Note on the Country Festival in Tibullus II. I
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The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Note on the Country Festival in Tibullus II. i W. Warde Fowler The Classical Review / Volume 22 / Issue 02 / March 1908, pp 36 - 40 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00000901, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00000901 How to cite this article: W. Warde Fowler (1908). Note on the Country Festival in Tibullus II. i. The Classical Review, 22, pp 36-40 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00000901 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 128.122.253.212 on 12 Apr 2015 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW In conclusion, what have we to gain by excess of time devoted to classics was in> adopting these methods, if as we confess they itself a curse, as, instead of employing it in will increase rather than decrease our work ? the legitimate study of the language, the 1. We shall awaken the interest of the schoolmasters of the day so elaborated the boy. Few men will deny that the average work, and so widened the field of study, that boy hates Latin as it has been taught in even when practically nothing else was taught, the past. I believe that by a change of only the really clever boys derived much method quite elementary Latin may be benefit. Now that the time allowed by the made one of the most attractive lessons of modern time-table is so short, it is impera- the day. tive that we throw overboard some of the 2. Knowledge gained in this way is quite lumber. different from that gained in any other way. 5. Let me set down exactly what, as a A Latin sentence becomes a piece of real teacher of the modern method, I claim. language; it is not a problem to be solved Give me 3! hours per week in school, and by the identification of verb, subject, object ij out of school, and at the end of 18 and so on. As all its teaching is based months 80 per cent, of an average class of directly or indirectly on classical Latin, boys beginning Latin at 11 or 12 will know nothing will be taught that is not to be the declensions and conjugations and the found in a text that the boy is likely to read. principal parts of the most important verbs; 3. If, as in the great majority of cases, the they will be acquainted with the chief uses boy will not proceed to a university, there to of the subjunctive and the easier forms of follow up his classical studies, he will still Indirect Speech; they will be able to trans- possess something tangible, viz. the power to late with ease a simplified form of Caesar or, translate straightforward Latin comfortably with a little help, the original text; they will and fluently. He will not have spent his be able to answer, in Latin, questions asked whole school life in laboriously laying a in Latin on the subject-matter of the book, gigantic foundation destined never to hold and the fluency with which they can speak the scantiest of superstructures. He will long sentences of Latin, and their keenness leave school possibly with a desire to extend for the subject, will more than compensate his acquaintance with the classics, and will for the lack of some of that elaborate know- not throw aside his books with a sigh of ledge which examination-papers have, I fear, relief for toil and drudgery ended. made appear most essential. 4. Some change must be made if Latin is FRANK JONES. to remain • a school subject at all. I am King Edward's School, inclined to think that in the past the very Aston, Birmingham. NOTE ON THE COUNTRY FESTIVAL IN TIBULLUS II. i. A CHANCE remark made by an old friend this festival m. Fasti i. 657 foil, and evidently during the recent meeting of the Classical had Tibullus' poem before him as he wrote : Association at Cambridge put me upon read- hence it has been inferred that both poets ing Tibullus more carefully than I had done were writing of the same festival. But a before. When I reached the first poem of careful examination of Tibullus' poem has the second book, I found from the notes in strongly inclined me to believe that Ovid is Dr. Postgate's valuable edition of selections only adopting his language and adapting it that I was reading about the Feriae Semen- to the Sementiuae; and that Tibullus' festival, tiuae, or lustratio pagi after the winter as the older commentators thought, belongs sowing: a festival not fixed to a date, but really to the spring and not to the winter, usually held in January. Ovid described and is one of the same kind as the lustratio THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 37 agri described in Virgil Georgic i. 339 foil, of January. Varro R.R. i. 36 makes it clear (which description Tibullus must have known that from midwinter to February 7 (Favonius) well), and as the Roman Ambarvalia, and there was no hard work of that kind done the lustratio of the farm described by Cato on the Italian farm; and Columella i 8 init. in de Re Rustica 141. On returning to the says that prudent husbandmen would not poem after a few days' interval and a corre- plough within fifteen days of the shortest spondence with Dr. Postgate, I am confirmed day, which shows that, as we might expect, in this opinion. there was difference of opinion and practice, My reasons are as follows : but that it was unusual to plough at the very 1. The poem taken as a whole seems beginning of the year. I gather from Col- clearly to belong to spring rather than to umella ii. 5 that ploughing was resumed for winter. Dr. Postgate for obvious reasons spring sowing, where that was the practice, was obliged to cut it short at line 65; when the days grew warmer. but if it be read to the end, where Amor 5. My last reason is suggested by Dr. plays a prominent part, it will be noticed Postgate in a letter: the yictim in Tibullus' that the operations of Amor in the farm are ritual is an agnus (line 15), and lambs alluded to in lines 83-84. Those operations, would hardly be old enough for sacrifice as we learn from Varro R.R. ii. 2 foil., all in January. This is not indeed a convincing took place, except in die case of the goats, argument, as lambs might he sacrificed when in the spring or early summer. they were not less than seven days old (Plin, 2. The first line, which gives a kind of title N.H. &. 206, Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung 2 to the poem, contains the words 'fruges iii . 171); and the usual time for lambing, as lustramus et agros.' Though I do not wish Varro tells us (R.R. ii. 2), was the end of to lay too much stress on the word ' fruges/ autumn. But remembering the line in yet it would certainly suit the time of the Virgil's description,' turn pingues agni et turn Ambarvalia in May, when the corn was mollissima vina,' I am inclined to guess that beginning to show the ear, better than the the agnus of Tibullus was not a lactens but a, Sementiuae in January; we may remember more fully developed lamb. that the word is used jn Virgil's description Supposing that these reasons are suffi- (line 345): ciently cogent to make it at least very doubt- Terque novas circum felix eat hostia fruges. ful whether Tibullus is writing of January and the Sementiuae, there still remains a 3. While Odd, in his description of the serious difficulty, which seems to have per- JSetaentiuae, writes of the seed only and the plexed all the commentators. In order to crops that are expected, Tibullus includes in indicate the nature of this difficulty, I must his ritual a prayer for man and beast also, quote the whole of the passage in which the as did Cato in bis description of the lustra- ritual is described: tio agri: Cernite, fulgentes ut eat sacer agnus ad aras Di patiii, purgamus agros, purgamus agrestes: uinctaque post olea Candida turba comas, uos mala de nostris pellite liniitibus, di patiii, purgamus agros, purgamus agrestes: neu seges eludat messem fallacibus herbis, uos mala de nostris pellite liniitibus, neu timeat celeres tardior agna lupos. neu seges eludat messem fallacibus herbis, neu timeat celeres tardior agna lupos. 4. Lines 5-^9 suggest that ploughing has tune nitidus plenis confisus rusticus agris been going on: this is to cease on the day ingeret ardenti grandia ligna foco, of the festival, and the oxen must rest. turbaque uernarum, saturi bona signa coloni Now ploughing was going on more or less ludet, et ex uirgis extruet ante casas. for the greater part of the year, and at differ- euentura precor: uiden ut felicibus extis ent times according to the nature of the signified placidos nuntia fibra deos? soil and the climate (see Columella ii. 4 and In the first two of these lines we see a 8); but if there was a time in the year when procession, in the next four we have a prayer, ploughing did not go on, it was after the answering in a condensed form closely to winter solstice and during the greater part that in Cato 141; but what are we to make THE CLASSICAL REVIEW of the next four, beginning 'tune nitidus and sportive vernae will build houses or plenis confisus rusticus agris'? At first I huts, is much nearer to the date of Tibullus' was inclined to take them as referring to festival, and will in fact come off either something done on the spot, i.e.