Images of Virgil
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Durham E-Theses Images of Virgil: some examples of the creative approach to the Virgilian biography in antiquity. POWELL, JAMES,EDWIN How to cite: POWELL, JAMES,EDWIN (2011) Images of Virgil: some examples of the creative approach to the Virgilian biography in antiquity., Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3357/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Images of Virgil. Some examples of the creative approach to the Virgilian biography in antiquity. James Edwin Powell. Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Durham University in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 2011 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the prior written consent of the author, and information derived from it should be acknowledged. i ii Contents. Abstract. v Acknowledgements vi Abbreviations. vii Introduction. 1 1. Virgilian careers: the problem of the Culex. 13 2. The cult of Virgil: the tomb and beyond. 67 3. Biographical readings of the Eclogues. 117 4. Virgil in Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus. 177 Conclusion. 233 Bibliography. 237 iii iv Images of Virgil. Some examples of the creative approach to the Virgilian biography in antiquity. James Edwin Powell. Abstract. This thesis explores the reception of the Virgilian biography in antiquity. The ancients were interested not only in the Virgilian oeuvre, but also in the man who created these works. The thesis will investigate the ways in which various authors respond to Virgil’s life, with an especial emphasis on how the Virgilian biography is something amenable to creative appropriation and manipulation. The authors we will be studying both respond to, and contribute towards the construction of, the biographical tradition of Virgil. Chapter 1 seeks to complicate the idea of Virgil’s poetic career by considering how certain writers broach the issue of the Culex as a putative piece of Virgilian juvenilia. The second chapter examines how Virgil’s tomb and the cult which surrounded it play a part in the biographies and autobiographies of his epic successors. The third chapter offers a fresh look at biographical readings of the Eclogues, focusing on the different ways in which this practice is carried out, and the different purposes to which it is put. The final chapter looks at Tacitus’ presentation of the Virgilian biography in the Dialogus de Oratoribus, examining how the historian raises the question of Virgil’s political allegiances, and how he interrogates the idealization of Virgil’s life. v Acknowledgements. Many thanks to my supervisor, Ingo Gildenhard, whose guidance, enthusiasm and patience made this project possible. Thanks are also due to my family, who supported me throughout. I note with gratitude that this PhD was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. vi Abbreviations. AL F. Bücheler & A. Riese (eds.), Anthologia Latina 1.1-2 (Leipzig, 1894-1906). ANRW H. Temporini & W. Haase (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung (Berlin, 1972-). BNP H. Cancik & H. Schneider (eds.), Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World (Leiden, 2002-10). EV Enciclopedia Virgiliana, (Rome, 1984-91). GL H. Keil (ed.), Grammatici Latini, 7 vols. (Leipzig, 1855-80). IEG M. L. West (ed.), Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1989-92). MGH AA Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 15 vols. (Berlin, 1877-1919). OCD S. Hornblower & A. Spawforth (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn. (Oxford, 1996). Pfeiffer R. Pfeiffer (ed.), Callimachus, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1949-53). RE Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, (Stuttgart, 1893-). Skutsch O. Skutsch (ed.), The Annals of Q. Ennius, (Oxford, 1985). Thilo-Hagen Servii grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii, vol. 1: Aeneidos librorum I-V commentarii (Leipzig, 1881); vol. 2: Aeneidos librorum VI-XII commentarii (1884); vol. 3.1: In Vergilii Bucolica et Georgica commentarii (1887); vol. 3.2: Appendix Serviana (1902). Vols. 1-3.1, ed. G. Thilo; vol. 3.2, ed. H. Hagen. TLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, (Leipzig, 1900-). VMA D. Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages, trans. E. F. M. Benecke, rept. edn., with introduction by J. Ziolkowski, (Princeton, 1997). VSD Vita Suetoniana-Donatiana. VVA G. Brugnoli & F. Stok (eds.), Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, (Rome, 1997) vii viii Introduction. Who was Virgil? From one angle the answer seems simple enough: he was a Roman poet whose life spanned the demise of the Republic and the birth of the Empire; and he was the author of, most famously, the epic Aeneid. But viewed from another angle our question might not be so easily answered, for Virgil as a figure within cultural discourse has proven to be a slippery and protean entity: quot lectores, tot Vergilii might be an accurate summation of the issue.1 For the emperor Constantine he was a prophet of Christ; for Dante a guiding beacon of light in the darkness; for T. S. Eliot he was simply the classic of all Europe: for two millennia Virgil has been an iconic figure in western culture.2 The idea of Virgil has been endlessly appropriated, contested and reconfigured as different readers have moulded different Virgils to suit their own particular ends: Christian Virgils, fascist Virgils, imperial Virgils, anti- establishment Virgils, royalist Virgils, philosophical Virgils, magical Virgils – these are just some of the incarnations that this most fought-over of poets has borne over the centuries. Themes and Approaches. This thesis is about the biographical tradition surrounding Virgil. In one sense it thus seeks to address the question with which we started: who was Virgil? More specifically, however, this thesis has two broad concerns: firstly, it is concerned with 1 Cf. Heyworth (2007a) lxv on the task of editing Propertius: ‘Housman described his editions of Juvenal and Lucan as editorum in usum; this text is rather lectorum in usum, but, in the case of Propertius at least, every reader needs to edit the text anew. Quot editores, tot Propertii is an inevitable truism, at least if editors are doing their job with conscientious independence. But it would be as true to say quot lectores, tot Propertii: just as the modern age celebrates diversity and openness of interpretation, so we should celebrate diversity and openness in textual choice’; the formulation quot editores, tot Propertii, quoted by most Propertian textual critics, is originally from Phillimore (1901) praef. 2 Martindale (1997b) provides a succinct overview of Virgil’s resonance in western culture; Kennedy (1997) looks at T. S. Eliot’s conception of Virgil. 1 how the Virgilian life was (and still is) something which was constructed and contested by various readers, each of whom had a particular agenda or axe to grind; secondly, it examines how later authors engage creatively with moments from the Virgilian biography. In this sense my topic is not what the Virgilian life was, but rather what the Virgilian life was made to be. The questions this thesis aims to explore are not only concerned with what our sources tell us about the life of Virgil, but also with how they say it and why. In the sense that this thesis explores stories told about the life of Virgil rather than the life of Virgil itself, it might be said to have affinities with the approach which Maria Wyke, in a recent exploration of the reception of Julius Caesar in western culture, terms ‘metabiography’: …this book constitutes a metabiography – that is, not an exploration of a life at its time of living but of key resonances of that life in subsequent periods.3 By examining key resonances of Virgil’s life in later periods, my aim is to elucidate how the Virgilian biography was not something passively handed down from generation to generation, but was rather something which was actively forged anew and renegotiated by different readers. Examining the processes of this refashioning sheds light not only on how subsequent readers thought about Virgil and his oeuvre, but can also tell us much about these receivers of Virgil themselves; a point made by Marjorie Garber in relation to Shakespearean studies: The search for an author, like any other quest for parentage, reveals more about the searcher than about the sought.4 How later authors fashion Virgil’s life often reveals much about how they conceptualize their own lives and works. This last point will be a recurrent theme of this thesis. 3 Wyke (2007) 19. 4 Garber (1987) 27; quoted by Bennett (2005) 2. 2 The Virgilian biography as a theme is ripe for re-investigation for a number of reasons. Despite Barthes’ (knowingly ironic) proclamation of the death of the author in 1967, interest in