hexameter is a rhythm that in tive impulses in man. World peace has of it found its way for a while into the Vergil’s hands can be made to sound been won, and Italy has begun to rework canon of sacred Scripture itself. For barbaric and quick, as when the Trojan its countryside. But then, to end his Dante, the author of the Aeneid was cavalry thunders across the dusty plain: Georgics, Vergil tells a story we opera maestro and autore, a guide through the quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula lovers know well: how Orpheus past and the world beyond. Michelange- campum. It can also suggest processional descended to the world of the dead to lo, painting the Sistine Chapel, gave grandeur, as when Vergil says: tu regere bring back his Eurydice, and won her, Vergil a parallel place with the Bible in imperio populos, Romane, memento. That and, through human frailty, lost her. The telling of man’s fatal flaw and his future line means “Remember, O Roman, it poet uses myth to wonder again about promise. Siena and Florence shaped will be your mission to rule the world.” rebirth and survival, and he finds, again, their histories, Milton and Tasso fash- When Berlioz first parades his royal mostly sad and ambivalent answers. ioned their epics under Vergil’s influ- Romans-to-be, the Trojans, across the (And here pages of the manuscript have, ence. Young Bernini, helped by his stage, the music is truly Vergilian. It I see, fallen away across the centuries.) father, sculpted Aeneas escaping from suggested to one critic “the warriors Finally, before my eyes, there is the Troy with his father on his back. Young who march in angular profile across great Aeneid. The panoramic story of the Berlioz, helped by his father, trembled some ancient sculpted frieze.” True Trojan hero Aeneas, who survives the with emotion when he read, in Latin, of enough, but as Berlioz has his Trojans fall of his city and leads his followers Dido gazing upward, searching for the sing at the moment, Attendez les accents! – over the sea to Carthage and then to light before she dies, and finding it. that is to say, “Listen to the rhythms!” Italy, who descends to the world of the All his life Berlioz was haunted by The music is not just sculpture. It is dead to glimpse his future, and then the Aeneid, and near the end of it (from meter. It is the rhythm of Vergil’s fights long, agonizing wars to win his 1856 to 1858), he wrote, as an act of prophetic line: Tu regere imperio populos peace. This longest and last of Vergil’s homage, Les Troyens. Not all of the … It is the rhythm of the very first line works is the saddest and most ambiva- Aeneid, just incidents chosen from little of the Aeneid, a line you may still have lent of all.

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