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Virgil and The Poetry of Explanations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Nicholas Horsfall
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Extract

The indebtedness of the Aeneid to Homer in terms of plot and structure has been analysed in minute detail, and the hunt is indeed by no means at an end. Here and there, notably but not exclusively in Aeneid 4, long narrative sequences have been followed back to Apollonius Rhodius. Isolated episodes have been identified as owing much to Greek tragedy. But the pursuit of Virgil's principal narrative sources, already undertaken with furious critical acerbity in antiquity, is perhaps too heavily committed to a limited quantity of likely literary models and to certain patterns of enquiry, though these last have changed a good deal in recent years. If I seem to grumble about a narrowness of outlook that becomes at times oppressive and about the danger of conclusions ever more forced and improbable if we continue barking up the same few trees, it is because (i) I have worked on and off for nearly twenty-five years on Aeneid 7, where Virgil's sources are as mixed, complex and anomalous as they ever become and because (ii) I published recently a study (Vergilius 35 (1989), 8–27) of narrative sequences in Aeneid, which seemed to point strongly towards Virgil's attentive reading of Greek colonization stories. This is not the place to continue my one-man pursuit of Herodotus and Pindar in the Aeneid? but it is high time that we looked at certain large narrative structures in the epic and asked whether we have really been framing the right questions about them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , October 1991 , pp. 203 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

NOTES

1. Knauer, G. N., Die Aeneis und Homer (Göottingen, 1964)Google Scholar; excellently summarized by the author himself, in English, GRBS 5 (1964), 61 ffGoogle Scholar. Gransden, K. W., Virgil's Iliad (Cambridge, 1984) should beGoogle Scholar used with caution.

2. Cf. for example, Lyne, R. O. A. M., Further voices in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar, and Conte, G. B., The Rhetoric of Imitation(Ithaca, 1986)Google Scholar.

3. Briggs, W. W., ANRW 2.31.2 (1981), 948ffGoogle Scholar. is useful, but there is much more work to be done.

4. For Roman tragedy, cf. Wigodsky, M., Vergil and early Latin poetry (Wiesbaden 1972)Google Scholar; for Greek, Lyne (n. 2) has some interesting suggestions, but the indispensable guide is König, A.-M., Die Aeneis und die griechische Tragödie (diss. Berlin 1970)Google Scholar.

5. Cf. Macrobius (c.430 A.D., but here following first century A.D. sources) Sal. 5.17.1ff. on Virgil's inadequacy in the central part of Aen. 7, when he has not got Homer to follow.

6. Cf. n.2.

7. I refer in particular to Varro and Greek tragedy, with a surprising Hellenistic admixture (for a summary, cf. Antichthon 15 (1981), 149f.)Google Scholar. A full commentary on Aen. 7 is still needed and is once more under serious consideration.

8. But cf. Vergilius 34 (1988), 3ffGoogle Scholar. (E. Courtney on one likely Herodotean detail) and A. Setaioli on Pindaro in the Enciclopedia Virgiliana.

9. Prof. Bernard Frischer (UCLA) remarked recently that in my Vergilius 1989 paper, there was a significant novelty on p. 24; Prof. Harry Gotoff (University of Cincinnati) then invited me to speak at a colloquium to be held there on ‘Troy’. The topic therefore seemed ready to hand, but the colloquium was cancelled owing to financial pressures and this paper is the result. I am grateful to the two kind friends named for unwittingly winkling it out of me.

10. The future: cf.l.278f., 6.792f, 8.324f.

11. PVS 13 (1973–1974), 1–13Google Scholar, now reprinted in S. Harrison, (ed.), Oxford readings in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1990), pp. 127–44; Prudentia 8 (1976), 73–89Google Scholar, with ample bibliography. More recently, cf. Henry, E., The Vigour of Prophecy (Bristol, 1989)Google Scholar and O'Hara, J.J., Death and the optimistic prophet (Princeton, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Cf. Prud. 8 (1976), 74Google Scholar, n. 12 for a guide to the older discussions.

13. On the role of anachronisms, cf. Sandbach, F. H., PVS 5 (1965–1966)Google Scholar reprinted with alterations, in Harrison (n. 11), pp. 449–65; also Encic. Virg. s.v. Anacronismi (Horsfall).

14. Alexander: Sen. Suas.l, Sen., Ep. 119.8Google Scholar; Julius Caesar: Vell.2.46.1, Flor.1.45.16; Augustus: Horace, , Odes 3.3.55 fGoogle Scholar., Paneg. Mess. 149 f.

15. Cf. Serv. on 6.752: in antiquis invenimus that the work was called not Aeneis but Gestapopuli Romani; this was changed because the name should be given on the basis not of a part but of the whole. There is late evidence for Romanis as an alternative title for the Annales of Ennius (cf. Skutsch's edition, p. 7).

16. Otis, B., Virgil. A study in civilised poetry (Oxford, 1964), pp. 9f., 16f., 24Google Scholar. Ziegler, K., Das hellenistische Epos (Leipzig, 1966), pp. 15 ffGoogle Scholar. is extremely interesting and not hard.

17. Cf. Cairns, F., Tibullus (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 68 ffGoogle Scholar. Horsfall, , Vergilius (1989), 9Google Scholar.

18. Discussed favourably in the later part of my PVS 1973–4 paper (n. 11); much more cautiously by Wigodsky (n. 4), pp. 29 ff.

19. For an admirable study of the apparent parallels between Isaiah and Eclogue 4 in terms of Virgil's knowledge of Jewish prophetic writing, cf. Nisbet, R. G. M., BICS 25 (1978), 59ffGoogle Scholar.

20. Cf. Prudentia (1976), 86, with n. 123.

21. Cf. West, S. R., CQ 33 (1983), 132–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ead. JHS 104 (1984), 130–7Google Scholar.

22. Notably by Dr. West; might some passages have undergone at least revision under the influence of Augustan poetry? (CQ ibid., 129–30).

23. George, E. V., Aeneid 8 and the Aitia of Callimachus (Leiden, 1974)Google Scholar.

24. Fedeli notes 8.42ff, 5Iff., 102ff. with 172ff, 134ff, 322f., 328f, 337ff, 342f., 345f., 347ff., 355ff.,597ff.

25. 1.248, 277, 533, 3.18, 210, 408, 693, 7.63, 601, 778, 10.145, 12.194.

26. The easiest way of extending the list still further would be to say that Virgil's many learned plays on the origins of names of people and places are themselves aetia, explanations of those names. Again, little joy for the English reader: a page in the Enc. Virg. s.v. Etimologia, an invaluable pamphlet in Dutch (G. J. M. Bartelink, Amsterdam, 1965), Marouzeau, J., Quelques Aspects de la formation du Latin littéeraire (Paris, 1949), pp. 71–9Google Scholar and (in English)Hansen, J. S. Th., SO 26 (1948), 93–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Antichthon (1981), 149, cf. JRS 65 (1975), 228 fGoogle Scholar. and CR 29 (1979), 223Google Scholar.

28. For dating, cf. BICS Suppl. 52 (1987), 68Google Scholar.

29. Fraenkel, E., JRS 35 (1945), 3Google Scholar= Kl. Beitr. 2 (Rome, 1964), p. 149Google Scholar.

30. Discussed in some detail in my paper of 1973–4 (n. 11).

31. Anderson, W. S., TAPA 88 (1957), 17ffGoogle Scholar.

32. Vergilius (1989), 17,26.

33. Cf. Feeney, D. C., PCPhS 32 (1986), 1–24Google Scholar.

34. With the confident belief in historical typology found in e.g. K. W. Gransden's commentary on Aen. 8, contrast the extreme scepticism of Griffin, J., Latin Poetry and Roman Life (London, 1985), 183–97Google Scholar.

35. West, D. A., G&R 21 (1974), 24Google Scholar, cf. Horsfall, , Vergilius (1989), 22ffGoogle Scholar.

36. 6.93, 7.96, 7.253, 271–2, 333, 9.600, 12.42, 821, 827, 835–6.

37. On name and nationhood, cf. Vergilius (1989), 22–3.

38. Cf. Wiseman, T. P., G &R 21 (1974), 153ff.Google Scholar, Horsfall, , Vergilius 32 (1986), 9Google Scholar.

39. Cf. n.42 below and some fresh observations in Cairns, F., Virgil's Augustan Epic (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Feeney, D. C., CQ 34 (1984), 179–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar = Harrison (n. 11), 339–62.

41. Galinsky, G. K., Aeneas, Sicily and Rome (Princeton, 1969), pp. 98–102Google Scholar, Horsfall, , Vergilius (1989), 17Google Scholar for the colonist and the sacred objects he carries.

42. Weinstock, S., Divus Iulius (Oxford, 1971), pp. 253 ffGoogle Scholar.

43. Timaeus, , FGH 566F59Google Scholar; cf. Horsfall, , BICS Suppl. 52 (1987), 17,19Google Scholar.

44. Vergilius (1989), 24.

45. On the ideological importance of trousers in Augustan epic, cf. Vergilius (1989), 23, Horsfall, , Riv. Fil. 117.1 (1989), 57–61Google Scholar. Unexpectedly, a fundamental topic.

46. Horsfall, , Prudentia(1976), 73fGoogle Scholar., Markus, R.A., Saeculum (Cambridge, 1970), 47 ffGoogle Scholar, Barrow, R. H., Introduction to St. Augustine, The City of God (London, 1950), pp. 162ffGoogle Scholar.

47. There was a time when, for many, Latin began at eight: an admirable system, in the hands of a good teacher. From 1955 to 1958,1 was particularly lucky: David Smith (cf. Campbell, P. J., Refuge from Fear (London, 1982), p. 94: an apt pseudonymous commemoration) took over and made it all so easy and such fun. I am his only pupil to have remained in the business: thirty-two years after his death, my gratitude is undiminishedGoogle Scholar.