DOCSLIB.ORG

The Enduring Mystery of Virgil's Fourth Eclogue

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Enduring Mystery of Virgil's Fourth Eclogue A child is born: the enduring mystery of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue Luke Houghton ‘The last age of Cumaean song has Aeneid 6.791–4 he writes: V in the Vatican combines words from now come; the great sequence of the Virgil’s fourth Eclogue with a line from ‘Here, here is the man you often ages is born anew. Now the Virgin Horace’s Carmen saeculare: hear promised to you – Augustus too returns, the reign of Saturn Caesar, descendant of a god, who In Sixtus’ time the reign of Saturn returns; now a new lineage is sent will once again establish the returns, and Plenty pours wealth down from heaven on high. You, Golden Age in Latium through from her full horn. chaste Lucina, look with favour on fields once ruled by Saturn…’ the child now being born, at whose appearance the iron race first will Motifs from Eclogue 4 have been recy- A light in the darkness cease and the golden race will arise cled in praise of rulers ever since. As throughout the world…’ successors of the first emperor Augustus, This adoption of phrasing and imagery Roman Emperors and Holy Roman Virgil’s fourth Eclogue is one of the from Eclogue 4 to celebrate kings, queens, Emperors after them were regularly strangest poems to have come down to us emperors, dukes, and popes was only one greeted on their accession with acclama- from antiquity. Its exotic, extravagant element in the fortunes of this remarkable tions of the return of the Golden Age and proclamations of peace, plenty, and a new poem. Equally (if not more) widespread of peace and prosperity in the natural world order have been associated with the was the use of the fourth Eclogue in reli- world drawn from Virgil’s lines. The worship of Dionysus, the Eleusinian gious contexts. imperial usurper Carausius, who declared Mysteries, the Sibylline Oracles, and the From an early date similarities had been himself emperor in Britain in A.D. 286, prophecies of Isaiah. Even in the decades noticed between Virgil’s portrait of the issued coins featuring the letters RSR and following the poem’s composition the new Golden Age, in which ‘herds will not INPCDA, which were deciphered only in identity of the mysterious child whose fear great lions’ (Ecl. 4.22) and ‘the 1998 by Guy de la Bedoyère as abbrevi- birth will usher in the renewed Golden serpent too shall perish’ (Ecl. 4.24), and ated quotations from the fourth Eclogue – Age seems to have been a matter of the Hebrew prophecies of Isaiah, in which redeunt Saturnia regna (‘the reign of dispute. It may be that Virgil consciously ‘the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, Saturn returns’, line 6) and iam nova pro- kept obscure the real significance of his and the leopard shall lie down with the kid’ genies caelo demittitur alto (‘now a new description of the wonders that the earth and ‘the sucking child shall play on the lineage is sent down from heaven on will experience in the consulship of Gaius hole of the asp’ (Isaiah 11). When this was high’, line 7). Asinius Pollio – a sensible move, perhaps, combined with references in Virgil’s Certain monarchs and royal dynasties in view of the unsettled political situation poem to the return of the Virgin and the became particularly identified with this of the time. No-one wants to be shown up descent of a miraculous child from Virgilian material: the Hapsburg emper- by events as an incompetent prophet, heaven, ‘who will rule a world made ors, for instance, with their claims to particularly if the other side proves victo- peaceful by his father’s virtues’ (Ecl. universal empire, were frequently saluted rious, and at the time of the Treaty of 4.17), early Christian readers drew the with prophecies of a new Golden Age, Brundisium in 40 B.C., traditionally iden- inevitable conclusion. Virgil became a while Queen Elizabeth I of England, the tified as the occasion for Virgil’s poem, conscious or unconscious prophet of the Virgin Queen, naturally attracted tributes nobody knew quite how things were going coming of Christ, inspired to foretell evoking the return of the unnamed Virgin to turn out. How long would the new events that would not take place until of Eclogue 4 (in Virgil’s poem a reference alliance between Octavian and Mark twenty years after his death. A speech to the virgin Astraea, the goddess of Antony last, and who would emerge as attributed to the emperor Constantine, Justice, who was said to have fled the earth ruler of the Roman world? who made Christianity the official religion at the end of the Golden Age). The title of of the Roman Empire, offers a reading of the 2007 film Elizabeth: The Golden Age the fourth Eclogue along these lines, as a Poetry and propaganda is thus only the latest example in a long prediction of the birth of Christ: ‘Who, tradition of such descriptions of then, is the virgin who was to come [Ecl. Elizabeth’s reign – and similar expres- One result of the vagueness of Virgil’s 4.6]? Is it not she who was filled with, and sions had in fact been used to praise her language in the fourth Eclogue is that the with child of, the Holy Spirit? … Those father Henry VIII and grandfather Henry imagery of this enigmatic poem has been who search deeply for the import of the VII by poets and scholars familiar with the applied in later ages to a bewildering vari- words [Ecl. 4.8–10], are able to discern the use of such language in the courts of ety of individuals and historical situations. Divinity of Christ’. Renaissance Italy and elsewhere in Virgil himself set the pattern, reusing the The view of Virgil – or of the Sibyl of Europe. Even popes got in on the act. A theme of the returning Golden Age to cele- Cumae, who is given as the source for the Latin couplet in the library of Pope Sixtus brate Augustus in book 6 of the Aeneid. At prophecies of his poem (‘the last age of 4 Cumaean song’, Ecl. 4.5) – as a prophet of the Latin word vates, which means both the promised Messiah was to endure for ‘poet’ and ‘prophet’, while the prophecy centuries. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the of ‘the age of gold’ (compare the ‘golden Roman poet Statius tells how he was race’, gens aurea, at Ecl. 4.9) brought on converted to Christianity by reading by ‘the ever-circling years’ (a cyclical Virgil’s fourth Eclogue, the full meaning conception of time comparable to Virgil’s of which was not clear to its author, who announcements of a renewed sequence of for that reason never embraced ages in Ecl. 4.5 and 12), and of the estab- Christianity and so cannot enter Paradise lishment of peace ‘over all the earth’ (see with Dante: Ecl. 4.9, toto…mundo), unmistakably recalls ideas and expressions from You first directed me to Parnassus Eclogue 4: ‘ancient splendours’ indeed! to drink in its caves, and first after God it was you who enlightened me. You acted like someone who goes by Coming around again night, who carries the light behind him and does not help himself, but It may not always be easy to think of our makes people wise after him, when own times as a new Golden Age, but the you said: ‘The age renews itself; long life enjoyed by Virgil’s most cryptic justice returns and the earliest time poem in later art and literature is by no of humankind, and a new lineage means over. Seamus Heaney’s Bann descends from heaven.’ Through Valley Eclogue, first published in 1999, you I was a poet, through you a echoes the fourth Eclogue to express the Christian… (Dante, Purgatory poet’s hopes for peace in Northern Ireland, 22.64–73). and a new opera on the emperor Nero, Neron Kaisar, by composer John Peel with a libretto by M. D. Usher, opens with The ever-circling years Nero’s mother Agrippina singing lines from the fourth Eclogue as she strokes her Another striking result of this reading of son’s face. There is even an instrumental the fourth Eclogue is the appearance of track by the Greek black metal band Sibyls in paintings in churches, holding Varathron with the title Redeunt Saturnia scrolls with quotations from Virgil’s regna. poem. In Rome alone there are no fewer The fourth Eclogue is still very much than four examples of this, to say nothing with us, and while it may no longer be of the Sibyl of Cumae represented on the possible to know what it meant to its marble pavement of Siena Cathedral with author and his contemporaries, the mean- a caption from Eclogue 4. It is often ings it has taken on for different readers in suggested that Michelangelo’s famous later centuries provide ample evidence of figure of the Sibyl of Cumae in Rome’s this curious poem’s continuing power to Sistine Chapel was inspired by the fourth inspire artists and writers who have fallen Eclogue – but in this case it is impossible under its strange but compelling spell. to make out any words in the Sibyl’s book, so the suggestion cannot be conclusively Luke Houghton teaches Classics at the proved. Further instances of quotations University of Reading, UCL and Birkbeck from the poem in religious art can be seen College, London. He is currently working in churches in France, Spain, Germany, on the reception of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue and the Netherlands; the latest example in a number of different times, places, and I’ve come across is an early-twentieth- artistic media, and is hopeful that this century stained glass window in work will eventually contribute to a new Aberdeen.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • THE MYTH of ORPHEUS and EURYDICE in WESTERN LITERATURE by MARK OWEN LEE, C.S.B. B.A., University of Toronto, 1953 M.A., Universi
    THE MYTH OF ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE IN WESTERN LITERATURE by MARK OWEN LEE, C.S.B. B.A., University of Toronto, 1953 M.A., University of Toronto, 1957 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OP PHILOSOPHY in the Department of- Classics We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September, i960 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada. ©he Pttttrerstt^ of ^riitsl} (Eolimtbta FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES PROGRAMME OF THE FINAL ORAL EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY of MARK OWEN LEE, C.S.B. B.A. University of Toronto, 1953 M.A. University of Toronto, 1957 S.T.B. University of Toronto, 1957 WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1960 AT 3:00 P.M. IN ROOM 256, BUCHANAN BUILDING COMMITTEE IN CHARGE DEAN G. M. SHRUM, Chairman M. F. MCGREGOR G. B. RIDDEHOUGH W. L. GRANT P. C. F. GUTHRIE C. W. J. ELIOT B. SAVERY G. W. MARQUIS A. E. BIRNEY External Examiner: T. G. ROSENMEYER University of Washington THE MYTH OF ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE IN WESTERN Myth sometimes evolves art-forms in which to express itself: LITERATURE Politian's Orfeo, a secular subject, which used music to tell its story, is seen to be the forerunner of the opera (Chapter IV); later, the ABSTRACT myth of Orpheus and Eurydice evolved the opera, in the works of the Florentine Camerata and Monteverdi, and served as the pattern This dissertion traces the course of the myth of Orpheus and for its reform, in Gluck (Chapter V).
    [Show full text]
  • Housman Lecture O'donoghue 2018 Final 02.Indd
    UCL DEPARTMENT OF GREEK AND LATIN UCL Housman Lecture 2018 ‘Chosen Ancestors’ Aeneid 6 and Seamus Heaney’s Pieties by Bernard O’Donoghue A.E. Housman (1859–1936) Born in Worcestershire in 1859, Alfred Edward Housman was a gifted classical scholar and poet. After studying in Oxford, Housman worked for ten years as a clerk, while publishing and writing scholarly articles on Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he returned to the academic world as Professor of Classics at University College London (1892–1911) and then as Kennedy Professor of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge (1911–1936). Housman Lectures at UCL The Department of Greek and Latin at University College London organizes regular Housman Lectures, named after its illustrious former colleague (with support from UCL Alumni). Housman Lectures, delivered by a scholar of international distinction, originally took place every second year and now happen every year, alternating between Greek and Roman topics (Greek lectures being funded by the A.G. Leventis Foundation). This is the tenth Housman Lecture, and it took place on 14 March 2018. Bernard O’Donoghue is a poet and an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. Cover images: Attic black-figured amphora: Aeneas’ flight from Troy © The Trustees of the British Museum HOUSMAN LECTURE ‘Chosen Ancestors’ Aeneid 6 and Seamus Heaney’s Pieties Bernard O’Donoghue A complete translation by Seamus Heaney of Aeneid 6 had long been rumoured, so its posthumous appearance in 2016 was a major event. Heaney had said that he wanted to produce a ‘poetic remaking of Book VI’, by contrast with his more dutiful translation of Beowulf, which he said to begin with he did ‘not know or love enough’ to remake poetically.
    [Show full text]
  • Title: Midas, the Golden Age Trope, and Hellenistic Kingship in Ovid's
    Title: Midas, the Golden Age trope, and Hellenistic Kingship in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Abstract: This article proposes a sustained politicized reading of the myth of Midas in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It argues that Midas stands, first, as the embodiment of failed, Hellenistic kingship, with its ostentatious display of wealth and heralding of a new Golden Age, and, second, as a warning against the infectious “love of gold”, to which Roman politicians are far from immune. While the capture of Silenus and the golden touch episode link Midas with the tropes of Hellenistic kingship, his involvement in the competition between Pan and Apollo raises questions about the tropes of Roman imperial power itself. 0 Midas, the Golden Age trope, and Hellenistic Kingship in Ovid’s Metamorphoses It might be heaven, this static Plenitude: apples gold on the bough, Goldfinch, goldfish, golden tiger cat stock - Still in one gigantic tapestry – Sylvia Plath, In Midas' Country Ovid provides the fullest and most elaborate account of the myth of Midas that has come down to us from Classical Antiquity. His version conflates what must have been three different myths involving the legendary Phrygian king: first, his encounter with or capture of Silenus, second, the gift of the golden touch, which turned into a curse, and third, his acquisition of ass’s ears –– in Ovid’s version as a punishment by Apollo for his musical preferences. Throughout the narrative (11.85-193) Midas emerges as a figure of ridicule, a man unable to learn from his mistakes1. Despite the amount of criticism that has focused on the Metamorphoses, this episode has attracted remarkably little attention.
    [Show full text]
  • Augustine College Course Descriptions | 2018
    AUGUSTINE COLLEGE Course Descriptions 2017-2018 1 1 | PROGRAMME 1 THE ANCIENT WORLD Introduction 3 1 Art in the Ancient World 5 2 History of Christian Thought 1 8 3 Beginning Latin 1 12 4 Literature in Western Culture 1 13 5 Philosophy in the Ancient World 15 6 Science, Medicine, & Faith 1 18 7 Reading the Scriptures 1 20 8 Trivium (Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric) 24 9 Seminar | Augustine’s Confessions 27 2 | PROGRAMME 2 THE MODERN WORL D Introduction 29 1 Art in the Modern World 31 2 History of Christian Thought 2 34 3 Beginning Latin 2 38 4 Literature in Western Culture 2 39 5 Philosophy in the Modern World 42 6 Science, Medicine, & Faith 2 44 7 Reading the Scriptures 2 46 8 Seminar | Music in Western Culture 48 PROGRAMME 1 The Ancient World Very often tradition is understood as a negative force: it THE ANCIENT WORLD programme, which covers is what holds us back. If you go to university to study a the period from roughly 3,000 BC to 1400 AD, is an subject in the humanities (say, history, philosophy, or attempt to bring back to college education the vital art), the odds are that a part of your learning will elements of ancient thought that are so rarely taught involve appreciating how traditional ideas obstructed today (even, surprisingly, in Christian colleges). As progress or the whole development of an art or a study. Christopher Lasch observed already thirty years ago, You will indeed see that traditional ideas did just that in science, but this is taken to deliver a verdict on “In the space of two or three generations, tradition itself, not on the proper role of tradition.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Birmingham Closure and the Book of Virgil
    University of Birmingham Closure and the Book of Virgil Theodorakopoulos, Elena DOI: 10.1017/9781316756102.016 License: Other (please specify with Rights Statement) Document Version Peer reviewed version Citation for published version (Harvard): Theodorakopoulos, E 2019, Closure and the Book of Virgil. in C Martindale & F Mac Gorain (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil. 2nd edn, Cambridge Companions to Literature, Cambridge University Press, pp. 226-240. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316756102.016 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal Publisher Rights Statement: “This material has been published in The Cambridge Companion to Virgil edited by Charles Martindale and Fiachra Mac Gorain. This version is free to view and download for personal use only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © Cambridge University Press.” General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. The express permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for any use of this material other than for purposes permitted by law. •Users may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication. •Users may download and/or print one copy of the publication from the University of Birmingham research portal for the purpose of private study or non-commercial research. •User may use extracts from the document in line with the concept of ‘fair dealing’ under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (?) •Users may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain.
    [Show full text]
  • “Eclogue IV” Virgil (37 B.C.E.) POLLIO Muses of Sicily, Essay We Now a Somewhat Loftier Task! Not All Men Love Coppice Or
    “Eclogue IV” Virgil (37 B.C.E.) POLLIO Muses of Sicily, essay we now A somewhat loftier task! Not all men love Coppice or lowly tamarisk: sing we woods, Woods worthy of a Consul let them be. Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung Has come and gone, and the majestic roll Of circling centuries begins anew: Justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign, With a new breed of men sent down from heaven. Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom The iron shall cease, the golden race arise, Befriend him, chaste Lucina; 'tis thine own Apollo reigns. And in thy consulate, This glorious age, O Pollio, shall begin, And the months enter on their mighty march. Under thy guidance, whatso tracks remain Of our old wickedness, once done away, Shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear. He shall receive the life of gods, and see Heroes with gods commingling, and himself Be seen of them, and with his father's worth Reign o'er a world at peace. For thee, O boy, First shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth Her childish gifts, the gadding ivy-spray With foxglove and Egyptian bean-flower mixed, And laughing-eyed acanthus. Of themselves, Untended, will the she-goats then bring home Their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield Shall of the monstrous lion have no fear. Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee Caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die, Die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far And wide Assyrian spices spring. But soon As thou hast skill to read of heroes' fame, And of thy father's deeds, and inly learn What virtue is, the plain by slow degrees With waving corn-crops shall to golden grow, From the wild briar shall hang the blushing grape, And stubborn oaks sweat honey-dew.
    [Show full text]
  • The Standing of the Soul: the Search for a Middle Being Between God and Matter in the De Statu Animae of Claudianus Mamertus
    The Standing of the Soul: The Search for a Middle Being between God and Matter in the De Statu Animae of Claudianus Mamertus Author: Steven Robert Cain Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:105066 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2016 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of Philosophy THE STANDING OF THE SOUL: THE SEARCH FOR A MIDDLE BEING BETWEEN GOD AND MATTER IN THE DE STATU ANIMAE OF CLAUDIANUS MAMERTUS a dissertation by STEVEN ROBERT CAIN submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May, 2016 © copyright by STEVEN ROBERT CAIN 2016 ABSTRACT THE STANDING OF THE SOUL: THE SEARCH FOR A MIDDLE BEING BETWEEN GOD AND MATTER IN THE DE STATU ANIMAE OF CLAUDIANUS MAMERTUS Steven Robert Cain Advisor: Dr. Stephen Brown This thesis is intended as a complement to Fr. Ernest Fortin’s Christianisme et culture philosophique. In that work, he examined the De statu animae of Claudianus Mamertus and its affinity to the thought of the Neoplatonic philosophers (especially Porphyry) in order to make its doctrine more clear. But he also looked at it to see the greatness of philosophical spirit that its author possessed, a remarkable spirit considering the time in which he wrote. Though Fr. Fortin’s work is quite thorough, there are some aspects of the De statu animae that are treated only slightly or not at all.
    [Show full text]
  • Paulo Maiora Canamus / 89 SUKANTA CHAUDHURI This Is Not a Passing Phase Succeeded by a Happier Age
    Paulo maiora canamus / 89 SUKANTA CHAUDHURI This is not a passing phase succeeded by a happier age. There is fear of more violence to come, in a passage of dense political allusion: Paulo maiora canamus: Hoc superi prohibete nefas: non caedibus hydram Crescentem innumeris patriae sed viscera ferro Appetet, The Transcendence of Pastoral hesperio satiari sanguine gliscit. (Boiardo 674) in the Neo-Latin Eclogue (May the gods forbid such an evil as this, that the sword comes to be plunged into our fatherland's entrails rather than into the hydra, growing with countless acts of slaughter: it is avid to be glutted with western blood.') The fourth of Boiardo's ten Latin eclogues begins with an invocation to Urania, though in rather apologetic vein: Alongside Boiardo's invocation of Urania, heralding a paradoxical vein of political and martial pastoral, we may place an invocation to Calliope in Tu, dea, ... "Amyntas," the first Eclogue by the Dutch Catholic poet Jakob de Slupere or Uranie, mecum silvas habitare casasque Sluperius. This is the more remarkable as there is no epic material in de Ne pudeat... (Boiardo 673) Slupere's poem. Its core is a love-lament, set in an elaborate narrative and reported at several removes, of the shepherd Amyntas, whose beloved Aegle (Let it not shame you, goddess Urania, to dwell with me in country cottages.) is married to the unsavoury Pamphagus. This pastoral lament is set within a real-life, or at least realistic, journey by the poet and his friends. The clear After all, says the poet, Apollo too tended cattle.
    [Show full text]
  • PLACE, PROPHECY, and POWER in AENEID VIII by Ricardo Andres
    ROME’S BUCOLIC LANDSCAPES: PLACE, PROPHECY, AND POWER IN AENEID VIII by Ricardo Andres Apostol A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Classical Studies) in The University of Michigan 2009 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Joseph D. Reed, Chair Professor Ruth S. Scodel Associate Professor Benjamin Acosta-Hughes Associate Professor Frederick R. Amrine copyright Ricardo Andres Apostol 2009 Table of Contents Chapter I. Introduction 1 II. Echoes from the cave: Bucolic allusion and the Cacus episode 15 III. Lucumque diemque: Time, place, and the shield 53 IV. Saturn and the Golden Age 101 V. The Bucolic Metropolis 143 VI. Conclusion 175 Bibliography 180 ii Chapter I Introduction This dissertation was born of an observation and an intuition; the former, that Aeneid book VIII is filled with bucolic imagery; and the latter, that this was such a patent and recurring feature of the text, that it could be no accident. After all, book VIII is where Aeneas comes face to face with Greek Arcadians, who were associated with the bucolic tradition from its inception. This line of research is important because it would explore how Vergil goes back to his earlier work and builds upon it. From these observational roots springs the basic organization of this work. Each of the next three chapters deals with an instance of sustained bucolic allusion in the text (the story of Hercules and Cacus, the grove in which Aeneas receives the Shield, Evander’s story of Italian prehistory and the Golden Age), analyzing it in terms of its intertexts and formal characteristics in order to develop a reading of the passage that takes the bucolic material properly into account.
    [Show full text]
  • Vergil Redux: Transitional Elements from Vergil's Eclogues And
    Vergil Redux: Transitional elements from Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics adapted by 21st century poets By Abigail Siegel A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of Classics University of Manitoba Winnipeg Copyright © 2020 by Abigail Siegel 1 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgments 3 Introduction 4 Chapter 1: Transition into the Golden Age 14 Powell’s Golden Age 22 Wilson’s Golden Age 25 Wronsky’s Golden Age 32 Chapter 2: Vergil’s Transitional Figures 37 Alexis 39 Orpheus 42 Hermes 44 Chapter 3: The Pastoral in Decline 49 Powell’s Decline 55 Wronsky’s Decline 60 Wilson’s Decline 67 Conclusion: The Future of Vergilian Pastoral 74 Bibliography 81 2 Abstract This thesis examines the ways in which three 21st century poets adapt Vergilian themes and text. There has been scant study of 21st century Vergilian poets, and so I take this opportunity to discuss such poets as a supplement to studies of previous poets in previous centuries. I analyze the 21st century poets’ uses of Vergil’s transitional themes from the Eclogues and Georgics, specifically ideas of the Golden Age, uses of transitional characters, and decline of the pastoral. The first chapter discusses Vergil’s uses of both the agricultural and Hesiodic Golden Ages, which the modern poets adapt and make relevant in 21st century contexts. The second chapter highlights three characters from Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics, Alexis, Orpheus, and Hermes, and analyzes how they are adapted from Vergil as heralds of either the Golden Age or decline.
    [Show full text]
  • Virgil (70–19 BCE)
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Departmental Papers (Classical Studies) Classical Studies at Penn 2010 Virgil (70–19 BCE) Joseph Farrell University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers Part of the Classics Commons Recommended Citation (OVERRIDE) “Virgil.” In Michael Gagarin, Elaine Fantham, et. al (Eds), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2010). This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/126 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Virgil (70–19 BCE) Abstract Roman poet. The biographical tradition for Virgil is extensive, including a few fantastic elements and stories probably invented to explain specific aspects of the poet's work. But there is no reason to doubt the attested dates of the poet's birth (15 October 70 bce) or death (21 September 19 bce). He was born near Mantua in a village called Andes. His father must have had money if he had his son educated at Cremona and then at Milan, as is attested. It is possible that the family, like many Transpadani (those who lived north of the River Po), had recently acquired equestrian rank from Julius Caesar; Caesarian politics is a theme throughout Virgil's oeuvre. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Classics This other is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/126 Virgil - Oxford Reference Oxford Reference The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome Edited by Michael Gagarin Publisher: Oxford University Press Print Publication Date: 2010 Print ISBN-13: 9780195170726 Published online: 2010 Current Online Version: 2010 eISBN: 9780195388398 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70–19 BCE), Roman poet.
    [Show full text]
  • Servius in the Carolingian Age: a Case Study of London, British Library, Harley 2782
    Servius in the Carolingian Age: A Case Study of London, British Library, Harley 2782 O'Sullivan, S. (2016). Servius in the Carolingian Age: A Case Study of London, British Library, Harley 2782. Journal of Medieval Latin, 26, 77-123. https://doi.org/10.1484/J.JML.5.112081 Published in: Journal of Medieval Latin Document Version: Peer reviewed version Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights Copyright 2016 Journal of Medieval Latin This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:25. Sep. 2021 Servius in the Carolingian Age: A Case Study of London, British Library, Harley 2782 Sinéad O’Sullivan Queen’s University, Belfast Abstract In Harley 2782, Servius’s late antique commentary on Vergil was transmitted as an independent text, edited, corrected, glossed, marked for mythological information, provided with NOTA monograms and headings, as well as interspersed and augmented with scholia adespota and non-Servian material.
    [Show full text]