^rotetiitnss; of the Virgil &otietp, J2o. 3

1963 - 1964

PROCEEDINGS OF THE VIRGIL SOCIETY

19§>§4

(Editor : H.MacL.Currie,M»A·, Queen Mary College, Univ. of London, Mile End Road, London, E*1*)

Contents

Page

Lecture No»63 ’’Virgil the European” Presidential Address by MICHAEL GRANT,C»B.E.,M.A.,Litt.D », F.S. A. 1

Lecture No«6^+ "Virgil and the Silver Latin Epic11 by J,H.MOZLEY,M#A. 12

Lecture No.65 ’’Principio caelum” (Aeneid vi.72^-751) by Miss M .R.ARUNDEL,B.Litt. 27

Lecture No.66 ’’The Miniatures of the Vatican Virgil Manuscript” by Professor H.BUCHTHAL,Ph.D.,F.B.A. 35

Lecture No.67 ’’Virgil’s Home Revisited” by K .VfflLLESLEY,M.A. 36

Book reviews by W.F.Jackson Knight,P.T.Eden and H.MacL.Currie bk

(Duplicated and distributed for the Virgil Society by H.W.Walden and Co,Ltd. 18 Station Approach, Clapham Junction, London, S.W.11» - September 196^)

V CS» Lectures,, No«63

VIRGIL THE EPBOEEAN

Presidential Address, delivered to the Virgil Society on- 22nd February 1964 by Michael Grant, C.B.E» ,M»A«,Litt,D<,F»S.A»

It is indeed a great honour to have been elected President of the Virgil Society, and I appreciate this very particularly. I feel especially privileged to succeed Sir John Lockwood - whom I nowadays see in a different capacity, as chairman of Northern Ireland's equivalent of the Bobbins Committee* I can only hope that my contribution will not be too unworthy of him and of other distinguished past presidents* Virgil was profoundly aware of a historical division between Europe and Asia, and of the Trojan War as a symbol of that division and an event in its history. When Juno denies that the war was her fault, she explicitly describes it as a struggle between the two continents; quae causa fuit, consurgere in arma Europamque Asiamque et foedera soluere furto . (Aen. X, 90-1) !fWhat was the reason why Europe and Asia violated their pact of peace by an act of treachery and rose up in arms?” Earlier, too, the war had been seen in the same terms, when Ilioneus told Latinus of the hates by which the continents of Europe and Asia were impelled to clash with each other, quibus actus uterque Europae atque Asiae fatis concurrerit orbis * (Aen. VII, 223-4)* This is not the place to tell how and when this idea of the continents had come into being* But it is extremely clear that the wars of the Greeks against the Persians had been the decisive factor, Aeschylus in his Persae repeatedly equates the Persians with Asia, and Herodotus, in the very first sentence of his Histories, deliberately asserts, as the main theme of his work, the identification of the Persian Wars with the millennial struggle between Europe and Asia, It is an attitude which he attributes, in origin, to the Persians, for it is they, he says, who !lclaim Asia for their own”; Europe and the Hellenic race they hold to be separate from them. Herodotus also maintains that the mythological heroines Io and Europa (note the rJime) had symbolised earlier stages of this same rivalry between Europe and Asia - and also particularly Helen; and indeed that the Trojan war was itself a struggle between Europe and Asia (1,4). And Thucydides, too, sees it in the same light as a first example of pan-Hellenic collective action (1,3)· Yet the Iliad,

* For other identifications of Troy with Asia see Aen, II, 557; III, 1; XI, 268; XII, 15, - 2 - although describing Troy's Carian allies as speaking barbarian tongues (II., IIi 86?), does not really see the war as a struggle of Europe against Asia; perhaps its attitude is closer to the findings of archaeology which suggest it was rather a fight .between, two coalitions both straddling the Burope-Asia borders. Yet Hesiod refers to 'Panhellenes1 as opposed to ’dark men', and already from the time of the Hesiodic poems Panhellenic feelings were beginning to run with increasing strength. As Herodotus implies (I, 6), it was probably the sixth century aggressions of the Lydian Groesus against the Greeks which helped to define the conception of a millennial inter-continental struggle, since the frontier which Croesus established corresponded for a short time with the boundary between Europe and Asia, thus emphasising the gulf between the two; and so already at the beginning of the fifth century Hecataeus had explicitly divided Europe from Asia, with fateful results. Once the point had been established» the continental antithesis was recalled to the attention of the Greeks again and again, Xenophon is conscious of it in 396 and 366 B.C. (Hell., Ill, 4,3, VIII, 1,34) and later in the fourth century Isocrates was never tired of making the same point; while a marble relief in the Villino Chigi at Rome represents the forces of Alexander the Great and Darius III, at the battle of Arbela, by personifications of Europe and Asia respectively. The contrast was, of course, geographical and political. But quite early on, too, it was made, as attempted political con­ trasts often are made if you can manage it, into a moral contrast as well. The whole atmosphere of Aeschylus’ Persae owes a great deal to the un-Hellenic and un-European barbaric luxury and brutal perfidious authoritarianism of the Asiatics: in other words, he stresses the inferiority of Asia to Europe. Ussani pointed out that the second book of the Aeneid shows considerable signs of a knowledge of the Persae, and the theme of Asian perfidy and luxury is quite often apparent throughout Virgil's work. Perfidy was one of the original troubles of Troy, since a long chain of reprisals had been started when Prima's father Laomedon had cheated the gods of their fee (Virg. Georg, I, 501 f; cf. Her. Od, III, 3, 21 f); and Trojan perfidy reached even more notorious heights in the behaviour of Paris with regard to Helen. Eastern luxury appears in the Aeneid on both temporal planes, that of Augustus and that of the first Trojan immigrants. On the shield of Aeneas fashioned by Vulcan, there is the famous contrast between Augustus leading his Italians into battle and Antony with his eastern riches and his eastern wife, too: hinc ope barbarica uariisque Antonius armis ... regina in mediis patrio uocat agmina sistro. (Aen, VIII, 685, 696) But when we turn back to Virgil's Aeneas, there is a curious paradox; for, although he is the revered forerunner, eastern luxury is at first not a perquisite of his enemies but of his own people. Indeed the opponents of the Trojans in the poem are allowed to identify Aeneas himself, and his followers, with this same theme of oriental Asian luxury and effeminacy. Thus when Numanus, the bridegroom of Turnus' sister, wants to be unpleasant about the Trojan invaders he stresses the virile austerity of the Italians, commenting most unfavourably on the other hand upon the Trojans, with their embroidered saffron and gleaming purple and sleeved tunics and ribboned turbans, and sloth­ ful habits and love of dancing and unmanly worship of the Great Mother (Aen, IX, - 3

598 ff). In precisely the same spirit Iarbas also., equally hostile to Aeneas, had described him to Jupiter as an oriental bride-ravisher with a eunuch train, wearing a Phrygian cap on his scented hair: cum semiuiro comitatu Maeonia mentem mitra crinemque madentem subnixus. (Aen, IV, 215 ff) These, it is true, are hostile witnesses, but they are but applying to Aeneas the famous contrast between virile Italy and the decadent east which Virgil has himself stressed in general terms, in the second Georgic (II, 136-9)· And then again, immediately after the prayer of Iarbas, Virgil makes the same point in another way. Jupiter sends Mercury to order Aeneas to leave Carthage, and Aeneas is found wrapped in oriental luxury - not Trojan this time, but still from Asia since the lavish robe which he is wearing is Tyrian purple given him by Dido, and from her too is his sword starred with yellow jasper: illi stellatus iaspide fulua ensis erat, Tyrioque ardebat murice laena. (Aen. IV, 261 f) Dido, who had given him this eastern splendour , is eternally famous for the ambiguity with which Virgil's equivocal compassion has endowed her. Though apparently not introduced to classical literature before Timaeus, her literary descent from Circe and Calypso is obvious, And yet Virgil has struck off on his own, telling quite a different story from his older or younger contemporaries Varro or Livy or Dionysius of Halicarnassus: transforming her totally into the great magic figure whom the world has never forgotten. Far from being a proto­ type of that Roman bogey Cleopatra, she is full of noble qualities tragically interwoven into her love - there is no trace in her of the traditional Punic perfidy in which Romans so deeply believed (Cic. Off* I* 38 etc,). Nevertheless, Virgil explicitly adopts the tradition, probably started by Naevius, by which she is the ancestor of Roman-Carthaginian strife through her unknown would-be avenger, Hannibal: exoriare, aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultori (Aen. IV, 625) At the very outset of the Aeneid this theme had been announced (Aen· I, 19 f)» and in the very year of Virgil’s death a triumph was again being celebrated over Africans (L* Balbus over the Garamantes). So Dido is not for Aeneas; and she is not, like him, regarded as an ancestor of European history. Virgil separates her from Rome's European future by condemning the jewelled sword and the purple, and by stressing that such luxuries, like Dido herself, are Tyrian and Phoenician. For it had been the Phoenicians, so Persians told Herodotus, who had actually founded the feud which Asia cherished against Europe - long before the Trojans came into it at all - by kidnapping Io from Argos (Herod* I, 1). However tempting Dido’s appeal that the two eastern races should unite (Aen* I, 574), and however pathetic her fate, Aeneas by escaping from her achieved, as Sir Maurice Bowra has put it, ’’both a moral and a physical escape, an escape from foreign rule and from the corrupting influences of the east". Before he escaped, Aeneas had indeed been, tainted with this oriental corruption:, the Trojans are made to bear a heavy load of guilt, as well as being shown to be on the anti-European side in the age-old struggle of east and west. This creates rather a puzzling situation* For, guilty though Troy is, a large part of the Aeneidi purpose lies in the assertion that Troy has to be on the right side since, through Aeneas, it was the ancestor of imperial Rome itself. Into the complicated history of Rome's Trojan legend many strands are woven* Long before Rome became imperial the travels of Aeneas in the west had taken shape* The Trojan clan of the Aeneadae were the ruling family at Eryx in Sicily, and perhaps as early as Stesichorus (sixth century B.C.) Aeneas was recorded as landing somewhere in-Italy, probably Cumae. Statuettes showing Aeneas carrying Archises from the ruins of Troy come from Veii, very close to Rome - they are probably of the sixth or fifth century B.C.; and then in the fourth century Timaeus was perhaps the first to state distinctly that Rome was founded by Aeneas, who was used, therefore, by the Greeks as the symbol of Rome's supremacy over Latium. It was quite customary for the Greeks to provide eastern founders for Italian regions or cultures; a famous example is the tradition - whether right or wrong is not the point here - that the Etruscan civilisation was established by Lydian immigrants* Particularly popular, however, was the provision of such founders from that classic and basic source of mythology, the Trojan War, and the epic cycles relating thereto. For instance Odysseus (Ulixes) has manifold Italian associations, and so have other Greeks, such as Diomedes. Nor is Aeneas the only Trojan in this category: his compatriot Antenor is mentioned by Virgil, and given great prominence by Livy as Aeneas' counterpart in their own northern Italy. But the- story of Aeneas gained particularly strong roots, helped by the idea that the Penates of Lavinium, to whom the magistrates of Rome performed ancient rituals, were identical with divinities of Samothrace, which had a traditional connection with Troy. In the third century B.C. Romans increasingly saw advantages in their Trojan legend. For one thing it was essential for their pride to have a part in the epic sagas which were the nucleus of x^estern civilisations: to be associated with them brought Rome into the classical community. Yet when their enemy Pyrrhus of Epirus laid claims to Achilles as an ancestor, it was convenient for the Romans that their tradition placed them on the anti-Greek side. Perhaps this seemed even more convenient in the.first Punic War when they found· themselves allies of the Sicilians, some of whom themselves included Aeneas among their ancestors, so that they could now be greeted as kinsmen (cf. Zon. VIII, 8, p. 382). And it was then, writing about the war and very conscious of the ancient Punic pressure on Sicily, that the poet Naevius evolved or developed the idea that the Trojan battles were in a wider sense the preface to the Carthaginian struggle, in that they were a sort.of divine and mythical dress-rehearsal to Roman imperialism in, which Aeneas foreshadowed contemporary defenders of Rome's mission against the alien foe* And so the story was elaborated by Fabius Pictor, who took part in the Second Punic War and wrote in Greek to explain Rome *s.institutions and policies to the Greeks; and in the mid-second century B.C. Cato the elder in his Origines (Fr, 8 ff Jordan) gave the whole tradition historical solidity and strength. Aeneas, who to Homer was φίλος άθανάτοισ-ι θεοϊατιν(ΐΐ.22.347) .i-as· a suitable patron for pious Rome. - 5 -

However, by Cato's time Rome's government, as well as its historians, had long become fully alive to the possible political advantages of this Trojan ancestry* For they had by now formed a decided habit of intervening in the Greek world as heirs (and sometimes avenging heirs) of the Trojans. Thus Flamininus, as reconciler of East and West, had been compared with Aeneas; and we find C* Livius Salinator in 190 B.C. making a special visit to Troy to receive deputations there (Livy XXXVII, 9)· Friendships were promised to Hellenistic monarchs by Rome on the condition that the Trojans, being Rome's kinsfolk, were exempted from taxes (Suet. Cl* 25s 3); and the Greeks them­ selves seem to have taken the initiative in pointing out that descendants of the Trojans had become the conquerors of Macedonia (Plut, Pyth, Orac. 11). But the whole process gained added momentum when Caesar became important, because the Julii claimed descent from Venus, Aeneadum genetrix through her son Anchises. And so the ancient scene of Anchises being carried by his son Aeneas appears on a coin of Caesar of about 50 B.C. Next Augustus, although evasive about the less inspiring features of his adoptive sonship of Julius, nevertheless stressed his role as diui filius, and so also the descent from Aeneas which this gave him- That is why Virgil gives such weight to Ascanius, who as lulus was the etymological link in the descent: Iulius a magno demissum nomen Iulo» (Aen. I, 288) And so Augustus too became heir to the promises of glory -made to Aeneas by Poseidon in the Iliad (II, XX, 293-308). The legend of the origins of Rome and the legend of the origins of the Julian, now the Augustan, house are conveniently identified: the Trojan-descended Penates and Trojan-descended Augustus are one» Aeneas is not the same as Augustus - Virgil is far too thoughtful a poet for that - and yet there is the strong hint that both had come out of the east to save the west. The solemn phrase of Aeneas* departure from Asia with his divine companions, Penatibus et magnis dis (Aen, III, 12), is deliberately repeated for Augustus at his crowning victory at Actium: cum patribus populoque, Penatibus et magnis dis· (Aen, VIII, 6?9) And yet, as I pointed out earlier, Troy’s reputation, even in Virgil and Horace, was in another sense smirched and suspect, as heir to un-Italian oriental Asiatic luxury and greed. Here is a strange contradiction between two apparently irreconcilable legendary themes, the Asiatic immorality of Troy and the descent from this same Troy of Rome and Augustus himself* Why does Virgil set himself the bold task of blending these contrasted traditions, and how does he reconcile them? He does it by insisting that the people and descendants of Aeneas will be, not Trojans, but Trojans raised and transformed Into new beings* The bracing future ahead of them is foreshadowed when Aeneas, arriving upon the site of Rome, is welcomed by Evander to his dwelling. This early symbol of Italian sovereignty Is a humble place, humile tectum, angusti fastigia tecti, very different from the Tyrian splendour of Africa or the luxurious grandeur of Troy; and the moral is pointed by Bvander's exhortation that his guest should not scorn such poverty but should scorn wealth instead: aude, hospes contemnere opes (Aen, VIII* 364), — 6 -

And indeed Aeneas was now ready to receive such injunctions, since his awe­ inspiring initiation in the Underworld had brought with it a transfiguration of the old Troy:' it is left behind for ever, in spirit as in place. This is the explicit condition upon which Juno brings her hostility to an end - that the Latins of Rome and Italy keep their name, their language and their customs, and that Troy’s fall be accepted as final: . sit Romana potens Itala uirtute propago; occidit, occideritque sinas cum nomine Troia. (Aen. XII, 827 f) To this Jupiter agrees: the Trojans shall be' an element in the race but shall b e .absorbed within it * commixti corpore tantum .subsident Teucri. (Aen. XII, 835 f) Now one of the most famous poems of Horace, the third Ode of his third Book, dwells at length upon this successful plea of Juno that the fall of Troy must be accepted and that it must never be, revived or rebuilt. Whichever was· written first, the references of Virgil and Horace coincide exactly in sentiment. My wrath will cease, says Horace's Juno, and Rome will prosper, provided that a wide sea rage between Troy and Rome - dum longus inter saeuiat Ilion Romamque pontus - and provided that the cattle trample over the tomb of Priam and of Paris: dum Priami Paridisque busto insultet armentum (Hor. Od. Ill, iii, 37, kO f). What is the purpose of this emphatic insistence ascribed to Juno? It used to be said that Horace was protesting against a rumour that Julius Caesar was planning to move the capital from Rome to Troy or Alexandria,. (Suet. Jul. 79). But that view is now recognised as highly improbable, for what both poets are surely saying is something on, the spiritual not the1 topographical plane: namely that the condition of the success of Troy’s colony,; Rome, is precisely the abandonment of the bad bid features which had been endemic in Asia and the east and which had caused Troy’s downfall. There must be-no repetition of the luxury and greed which Horace, like Virgil, ascribes to Asiatics (Od. II, xii, 21 f) - the whole of these six Roman Odes is a warning against greed - and which Augustus was trying to suppress by example and. legislation (unsuccessful, apparently, but that is not the point). But the warning is moral in a .wider sense. The horrors of the Civil Wars just past are seen as a direct heritage and consequence of the original Trojan perfidy: already in the first Georgic, before they had ended, Virgil had cried that Roman life blood had atoned long enough for Laomeden’s perjury at Troy (Georg. I, 501 f); and Horace refers to Helen as a mulier pergrina (Od, III, 3, 20), a reference which could not fail to evoke memories of Cleopatraj denounced by Virgil as Antony’s Aegyptia coniunx:. But Horace has his own way of making it clear, as Virgil does, that Aeneas had the Messianic role of providing a fresh beginning:, for whereas Paris had been the fatalis incestusque iudex:, the epithet given to Aeneas in the Secular Hymn of 17 B.C. is exactly the opposite, castus (Carm. Saec. 42) - the man whose .Righteousness is favoured by the gods, and the man who will give Trojan survivors greater things them Troy; daturus plura relictis. So Aeneas, and now Augustus, are giving a new start, and what is scrapped from old Troy includes not only its - 7 -

oriental greed and perfidy, but evils nearer home resulting from the Civil Wars - and indeed the evils of the old Soman order itself, the anarchic Republic which Augustus was claiming to renew and replace by a Republic of pristine Italian virtue. Although so great a poet could never be merely a propagandist, it would be equally idle to suppose that Virgil*s hearers and readers were intended to remain oblivious of contemporary great events; and particularly of events in Asia· For what Asiatic Troy had been to Agamemnon, what Persia had been to fifth century Hellas, so Parthia was to the Romans of the Augustan age. Indeed, the very year preceding Virgil’s death, while the Aeneid was being written, had witnessed the culmination of all Augustus* effortsto solve the Parthian question. The settlement was, as hindsight tells us, a failure, but it was hailed with every sort of exultation at the time: and Virgil explicitly refers to it, or looks ahead to it, by celebrating the return by the Parthians of the standards captured by them thirty-three years earlier from Crassus. Augustus* coinage commemorates their recovery with the phrase SIGNIS PARTHICIS RECEPTIS, and Virgil too explicitly refers to the event, either in anticipation or after it had happened, when he speaks of demanding the standards back: Parthosque reposcere signa (Aen. VII, 606). So this is another specific way in which Augustus, at the very .date when the Aeneid was nearing completion, succeeded Aeneas as reconciler of Europe and Asia. It was obviously tempting, indeed reasons of internal politics may have made it necessary, for Augustus to have celebrated this diplomatic settlement as a victory» That is why one,of the arrangements with Parthia, by which kings of Armenia should be Roman vassals, is roundly described on his coinage as ARMENIA CAPTA, only a little more truthfully than when Antony, after being heavily defeated in Armenia, had inscribed his coinage ARMENIA DEVICTA. On other occa­ sions Augustan moneyers are perhaps a little more polite, putting ARMENIA RECEPTA (not CAPTA), as they had put ASIA RECEPTA after Actium. However, imperial pub­ licists could clearly not be expected to see the millennial dispute between Europe and Asia ending in anything other than a military success, (I expect the Parthian king said the same to his own people when he returned home). But here again Virgil offers a more subtle, conciliatory note towards Asia. He chooses as the instrument for this idea the goddess who was the very symbol of oriental un-Roman worships, Cybele the Great Mother. Although her image, to allay popular panics, had been brought to Rome in 205-20^ B.C. and lodged on the Pala­ tine, she seemed so foreign that Romans were still in Virgil’s day not allowed to serve as her priests and attendants (Dion. Hal* Ant. Rom, II, 19)* This will not surprise any reader of Catullus1 sixty-third poem, in which the utterly un- Roman, orgiastic nature of her cult is startlingly portrayed. Virgil on the other hand places her within the Roman framework as a loved and revered figure. The image, it was said, had only been obtained from Pessinus in the first place by reminding the Phrygians of their kinship with Rome through Aeneas (Herodian I, 11, 3); and Virgil's Aeneas feels very close to her. Enemies such as Numanus sneer at her eastern-style worship, but far more impressive is her kindliness in giving Aeneas a forest to make his ships from (Aen. IX, 85 ff) - prosit nostris in montibus ortas (Aen. IX, 92), and on his arrival in Italy her name, identified with Jupiter's mother Rhea, is invoked along with Jupiter himself; Idaeumque Iouem Phrygiamque ex ordine Matrem inuocat. (Aen. VII, 139 f) And then it is Cybele again who intercedes with Jupiter to save Aeneas* ships (IX, 83 ff). sends her nymphs to give him counsel (X, 219 ff), and is prayed to by him before the battle (X, 252 ff); and finally Anchises in the Underworld - 8 - explicitly compares Rome, with her seven hills and worldwide empire, to the Great Mother riding in her chariot through the Phrygian cities: laeta deum partu, centum complexa nepotes, omnis caelicolas, omnis supera alta tenentes. (Aen. VI, 785 f) Cybele was a neighbour of Augustus on the Palatine, and Virgil is at pains to show that she was a venerable and glorious neighbour, fully integrated into the Roman tradition. Bat in this conciliatory, liberal gesture he was considerably ahead of the official thought of his time. For it was not until the reign of Claudius that the priesthood of Cybele was opened to Roman citizens, and not until Domitian that her temple and statue join the numerous other deities on the coinage, an exceptional type (not repeated for many years) vihich coincides, as such types often do, with an anniversary of the temple’s foundation, in this case its tercentenary. So Asian Cybele is brought by Virgil into the Roman European framework, just as the Asian Trojans themselves were transfigured and absorbed into that same picture. But the problem of Europe versus Asia, in his times, was really a minor problem compared to a far more serious issue within Europe itself: namely, the marked antagonism between the two main living components of Europe, the Greeks and the Romans. Until the Romans became powerful, the Greeks had been Europe - its creators, and its sole creators* Now civilised Europe held two peoples, Gauls, Scythians and the like were not Europeans but outer barbarians whom it was part of Rome's mission to bring within the civilised zone (cf. Dion. Hal. VII, 70). Greece and Rome alone were Europe, and the most complex of all Virgil's reconciliations is concerned with the relation of the Romans to the Greeks. For in this first century B.C., although educated Romans deeply admired Greek culture, there was an abysmal lack of sympathy between the living representatives of the two nations. The dependence of the very occasional Roman litterateur upon an · obedient and convenient Greek literary freedman must not be allowed to obscure the fact that most Romans hated the Greeks, and .the Greeks hated them. The idea of Rome having 'liberated' the Greeks was hopelessly discredited; and the battle for conciliation waged by Fabius Pictor and Polybius had been completely lost. For in addition to all the grudges of the second century B.C., from Sulla onwards the cities of Greece endured appalling sufferings at Roman hands, and the Romans for their part blamed the Greeks very substantially for giving aid and comfort first to Mithridates, whom they helped to massacre a great many Italians, and then to the pirates whom certain Greeks did, indeed, assist in shattering over a large area Mediterranean communications, security and trade. Such are the reasons why Cicero, who,adored Greek culture, relied upon Greek scribes and men of learn­ ing, and praised their representatives such as Archias, can devote the Pro Flacco to an exceptionally savage outburst against the characters of contemporary Greeks, Finally, the Greeks had sided, of necessity or voluntarily, with Antony at Actium. Things could scarcely have been worse. Yet now, in the time of Augustus, when general reconciliation was in the air, it seems to have been fairly widely appreciated that some attempt at a rapprochement between Greece and Rome was one of the most urgent of necessities. Augustus proclaimed it, in the field of religion, by his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries (in the last year of Virgil's life); and by his special emphasis upon Apollo, who besides possessing an ancient link with the Julian House (Serv. Aen. X, 316) and with Troy (Aen. VI, 56, 69 f) was the dazzling symbol of Hellenism and, through his temple on the Palatine, the focus of what was intended to be a new Greco-Roman unity. In the field of art, again, there was that extraordinary government-sponsored synthesis of Greece and Rome, that equipoise between Greek form and Roman content which achieved some of its best results in the portrait busts of the ruler himself. The writers, in their different ways, make the same point. However Roman your patriotism, it was a matter of honour if you were a lyric poet to say you were the descendant of Alcaeus, if you were an elegist of Callimachus, and so on. The contemporary historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus goes much farther when he repeatedly argues that each successive wave of the immigrants who later became Romans actually were Greeks (I, 11, 61, 89, VII, 70), Livy, more subtly, has nothing to say of the Greeks playing a part in Rome’s foundation, but instead introduces the story that one of the early kings of Rome was a Greek - Tarquinius Priscus to whom he attributes Corinthian origin (Livy, I, Jk) i possible evidence of a real migration of Corinthian nobles (driven out by Corinthian tyrants) at a time when, as archaeologists have shown us, Italy was inundated with Corinthian pottery, Virgil’s treatment of the Greeks is a good deal more nuance. In the first place he does not attempt to palliate the old warlike, hostile tradition by which the Romans have taken vengeance uj>on the Greeks for the Sack of Troy, The time will come, says Jupiter, when the Trojan race shall lord it over Mycenae and Argos - uictis dominabitur Argis (Aen, I, 285); and Anchises foretells Rome's conquest of Corinth and of the Macedonian King Perseus, who claimed descent from Achilles (Aen, VI, 839)« Nor does Virgil resort to any solution nearly so simple as Dionysius' discovery that, the Romans really are Greek after all - or as the rival tradition about Aeneas, that he was not a good friend to Priam (II. XIII, ^f60; XX, 179-86, 306), and (like Antenor) was guiltless of the Trojan War (II, XX 297)· And yet there is immense warmth and beauty in Virgil's picture of the Greek Evander, who dwelt on the site of future imperial Rorne; to many, this eighth book of the Aeneid is as haunting and marvellous as any other part of the poem. One important thing about Evander is that he is an Arcadian, and as Dr# Gossage so rightly noted in a paper to this Society one of the mainsprings of Virgil's poetic inspiration was his inner need for Arcadia's peace and security. Not fandi fictor Ulixes, not perfidious Helen, but this Arcadia was the Hellas which Virgil wanted as an addition and corrective to Rome; these were the Greeks through whom, as the Sibyl prophesied, an unexpected way of salvation would be opened: uia prima salutis, quod minime reris, Graia pandetur ab urbe» (Aen. VI, 96 f) Evander openly proclaims this Greco-Trojan and Greco-Roman reconciliation by declaring that, Greek though he is, he will never, as long as Aeneas lives, proclaim Troy as vanquished (Aen, VIII, ^70 f). And then later, the message of reconciliation is explicitly taken up by one of the actual Greek participants in the Trojan War, Diomedes. Settled now at Argyripa in Apulia, he declares to the Italian envoys that he has no further quarrel with Troy since the city has fallen - and that he has forgotten the past and takes no pleasure in it. - 10 -

nec mihi cura Teucris ullum post eruta bellum Pergama, nec ueterum memini laetorue malorum. (Aen, XI, 279 f) Instead, the emphasis is on partnership between Aeneas and the Greeks, and Virgil deliberately and persistently dwells on those common elements which, despite the bloodthirsty past, could make such a partnership possible. . In the first place, a most solemn role in the fateful initiation and (so to speak) Europeanisation of Aeneas is played by Cumae, which was held to be, and probably was,'the oldest Greek colony in. Italy or Sicily (Str* 2^+3), and was also believed - again perhaps rightly - to have played a decisive part in the Greek influence which was later so apparent to Rome. Furthermore Cumae’s Apollo, from whose shrine Aeneas passes to the underworld, was the counterpart and forerunner of the superb Palatine temple of Apollo founded by Augustus: ipse sedens niueo candentis limine Phoebi. (Aen, VIII, 720) And in the city itself Aeneas had seen, in this same book, another powerful religious link between Greece and Rome, the great Altar of Hercules who had designed to visit Evander's home (Aen, VIII, 362 f) - and to marry his daughter (Dion, Hal, Ant. Rom, I, 32, 1), There was no doubt of Hercules' Greek origin, as everyone could see by noting that his ritual remained Greek in character; it was reputed to be the only foreign ritual accepted by Romulus. With Hercules, Apollo and Cumae as elements in a shared tradition and as religious and cultural intermediaries, Virgil has set the stage for Rome's reconciliation with Greece. It is Anchises who reveals, in what are perhaps the most famous, lines in the Aeneid, Virgil's mighty vision of how the two nations- will heal the breach in Europe, united to advance the human race, incomplete without each other: the Romans supreme in beneficent government., yet the Greeks also openly recognised as excelling in a great sector of this new. composite civilisation, namely all the arts and the things of the mind: excudent alii spirantia mollius aera’ (credo equidem), uiuos ducent de marmore uoltus, orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent. (Aen. VI, 8^7 ff) Contrasts of opposing qualities appealed to the ancients, but here Virgil brings the contrasting elements together as complementary, essential ingredients in the same picture. The climax is with the Romans and their rule; for Virgil was no vague cosmopolitan idealist, but a Roman and a nationalist - and a realist,. Yet the part reserved for the Greeks was a glorious one, and could mean, or could have meant, a practical working out of the friendship and partnership dreamt of by Fabius Pictor and Polybius. As always, Virgil was far ahead of his times, and particularly of official thought. The Roman emperors achieved many great things, but a dignified partnership between living Romans and living Greeks was not one of them. Probably Augustus was too much of an Italian to achieve more than the semblance. And then, throughout the centuries which wore to follow, information can be *· 11 gathered at many periods - fragmentary it is true, yet cogent - indicating that the mutual distaste, indeed hatred, of the Greeks and Romans continued to rage or smoulder. You will remember Juvenal’s Graeculus esuriens (3, 78), and on the other side one hears Dio Chrysostom being painfully aware how the Romans still laughed at Greek failings, which they described as typically Greek (Or. XXXVIII, 36 ff)* Worse still Plutarch, a man not unsympathetic with Rome, unveils the brutal facts of power when he warns his fellow Greeks against the Roman boot on the neck, the dread chastiser, the axe that severs the neck (Praec. Reip. Ger. 813 f)» It was one of the great disasters of history that Rome bequeathed to the future this split right down Europe beside which all intercontinental strife fades to nothing* Europe was Greece and Rome; they were its two forces, of such very different kinds, and they were basically at odds with one another. When Europe came to have two centres, one at Rome and one at Constantinople, this fatal fission became permanent. For it led by gradual but ineluctable stages to the age-old division between the Greek and Roman churches which has kept a raw frontier raw for centuries. When its leaders met the other day they had not done so for half a millennium. It is quite easy to trace the continuity between the ancient hostility, and that ecclesiastical split down the centre of Europe,and its modern perpetuation in the Iron Curtain that has divided Europe in two in our own day, with boundaries not quite the same (indeed Greece is one of the exceptions) yet inherited from that former fission. Though Virgil’s story is fundamentally one of sadness - sombre endurance of suffering, and harsh destiny - his heartfelt all-pervasive hope was union. He told how through Aeneas,and then Augustus, Europe and Asia were reconciled one with the other, and at the same time he told, even more powerfully, how he hoped that the two great elements in Europe itself, Greece and Rome, might come together. And if he were alive now, and saw that this had not, in the end, happened, he still would not despair, for above all he believed in the lives and the personalities and the wills of human beings. Ho felt that they are good and not evil, and he believed, he would still believe now, that their goodness would prevail and achieve the Messianic millennium of the fourth Eclogue, in which there shall be no more any savage beasts, or serpents, or poisons. It was not his fault, it was not for want of endeavour on his part, that his own European civilisation has rcaaincd at variance within itself ever since.

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V,S. Lectures, No,6^,

VIRGIL AND THE SILVER IA TIN EPIC A lecture delivered to the Virgil Society 19th October 1965 by J,H« Mozley, M.A.

The impact of Virgil upon the literature and the thought of subsequent ages has been various and unceasing. Following upon the epic of the Silver Age, with which or with some of which we are here concerned, there is the immense reputation which Virgil enjoyed in the transition from Classical to Medieval times as a master of all the styles, as a treasure-store of all kinds of information and learning, from grammar and philosophy to ritual and bee-keeping. Macrobius in the 5th cent., for instance, says: 'would you hear him speaking with such brevity that brevity itself cannot be more contracted? et campos ubi Troia fuit - looki in a very few words he has consumed and swallowed up a whole city, and left not even a ruin'. Then there is the aetas Virgiliana, as Ludwig Traube called it, roughly the 8th and 9th centuries, when poets such as Ermoldus Nigellus plagiarised most freely from Virgil; this was that so-called Carolingian Renaissance when ecclesiastics playfully assumed or were given names such as Homer, Pindar, and even, as in the case of Modoin, Bishop of Autun, Ovidius Naso. Although Horace succeeds Virgil as the most plagiarised poet in the 10th and 11th centuries, and Ovid’s influence seems greatest in the 12th and 13th, yet the Virgilian epic was revived even then, and we have the names of Walter of Chatillon, who wrote an Alexandreis, and our own countryman Joseph of Exeter, whose Bellum Troianum, according to W.B.Sedgwick, beats the Silver Latin poets at their own game. But if the Carolingians laid Virgil under contribution, they were not the first to do so. The poets of the Silver Age (roughly, the last three quarters of the 1st century AD and onwards) were no less open to his influence» Of the Epic poets of the 1st century there are four whose works have survived, those of Lucan, Silius Italicus, Valerius Flaccus and Statius» Of these I shall be mainly concerned with the last two, but it may be of interest to notice some differences between their productions. Lucan's Pharsalia, as we may conveniently call it (his own title is De Bello Civili), is in many ways a complete contrast to Virgil's work; first, it relates contemporary history or nearly so, for Lucan's death in 65 in his 26th year took place not much more than a century after the battle of b8 BC; secondly ,there is no supernatural participation; to have brought in Venus, unavoidably, as she was Venus Genetrix to Julius Caesar and obviously would have had a good deal to say in the matter,would have proved a stale repetition of the Venus-Aeneas theme. Besides, Lucan was too serious for the petty rivalries of goddesses. He was republican in sympathy, and the fall of the Republic on the field of Pharsalus is the theme of the epic. This gives an underlying intensity to the poem, turns Pompey and Cato into martyrs, and lends a bitter irony to the opening address, in which he tells Nero that any horrors of civil war are worth it (tanti) if they lead to a Nero on the throne. The poem thus possesses an urgency like that which we find in the Aeneid, where everything leads up, through whatever doubts and trialst to the hero’s triumph in Italy; and also in Lucretius, whose vision of the universe carries him through all the difficulties of exposition. It excuses Lucan's faults, monotony of rhythm, excessive straining after epigram, and lack of any beauty of description. In his four-line preface to the Prize Poem, "Olympia," which he composed in 1885} Gilbert Murray asks whether he shall write in the style of Virgil or Lucan or Statius» 'Ille Maro deus est' he continues, ‘rapit ignea Lucanum vis; Papinius nostri earminis auctor erit!,P) If Lucan then is fired by his theme, can we say as much of the others? Their inspiration is of a different kind; they descend rather from Ovid in that they write because they have the skill and learning; it is this that inspires them rather than any underlying theme. This judgment nay perhaps be qualified in the case of Statius, as will appear later in this paper, Silius (A.D.26-101) had been proconsul of Asia, and in his retirement devoted himself to literature. He was a wealthy man, owning several country- houses. He was a reverent admirer of Virgil, whose tomb near Naples he repaired. In his epic, he relates the Second Punic War to the extent of 17 books, the longest extant Latin poem. He does not disdain supernatural machinery, and his Juno is as keen a champion of Carthage as she is in the Aeneid, His style is reminiscent of Virgil's* though owing something to Lucan, Pliny says that he wrote "maiore cura quam ingenio" (rather industrious than inspired), Valerius chose a mythological theme. The breaking into new seas that the Argonautica relates is turned into a compliment to the Flavian Imperial house, for the Roman Fleet had lately been exploring the North Sea, In the Prologue Vespasian is begged to look after Roman mariners when he joins the company of the gods in heaven. Valerius was clearly interested in geography, and one would like to know how he proposed to bring the Argo back into the Mediterranean after sending it sailing up the Danube, if he followed his predecessors in this, Statius (circ, Α,0.^5*“96) was a Neapolitan, who enjoyed the patronage of the Emperor Domitian and some rich friends. Son of a poet and a schoolmaster, he was brought up in familiarity with the Greek and Latin Classics, and acquired a remarkable technique in the writing of Latin verse. Apart from the need of flattering his patrons, particularly the Emperor, he had probably little interest in Roman affairs. The subject chosen, the story of Thebes, was one which would display his learning and technical skill; it had been treated by many earlier Greek poets, Antimachus (5th cent, B.C.) in a vast epic, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides in drama, and by Seneca also in his plays Oedipus and Phoenissae. Besides the Thebaid Statius also began an Achilleid, but it was left unfinished, in the middle of the second book. This was also the fate of Lucan's epic, which ends in Bk 10, and of the Argonautica, which ends in the eighth book, for we may perhaps draw this conclusion from Quintilian's words,

(1) Tene, gravis Stati, Cadmeorurnque labores Annaeine modos Vergiliine sequar? Ille Maro deus est, rapit ignea Lucanum vis; Papinius nostri carminis auctor erit. ~ 14 ~ written about A,D, 92, lin Valerius we have lately lost much*, rather than suppose that leaves of the MS were missing, Lucanfs career was cut short by his implication in a conspiracy against Nero and consequent suicide, that of Statius, it would seem, by ill-health. The Epic poets of the Silver Age inherited much from that which preceded them. First, there was the epic tradition itself, with its familiar features, similes from Nature, animate or inanimate, participation in the action by super­ natural beings, either Olympians or personifications of abstract qualities, regular features of the narrative, storms, games, single combats etc. Then they could draw upon immense stores of learning, literary, mythological, historical, and could rely on appreciative readers or listeners to recitals. They inherited also .technique in versification, brought by Virgil to an extreme of sensitiveness, adapted to more superficial and more easily running narrative by Ovid, though debased by the taste for rhetoric and pointed epigram, for which Lucan is largely responsible. Of these poets I can only deal here with the Argonautica and- the Thebaid. Valerius probably planned his epic in twelve books, like Virgil before him and Statius after. His style is in the main Virgilian, but has been influenced by the contemporary taste for epigram and hyperbole, yet he does not go so far in this as Lucan, Besides this he has a real gift for descriptive writing; the lines on the underworld in the first book and the night scene out at sea in the second are examples, and he has expressive phrases, as of Hesione, exposed to the monster, trembling on the verge of tears (ad primos turgentia lumina fletus 2,464), or of the thread of light as the lightning brand passes through the Clashing Rocks (illa volans tenui per concita saxa luce fugit 4,672), or of Medea, troubled she knows not why (castigatque metus et quas alit inscia curas 6.660) and the beautiful simile that follows: "Just as the South wind makes gentle sport as it softly stirs the leaves and topmost branches of the woodland, but soon the ships are feeling all its t errible strength, ’! The action of the deities is constant; Venus- has first to lend her girdle to Juno in order to make Medea interested in Jason and then to go herself in the form of Circe; Mars and Pallas also take a hand, and Boreas feels affronted by the appearance of Argo on the high seas. Of the characters in the story, Jason owes something to Aeneas; he does not of course bear the weight of destiny as Aeneas does; he is simply engaged in a task thrust upon him but rousing no enthusiasm, except where he is inducing Acastus, his young cousin to go with him: 'Lo what mighty tracts of lend, what vast expanse of sky is it granted us to knowi to what great ends are we opening the paths of the-sea, i,168, lines expressing the romance of exploration which, if anything, gives a theme to this epic. But he is primarily concerned to get the job done, and there is no hint of a future destiny, except indeed for the tragedy of his relations with Medea, of which Valerius gives occasional hints, as in Mopsus's oracular utterances in Bk I (207 ff), Jason is a good captain, concerned for the well-being of his men; he can rebuke them if necessary, as in the critical passage of the Rocks, - 15 ■> he can put the situation before them, as when Aeetes requires their help in his war* It is a test of Jason's character when he first faces Aeetes and has to explain his coming. The speech, which owes something to Apollonius, is tactful yet firm, with a hint of force. 'Had I determined to seek this prize by war, I could have had ships and more princes to help me* (5Orpheus, Mopsus, Tiphys and Pollux are all something more than names. Echoes of Virgil are heard in Amycus, the brutal king of the Bebrycuans whom Pollux has to fight, suggesting Cacus, and Absyrtus suggests Lausus or Pallas. References to Roman matters are faint and few compared with those in Virgil; while in the latter we have the Temple of Janus, the Ludus Troianus, the funeral rites of Misenus and the name Camilla, these are part of the back­ ground and theme of the work, organic parts of the fore-ordained course of events, here on the contrary they occur rather by chance· Such references in Valerius are to the Legio Fulminata (12th) on whose shields were thunderbolts, in 6.55s rnor, soldiers of Rome, are ye the first to spread the flash and glare and flaming pinions of the brand'; to the cry 'Mars vigila' uttered by a Roman general in the temple of Mars on a declaration of. war ('keep watch, Gradivus1·); Roman lustrations in Bk.3 and Roman marriage rites in Bk.8, (3*430 and 8,217.) To mention a few borrowings from Virgil, the carvings seen by Aeneas at Cumae and at Carthage, or on the shield of Vulcan, are paralleled by those that Jason sees in the city of Aeetes (5*407), or the paintings on the Argo (1.120). Then, as the ship sails through the quiet night Tiphys like Palinurus falls asleep with disastrous results. Both poets like night scenes; there is a striking one at the end where the fleece glows and flashes in the darkness as it is being carried to the ship (8.120). Hypsipyle in taking leave of Jason reminds one of Dido's words to Aeneas: 'Gc now* she says, "but forget not the land that first folded you to its bosom . . . bring back hither your sails, I - 16 - pray you by this Jason whom jou leave in my womb1 (2,420). In fact she bore twins (Thoas and Euneos). Then there is the passage where Mopsus the seer explains the cause of the crew’s malaise after the battle at Cyzicus (3·377); they refuse to sail, and Jason asks Mopsus the reason; he tells him that, while intentional homicide may result in its victims returning to earth for a while with one of the Sisters (Furies?) to wreak vengeance on the guilty, those, who have committed murder unintentionally suffer for it in their own minds, in a slothful languor that can only be purged by a ritual lustration. In Apollonius the Argonauts are purged, but not till they meet Circe in Italy; there are slight echoes here of Anchises*,discourse in Aen,6, which deals with the same theme of the soul after death, and contains the same doctrine of its fiery origin.. We may now compare two longer passages, those which describe a storm at sea. Eight at the beginning of the Aeneid (1,57^) Aeneas and his men are caught in a storm as they leave Sicily, Juno* angry with the hero, visits Aeolus in his cave, where the winds, "indignantes magno cum murmure montis circum claustra fremunt”» She coaxes him with the offer of a charming nymph for marriage, and bids him ’submersas obrue puppes’. Aeolus ignores Deiopoea the nymph, and says it is for Juno to command, and lets out the winds* After ten vigorous lines of description Aeneas cries that those who died at Troy are happy: why did he not perish there gallantly himself? The storm is further described, the ship breaks up, and 'apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto1. Neptune appears, and rebukes Eurus and Zephyrus ’quos ego - ’, and the famous simile of the mob silenced by the grave senior. In Valerius it is Boreas who complains, for the first ship is defying his domain, and there is a picture of the Sicilian home of the winds. They were formerly uncontrolled, but when their violence broke Sicily off from Italy and Calpe from Libya they were put under restraint. Now they are let out* Virgil’s ’magnos volvunt ad litora fluctus' is enlarged into 'raucoque ad litora tractu unanimi freta curva ferunt’. The Argonauts think the sea is always like that, and are not surprised at their forefathers' refusal to violate it* Suddenly Neptune trident and all ’trifida Neptunus in nasta’ appears and gives permission for Argo to sail, but blames Tiphys and the ship for all the deaths by shipwreck that will follow, Valerius thus (i) makes his points, of the first sailors thinking the sea to be always stormy, and being responsible for subsequent disasters, (ii) displays his geographical interests, in what he says about the straits of Messina and Gibraltar* He puts in details that are intended to make the narrative more lively, as ^^rhen Hercules gazes ruefully at his club, which is quite useless in the storm, or to display the author’s familiarity with mythology; Jason pours libation with a goblet that belonged to Aeson, given him by Salmoneus, who was not yet the madman he became later, when he dared to imitate the lightnings of Jove; or the vessel is supported by Thetis and Nereus ’socer', father-in-law, because Peleus, one of the crew, subsequently married Thetis, The winds are shown us: ’joyfully from the prison burst the Thracian horses, the west wind and the south wind of the night - dark pinions (nocti concolor alas), and the east wind, his hair dishevelled with the blasts and tawny with much sand, Boreas in his plea to Aeolus says ’the thought of my sons moves me not’, for Zetes and Calais were among the crew. Besides the adaptation of the Virgilian phrase just mentioned we have a borrowing, not ineffective, in Valerius's ’ruit igneus aether’ from 'ruit - 17 - ardxcus aether1 of the first Georgic. Finally X would like to quote (in translation) from Valerius1 version of the rape of Hylas (3.510). It was, of course, a favourite theme; we have in Greek, Apollonius, Theocritus and the few lines in the Orphic Argonautica and Propertius in Latin. Valerius has supplied an original feature, for while the others describe the boy as going to fetch water for Hercules1.evening meal ( ΰδωρ έίίΐδδρκιον Theocritus, υδωρ κοτίδόρϋαον Apollonius), and this seems to be implied by Propertius (Hylas preferred gathering flowers to his officium, though no pitcher is mentioned), Valerius sends both Hercules and Hylas hunting; the boy follows a stag, and getting tired refreshes himself at a spring, and is drawn down by the nymph. There is no mention of a ΐΐολυχάνδεα κρωσσόν ' a too heavy pitcher, or of drawing water at all. In the Orphic Argonautica Hylas misses his way and comes to a cave of nymphs of the mere (Νΰμφοαν Χχμναίων ΰ&έ.ος ). Date unknown, but latest of the 5» Valerius’ lines are charming, without trace of hyperbole or artificiality. . Juno wishes to gratify her grudge against Hercules, who has proved superiod to all the labours she has imposed upon him. "Therewith, glancing at the pine-clad ridges of the hills to leftward, she sees a comely troop of huntress nymphs, the pride of woods and waves. Light bows and green armlets have they all, and shafts of myrtle-wood with tight-drawn strap; knee-high are their skirts, and the straying tresses float and fall gently rippling to the band- that confines the hidden breasts. . . . Of these Dryope, hearing the crash of Hercules· advance, as the quarry fled before his shafts, had gone forward to view the havoc of the grove, and was returning to her spring, bringing back from Hercules an awe-struck face. (Juno coaxes her with the promise of Hylas as a mate). So saying she puts up a swift hart through the trackless brush­ wood, right in the lad’s path. . * Hylas adventures, and madly afire for so near a quarry gives chase, while Alcides urges him on with cheering cry. And now both are out of sight, when as the boy presses on and with weary arm threatens a shot the stag leads him far onward to where a bright fountain gushes forth, and with light bound springs clear over the pool. Thus is the lad’s hope baffled nor is he fain to struggle further . . and he sinks beside the pleasant stream. Even as the light that shifts and plays upon a lake, when Cynthia looks forth from heaven or the bright wheel of Phoebus in mid course passes by, so does he shed a gleam upon the waters;, he heeds not the shadow of the Nymph or her hair or the sound of her as she rises to embrace him. Greedily casting her arms about him as he calls too late for help and utters the name of his mighty friend she draws him down; for her strength is aided by his falling weight.* Statius, about b5 to 96 A.D., refers to Virgil in three passages, two in the Silvae, where he thanks his friend Maximus for encouraging him to aspire to the joys of the Mantuan’s renown, and where he tells how he repairs to Virgil's tomb to seek inspiration and to find the sleep which would not come to him - his sonnet-like poem to Sleep is perhaps the best known of the Silvae - and the third at the end of the Thebaid, where he exhorts his poem not to rival the divine Aeneid, but to follow it adoringly at a distance* He clearly had a genuine and reverential feeling for the great Master, and was under no illusions as to the respective values of the works. Epics were in fashion and gave Statius an opportunity of displaying his learning and technical skill. His ~ 18 recitations, as Juvenal tells us, drew crowds to hear him, and his pleasant voice no doubt would do justice to the alliterations and assonances of his verse, often carefully built up through a passage of several lines* Virgil provided him with-a model, which he follows in the outline and make-up of his epic; he has 12 books, catalogues of warriors, active gods and goddesses, games, battle scenes, storms on sea and land, similes Virgilian in character, and a metrical technique that is based on Virgil's, while displaying the influence of Ovid*(1) If the style of Valerius Flaccus may be called post-classical, from its partial reaction from Lucan's excesses, Statius on the other hand carries the rhetorical straining after effect, the morbid sentimentality and love of the horrible, which were to the taste of his audiences, to a degree which has led a recent critic' ' to label him as baroque* He spares no effort to extract every ounce of thrill and emotion from his descriptions, he is fond of the pointed comments, the 'sententiae' that often close a paragraph, and he ptishes language to the limit of intelligibility. He is full of learned mythological allusions* He is devoted to the episode; these of course occur in other epics, for instance the Cacus episode in the Aeneid, but they abound in the Thebaid, and are developed for their own sake, halting the action of the story; such are the account of the ambush set for Tydeus (2*496), the story of the Lemnian women (5 40-498), which occurs also in the Argonautica; he is fond too of the purple patch, or έκφρασής , for instance the description of the Cave of Sleep, a deliberate attempt to rival Ovid (10*84). His battle scenes carry on the epic tradition* Peaceful scenes are rare; one may mention the practice of divination on the hill-top, when Melampus and Amphiaraus inspect together the· flight of birds (3.460), the pretty picture of the child Opheltes lying in the grassy meadow (4*786), or the lines describing Bacchus returning from his wars (4.652). His emotionalism is shown in the laments of Hypsipyle for the child that the serpent has unwittingly killed (5.608), and of Argia for her husband Polynices (12,325)· Such laments are traditional in the epic; we may compare those of the mother of Nisus and the father of Pallas in the Aeneid, or of Helen for Hector in the Iliad. It may be of interest here to . mention that extracts from Hypsipyle*s and Argia's lament are included in the Cambridge Songs, that 10th cent, collection of miscellaneous verse, and also that in the 9th cent. Paris MS of the Thebaid the lines of the former are marked with neums, showing that they were sung. Other MSS containing these passages also have neums, though not the Cambridge MS* I might add that the inter­ pretation of this primitive musical notation is difficult, since they were rather reminders of tunes already known than precise indications telling one what the tune was. In the ca.se of the Puteanus they are very scrappy, so that we must be content with, knowing that Statius was sung in the Dark ages. The indebtedness of Statius to other authors gives a measure of his learn­ ing; Homer, Euripides, Apollonius of the Greeks are his original for various scenes - funeral rites, river battle, night raid, the duel of the brothers, the story of the Lemnian women, though here Statius has elaborated considerably,

(1) See Appendices on these subjects. (2) H. Bardon in Latomus XXI (1962), - 19 -

Of the Roman writers he. has used SenecaTs Phoenissae, and there are occasional borrowings from Ovid and Lucan, Virgil, however, provides the greatest number of parallels;. Adrastus meeting Hypsipyle greets her as a goddess (^.7^), like Aeneas on his first encounter with Dido, the apparition of Allecto while Turnus is sleeping is paralleled by that of Laius to Eteocles (1,90), the reception of Tydeus by Adrastus (1-end) by that of Aeneas,by Evander, There is a good deal of similarity of course in the fighting scenes, the most obvious being the two raids, those of Euryalus and Nisus in Virgil and of Hopleus and Dymas in Statius (10.262). The Argives1 rush to arms in 3.572 etc. contrasts with a like passage in Aen.7.572 etc. Whereas Virgil has 'ruit omnis in urbem pastorum ex acie numerus', and while Turnus urges them to war Latinus feebly protests, in.Statius 'on every side the war-god sweeps countless troops before him - gladly do they leave their homes and beloved wives and babes wailing on the threshold - eager are they to tear away the weapons from the doorposts and chariots from shrines - they refashion for cruel wounds spears worn by rotting rust and swords that stick fast in scabbards through neglect - the shout goes up like the roar of the Tyrrhenian surge or when Enceladus tries to shift his side,* Probably the most extended of the parallel passages is that which describes the exploits of Parthenopaeus. . (9*570). One of the Seven he is an Arcadian, the son of Atalanta (though according to another tradition an Argive); he must therefore be fleet of foot, and accordingly runs in the foot­ race in the funeral games held in honour of Opheltes. The parallel is with the maiden Camilla, to whom we are introduced in the 15 lines that close the 7th Aeneid, which speak of her speed and lightness of foot. Whereas Camilla has the strength and hardihood of a man, Parthenopaeus is a boy with the grace and partly the appearance of a girl (as his name suggests). As a competitor in the footrace,. however, he is the double of Nisus or Euryalus. Nisus is winning when he .slips in -the blood of slain bullocks, and to allow Euryalus to win he throws himself in the way of Salius,.running second. In the Thebaid Idas pulls Parthenopaeus back by the hair when he is almost breasting the tape. This causes a great commotion; the Arcadians utter, threats and the lad weeps passionate tears, whereupon Adrastus has the race run again, and in.separate tracks, adding 'no cheating this time* (fraus cursibus omnis abesto). Apparently Father Aeneas was prepared to overlook the unsporting conduct of Nisus, and we hope Salius was contented with his lionskin. In the fighting there is a difference between Parthenopaeus and Camilla, the latter though 'pharetrata' is equally handy with javelin, battle-axe and bow, she cracks the skull of Orsilochus after a skilful bit of manoeuvring, described, as will be remembered, thus: 'magnumque agitata per orbem eludit gyro, interior sequiturque sequentem'. Parthenopaeus on the other hand is an archer only; not an arrow can go astray, for he has divine shafts which Diana, whose votary Atalanta is, has secretly' substituted for his own. ’Now aims he forward, now shifts from side to side in bewildering change of attack, now flees when assailed, turning nought but his bow to face his enemies'. Camilla, when by a ruse she is challenged to fight on foot and her assailant flees, catches up his horse and disposes of him as easily as a hawk overtakes and slays a dove, whereas Parthenopaeus is on horseback till he meets his fate at the hands' of Dryas. Statius is lavish, perhaps too lavish with descriptions of his beauty. Perhaps the poet had in mind the beautiful slave-boy whom he had intended to - 20 - adopt as a son, The poet himself had no child of his own, only a step­ daughter, his wife Claudia's daughter by a previous marriage. The boy died young, and the poem which is the last of the Silvae and remains unfinished, expresses the poignant grief of the poet. His own death probably occurred about the same time* Camilla's career is anxiously watched by Diana, who relates to the nymph Opis the story of Camilla's bringing-ups and sees that her death is avenged* All this is much extended by Statius, who describes first the forebodings of Atalanta for her son who has gone to the war against her will, her prayer to Diana, Diana1s meeting with Apollo, sad at the death of his prophet Amphiaraus, then the sorrow of Diana herself for the boy's fate, and her secret changing of the arrows, finally the complaint of Venus to Mars on behalf of Thebes, the city of their daughter Harmonia, and Mars' intervention which results in his death. As compared with the simplicity of Camilla’s fate 'nihil ipsa nec aurae nec sonitus memor aut venientis ab aethere teli hasta sub exsertam donec perlata papillam haesit virgineutnque alte bibit acta eruorem1 Statius goes into much detail* Confronted with the gigantic Dryas presentiments of doom crowd upon him, black clouds of death float before him, he feels his strength ebb, the quiver is lighter on his shoulder, he seems to himself but a boy, there is a simile of a swan that sees an eagle above him, he is about to shoot, arrowhead on bow, the string at his breast, when his foe gets in his javelin throw first, it cuts the bowstring and pierces the boy’s body; he drops the reins, another javelin checks the horse. They both* Camilla and Parthenopaeus, have dying speeches, Camilla to her sister Acca, with a message to Turnus (rather as Joan of Arc might in similar circumstances have sent a last word to ’Jack'), * join battle and keep the Trojans from the city*. Parthenopaeus1s last words are to his mother, confessing his fault in going to the war against her will* The episode is an example of Statius's favourite mother-son relationship, contrasted with Virgil’s preference for that of father and son (Aeneas - Ascanius, Evander - Pallas, Mezentius - Lausus). Both Virgil's maidens, Camilla and Juturna, have something of the other sex. Other examples of Statius's preference are Ismenis - Crenaeus in the river fighting. Thetis - Achilles in the Achilleid, and the frequent references to Ino and Palaemon. This mother and son complex nay have acted as a compensation or wish-fulfilment for what nature had not granted to the poet, the presence of a son and mother in his household. If so it may point to a sensitivity, a tenderness, which explains some features of his verse, its emotionalism, and his habit of attributing feelings to inanimate objects, e.g. miserae carinae, (an epithet which occurs all too frequently in his epic.) This tendency may have been encouraged by the prevailing taste for sensationalism, a taste which the poet in his turn was only too ready to gratify. The real humanity of Sta.tius, as will be seen later, was rather implicit than explicit in his treatment of the story of Thebes. I should not like, in a paper that deals with Statius and Virgil, to pass over without mentioning the meeting of these two in Purgatory, as described by Dante. He relates how they are joined by a shade who after a discourse on earthquakes reveals himself to be Statius, explaining that he had become a Christian, partly owing to Virgil's prophetic Eclogue, but for a long time had not made his conversion known. As a result he was in the circle of those who were working out their punishment for Sloth. On discovering that he is - 21 - speaking to Virgil he falls adoringly at his feet, but finds, according to good classical precedent, that he cannot embrace him. The question why Dante should have thought that Statius had become a Christian is an intriguing one, and excited the ingenuity of A*W*Verrall* There may have been some tradition to that effect, but as none is known today Verrall has sought for an explanation in the writings of Statius himself, and thinks it may be found in a contrast between the prologues of the Thebaid and the Achilleid, of which the former recognises the divinity of the Emperor while the latter does not do so explicitly. Next, as Statius tells Virgil that he was converted before he brought the Argives to the waters of Boeotia, the latter part of the Thebaid would have been written as· a Christian, and here the description of the Altar of Mercy at Athens may have struck Dante as peculiarly Christian in sentiment. The mention of this passage leads me to a final point, for I would like to return briefly to the question of an underlying theme in the Thebaid, In one of the three papers which he wrote on the subject of Dante and Statius A.W*Verrall states that the whole story of the Thebaid as conceived by the author is a preparation for the final interference of Athens, an ideal Athens, which figures symbolically as the sacred city of humanism and humanity* The whole Thebaid, he says, is entirely occupied with this idea or sentiment, that of the vindication of the oppressed and respect even for the enemy* If this is so, it is so by implication rather than by any explicit stress laid upon Athenian action. Indeed the 12th book might be thought of as an Epilogue more than as a climax. In the rapid summary given in the opening lines of the Epic there is no mention of it; the words 'tumulisque carentia regum funera’ only leave the matter where it is left in Aeschylus* Septem and in Euripides' Phoenissae, while the 11th book closes with the slinking away of the defeated disillusioned host, Adrastus having already fled in his chariot when he saw that the duel of the brothers was inevitable* But if there is no explicit reference in the work, is there not an implied emphasis on humanity, flouted as it is by the expedition and the fraternal quarrel? It is not that the battle scenes are bloody; they naturally are, and were certainly expected to be, and Statius is clever in varying them - Hippomedon and the river-battle, Capaneus on the battlements, Parthenopaeus the boy archer, besides the usual incidents. Their culmination in the hideous picture of Tydeus gnawing Melanippus' head contrasts with the sentimentality of the deaths of young warriors, Parthenopaeus, Atys and Crenaeus· There are the pathetic scenes of the searching for corpses by weeping relatives after the ambush in Bk 2, or where in Bk 12 Argia and Antigone meet by moonlight in their search for husband and brother* Argia's anxieties are twice described, in Bks 2 and 3* The wickedness of the Argive enterprise is emphasized by Jupiter in Bk 1 but he considers Thebes just as reprehensible, and his threats are repeated in Bk 3* and Eteocles does not come short of any of the Seven in brutality. Apart from the other gods, who do as may be expected of them, favouring their ov/n proteges, and Mars naturally being always eager for war, a considerable part is played by the Furies and War-goddesses, symbolizing presumably the ungovernable passions that lead to the horrors of war; Erinys in Bk 7j Enyo in Bk 8, Tisiphone and Megaera setting the brothers in conflict in Bk 11 and driving Pietas off the field. Rumour, Frenzy, Wrath and Panic, with Bellona, stir up warlike passions in Bk 3? Bellona and Rumour again in Bk 4, while Tydeus and Capaneus lose no opportunity of doing likewise. These two, it may be noted, are rejected by the gods, Tydeus by Minerva, - 22 -

Capaneus by Jupiter* Hippomedon is pleaded for by Juno, but in vain, Amphiaraus cannot be saved by Apollo, nor Parthenopaeus by Diana, Adrastus flees in all the bitterness of defeat, and we are left to imagine his feelings, through Statius' simile of Pluto finding he has hell for. his portion* Two sons-in-law lost, two daughters widowed, his army cut up and in retreat, and he himself only too conscious of the folly and wickedness of the whole campaign* Viewed in this light, the final scene in which Theseus intervenes in the name of humanity and champions the suppliants against the brutal Creon may be regarded as the climax and redeeming feature of the story, in which it stands to the preceding narrative very tiuch as in Homer's Iliad the last book in which Priam persuades Achilles to give up the body of Hector contrasts with the strife and bloodshed of the preceding books. If this is so, we may be grateful to Statius for having included in his epic that part of the traditional story, and may be sure that his master, Virgil, would have approved. I will conclude by quoting the passage (12.481) in which Statius describes the Altar of Mercy in Athens. That there was such an altar is proved by two references in Lucian (Timon 4-2 and Bis Accusatus 21), and in Pausanias, 1 1? (an altar of Mercy in the Agora, to which of the gods, as being helpful in the changes and chances of mortal life, the Athenians alone of the Greeks pay honours); there are also references to Eleos as a god in Tiaocles, writer of Comedy, and in the scholiast to Sophocles, 0.C.261, where Oedipus speaks of Athens as the only city to shelter the vexed stranger. I quote Verrall's version: (Collected Literary Essays, 1913) In the midst of the city was an Altar, pertaining not to Might nor the powers thereof, but to gentle Mercy* Mercy there had fixed her seat, and misery made it holy. Thither new suppliants came ever without fail, and found acceptance all* There to ask is to be heard, and dark or light all hours give access unto One whose grace costs nothing.but a complaint* The ritual takes no tax, accepts no incense-flame, no drench of blood, but only the dew of tears upon the stone, and the shorn hair of the mourner for a wreath above, and for drapery the cast robe which sorrow puts away. With trees of kindness the' ground is planted about, and marked for pardon and grace with fillet-bounden bay and the olive’s suppliant bough. Image there is not any; to no mould.of metal is' trusted that form divine, who loves to dwell in minds and in hearts. Nor lacketh there perpetual assembly. For shaking fear and shivering poverty, these kno\

APPENDIX

Similes compared

(i) qualis ubi in lucem coluber mala gramina pastus frigida sub terra tumidum quem bruma tegebat nunc positis novus exuviis nitidusque iuventa lubrica convolvit sublato pectore terga arduus in solem et linguis micat ore trisulcis A*2,471

ceu lubricus alta anguis humo verni blanda ad spiramina solis erigitur liber senio et squalentibus annis exutus laetisque minax interviret herbis a miser agrestum siquis per gramina hianti obvius et primo fraudaverit ora veneno T.4.72

Virgil’s vigorous line (4?3) is replaced by something weaker in rhythm and more artificial (liber * * * annis exutus). Statius is sentimental on the danger to the countryman*

(ii) eeu duo nubigenae cum vertice montis ab alto descendunt Centauri Homolen Othrynque nivalem linquentes cursu rapido; dat euntibus ingens silva locum et magno cedunt virgulta fragore A.7*674 Non aliter silvas umeris et utroque refringens pectore montano duplex Hylaeus ab antro praecipitat; pavet Ossa vias pecudesque feraeque procubuere metu; non ipsis fratribus horror afuit, ingenti donec Peneia saltu stagna subit magnumque obiectus detinet amnem T.4.139

V* is content with a simple picture, while marking the three stages of the course (nivalem, silva, virgulta)* St.elaborates by sentimentality (pavet, metu, horror), by forcing the point (duplex, utroque) and by hyperbole (magnum * amnem). - 24 -

(iii) quales sub nibibus atris Strymonias dant signa grues atque aethera tranant cum sonitu fugiuntque Notos clamore secundo A «10.265 qualia trans pontum Phariis deprensa serenis rauca Paraetonio decedunt agmina Nilo quo fera cogit hiems; illae clangore fugaci umbra fretis arvisque volant, sonat avius aether, iam Borean imbrisque pati, iam nare solutis amnibus et nude iuvat aestivare sub Haemo T »5·^ There is a difference in application; in V. the comparison is to the shout of the Trojans, in St. to the moving hosts* St, elaborates con­ siderably, and the comparison is rather lost sight of, 14 is a good line with its alliteration of a and v, and the hissing sound of the repeated s* ’fugiuntque . · secundo’ becomes ’clangore fugaci’, (iv) inde lupi ceu raptores atra in nebula qxios improba ventris exegit caecoa rabies catulique relicti faucibus expectant siccis. A.2.355 ac veluti pleno lupus insidiatus evili cum frerit ad caules, ventes perpessus et imbres nocte super media; tuti sub matribus agni balatum exercent; ille asper et improbus ira saevit in absentes, collecta fatigat edendi ex longo rabies et siccae sanguine guttur A.9*39 rabidi sic agmine multo sub noctem eoiore lupi, quos omnibus agris nil non ausa fames longo tenuavit hiatu, iam stabula ipsa premunt, torquet spes inrita fauces balatusque tremens pinguesque ab ovilibus aurae; quod superest duris adfringunt postibus ungues pectoraque et siccos minuunt in limine dentes. T.10.42 A combination of the two similes, in which the Virgilian phrases ’improba’ etc, and ’collecta’ etc. are represented somewhat weakly by ’nil non ausa fames’ and ’longo tenuavit hiatu1; an original touch is ’pinguesque . . aurae’, where some scribes thought that St. should have written ’agnae’*

Passages with difficult grammar (i) geminus fragor ardua canet per latera 5*337 the twofold splash whitens along the steep sides An impressionistic phrase appealing to eye and ear (ii) cuius iustos pulsantia menses vota tument? 5 * ^ 5 whose ripening hope throbs in the womb as the due months draw on? Perhaps ’iustos menses’ should be taken as accusative of duration of time* - 25 -

(iii) viderat Inachios rapidum glomerare cohortes Bacchus iter 7*145 B. had seen the Inachian cohorts gather swiftly for the march A refinement upon V. *s ‘agmina cervi pulverulenta fuga glomerant* (A.4,154); here a purely impressionistic phrase, unless *iterl be the subject, (iv) sorte carebat dilatus Polynicis honos 1*164 by the losing of the hazard P.'s reign was deferred A conjecture ’cadebat* would make it easier, otherwise an extreme kind of inversion. Alliteration and Assonance in the Thebaid (i) atque ea Cadmeo praeceps ubi culmine primum / constitit 1.123 Triple and symmetrical (ii) nox ea cum tacita volucer Cyllenius aura 2.89 Repeated c with 1 , n, t subordinate (iii) umbra fretis arvisque volant sonat avius aether 5*14 Combined s and v to suggest whirring wings (iv) spumantem proni mandunt adamanta.iugales 3*268 Repeated nt suggest champing of bits, cf. different effect in 10.6 illic ariaa et equos ibant quibus ante superbi (v) quoties tibi Lemnon et Argo sueta loqui et longo - somnum suadere querela 5*615 Beautiful effect of combined assonance and alliteration (vi) . laeto regalia coetu atria complentur, species est cernere avorum comminus et vivis certantia vultibus aera 2.214 Long a fist with c,l,t; then c mostly with v Notice similar effect of broad syllables to suggest stateliness in (vii) mixta convexa, deorum maiestate tremunt, radiant maiore sereno culmina et arcano florentes lumine postes 1.298 (vixi) quisquis es Aonidum quem crastina munere nostro manibus exemptum mediis Aurora videbit 2.697 Symmetrical arrangement of a m m m a Other examples of assonance and alliteration will be found in 2.81, 2.118 , 4.604, 5, 2.13, 14, 2.538-40, cf. 2.41,2 with 6,120,1 (ix) non secus ac supero pariter si cardine lapsae Pallas et asperior Phoebi soror, utraque telis utraque torva genis flavoque in vertice nodo illa suas Cyntho comites agat haec Aracyntho, - 26 ~

tunc si fas oculis non unquam longa tuendo expedias cui maior honos cui gratier, aut plus de Iove; mutatosque velint transumere cultus et Pallas deceat pharetras et Delia cristas 2.236 ff p,c,t,l prevail in these lines; in 239 ctcigtcct where the repetition of Cyntho is saved from being a jingle by the change of ictus. The same principle prevails in the homoeoteleuton of 3rd arsis and last syllable, commoner in Silver Latin poetry than in Virgil. In 242 all the dominant letters occur, and d, c in thesis (deceat) leads up to d,c in arsis (Delia cristas), the whole line being a good example of careful balance both in sound and sense. Other longer passages can be compared, e.g. 1.292-5} 303-309i 2.736-742.

(x) sed nec puniceo rediturum nubila caelo promisere iubar nec rarescentibus umbris longa repercusso nituere crepuscula Phoebo; densior a terris et nulli pervia flammae subtexit nox atra polos, iam claustra rigentis Aeoliae percussa sonant venturaque rauco ore minatur hiems, venti transversa frementes confligunt axemque emoto cardine vellunt, dura caelum sibi quisque rapit; sed plurimus Auster inglomerat noctem tenebrosa volumina torquens defunditque imbres, sicco quos asper hiatu praesolidat Boreas; nec non abrupta tremescunt fulgura et attritus subita face rumpitur aether. 1.342 Notice p,n,c dominant in first few lines with u assonance, repercusso, crepuscula, p,c alternately in thesis and arsis; after 345 the low murmurings of the storm suggested by the u sounds broaden out into claustra and rauco ore, and are followed by Auster and the various o sounds of 351-3* which suggest the blasts of the wind. In 353,4 the various br, trs keep up the impression, while the heavens are rent in the last four words, in which we have u a a u u, alternately in thesis and arsis, but culminating in rumpitur. Later on we may notice the symmetry of a m a m, followed by g s g s in Arcadiae capita alta madent, ruit agmine magno Inachus et gelida surgens Erasinua in unda 356, 7 and the expressive consonants in Frangitur omne nemus rapiunt antiqua procellae bracchia silvarum 361, 2 and the rhythm of ille tamen, modo saxa iugis fugientia ruptis miratus, modo nubigenas e montibus amnes aure pavens etc.

- 27 -

V.S. Lectures, Mo. 65

"PRIIICIPIO CAELUIr11 fAEHffi) vi. 724-751) A lecture delivered to the Virgil Society 16th Ifovember 1965 by Kiss Π.Pi.Arundel, ri.A. .B.Litt. Aexieid vi., lines 724-751 I propose in this paper to examine the notoriously difficult and complex passage from the sixth Aeneid (lines 724-751), in which Anchises propounds to his son a philosophy of the cosmos, and of the human soul, as a prologue to the identification of the animae who are waiting their turn to be born on earth as distinguished Homans. 'This passage is inconsistent with the traditional account, given earlier in the sixth book, of the great wrong-doers undergoing eternal punishment in Tartarus, and of the twittering shades which inhabit various other regions of the underworld. And within itself the passage makes use of theories which are not immediately reconcilable. ϊ-Iy aim is therefore to try to give as exact an analysis as possible of Vergil's lines here, to point out parallels in other theories of both Greek and Roman origin which may help in the interpretation of these lines, and to attempt in the end to present the overall view as coherent, and as relevant to Vergil’s purpose. Many Vergilian editors have tried their hand at this, yet their comments are not wholly satisfactory. The intricacy of the task partly accounts for this, but there is more evidence available to support or refute views expressed than is generally brought forward. Also, the healthy scepticism which has queried some accepted aspects of Greek philosophy has not yet penetrated far into the Roman scene, and theories are labelled, perhaps too dogmatically, as Orphic or Stoic or Pythagorean. My conclusions are likely to be more cautious than this, but I hope the spade work may prove useful. "ordine singula pandit.1* The exposition of lines 724-751 is set out in well-defined stages, each new move being introduced with a clear connection - “principio ... 'inde... hinc ... ergo", reminiscent of Lucretius' careful method of argument, for example "principio ... inde" at De Rerum Jatura v.510f«» and the line, strikingly similar to Vergil's introduction, of "principio maria ac terras caelumque tuere" (v.92). But, before starting my analysis, I would like to establish the meaning of the phrase "Titania astra". The adjective Titan in Greek literature, where it is not used generally of the Titan race, does have a meteorological reference. It is used by Aeschylus (Lum,6) of Titan Phoebe, which is presumably the moon, by Empedocles (fr.38) as an epithet for his element of air, perhaps to jndicate vast extent or great age, and also once,' in an inscription, for the sun. In Latin the adjective has the

1. IG 9(l) 8ci2.p—4-i Zeus ος κόσμου διέταξε, Σελήυηυ υυκτϊ κελεύσας πε£θεσ6αι, Τει,ταυα ημερι,ναΓς χάρισι. - 28 - general reference "Titanic", except where, as at Aeneid iv.119, a specific and detailed description makes it clear that the allusion is to the sun. On the other hand astra, for Plato in the Timaeus (38c), and for the Stoics, meant the sun and the stars. Evidence for this use is provided among others by Cleanthes, who calls the sun "greatest of the stars" (ir.Did. Pox.465.6). and by Posidonius, who includes the sun in his definition of a star as "a divine soma made up of aether'1 (Ar.Did. Dox.466.18). Stoic theory also is quoted by Cicero in the second book of De ffatura Deorum, where the stars, the chief of which is the sun, are said to be of aether (ii.92, 101), and elsewhere in the same book where the plorase "sol ... et reliqua astra"'is used (ii.4l). There can therefore be little doubt that Vergil's phrase is to be interpreted as "the sun and the stars1'. First Vergil speaks of "spiritus" as nourishing sky, earth and sea, and of "mens" as pervading the cosmic structure. The "and" joining "spiritus" and ”mensrt is not here to be taken as a conjunction, but as explanatory, a typical Vergilian move, especially where a complex notion has to be expressed. Mother example from this passage is "clausae tenebris et carcere caeco", where the one idea is given in two ways (cf. Aen. ii.557-8, and passim). Similarly "spiritus" and "mens" are two aspects of the sa'ne force. Vergil does not here specifically call this force "deus", but he had done so in the Georalcs (iv.221-2), where, in words similar to the opening of this passage, he had written; "deum namque ire per omnis / terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum". Perhaps these earlier lines may be used to show that Vergil did think of sniritus/mens as divine. 'The theory of an animus mundi as ratio perfecta et sempiterna recurs of course throughout Cicero's philosophical works (e.g. i'ffi 2.30, TD 1.166). The ■ animus mundi is described as "sapiens purus, integer, liber", and as a fiery principle "purior, perlucidior, mobilior" than the fire we know; our fire is destructive, but the god/fire alit and auget (M) 2.41). This force is also called a divine and unbroken "spiritus" (HD 2.13). low this is all standard Stoic terminology, and often Cicero gives his Stoic source, l/ith reference to the fiery/airy rational principle he quotes Zeno, e.g. at ID 2.22 for the world as "animans composque mentis", at Acad.1.59 for fire as the parent of everything, and Acad.2.126 for aether as "summus deus, mente praeditus, qua omnia reguntur". He also quotes Chrysippus as saying that the world, which is entirely perfect, has "mens" and "ratio" and is god (JD 2.38), and Chrysippus with Cleanthes to the effect that god ia the world itself, "mens et animus totius naturae", and in particular the heat at the circumference, called aether. Cicero's statements can be verified elsewhere. Sextus quotes Zeno as saying that the cosmos is νοερός and έμψυχος,(adv.Phys. 1.104), and such a description recurs constantly in other quotations of Zeno, e.g. DL 7.139?147, and also fr.38 (von Arnim I), in which he agrees with Heraclitus that the stoicheion is fire. But the idea that the world is living and intelligent is much older than the Stoics. The fact that Vergil uses the words "spiritus" and "mens” of a pervading cosmic force does not brand him here as exclusively Stoic, but as one who, lilce the Stoics, took over an earlier tradition. The theory is Platonic, elaborated in particular in the Timaeus (30f), where the cosmos is described as ζφον έμψυχον ευυουν, and also, among other works, in the Philebus (28d-e), where it is agreed that the world is governed by nous and phronesis., and that this intelligence controls everything - sun, moon, stars and sky. - 29 -

Plato himself is here developing- Presocratic theory, for the idea of a nous which pervades and moves the whole cosmos is found in Anaxagoras (fr.12, and cf. . Plato Crat. 413c, Pliaedo S7c, and Aristotle DA i.2), in Diogenes of Apollonia in his equation of universal air with intelligence (fr.5), and in earlier theories. There is, for example* the "holy mind" given in fr.134 of Empedocles, which is said to dart through'the world, the universal logos of Heraclitus, Xenophanes' conception of god (frs.23-5), and Anaximenes' view, which compares and assimilates the air which surrounds the world to the soul which holds together the body. The notion of a world-ranging.intelligence is used much later even by Lucretius, when he ’speaks of the ’’vivida vis animi** of Epicurus, which "omne immensum peragravit mente animoque”(i.72-4). In sum, the idea of the cosmos as living’ and intelligent, i.e. as having "spiritus" and "mens'*, occurs at all stages of Greek philosophy, and is often there associated with fire or air, and especially with the aether at the circumference of the world. But the combination of the two in the conception of a rational fiery/airy substance, πνεύμα, νοερόν,ίβ more specifically Stoic, and Vergil comes nearer to the Stoics here, as: we shall see, in his description of the purified soul as "aetherius sensus" and "aurai simplicis ignis". The pervading mind, says Vergil, moves the mass and mingles with the great body. ¥hat does this mean? At first sight it could be the Stoic distinction between τό ποιούν (reason/god) and τό πάσχ,ον(which is matter devoid of quality, i.e. αποίος ΰλη), the two together forming one whole, with pneuma as the principle of cohesion (cf. DL 7.134, SE adv.Phys.1.11). The union is so complete that nothing is done by nature without body; matter wholly infused by force is all there is, a continuum united with all its parts (cf. e.g. Cic. Acad. 1.11.39, 1.7.29). The early Stoa were in agreement that primary matter is the ousia of the things that exist (DL 7.150), and that god is inseparable from this matter (cf. Zeno quoted by Chalcidius Tim. 2S4). But later Stoics disputed this, and it seems probable that Posidonius denied the real existence of matter, supposing that the four elements ever exist as the material principle, and not that god and matter are the archai of the four elements (cf. Zeno fr.98, and Ar.Did. Dox,453.8). In effect Vergil's actual language is much closer to that of Plato in the Timaeus (34), with its constant talk of the world as a living· soma . in the centre of which the soul is put, and from there stretches out through the whole body. And even Vergil’s phrase "infusa per artus*’ cannot be directly labelled Stoic, for although the Stoics did call parts of the world "membra dei" (e.w. Cic. HD 2.86), the phrase can be traced back at least to the fifth century, in the γυϊα ΘεοΓο mentioned by Empedocles (fr.31). Vergil's spiritus/mens performs two functions: firstly it nourishes earth, sea and sky, and secondly, by its union with the body of the world, it causes the generation of men, animals, birds and fishes. That fire supplies nourishment and furthers growth was a notion long accepted by Greek thinkers, and was taken over by the Stoics as functions of the world pneuma. This nourishes and is αυξητικόν (Cic. i»D 2.41, Ar.Did. Dox. 467.5), all parts of the world being sustained by heat and containing1 it, since it contains both procreandi vis (the female function), and causa gignendi (the male), (cf. Gic. JD 2.28), Erom another aspect the pneuma is logos, logos spermatikos (ον καδαπερει τι σπέρμα Zeno fr.98), containing the logoi and aitiai of all past, present and future tilings. Zeno's argument here is given in Sextus (adv.Phys. 1.101-3), and it is claimed - 30 —

that σπέρμα λογικό ponies from what is logikon. i.e. the cosmos, and has within itself σπέρματα λογικών ζωωυ. But here again the theory has earlier origins, perhaps going bade to the spermata of Anaxagoras' scheme (e.g. Anaxagoras fr.5). How the s'oermatikos logos of the Stoics is said to fashion matter for the next generation (ποιοϋντα την υληυ προς την των έξης γεν., Seno ap. DL 7.136)? and so can also be called δημιουργός and ώσπερ πατήρ των δλων (dL 7.147), and πυρ τεχνικόν (the Latin ignis artificiosus. Cic. 3D 2.57, and cf. DL 7.156; πνεύμα πυροειδές και τεχνοειδές). Only Posidonius is the dissenting voice here, claiming a governing· rather than a generating· function for god (cf. Dobson, The Posidonius hyth. CQ XII, 1918). And yet the notion that nature nourishes things is commonplace, not belonging specifically to any philosophy. T/e find similar phrasing for example in Lucretius for a-quite different theory, in the daedala tellus which nourishes and increases living things (v.234), and'in the line from the proem; "... unde ornnis natura creet res, auctet alatque” (i.56). In the Stoic version of the generation of tilings (as held by Zeno, Chrysippus, Cleanthes and Posidonius ap. DL 7.142, and cf. Ar.Did. Dox. 469.28f), the elemental fire took on various tropai. becoming air, then water, then earth, then air, and finally fire again. This theory had been propounded by Heraclitus, and was taken over by the Stoics, with the addition of air from the four elements of Bapedocles. From the mixing of the elements, generated in this way from the tropai of fire, come all animals and plants. Vergil had already given assent to a theory like this in the Georgies (iv.221-3), when he had said that god goes through earth, sea and sky, and thus come animals and men. Perhaps earth, sea and sky should here be understood as the elements of earth, water and air/fire, often so called from Empedocles onwards, and men arise from the mixing of these elements under the agency of god. There is something like this in the sixth Eclogue (31f), where seeds of lands, breath, sea and fire (i.e. earth, air, water and fire) are said to have come together, and to have taken on the form of things. But because he speaks of the seeds collecting magnum per inane this Eclogue passage is some support for the tradition of Vergil having Epicurean sympathies in his youth. Whatever the case, these passages from the Georgies and Eclogues show that Vergil was familiar with theories which held that the generation of living things resulted from a combination of more basic substances. Here in the Aeneid Vergil gives thneta as arising from the union of the world-mens and the world-hody. The four elements, which in official Stoic theory are the intermediate stage, come out of their logical order, and appear at the beginning of the passage (vi.724-5) as the sea, earth and sky masses nourished by spiritus, but there is partial compensation in the listing of living things from different elements, as men and animals on earth, birds-in the air and fishes in the sea (vi.728-9). How the early Stoics, following- the theory set out in the Timaeus. viewed matter as recalcitrant, as resisting the logos in the universe, and in this way they reconciled the notion of an all-pervading god who is good, causing a world to be generated according to nous and pronoia. with the obvious imperfections we see: the best is done with the only available material. There are, for example, the linesby Cleanthes in his Hymn to Zeus; "All things confess thee as their life that are 011 earth Or in the sea or in the holy air of heaven, Save what in foolishness is wrought by evil men.” (OCT tr.) - 31 -

Cleairfch.es seems to mean that the wickedness of aen, not god or matter, is responsible for evil. Posidonius however is said to have contradicted this; in his view good and evil in the world are in the nature of things (i.e. in the opposition of god and the material elements), and evil is not to be explained as a consequence of guilt· (cf. Dobson, loc.cit.) But what of the individual man? According to Vergil things have an igneus vigor and caelestis origo in their seeds, and at the end. of the cycle the soul is "purus aetherius sensus” and "aurai simplicis ignis". Putting these together we have a description of soul as a pure fiery/airy vigorous sensus, originating from the sky. It is clear that it is akin to the spiritus/mens of the world, and there is support for this from the Georgies (iv.221), where ''pars divinae mentis" and "haustus aetherii" are allowed to bees, and a fortiori to men. The whole agrees well with the Stoic definition of soul. According to this, the soul of man was part of the divine, which came to man at birth; in the words of liarcus Aurelius (med. 5.27? 12.1) the human nous, from the νοερόν of the universe, is an απόσπασμα of god. The soul as fiery is given, for example, in Zeno's description of the seed of living- things as "igneus, isque anima et mens" Varro LL 5.59)? and in the definition of Zeno and Chrysippus of the soul as πνεύμα ενθερμον,animating and moving- us (DL 7.157). It was also adopted by Cicero in the Somnium Scipionis (vi.15), when he says that man's soul is given him "ex illis sempiternis ignibus". And a Stoic source, which is perhaps Posidonius (SE advJPhjn. 1.71) speaks of α ι ψυχαί ... ούχ ηττον πυρώδεις η πνευματώδεις. Such ideas are not of course original to the Stoics. They confessedly followed Heraclitus (cf.e.g. Cic. HD 3.35) in tracing back everything· to an ignea vis. They seem in addition to have used a passage from the Philebus (cf. Phiiebus 29b with the Stoics ap. SL adv.Phys. 1.96, Cic. 24D 2.18) to the effect that as our body, made up of four elements, comes from the body (the four elements) of the world, so is our soul a part of the divine soul and is sustained by it. But the notion that our soul is akin to, or originates with, or is of the same substance as, what is divine (and what surrounds the world) goes back to the beginnings of Greek philosophy, and even to myth. It is another example of a traditional view which appears throughout the history of ancient thought. Sven Lucretius says that we are sprung of heavenly seed: "caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi" (ii.991). because we have in us a portion of the divine logos we are ourselves divine, said the Stoics: "deum te scito esse" in Cicero's words (Som.Scip, vi.26). But as, on the cosmic scale, matter resists the control of pneuma/logos» so in man the body can resist and blunt the igneus vigor. This is brought out in Vergil's lines: "quantum non corpora noxia tardant terrenique hebetant artus, moribundaque membra; hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gandentque" (vi.731-3). The resistance of the body to the igneus vigor and caelestis origo gives rise to human passions. And this view is found, before the Stoics adopted it, in the Timaeus (41). There, in the myth, the human soul is said to be made up from what is left of the elements, once the world soul has been formed; each soul is then assigned to a star (cf. Vergil's caelestis origo), and from there comes into a body. So arise pleasure and pain, fear, .anLger and the rest, which must be conquered, for each pleasure or pain rivets the soul more firmly to the body (cf. Phaedo 83d). — 32 —

Posidonius, more Platonic than Stoic according to Galen, divided off the irrational, godless and miserable elements from the divine and virtuous soul. He says that the passions originate with the body, but that not every part of the body is equally permeated by the soul - there are gradations of mixture, individually accounting for the several passions: at του σώματος κράσεις οικείας έαυταις εργάζεται τάς παθητικάς κινήσεις(Galen ¥.443 , 442 Κ). The official Stoic theory was that the passions were caused by the tropai of pneuma (cf. DL 7.158). How if, as Vergil says in agreement with what is common to these theories, the body gives rise to disturbing passions, and blunts and hinders the igneus vigor, then it is an easy step to go further, and to view the body as a prison. The notion of the body as the prison of the soul found favour with the .Stoics (cf. Cic. TD 1.75, Hep. 6.15, Seneca Ep. 120.14 and 65.16), but it is much older than this. It is used by Plato in the Phaedo (81f), and, in the Cratylus. in one of the few early Greek references to Orphism, it is said, that the followers of Orpheus thought of the body as an "enclosure" (Crat. 400c). In the passage under consideration Vergil writes: “neque auras dispiciunt, clausae tenebris et carcere caeco". (vi.733-4) The feminine plural Uclausae" is odd after "igneus vigor" and "caelestis origo seminibus", and must refer back to animae of 17 lines earlier. But after line 734 the feminine continues to be used, presumably with the same reference. Vergil may therefore be indicating that the animae in Elysium, which have individual and recognisable features, are in some sense, and from another aspect, the airy/fiery spark that is clogged by contact with the body. And what does Vergil mean by saying that these cannot '’look through" (if dispiciunt is read) to the auras? Because of the importance given to words like "spiritus", "aetherius" and rtaura simplex" in the passage, "auras" in this line is to be assimilated to them. Vergil then is perhaps suggesting that the soul is incapable of recognising that pure spirit which is the beginning and end of its career. The union of the body with the soul in this life is so close that even at death part of the corporeal still adheres to the soul, and this is the "ingrained evil", the σύμφυτου κακόν, which must be purified. This notion, adopted'by Vergil, of the accretion of bodily elements to the soul, which from another point of view is evil ingrained in the soul, is Platonic, occurring in the Republic (cf. 609a-b and the Glaucus comparison 611d-e), and in the Timaeus (42a-c), and especially in the Phaedo. But, according to the tradition used by Plato in the Phaedo, the punishment for those in this state is to hover about tombs and graveyards until the return to the body they desire. The following quotation is surely one of Vergil's sources, but also shows how Vergil differs from Plato on this point. Socrates is speaking·; "But I suppose at the tine of its release the soul is tainted and impure, because it has always associated with the body, and cared for it and loved it ... In this state do you think it will escape independent and uncontaminated? On the contrary, it will I imagine be permeated by the corporeal, which fellowship and intercourse with the body have ingrained in its very nature ... and we must suppose that the - 33 - corporeal is oppressive, heavy, earthly and visible. So the soul, which is tainted by its presence, is weighed down and dragged back into the visible world ... and hovers about graves and tombstones ... Of course, these are not the souls of the good, but of the wicked, and they are compelled to wander about these places as a punisnment for their bad conduct i;· the past. They continue wandering, until at last, through craving for the corporeal which unceasingly pursues then, they are imprisoned once more in the body ... Until philosophy takes it over, the soul is a helpless prisoner, chained in the body, compelled to view reality, not directly, but through its prison ... and philosophy can see that the imprisonment is effected by the prisoner's own active desire, which makes him first accessory to his own confinement". (Phaedo 61b ff·, tr. Tredennick) However, in the method by which purification is worked out and the original state achieved (vi. 739f)» Vergil is not following either Plato or the Stoics. Vergil, as vre have seen, is in some agreement with the Stoic theory of the fiery/airy rational god permeating the body of the world, and the re-occurrence of this cosmic pattern in the individual, where the bit of god within us is said to be held fast by the body, but he parts company with the Stoics on the question of what happens to the soul after death. A theory of personal immortality is of course inconsistent with that of a periodic general eltmrosis - the soul can only be, as Zeno put it (fr.146), a πολυχρόνιον 'πνεύμα. Even where, as with Chrysippus, the ekpyrosis is rejected, the fate of the soul is still rather hazy. According to one authority Zeno supposed that the souls went to the stars for a time (Dox. 471.14), in agreement again in part with Plato. Others, for example Posidonius, supposed the souls to inhabit the sub-lunar region after death (SE adv.Phys. 1.71, and cf. Cic. de div. 1.64), but Cicero, in the Somnium Scipionis, put them in the nilky Way. And Vergil himself, in his mock-heroic fashion, sent the souls of the bees to the stars (cf. Georgies iv.226). However, in another tradition, recorded by Lactantius (Zeno fr.147), Zeno kept to a more traditional picture, and supposed separate , regions underground for the good and the wicked, and punishments suffered in tenebris locis. And Plato, in the Gorgias, Phaedo and Republic myths, perpetuated and elaborated.on an older picture of judgments, punishments, forgetfulness through Lethe, and rebirth. The old view of Hades continued to survive, and is mentioned for example by Aristotle in the Sudemus (fr.5). Vergil explains the method of purification as follows? "ergo exercentur poenis veterumque malorum supplicia expendunt: aliae panduntur inanes suspensae ad ventos, aliis sub gurgite vasto infectum eluitur scelus aut exuritur igni ...n (vi.739-742) These lines have often proved puzzling, but perhaps Empedocles may be helpful here. In the Katharmoi (fr.115) Empedocles represents the daimon, who has done wrong, as being· driven, for three thousand seasons, from one element to another, through fire and sea and earth and air. But Hnpedocles, I think, meant by this that parts of the elements form and re-form, and so result in different types of life in fire, and in the sea, and on land, and in the air (cf. fr. 117). Perhaps Vergil means something like this too, that the individual must live all kinds of lives, - 3h -

in fire, and air, and sea, before it can be free and return to its former state: again, however, it is not possible to be sure. The notion of a ’’Great Year11 was a familiar one, but here Vergil's theory is not exactly like any of the traceable sources. In Pindar (01.2.78) a soul lives a pure life three times to achieve release from re-birth. Plato, in the xyth of Er ?Rep. 615a), gives 1000 years as the time for a soul to suffer punishment or reward before drinking' of LeMie and returning- to earth. In the Phaedrus myth (Phaedrus 248e) the soul does not return to her origin before 10,000 years, except "if with three revolutions of 1000 years she has thrice chosen this philosophic life she thereby gains her wings, and speedsaway after 3000 years" (tr, Hackforth). The Stoics generally made use of a Great Tear to calculate the ekpyrosis. and Cicero, in the Somnium Scipionis, gives an account of a Year 1'huius quidem anni nondum vigesimam partem scito esse conversam" (Rep. 27.24). Vergil gives 1000 years before the soul returns, to Lethe for re-birth, and "longa dies, perfecto temporis orbe" for the time it takes the soul to achieve purity. And here again there is an echo of Lucretius (cf. Rl-J i.546),who speaks of nsupremo tempore" and "perfecto temporis orbe" for the time when things return to the primordia from which they were generated. And so, to summarise. In the conception of a universal spiritus/mens Vergil is agreeing with the Stoics, but not exclusively so, for he is speaking in a tradition acceptable to all Greek philosophical thinking. The union of this spiritus with matter is also Stoic,, but before that it had a firm Platonic foundation, as did the theory of the generation of life from this union, and the faults arising- from the resistance matter offers to mind. The resulting view of the body as the prison of the soul Plato himself admitted had been handed down from of old. Vergil makes use too of the Platonic notion of ingrained evil, the consequence of a too loving attachment to the body, but in finding purification for the concreta labis, in fire, air and water, Vergil looked elsewhere, and perhaps to Eapedocles. Transmigration theories, belonging- to some Pythagoreans, and made use of by Pindar, and by Plato, especially in his myths, would be alien to Stoic doctrine, but nevertheless are taken over by Vergil. And still Vergil did not disdain the old traditions, but brought into his account Elysium, Lethe, and the god who guides the souls. ~ 35 -

V»S« Lectures, No»66

THE MINIATURES OF THE VATICAN VIBGIL MAMJSCRIPT

by Professor H^Buchthal, Ph»D»iF,B»A«

The material which Professor Buchthal used for this lecture (delivered

to the Virgil Society on 18 th January, 196*0 has been embodied partly in a

review by him of Dr. de Wit*s !!Die Miniaturen des Vergilius Vaticanus”

(1939) published in :(The Art Bulletin” (December, 1963)? and partly in an

article entitled "A Note on the Miniatures of the Vatican Virgil Manuscript'*

to be published by the Vatican Library in a volume belonging to its !!Studi e

Testi” series dedicated to H.E. Cardinal E« Tisserant,

- 36 -

V.S. Lectures, No.67. .

VIBGIL· 1 S HOME REVISITED The substance of a lecture delivered to the Virgil Society 21st March 1964 by K.Welleeley, M.A.

(Note : This summary should be read in conjunction \vith Lecture Summary No* 41)

Since 1957, when the writer attempted to show that Virgil‘s home may be plausibly placed in the area south-west of Valeggio, towards Volta Mantova&a, in the northern part of the province of Mantua, he has visited and photographed this area on two occasions. The remarks which follow underline or amplify some of the points made on the earlier occasion. At a time when classical scholars are accused of paying undue attention to. literary puzzles at the expense of literary criticism, an attempt to discover Virgilrs home might appear to be one more example of learned trifling# The shepherds and goatherds of the Eclogues, it may be claimed, sing their songs against a stage backcloth, a landscape of the imagination; his Arcadia has never existed and cannot be located upon a map «* There is however general agreement that Eclogues i and ix (in one ancient edition perhaps the last and first of the collection) portray a historical situation - the evictions in the territory of Cremona and Mantua in 40 B.C. of which Virgil and his father were victims. Even in these two poems there are literary echoes xtfhich might discourage topographical identification. The tomb which marks the mid-point in the journey of Lycidas and Moeris to their local town in Eel, ix is a motif inspired by Theocritus νϋ,10, while the name of its occupant, Bianor,^has been recently found to be a borrowing from a poem in the Greek Anthology · Against these literary reminiscences one must set the clear allusions to contemporary history: Borne, Octavian, Varus, Mantua, Cremona and the assignation of land to veterans- of the civil wars. With caution, we may yet place Virgil upon the map# When an exile writes of his lost home, it is a psychological impossibility that the landscape which he describes, as Virgil does in Eel, i and ix, should be totally removed from reality. The belief that Virgil introduced the mountains of Campania, Sicily or Greece into the territory of Mantua is repugnant, and should not be adopted except under the compulsion of overwhelming evidence. Let us make the more nattiral assumption that Virgil faithfully describes the lands of his lost home, and consider whether his allusions can be applied to any part of the territory of Mantua. Only if we fail conclusively in this attempt can we assert that Eel, i and ix also belong to the world of fantasy. The venerable tradition that Virgil's home was at Pietole, 3 km south-east of Mantua, has still its champions, notably Bruno Nardi and dal Zotto; but the flatness of the site and its close proximity to the city tell against it. More attractive is the hill area through which the Mincio winds its way from Lake Garda southwards to Mantua, and Sir William Ramsay and Professor Cliffe Richmond

* The notes and two sketch-maps are on pp. 41-43· - 37 - have indicated the area opposite Valeggio and on the west bank of the river as,a probable site* The villages of Carpendolo (Conway) and Montichiari (Herrmann) further north-west will not do, and for two reasons: they lie near the river Chiese, not the Mincio; and both now fall within the province of Brescia and are shown by inscriptioaaal evidence to have belonged to a tribe or voting- district (Poblilia) which is not that of Mantua (Sabatina). It is almost certain therefore that they lay outside the ager Mantuanus» Luckily, there is plenty of evidence in Virgil to enable us to pin-point the home. Some eight conditions must be satisfied: 1. Meliboeus, Lycidas, and Moeris have a long day’s walk into town (Mantua), This is repeatedly stressed , and no site as near as Pietole is satisfactory· A distance of 12 or 15 or more miles might appear probable. 2# The site must lie in the territory of Mantua, whose boundaries towards Verona can be shown with a high degree of probability to coincide with the modern ones. Thus Peschiera and Valeggio belonged then as now to Verona; westwards of Volta, Guidizzolo and probably Medole belonged to Brixia. 3* We require rupes and alti montes. Within Mantuan territory these can only be found in the north-west, round Volta Mantovana. bm Virgil’s farm was confiscated, and must therefore lie in a plausible relationship to the centuriated area. This occupied the eastern part of Cremonese territory along the Via Postuma and overflowed into Mantuan territory, still following the Via Postumia as it traverses the 15 miles of flat land from the Oglio to the Mincio, and forming a broad belt running from south-west to north-east through the fruitful plain. The highroad crossed the Mincio between Goito and Massimbona, south of Volta. 5. The farm occupied high and low ground, and stretched down to the river^. This river must be the Mincio. 6. The swampy plot of Tityrus, exempt from confiscation because it was poor land, lies between the confiscated farm and Mantua· 7. The hills lie to the west of Tityrus’ land.7 8. They descend gently -into the plain, and this gentle descent is a feature of the confiscated land in question* All these conditions are satisfied by a site on the escarpment which runs south-west from Valeggio to Volta Mantovana. A strong candidate as the modern counterpart of Virgil’s farm is the estate now called Montaldo, 5 km. from Valeggio, for it lies just within the Mantuan boundary beneath the higher ground of Monte della Maddalena (121 m.) and looks south-east over the lower Bassa dei Bonori (50-60 m.) to the Mincio* If this be granted certain doubts and difficulties may still require an answer* The Virgilian Lives, amid much which is useless guess-work or romance, speak of a.tradition that Virgil was born while his mother was away from home, indeed on a journey, and that this birthplace was an otherwise unattested 'pagus qui Andes dicitur' or 'rusticus uicus Andicus’ (a distance from Mantua follows, but - 38 - what the numeral was is a matter of debate: perhaps XXX or XXV or III)* This information cannot be read out of Virgil’s writings, and may be genuine. Francese Scipione Maffei's identification of Andes (clearly a remote and unknown spot) with the hamlet of Bande north of Cavriana may well be correct. It lies a kilometer or so south of the Mantua-Verona frontier, which here runs east and west, south of L* Garda, and it now comprises a scattering of cottages and large farms in undulating and fairly well timbered country* Virgil’s mother was no doubt on a visit to relations or friends, for Montaldo is only some ten kms* away. The distance from Bande to Mantua by the obvious route (Cavriana-Goito- Sacca-Grazie) is 37 km = 25 nip* The famous description in Eel, ix, 7ff:~ certe equidem audieram, qua se subducere colles incipiunt mollique iugum demittere cliuo usque ad aqUam et ueteres, iam fracta cacumina, fagos omnia carminibus uestrum seruasse Menalcan can be easily illustrated by the photographer who wanders around Montaldo and the Bassa, studying the gentle slope by which the ground descends to the level plain and to the Mincio. The apparent vagueness of the description is illusive. It finds a parallel in a passage from Sergei Aksakov's Family History (1846) which deals with the settlement of Bashkir territory by Russian colonists at the beginning of the nineteenth century: ’Whole districts were bought and sold for a mere song. The bargain was clinched by a legal document, but the amount of land was never stated in it, and could not be, as it had never been surveyed. As a rule, the boundaries were settled by landmarks of this kind: "from the mouth of such and such a stream as far as the dead beech-tree on the wolf-track, and from the dead beech-tree in a bee-line to the watershed, and from the watershed to the fox-earths, and from the fox-earths to the hollow tree at Soltamratka” and so on.' The apparent vagueness of Virgil has all the precision to be expected of the conditions of his time before the pertica of Octavian’s surveyor was laid upon the land. Now a v/ord on the lucky Tityrus of Eclogue i. He lives nearer to Mantua than the evicted Meliboeus, on a small, swampy, stony and well-shaded plot sometimes flooded by the reedy Mincio®. All these features may be illustrated by present-day conditions which, despite extensive hydraulic improvements over many centuries, have left untouched just such an area a little to the north of the power-station at Molini di Volta, where the contours bring the Canale Virgilio into close proximity to the river. The place lies south of Montaldo, and must have been passed by any traveller proceeding thence to Mantua by the straightest route. Tityrus lives, then, inter (between) flumina nota (the Mincio) and fontes sacros (springing from the higher ground to the west) - a cool spot in a hot Italian summer. The lines that follow are delightful, but a little obscure:- hinc tibi, quae semper, uicino a limite sepes Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti saepe leui somnum suadebit inire susurro; hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras* The co-ordinating hinc ... hinc point in different directions. The vine dresser sings at his task alta sub rupe, to the north or north-west (along the ridge), - 39 - while the bees murmur to the south uicino a limite along a sepes, a hedge, fence, enclosure or boundary. Vicino a limite means 'in the direction of the (all too) near centuriated land, delimited and confiscated for the veterans.' We also hear in Eel, i of silex nuda, lapis nudus - the valley of the Mincio at this point is full of flint moraine*' The stones stud the fields of the Bassa and congregate in great clamps here and there; not even two thousand years of cultivation and river-control have produced much alteration in this respect. We must now deal with, three more serious objections to the identifications proposed. First what of the dumosa rupes and the alti montes^? Can it be claimed that the low ridge westward of the Mincio is all that is meant? The answer is •yes': altus is a purely relative term and the meaning of mons overlaps those of collis and iugum. The hills of Rome (no higher than the Monte della Maddalena) are montes or colles indifferently; and finally 'Monti* stud the map around the Bassa, and the word is reflected in the place-name (rare in Italy)^ of *Montaldo* itself. In any case, at evening the trees along the slope throw the lengthening shadows mentioned in the last line in Eel, i. More serious is the complaint that there are no caves (antra) in the area, or indeed in the whole territory of Mantua. How are we to explain the habits of Meliboeus? non ego uos posthac uiridi proiectus in antro dumosa pendere procul de rupe uidebo. Goats, of course, may be seen clinging to impossible slopes here or anywhere in Italy. But a green (wet) 'cave' seems an odd coign of vantage for the goatherd. The truth is that 'cave·* is far too narrow a translation, - for antrum means also 1a hollow', 'nook', or indeed 'valley'; in the glossaries it is Various explained as spelunca, obscurus locus, nemus umbrosum et obscurum, uallie and so on. There is no difficulty in finding shady nooks in our area, from which Meliboeus can watch in comfort his goats perched and perhaps silhouetted on the hills above him. Finally, what of the aequor which comes in sight when the two interlocutors of Eel, ix are halfway to Mantua from the farm of Lycidas? There is no need to adopt the desperate remedy of supposing that aequor here means the flat plain, a sense forbidden by the Theocritean exemplar (ii,38: ήνίδε αχγ($, ρ,έν ίίόντος, σ^γωντΐ 5*dqTCu).The still, flat surface is that of the mere to the west of Mantua, the Lago Superiore into which the Mincio expands. Its western edge lies at a distance of 8 km from the town, and Lycidas' farm is therefore some 16 km from Mantua, near Sacca. But Moeris, the slave of the dispossessed Menalcas (who corresponds to the dispossessed Meliboeus of Ecl.i) has already covered a considerable distance before reaching Lycidas. And this is only natural upon our hypothesis that the confiscated farm lay at or near Montaldo, 30 km (20 mp) from Mantua by the route Molini di Volta-Goito-Sacca-Grazie- Mantua. Thus the three objections vanish on a nearer inspection of the Latin and of the topography of the ager Mantuanus. It. would in fact be difficult to imagine a closer correspondence between the data provided by the poet, and the landscape as it was and is. - 40 -

In 40 B.C. Virgil lost his farm at Montaldo, and settled near Naples. He travelled widely in Italy, Sicily and Greece, and ws.s to see many more dramatic landscajjes than the quiet plains and hills of Mantua* But an exile remembers his patria^ and loves to think and write of it* Whether he ever returned to the lost home is more than doubtful* But the Virgilian who makes his pilgrimage to Cumae and Naples, the lakes of Italy, the hill-top towns of Umbria or the Clitumnus with its white oxen will also be well advised to spare a day or so to wander around the gentler scenes of Virgil’s youth - 41 -

NOTES

1. Cf* Bruno Snell, fArkadien, die Entdeckung einer geistigen.Landschaft1 in Die Entdeckung des Geistes, 1946. The article has now been reprinted in Wege zu Vergil, ed* H* Opperraann, 1963»

2. Cf, S. Tugwell, ’Virgil, Eel, 9.59-60», CR NS 13(1963), I32f·

3* For Conway see V.S.Lecture Summary No*41; L* Herrmann’s article *Le domaine rurale de Virgile* is in Latomus 19(1960), 533-8.

4* i, 21-2 and 80; ix,1 and 55-65»

5. G ii, 198.

6* ix, 7 -10*

7. i, 84.

8* i, 47-59.

9* i, 77 and 84,

10* Cf. D. Olivieri, Dizionario di toponomastica lombarda, s.v*

1 1 . ix, 59.

12, The visitor should be armed with the following maps, published by the Istituto geoggafico militare at Florence : 1:100,100:F 48 (’Peschiera del Garda*) and F 62 (’Mantova*); together with the appropriate portions of the 1:25,000 edition, in which, however, Montaldo lies at the junction of four sheets*

- ¥ f -

BOOK REVIEWS

The Council of the Virgil Society has decided to include in the Proceedings reviews of selected works relating to Virgil in the belief that this policy will be welcomed by readers.

P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos liber secundus with a Commentary by R.G. Austin Professor of Latin in the University of Liverpool, Oxford, at the Clarendon , Press, 1904, pages xxiii + 312, Cloth, Small o , with three plates, 25/-.

The keenly awaited edition of the Second Aeneid by the distinguished editor of Quintilian, whose edition of the Fourth Aeneid seems to be praised as much for its sensitivity as for its learning and judgement, has already won much admiration# I understand that this notice of it is to begin the practice of publishing reviews in The Proceedings of the Virgil Society* If so, it is a fit volume with which to start - in principiis omen all the more because this is said to be the first detailed separate edition of the Second Aeneid to be published in English. Professor Austin writes first as a Latinist and then as a Virgilian - or that may be the wrong way round; I am not quite sure· His intimate knowledge of Old Latin and Roman literary criticism make him a good guide. His parallels and not-quite parallels to Virgil's usages are fascinating. A few examples, as on pervius u s u s ... postesque relicti»..... ^53-^5^ j- niay seem to go rather far and rather deep for young readers, but a good Upper Sixth should like them, especially if they know enough Greek to follow the Greek quotations. We are often greatly helped to understand·what kind of Latin Virgil wrote. Lamentabilis, 3, is not found in poetry before Virgil, and intemeratus, 1^3, is not found at all, nor is violabilis, 15^, nor inclementia, 602« Puella, 238, is not found in epic before Virgil. Of course some usages may have been in lost works: it is not safe always to call them inventions" of Virgil. On scelus expendisse, 229, Servius Auctus says, quis ante hunc expendisse pro luisse? Pone, 725 j is according to Quintilian an archaism. There is a very good note oa the origin and use of ilicit, k2k^ and another on somnus, singular and plural, 9* Mirabile dictu, belongs to ritual» Sed quid ego haec ...·?, is not only conversational, but could actually be scanned as the beginning of a comic senarius» There are over forty of these valuable notes on unconvexrtional uses# Professor Austin sometimes comments on these strange occurrences by saying that Virgil is experimenting, on 229, 722 and elsewhere. This is a delicate question, and I am not saying that Professor Austin is himself deceived. In a sense Virgil was experimenting all the time* Poets try over phrases again and again for sound and for economical sense. But surely what we have in the Second Aeneid are the finished results of long experimentation rather than experiments without achievement. Virgil’s purpose was to compress and condense his words, to say much in little, ut verba in compendium cogeret, a quotation from Servius which would have been worth including. If we talk of experimenting, we may make it seem as if this or that expression, because it appears odd to us, would also have seemed odd to Virgil, and not only odd, but also too odd to be happily accepted. I may - k5 - seem to make too much of this, but it is important* Virgil was not trying to emulate his predecessors in' a search for ordinariness* It is really impossible to say very often that this or that expression would have been aJLtered by Virgil, Professor Austin himself expresses the right view of such matters on 577 ££: "The fact that it has no precedent is no proof at all that the passage is unauthentic, No ’sciolus' (the favourite term among the condemnatory critics) would have had the inventiveness to break the 'rules* so brilliantly." Perhaps, in this context, it might have been well to include a sharper warning for younger readers that there is a hard distinction'between pre-Virgilian Latin and post-Virgilian Latin, which, since Virgil may always have affected it, is not evidence for "normal" Latin. Here Livy is a puzzle. He seems to be cited three times, the last time with the statement that he was writing his History when Virgil was writing the Aeneid. Rostagni argues that at first Livy learnt from Virgil and later Virgil learnt from Livy. But this could hardly be discussed fully .in a commentary. In any case, Professor Austin is extremely instructive on language. The reader has a sense of a strong, clear, new light shed, and is confident* The text adopted is Hirtzel*s in The Oxford Classical Texts, with divergences at 69j 392, ¥f5, 58^ £f> said 616. The fifth of these is important. Professor Austin here gives the results of his powerful article in C.Q. XI 1961, pp.185- 198, on the Helen Scene. He wisely accepts it as Virgil's, whatever may have been Virgil's own reasons for deleting it, but at the end of Aeneas’ soliloquy he finds the problems of the text too difficult, and proposes a lacuna. I am not myself convinced: and I still think animumque explesse iuvabit altricis flammae translatable, perhaps in two equally valid ways, and magnificent as a culmination to these lines of intensest passion. But Professor Austin's treatment of this great passage will no doubt be prized as one of the finest things in his Edition. There was so much to say, especially for so learned an editor, and care and ingenuity were needed to decide what to leave out. Even temptations to write about metre had to be resisted except at important places. Here the comments, though of course some might be called subjective, are often most revealing, not least in the effect of elisions - for example.showing confused haste or indicating a catch in the breath. Professor Austin has always be,en specially ·■ good at indicating these effects. He can equally indicate effects of rhythm, alliteration, and, in general, patterns of sound. On 693 he writes: "One of the loveliest of Virgil's descriptions of light .... the 1-sounds are especially marked, with u, s, and c also notable: the speed and brilliance of the star as it falls are repeatedly made plain, a thing of wonder in all the physical and spiritual darkness of that hour." Virgil has been understood. The proposals are in general bold, and also sparing; but they are precious. .Professor Austin has less to say on the famous Virgilian ambiguities, the double meanings, the penumbra behind a phrase* He considers whether apex, 683, is a sacred cap or just the flame itself on Ascanius' head, and firmly decided for the flame. Surely it is both. The. flame is given a word which brilliantly hints at this other, the priestly, significance. Also, late in the book occurs the line nec tamen amissum respexi animumve reflexi, 741, .Professor Austin recognizes respexi as ”a Virgilian compression” - I think he does not use this word elsewhere - "combining literal and transferred meanings"; we wonder if - h6 - perhaps animum reflexi might also be so explained and indeed other phrases and clauses in the book. However, there is a very good note on clarior, 705: "perhaps the brightness of the flames as well as the noise is meant." Important sources are well, sometimes even lovingly, quoted, as Ennius' bewitching lines, Eurydica prognata ..... It is seen that Virgil is normally better than his source* On 678 the note is "The little scene is beautifully done; Conington observes that it is briefly and hastily sketched in imitation of II. vi, 399 ff., but Virgil owes little if anything to Homer here; it is all so natural, the stubborn old man with his curt refusal to do what his son tells him, the angry, unhappy son, the anxious and frightened wife, the puzzled child." This, indeed, is the way to edit Virgil* It seems almost impious to ask if Homerrs inspiration at the beginning of a process should not have more credit. Mysteriously, sources are not mere soux-ces. If Arctims says that Priam was killed at the altar and Lesches that he was dragged from the altar, it is largely because of them that Virgil says that Priam was dragged to the altar to be killed* We are told of the sources. But we might be also advised how to under­ stand their force in Virgil’s mind. On 6^9 the note is "For the moment, myth is merged in human experience". We might suggest that this should happen always in good poetry, not only for a moment. Understood organically, sources can help greatly with ducente deo, culpatusve Paris and even the "ancient mound of Ceres", profoundly explained by the late R.W. Cruttwell, as 1 am always, and unashamedly, recalling, since 1 think his method, though often unsuccessful, is nevertheless indispensable to a modern exegesis. But of course Professor Austin can make good use of what sources tell, for example lihen he admires Virgil for setting the blaze of burning Troy not, as in the sources, at a time after Aeneas has left, but as an awe-inspiring background to the last scenes of the fight and Aeneas' departure. Professor Austin is not dangerously caught up in "patterns”. He uses the word "pattern" two or three times towards the -end of his commentary, always for a pattern of sound within a verse, and also in the Introduction, page xi, for the parts of the Second Aeneid and their "inner structural pattern". He quotes Hamlet, "an excellent play, well digested in the scenes" in which "he chiefly loved one speech, Aeneas’ tale to Dido": "Hamlet might well have been speaking of this very Book, in which all is so admirably digested". But Professor Austin does not go into detail, in the modern fashion. In general, like a number of German scholars, he accepts Heinze as a basis for new advance; one German writer says that only in the last ten years has progress from the point reached by Heinze been made. Perhaps few editors have been so careful to avoid the irrelevant* Various references might have been expected but are not found, for example, on language, to M,J. Marouzeau, Professor L.E. Palmer, and Professor B.C. Woodcock; but Professor E. Wistrand's work on Virgil's architecture is used, and so is Professor L.J.D. Richardson's superb article on facilis iaetura sepulchri, A great merit in Professor Austin's Edition lies in his archaeological notes. When, for example, Polygnotus' painting in the Lesche at Delphi, or some vase-painting, can help, he takes characteristic care to consult the best authorities, verbally if necessary, and to make his information accurate and up to date. He is valuably informative on the new dating for the Laocoon Group, I was surprised, however, to read that no bay-tree is shown in plastic art near the altar at Priam’s death; I had thought that one or more vase-paintings - ψρ -

showed a fcay-tree there. The plates are admirable, especially the relief, apparently showing the Wooden Horse, found in India and dated to, perhaps, the second century A*D*: on this animal he had already collected much information in J.R.S.(4-9), 1959, PP· 16-25, and could present valuable excerpts in the Edition, Another particularly useful account is the careful presentation of evidence concerning plastic versions of Aeneas with his family escaping from Troy. The care given to Virgil himself, his language, and his poetry, with at least one really useful comment, so far as I have noticed, on every single line, does not lead to neglect of other matters. It is a peculiarly well-balanced Edition, And it is highly original at the end, where are printed the poem of Jacopo Sadoleto on the then newly-discovered Laocoon Group, and three other, lighter, poems relevant to Virgil's Troy. But most important of all is the active human feeling and poetic receptivity which pervade the Edition. Troy, 609, is like· a modern city after an air-raid. When the Greeks are found to have departed, it is just like our modern experience when we visit, in peace, the scene of recent fighting. The poignant words, fatone erepta Creusa .... 738-739, with the older and more homely word lassa, not fossa, need no explanation. ”The whole is brilliantly natural, and very moving,” Curva valle, 7^8, again the Editor does not explain, for he tells us each to think of a valley which we remember: ''Mine”, he says, ”is Sheepscombe in Gloucestershire”, On apparent, dirae facies... 622, he says "Mark the contrast between Venus ..... and. these fiendish shapes of gods' who have become near-devils ..... This is Virgil at his greatest”. On nusquam abero ... . 620, the note is ”A simple, beautiful line of extraordinary comfort and blessing: yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. . . 1 ” On vos agitate fugara .... 640, the comment is, ”1 doubt if Virgil used the words in any doctrinaire sense: they spring from his poet's insight and his poet's pity for the old and unhappy,” Virgil's handling of Sinon, 163 etc., is "a masterly performance” . Having accepted Sinon, the Trojans 194, are all the less suspicious and doubtful because "they are proud to be so honest and kind” - a brilliant stroke of comprehension, matching up to Virgil's own art. Even in these matters of sensitivity disagreement is possible. There is no need for surprise if the gods demolish Troy and, yet Jupiter favours Aeneas. It is simply that Troy has sinned and offended some gods, but Aeneas himself is blameless, Aeneas, certainly, is not a fully mature hero and leader in the Second Aeneid* But it is surely unsafe to go further and say that he is the same in the Fourth Aeneid. There he has progressed and begins to progress more; Dido, certainly, sees him as a great and strong man,.though of course he still has some weakness. But, proportionately, any objections that there may be count for little. Can we say that Virgil has found the Editor whom he himself deserves?

W.F, Jackson Knight, - 48 -

VIRGIL AND £ ( / 5+1) ·

GEORGE E. DUCKWORTH: Structural Patterns and Proportions in Vergil*s Aeneid. A Study in Mathematical Composition. Pp.x+268. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962. Cloth, $ 7*50.

"Geometric structure” has been detected in Homer and “symbolic numerical progressions” discovered in Milton; it was high time that Virgil too should be put on a firm mathematical footing, Duckworth’s thesis is that ’’Vergil composed the Aeneid on the basis of mathematical proportion; each book reveals, in small units as well as in the main divisions, the famous numerical ratio known variously as the Golden Section, the Divine Proportion, or the Golden Mean ratio"* As proportions are only significant between units which bear some interrelationship other than that of being proportionate, Duckworth devotes his first two chapters to a useful schematized resume of views already propounded by other scholars (and by himself in various articles) on the types of pattern-structure in the Aeneid: an "alternating rhythm" produces greater tension and power in even-numbered books; there is a parallelism of incident and episode between corresponding books in each half of the Aeneid; and the whole poem may be regarded as a trilogy, the Tragedy of Dido and the Tragedy of Turnus enclosing the Destiny of Rome, each comprising four books. Of the material content within each book, any given section may be followed by a contrasting section, or by s. different topic with a return to the first (the ’’framework or recessed loanel pattern" of the type a-(b)-(c)-(d)-(c)-(b)-a), or by two other sections, neither necessarily related to the first in thematic content ("tripartite structure")* Every book of the Aeneid (with good-will even Book V) can be seen to fall naturally into three main sections, but these sections are not of equal length. At this point Le Grello’s argument for the importance of the Golden Mean ratio in Georgies I (Les Etudes Classiques 17 (1949) PP.139-235) (concerning which Duckworth admits to an "original skepticism") is examined with reference to the Eclogues and other books of the Georgies, reaffirmed and applied to the Aeneid. The Golden Mean ratio (to three decimal places) is 0.618 /JC/ 5-1)/ :: 1 or 1 :: 1.618 /£(*/5+1)/, and this proportion is reached sooner or later by consecutive numbers in any series of which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers; the simplest series of this type (the Fibonacci series), 1,1,2,3,5*8,13,21,34, 55 reaches it with 21,34. Put in another way, the Golden Mean ratio is found whenever a smaller unit bears the same proportion to a larger unit as the larger to the sum of both (m/M = M/(m+M)), Duckworth has discovered no less than 1,048 such ratios, perfect or approximate (with a generous allowance for approximation) in the Aeneid: in short passages with any of the strueture-patterns listed above (bipartite, tripartite non-frame- work, tripartite framework), in short passages with a four- or five-part interlocking structure (such as a-b-c-d-e, where a,c,e and b,d are related in content and b+d produces the desired ratio to a+c+e), in the main divisions of each book, and^in the Aeneid as a whole. ~ ~* By this time scepticism has given way to astonishment; convinced of Virgil’s deliberate and calculating use of the Golden Mean ratio Duckworth - k9 -

uses it as a criterion for resolving textual problems: all but fourteen of the "half~lines!! are intentional (for if counted according to length as an approximate decimal fraction of a line most of them fit with Golden Mean ratios as accurately as required); the fourteen which are recalcitrant would have been replaced by complete lines in the final revision,. The same criterion condemns as interpolations lines omitted by the best MSS, refutes editors who have indulged in transpositions, authenticates inter alia the much-debated Helen episode (11,567-588), and is of course widely applicable to questions of para­ graphing. Last but not least, it rescues much of the Appendix Virgiliana, especially the Culex, from exaggerated suspicions of falseness. Nobody would Gredit the author of the Culex with any measure of poetic maturity or sensibility, and the discovery of Golden Mean ratios in it proves only that they can be found in bad poetry too. And when Duckworth goes on to detect them in Catullus' Epyllion, Lucretius, Horace’s Ars Poetica and Sermones (i), and the fragments of Ennius, the question arises whether they are not a feature of all poetry (good and bad), an accidental or inevitable aspect of literary composition rather than the concealed secret of Virgil1s art. The main assumptions of Duckworth's thesis cannot be taken as proven* In spite of his repeated reminder that according to the Donatus-Suetonius Vita (15) Virgil gave special attention to mathematical studies, there is no evidence that the arithmetic series which aspire to the Golden Mean ratio were known to Greek mathematics, and the probability that they were is not increased by the fact that the discovery of the simplest type of such a series is attributed to Leonardo of Pisa (alias Fibonacci), the mathematical genius of his age, after his intensive study of Arabic mathematics. Equally there is no evidence that the other Soman poets examined were especial students of mathe­ matics, or· that their indispensable equipment was an outsize abacus« It might seem less improbable that from an intuitive sense of harmonious proportion Virgil and other poets preferred a ratio approximating to the Golden Section, to be found in Greek architecture and aesthetically most satisfying (as shown by psychological tests) to the European mind; but could a visual concept - acquire significant status in a poetry which was transmitted from voice to ear rather than from page to eye? Beyond this, a non-mathematician must speak with caution. But could it be that any poem, composed for any reason in units which are- not equal in' length or multiples of each other, must fall more often than not into sections whose numbers of lines occur on one of the numerous series leading, to the Golden Mean ratio? Duckworth suggests the post-Virgilian epic poets as a "fruitful area for future investigation'*» I predict that the Golden Mean ratio can be found in Statius and Claudian; I fear it will, P. T. EDEN

Bedford College, University of London,