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Further Considerations on the Site of Vergil's Farm
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Since the publication of a lecture called ‘Where Was Vergil's Farm?’ in the John Rylands' Library Bulletin in 1923, and its appearance in a fuller form as Ch. II. of my Harvard Lectures on the Vergilian Age, no hostile criticism has appeared except from writers in Mantua itself (who naturally cling to the local tradition for its own sake), until the book of my friend Prof. E. K. Rand, In Quest of Vergil's Birthplace. This describes in a delightful way his travels in the region of Mantua and Carpenedolo, in the summer of 1929, and re-examines the question in the light of his experience. It also includes several valuable photographs and a map of the Provincia di Mantova, from all of which I have been glad to learn much. The reproductions of pages from the three manuscripts and two editions of the Life by Probus are particularly welcome.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1931
References
page 66 note 1 See my review, Some light on the Eclogues at last, in Cl. Rev., 1931, p. 29.
page 67 note 1 Tu nunc eris illi, Mantua quod fuerat, quodque Cremona, prius.
2 Prof. Bruno Nardi, in the long afternoon which he most kindly devoted to me at Pietole last April (1930), pleaded hard for the tradition. But I could not bring myself to look upon a slight swelling of ground, perhaps 50 feet above the level of the water, as representing the colles which Vergil describes in these lines, especially as it is the only variation of level, save the dykes and the modern fortress, in sight at all.
page 68 note 1 This Prof. Rand (p. 113, note 73) calls “a clear tradition that Conway does not cite.” It is a remark of Servius attached to Eclogue IX. 10. VestrumMenalcan: ‘id est uestrum Vergilium cuius causa agri Mantuanis redditi sunt,’ where he renders agri ‘all the land that Mantua had lost.’ But if Servius meant ‘omnis ager’ and wrote merely ‘agri,’ his note should hardly be called ‘clear’; and if he did mean that, whether clear or not, he was certainly stating what was not so, as appears by Vergil's own testi-mony (in Georg. II. 198, qualem infelix amisit Mantua campum), which Prof. Rand himself cites two pages later, and which shows that Mantua did lose some land. That is why this particular remark, probably much abridged, did not seem to me to contribute anything to our knowledge.
2 This argument is not in the least affected by the vague and quite undocumented statement of Prof. Nardi (Giov. d. Virg., p. 109) that before the operations of Pitentino at the beginning of the thirteenth century the only lagoon was to the south-east of Mantua; because in any case Pietole is at the southern extremity of this lagoon, or further south still. But such an assertion requires to be supported by a scrutiny of the competence and personal trustworthiness of the successive witnesses; and by a careful study of the area, levels, topography and all the details of a scientific physiographical map; and until these are forthcoming, such a bare affirmation cannot be taken into any serious account.
page 69 note 1 See Verg. Age, p. 19, footnote, and pp. 33–4, which Prof. Rand has entirely disregarded.
page 72 note 1 See Nino's, DeArchaeologia Leggendaria Turin, 1896Google Scholare.g., the story about Nero and Lake Fucjnus (cited C.R. XI. [1897], p. 69).
page 75 note 1 What is this symbol (p) which Crinitus puts after primum? Enough of his writing appears in Prof. Rand's photograph to make it most unlikely that it was meant for q (que); but without more of the codex to study I do not venture to say what it was.