Critical Notes on Virgil: Editing the Teubner Text of the "Georgics" and the "Aeneid" 9783110456523, 9783110455762

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Gian Biagio Conte Critical Notes on Virgil

Global Studies in Libraries and Information

Edited by Ian M. Johnson Editorial Board Johannes Britz (South Africa/U.S.A) Barbara Ford (U.S.A.) Peter Lor (South Africa) Kay Raseroka (Botswana) Abdus Sattar Chaudry (Pakistan/Kuwait) Kerry Smith (Australia) Anna Maria Tammaro (Italy)

Volume 2

Gian Biagio Conte

Critical Notes on Virgil  Editing the Teubner Text of the Georgics and the Aeneid

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 Εὔτολμος εἶναι κρῖνε, τολμηρὸς δὲ μή. Menandri Sent. 226

Foreword Going against the usual practice I want to acknowledge my scholarly debts at the beginning as well as at the end of the foreword. And surely it is only right that I should begin with the thanks I owe to those who reviewed my critical editions of Virgil. I am grateful to them not only for the endorsement they have seen fit to express but also for the occasional disagreement. Even when I have not been receptive to their criticisms they have stimulated me to discussion and even prompted a deeper exploration of this or that problem. This is why some of these reviewers have been a real help to me in preparing these notes. But I do not feel the same indebtedness towards them all. I am grateful only to those who have patiently engaged their own expertise and demonstrated a scrupulous examination of the editions. Their names will reappear several times when I have occasion to discuss their observations: D. Butterfield, P. De Paolis, S.J. Harrison, S. Heyworth, N. Horsfall, E. Kraggerud, L. Rivero Garcia, U. Schmitzer, F. Stok.¹ I will not concern myself with those who showed themselves superficial or hasty; the only exception I shall make is in honor of a picaresque professor from Bordeaux, Gauthier Liberman, who seems to have derived from the region where he lives the true Gascon spirit of a D’Artagnan and would-be musketeer.² A critical edition is essentially a working hypothesis, at least insofar as it is guided by premises to be openly verified; it presents itself as a venture that, even when inspired by criteria of probability, still has empirical features. It is obvious that a critical edition can never be considered either definitive or incontrovertible. Nevertheless, I shall try in every way in the following pages to justify some of the textual choices I have made in my two Teubners – first in that of the Aeneid (2009), then later in that of the Georgics (2013). In each instance I shall argue my case at length; I shall try to present conclusive evidence without hiding my doubts and reservations. I shall also propose some improvements, and will not abstain from confessing some second thoughts.

1 D. Butterfield, «ExClass» 15, 2011, pp. 397–401; P. De Paolis, Sacrum poema. Riflessioni sulla nuova edizione teubneriana dell’Eneide di Virgilio, «Paideia» 66, 2011, pp. 549–81; S. J. Harrison, «Gnomon» 83, 2011, pp. 306–9; S. Heyworth, «BMCR» 2010.10.03 (Aeneid); 2014.02.47 (Georgics); N. Horsfall, L’Eneide di Gian Biagio Conte, «RFIC» 140, 2012, pp. 199–208; E. Kraggerud, Marginalia to a New Aeneis recensa, «SO» 85, 2011, pp. 210–25 + «Gymnasium» 121, 2014, pp. 496–97 (Georgics); L. Rivero Garcia, «Latomus» 70, 2011, pp. 883–85 + L. Rivero Garcia, Notes on the Text of Virgil’s Aeneid. Apropos the New Teubner Edition, in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History XVI, Bruxelles 2012, pp. 176–97; U. Schmitzer, L’Eneide teubneriana a cura di Gian Biagio Conte, «Paideia» 65, 2010, pp. 667–74; F. Stok, Il Virgilio del XXI secolo, «Paideia» 66, 2011, pp. 583–609. 2 G. Liberman, «CR» 62, 2012, pp. 149–51.

VIII  Foreword

Every editor tries to bridle his own subjectivity by subordinating it to the objective evidence of the tradition (whether direct or indirect); despite this shared starting point the divergence between possible editorial outcomes is always greater than what a “common reader” might expect. This is especially true of the process of establishing the text, but it is also true of furnishing the apparatus criticus, to which we entrust the record of testimonia, and with it the proposals for correction already advanced by other critics. It is right for the apparatus too to have a style, and that style displays itself in this case in the calculated weighing of which opinions should be included, which omitted. The apparatus criticus cannot be a repository in which readings and names (ancient or modern) are allowed to pile up; only relevant information is wanted here, for what is superfluous risks swamping what is useful. Imposing order on an apparatus entails evaluating the discrepancies and sacrificing whatever is not helpful. Even “diagnostic conjectures” are selected with care and evaluated on the basis of their probability; they are worthy of attention only if they are strengthened by reasonable motivations. I would like to offer an example, in the hope that it will give a concrete exhibit of the criteria I have used. In Aen. 4.176 I accepted the text offered by the manuscripts parua metu primo: this is Fama, which “small at first out of fear” suddenly (mox) rears up to the sky. The two adjacent ablative terminations create a problem here, by giving the awkward impression of an adjective primo agreeing with metu; in reality the adverb primo is antecedent to mox, and metu is autonomous. However, this would be a piece of inattention, if not accidental ambivalence, to be blamed on the poet. (It seems to me less probable that one could understand it as “because of an initial fear”). Baehrens, one of the most acute intellects in the history of Latin philology, was perhaps impelled by this dissatisfaction and conjectured parua initu primo: he had in mind the Lucretian nexus – perfectly isometric and isoprosodic, and furthermore set in the same metrical sedes – unde initum primum capiat (1.383). The emendation is superb and eliminates every awkwardness in the Virgilian text: primo initu seems to be an elegant equivalent of the temporal adverb primum (in correlation with mox.) This emendation had every right to be recorded in the apparatus, at least as a diagnostic conjecture: and that is what I did. But why not put it into the text? Perhaps from lack of courage, perhaps from the illusion (common to all editors) that metu contains a psychological connotation which we must not lose: Fama shows herself timid in the beginning. Now I suspect that such an assumed psychological connotation is the accidental product of the misunderstanding of a copyist who let himself be deceived by the palaeographic affinity of initu and metu. I regret not exercising a bit more courage, rather than allowing myself to be inhibited by the religious respect paid to the tradition. My present remorse is born from disillusion and would like to condemn my excessive caution. My only

Foreword



IX

consolation is that in practice, starting from my apparatus criticus, the reader too can discover independently which is the more probable text. It is a debt owed to the intuition of Baehrens, but it is still relegated to the apparatus. If I prepare a second edition of the Aeneid and the Georgics, I will obviously take stock of my second thoughts, not to mention contributions subsequently published; but in truth I have not found many new proposals that have convinced me, for all that scholars continue to probe the Virgilian text on all sides. But I did find one and I shall surely accept it into my text because of its economy and the undoubted benefits which it produces in one passage of the Aeneid. I must thank the critical vigilance of E. Kraggerud. I gladly mention this contribution here in order to compensate in this way for some disagreements I was obliged to voice in the following pages regarding other interpretations by the same scholar, an unwearying explorer of Virgil’s text. His short note is entitled “On Vergil, Aeneid 11.256: a conjecture”, in «Eranos» 107. In this passage the envoy Venulus is quoting the words with which Diomedes tries to deter the Latins from war against the exiled Trojans: quicumque Iliacos ferro uiolauimus agros (mitto ea quae muris bellando exhausta sub altis, quos Simois premat ille uiros) infanda per orbem supplicia et scelerum poenas expendimus omnes.

255

Kraggerud constructs a fine syntactical and grammatical analysis to show that in the nexus mitto ea quae… exhausta, the proleptic ea is nothing but a banal scholastic gloss that has crept into the text; it not only goes against the Virgilian usus scribendi but even alters the indirect exclamatory interrogative quae … exhausta, incorrectly transforming it into a relative clause. The same syntactic structure returns in the coordinated phrase that follows quos… premat… uiros, and can be conveniently compared with 4.14 quae bella exhausta canebat. It follows that ea should be deleted because it is interpolated. (Kraggerud sets out in note 7 some metrical considerations that definitively condemn this intrusion.) I could have written additional critical notes beyond those presented here. I limited myself to the most interesting – by which I mean the most problematic – cases. In my editions I often took steps to justify my textual choices with critical notes scattered in the apparatus, and this allowed me to make known from time to time, however briefly, what my arguments were on many passages. The longest of my notes – and I apologize for the pedantry from which it suffers – is dedicated to the so-called “Helen Episode”. I turned it into an appendix, as I did for other reasons my remarks on pernox/pernix in the Georgics (where I take the opportunity to deal with some alleged lectiones difficiliores in Virgil.)

X  Foreword

This is why the appendixes deal not with individual readings but with problems of a larger scope. In the appendix on the Helen episode I argue in favor of its Virgilian authenticity, or better, I maintain that the passage represents a first draft from the poet’s hand, a sketch which should have been subjected to revision and the labor limae. Excluded from the edition supervised by Varius (either on his initiative or because the poet himself had marked the section as incomplete and provisional), the episode survived thanks to Servius and Servius Danielinus, but in my opinion it cannot be left out of the body of the poem. This explains why I let it stand in my text of the second book of the Aeneid (although printed in italics). Had I thought it a forgery, it should have been included in the Praefatio, or in any case outside the text. In Appendix II I explain why it must be considered an integral part of the poem, just as it was conceived by Virgil before death prevented him from bringing his poetry to full completion. I should record here how useful I have found discussions with Giulia Ammanati, Emanuele Berti, Paolo Dainotti, Rolando Ferri, Philip Hardie, Alessio Mancini, Lisa Piazzi, Antonino Pittà and Gianpiero Rosati. It sometimes happened that my friend Michael Reeve had ideas opposing mine. I confess I have gained great advantage from our arguments. I take great pleasure in dedicating these pages to Elaine Fantham. She not only generously offered to translate them into English but with her cheerful good sense she knew how to mitigate the polemical thrusts that gave a pungent flavor to my discussion. “It is no longer the time” – she said to me – “to play Achilles, you are too mature for that now.” I am grateful to her even for this reproach! G.B. Conte

Table of Contents Editions and commentaries  XIII Critical Notes  1 Georg. 2.69–72  3 Georg. 2.433  6 Georg. 3.157–165  8 Georg. 4.92  15 Georg. 4.203–5  18 Georg. 4.221  21 Georg. 4.287–294  23 Georg. 4.348  26 Some cases of interpolation: Aen. 1.378; 4.126; 9.151  28 Readings from the indirect tradition: Aen. 5.720; 7.110  33 Aen. 3.684–86  36 Aen. 5.323–26  40 Aen. 6.602  41 Aen. 6.901  45 Aen. 7.543  49 Aen. 10.366 and 9.461  51 Aen. 12.53  55 Appendices  59 I Georgics 3.230: pernox vs. pernix  61 II The dossier on the Helen episode (Aen. 2.567–588)  69 Indexes  89 Index locorum  91 Index rerum et nominum  95

Editions and commentaries Bentley Castiglioni

Conington Cunningham Erren

Geymonat Goold Harrison Heinsius

Heyne Hirtzel Horsfall

Jahn Martyn Mynors

Nettleship

Norden Page Peerlkamp Ribbeck

Sabbadini

readings and conjectures by Richard Bentley annotated in his copy of editio Commelinianae,  (Brit. Mus.  g. ) P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos libri XII, recensuit R. Sabbadini. Editionem ad exemplum editionis Romanae (MCMXXX) emendatam curauit Aloisius Castiglioni, Aug. Taurinorum  The Works of Virgil, with a Commentary by J. Conington, London – P. Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica et Aeneis, ex recensione A. Cuningamii, Edinburgi  P. Vergilius Maro, Georgica, herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert von M. Erren, Band I: Einleitung, Praefatio, Text und Übersetzung, Heidelberg ; Band II: Kommentar, Heidelberg  P. Vergili Maronis opera, post Remigium Sabbadini et Aloisium Castiglioni recensuit M. Geymonat, Aug. Taurinorum  (Roma ²) Virgil, with an English Translation by R.H. Fairclough, revised by G.P. Goold,  voll., Cambridge, MA, – Vergil, Aeneid , with Introduction, Translation and Commentary by S.J. Harrison, Oxford  P. Virgilii Maronis opera, cum integris et emendatioribus commentariis Seruii, Philargyrii, Pierii. Accedunt … praecipue Nic. Heinsii notae nunc primum editae; quibus et suas et in omne opus animaduersiones et uariantes in Seruium lectiones addidit P. Burmannus, post cuius obitum interruptam editionis curam suscepit et adornauit P. Burmannus junior,  voll., Amstelaedami  P. Vergilii Maronis Opera, uarietate lectionis et perpetua adnotatione illustrata a Chr. G. Heyne,  voll., Lipsiae –¹ (–²; –³) P. Vergilii Maronis opera, recognouit F.A. Hirtzel, Oxonii  N. Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid : A Commentary, Leiden/Boston/Köln ; N. Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid : A Commentary, Leiden/Boston ; N. Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid : A Commentary,  voll., Berlin/Boston  P. Virgilii Maronis opera omnia, ex recensione Ioann. Chr. Jahn, editio quarta, Lipsiae  P. Virgilii Maronis Georgicorum libri quatuor. The Georgicks of Virgil, with an English Translation and Notes by J. Martyn, London ³ P. Vergili Maronis opera, recognouit breuique adnotatione critica instruxit R.A.B. Mynors, Oxonii ; Virgil, Georgics, ed. with a Commentary by R.A.B. Mynors, Oxford  The Works of Virgil, with a Commentary by J. Conington. Fourth Edition Revised with Corrected Orthography and Additional Notes by H. Nettleship,  voll., London – P. Vergilius Maro, Aeneis Buch VI, erklärt von E. Norden, Leipzig ³ P. Vergili Maronis Bucolica et Georgica, with Introduction and Notes by T.E. Page, London  P. Virgilii Maronis Aeneidos libri I-XII, edidit et annotatione illustrauit P. Hofman Peerlkamp, I–II, Leidae  P. Vergili Maronis opera, apparatu critico in artius contracto iterum recensuit O. Ribbeck,  voll., Lipsiae – (–¹); Prolegomena critica ad P. Vergili Maronis opera maiora, Lipsiae  P. Vergili Maronis opera, recensuit R. Sabbadini,  voll., Romae  (²)

XIV  Editions and commentaries

Schaper Sidgwick Tarrant Thomas Traina Wagner

Vergils Gedichte, erklärt von Th. Ladewig, . (., .) Aufl. von C. Schaper,  voll., Berlin – P. Vergili Maronis opera, with Introduction and English Notes by A. Sidgwick,  voll., Cambridge  Virgil, Aeneid, Book XII, ed. by R. Tarrant, Cambridge  Virgil, Georgics, ed. by R.F. Thomas,  voll., Cambridge  A. Traina, Virgilio. L’utopia e la storia (il libro XII dell’Eneide e antologia delle opere), Torino  P. Virgilius Maro, uarietate lectionis et perpetua adnotatione illustratus a Chr. G. Heyne. Quartam editionem curauit G.Ph.E. Wagner,  voll., Lipsiae/Londinii –

 Critical Notes

Georg. 2.69–72 With Heyne-Wagner’s editions the two textual problems that disfigure the passage had been solved, at least in part. Ribbeck took a step backwards. Happily Conington returned to Heyne-Wagner, but Hirtzel moved further away again, affecting consequently the text of Mynors. Meanwhile Sabbadini had recovered the good arguments of Heyne-Wagner, but Geymonat, contrary to his usual practice, distanced his text from Sabbadini, allowing himself instead to be influenced by Mynors. Finally Goold was half right: in one case he followed Ribbeck’s choice, in the other that of Heyne-Wagner (who had satisfied even Conington). Thomas, as we shall see, is a special case. In short, a see-saw of choices, which gives us a clear understanding of how the passage in question was worked over. Let us start from Ribbeck’s text, which makes the errors of the tradition manifest: Inseritur uero et nucis arbutus horrida fetu, et steriles platani malos gessere ualentes, castaneae fagos; ornusque incanuit albo flore piri, glandemque sues fregere sub ulmis.

70

69 ET FETV NVCIS ARBVTVS HORRIDÄ (signis rubris suprap.) M, Servius ex foetu nucis arbutus orrida γ et fetu nucis arbutus horrida abc ex fetu nucis a. horrida de ult. syll. Victorinus. ‘uersus dactylicus’, nam male quidam horrens legunt Servius, item schol. Bern. 71 castaneas fagus Scaliger prol. ad Manil. 9 FAGOS Mγab, Servius fagus Prisciani exempl., fortasse ut nominativus sit. platani malos gessere valentes, Castaneae fagos; ornusque incanuit albo Servius platani m. g. valentes Castaneae; fagus ornusque i. a. alii teste eodem platani m. g. valentes; Castaneae fagos, ornusque i. a. ‘ut similiter fagos nominativus sit’ alii teste eodem, etiam Philargyrius ut videtur, qui narrat alios legere: platani malos, gessere valentes Castaneae fagos, ut illic subintelligas inserit, in sequenti hypallage sit; et hanc etiam schol. Bern. statuit. CASTANEAE·FAGOS·ORNUSQU·INCANUIT ALBO M fagus nominativum pluralem interpretatur Wagnerus quaest. Verg. XII 14.

There are two problems, one in v. 69 and one in v. 71, both the product of a metrical anomaly. Let us start with the first. The verse is hypermetric with synaphea, as Macrobius observes (Sat. 5.14.4): “hypercatalectic lines are a syllable too long… arbutus horrida.” Pomponius Laetus, the humanist who in about 1470 corrected the Codex Mediceus in red ink (M⁷), wanted to eliminate what seemed to him like a corruption, and so (having restored an intervention by the second hand of γ) transposed the transmitted sequence fetu nucis arbutus horrida, cor-

4  Georg. 2.69–72

recting it to nucis arbutus horrida fetu. The transposition won the undeserved approval of several editors (surprisingly it is still found in the excellent text of Goold). This is not the only instance of hypermetric verse with synaphea in the Georgics; consider 1.295 aut dulcis musti Volcano decoquit umorem/et foliis… and 3.449 et spumas miscent argenti uiuaque sulpura/Idaeasque pices …, where the manuscript tradition almost unanimously (but not the grammarians and scholiasts) presents the normalized sequence et sulpura uiua. Hypermetric verses ending in – que are more common: 2.344, 443; 3.242, 377.³ Just as embarrassing from the metrical point of view is v. 71, because of the lengthening of the final syllable of fagus ‘in arsi’ before the caesura. Now this was something that could easily be healed by correcting to fagos, and the innovation grafted itself into the direct tradition, almost completely displacing it. This illicit correction had the advantage of eliminating the metrical anomaly, but at the same time it created a deceptive correspondence between castaneae fagos and platani malos gessere in the preceding verse: “plane trees bore apples, and chestnut trees bore beechnuts”, two nominatives plural and two accusatives plural in perfect parallelism, sharing the verb gessere. Thus the punctuation came to stand after fagos (option c in Mynors’ discussion, Virgil, Georgics 1990, pp. 109–110) which Mynors seems to reject. But to connect castaneae fagos asyndetically with the previous verse, in which the apples were grafted on plane trees, entailed a sterile plant (the beech) being grafted onto a fruitbearing tree (the chestnut) contrary to all good sense, and equally contrary to the other examples of grafting mentioned by Virgil in the passage.⁴ To heal the absurdity Scaliger (Proleg. ad Manil. 9) proposed the emendation castaneas fagus (clearly treating fagus as a fourth declension nominative plural) and Thomas has accepted this adjustment in his edition and commentary. But the correct solution is altogether different; it is found in the reading fagus transmitted by Priscian (and by two Carolingian Mss.) With the change in punctuation, it brings the period to an end with gessere valentis; thus a new

3 There is an excellent discussion in J. Soubiran, L’Élision dans la Poésie latine, Paris 1966, pp. 466 ff., «REL» 58, 1980, p. 126. 4 Servius seems to have gone astray, even if he notices the aporia: sed ‘castaneae fagos’ eget expositione; non enim in castanea fertili infecunda fagus inseritur: unde aut hypallage est, ut ‘castaneae fagos’ sit pro ‘fagi castaneas’; aut est mutanda distinctio, ut sit ‘et steriles platani malos gessere valentes castaneae’ – id est infecundae arbores platani fortes ramos castaneae portaverunt – ‘fagos ornusque incanuit albo flore piri’: secundum quam distinctionem ‘fagos’, licet brevis sit ‘gos’, finalitatis tamen ratione producitur, ‘fagos’ enim incipit Graecus esse nominativus singularis, non pluralis noster accusativus. Alii neutrum probant et ita accipiunt ‘castaneae fagos, piri flore ornus incanuit’, ut similiter ‘fagos’ nominativus sit graecus.

Georg. 2.69–72

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5

period begins in which fagus is coordinated with ornus and it too is subject of incanuit, while castaneae is genitive, governed by flore (and parallel with piri); this is understood as “the beech is hoary white with the chestnut flower and the ash (also sterile) is covered with the white flower of the pear”. So fagus is nominative singular with the final syllable prolonged ‘in arsi’ before the caesura: not such a rare event. For similar instances compare e.g. Georg. 2.5 … pampineo grauidus autumno; 3.76 altius ingreditur et mollia…; 118 aequus uterque labor, aeque…; 189 inualidus etiamque tremens…; 332 sicubi magna Iouis antiquo…; 4.92 nam duo sunt genera, hic melior insignis…; 453 non te nullius exercent numinis irae. See the ample collection of similar cases offered by R.G. Kent in Mélanges Marouzeau, Paris 1948, 301 ff.

Georg. 2.433 [et dubitant homines serere atque impendere curam?] I have no doubt that this line is spurious. Ribbeck decided to delete it (cf. Proll. crit. p. 49). In fact this is an interpolation and one not even well disguised. But the reputation of a “compulsive athetizer” that clung to the great German philologist unjustly discredited his damnatio of the line. Sabbadini rebaptized it in his text, but he was of the opinion that it was an addition inserted by the poet himself in a second edition of the Georgics (he was firmly convinced of the hypothesis of an updated revision of the work: «secundis curis additus est non in ordine sed in margine … unde non omnia exemplaria descripserunt»). Hirtzel in the old OCT had again expelled the verse, but in the next OCT Mynors rescued it (see also his commentary of 1990), and so, following him, did Geymonat. More recently Thomas and Goold have not hesitated to eliminate it. The line, which in itself sounds ingenuously rhetorical, seems an incongruous comment in relation to the context, or even a rhetorical question that openly contradicts the context. Previously, in vv. 259–419, the poet had dilated on the cultivation of the vine, broadcasting advice and suggesting precautions; in particular he had recalled how wearisome and laborious was the life of the vinedresser. Now, having spelled out the chores of viticulture, he moves on to discuss plants that “on the contrary” – as he says explicitly – require little or no care from the farmer. Olives are mentioned (v. 420 contra non ulla est oleis cultura …), as well as fruit trees (vv. 426 ff. poma quoque …ad sidera raptim/ui propria nituntur opisque haud indiga nostrae) and some moorland species (vv. 438 ff. … iuuat arua uidere/non rastris, hominum non ulli obnoxia curae). The whole section proclaims the self-sufficiency of these plants – which “grow naturally”, “have no need of our assistance”, and “do not depend on hoeing and men’s carefulness”. In short these are crops that leave the peasant in complete repose. For this reason a rhetorical question like et dubitant homines serere atque impendere curam? shows itself inconsistent from a logical point of view, since it presupposes the wearisome toil of the farmer (impendere curam) – precisely that human effort which, we have just been told, is not necessary at all. Obviously an ancient reader could not resist the temptation of adding his own contribution to that of Virgil and embarked on an unjustified and even thoughtless act of poetic collaboration. Among other problems, in his enthusiasm the clumsy interpolator did not realize that the insertion of the new verse produces the immediate succession of two rhetorical questions (not justified by anaphora) – a careless juxtaposition that finds no counterpart in any other passage of Virgil’s works.

Georg. 2.433

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7

Even to an “external” scrutiny the verse presents all the characteristics of interpolation. It is actually missing from one of the main codices (M), nor is it commented on by Servius (who most likely did not have it in his text), and it is unknown even to the Scholia Bernensia. Rather than an imitation of Virgil it is a patchwork constructed by adapting turns of phrase retrieved from other places in his oeuvre; compare especially Aen. 6.806 et dubitamus adhuc uirtutem extendere factis? For impendere curam compare Georg. 2.61 scilicet omnibus est labor impendendus; 3.74 praecipuum iam inde a teneris impende laborem; 3.123 f. omnis/ impendunt curas. So it should be deleted as apocryphal.

Georg. 3.157–165 This passage is a hornet’s nest. The poisonous stings of problems bristle from almost every line, now textual, now exegetic. I offer below the transmitted text, in the form which has become virtually the current vulgata. I also provide a literal translation for a first orientation. Post partum cura in uitulos traducitur omnis; continuoque notas et nomina gentis inurunt, et quos aut pecori malint submittere habendo aut aris seruare sacros aut scindere terram et campum horrentem fractis inuertere glaebis. cetera pascuntur uiridis armenta per herbas: tu quos ad studium atque usum formabis agrestem iam uitulos hortare uiamque insiste domandi, dum faciles animi iuuenum, dum mobilis aetas.

160

165

After the births all care is transferred to the calves; and immediately the farmers brand the mark and name of the household and [indicate] the calves they prefer to put to breeding or consecrate to altars or designate to plow the land and to overturn the field rough with broken clods. The other herds pasture on the green grass; but break in those you want to mould for fieldwork, train them even when small and begin to tame them, while their young spirits are inclined, while their youth is flexible. Virgil is talking about the branding of domestic animals in view of the various functions for which the breeder has destined them. For clarity it is helpful to divide the passage into individual problematic points: once they are clarified it will be easy to reassemble them so as to obtain a comprehensive interpretation. 1) v. 159 et quos …aut…aut…aut 2) v. 160 aut aris seruare sacros 3) v. 162 cetera pascuntur …. armenta 4) v. 163 f. tu …hortare 1) For some time philologists have shown discomfort with the link et quos; it seems a real exegetic “crux”. I state in advance that all the possible hypotheses

Georg. 3.157–165

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9

of syntactic connection seem in my opinion unsatisfactory. Early on Heyne summarized the problem well: «copula et non habet cui bene iungatur. Sunt qui construant continuoque inurunt notas et nomina gentis et quos, ut uerba et nomina et quos pro appositione habeantur, genusque et usus distincte designetur. Sed quomodo inurunt nomina et quos iungi possit, non docent. Equidem suppleo: et inurunt notas iis, quos».⁵ Modern commentators stay within the furrow of the dilemma formulated by Heyne; either they follow his proposal or they accept the other solution which he mentioned, only to refute it himself. Thus Conington, Page and Thomas try to extract from the general sense of notas et nomina gentis inurunt a verb like signant or distinguunt, an implied verb which would perform the function of governing an unexpressed eos, antecedent of quos. Mynors instead prefers to adopt the old interpretation that treats et nomina … et (eos) quos as a double apposition explaining notas (“signa quibus et denotentur nomina et distinguantur ii qui …”).⁶ None of these interpretations seems acceptable to me. They are all forced distortions, exegetical acrobatics licensed only by the illusion that a relative clause can be constructed with a syntactic link that is insupportably elliptical, even grammatically disconnected. It seems likely to me that in the course of transmission the first unit et nomina gentis inurunt mechanically produced the second unit et quos, resulting in two members apparently coordinated in polysyndeton. This is the same syntactical mirage which, as I just said, led some exegetes – first Heyne hesitantly, then Mynors more confidently – to construct et nomina … et quos as a correlation intended to make explicit notas: an illusion all the more deceptive because in this way the unit et nomina gentis would be separated from notas, whereas it forms with notas an indissoluble hendiadys (notas et nomina gentis = “the brandings which indicate the name of the establishment and the different categories according to which the animals would be distinguished”). I am convinced that et quos conceals a corruption. Wagner saw the palaeographically easiest correction: ecquos [scil. uitulos]. This is quite plausible, since in the ancient manuscripts ecquis commonly appears written etquis and so on throughout the declension. The construction composed of an indirect interrogative (as the subjunctive malint would lead one to believe) would be tolerable in itself, even if in reality the syntax of the period would end up somewhat “relaxed”; in fact it would lack an organic link between notas … inurunt and

5 Publius Vergilius Maro. Ex recensione C.G. Heyne recentioribus Wunderlichii et Ruhkopfii curis illustrata, 1827, II, p. 25. 6 Virgil, Georgics, p. 207.

10  Georg. 3.157–165

ecquos … malint. But the real difficulty lies in the semantic value of the interrogative ecquis, which signals a tinge of discomfort or indignation (“what on earth?”) – an emphasis quite inappropriate in this case. There are also scholars who have found nothing to reconsider in the transmitted text. Thus Sidgwick (vol.II ad loc.) stated that “quos…malint is an indirect question depending on the sense of the preceding line”. That is also the opinion of Erren, (Bd. I, p. 103) who translates: “They brand immediately the sign for the name on the cattle, and whether one wishes to group them with his own cattle herd or … or… (ob man sie dem eigenen Zuchtvieh einreihen will, oder … oder …)”. But we notice that the “literal” formulation of his German version seems to come closer to a Latin text in which the disjunctive interrogative would require a syntactic link like anne … an… an. The triple disjunction with aut seems to me oriented more towards an affirmative syntactical structure than towards a phrase that is interrogative or dubitative. I will add only that anyone who understands et quos …malint as an indirect interrogative – that is, as a third “complementary object” of inurunt coordinated with notas et nomina gentis – meets a difficulty hard to overcome. According to this interpretation, …aut…aut would inevitably serve as the specification of notas, inasmuch as it clarifies the ‘content’ of those notas that the breeders brand upon the calves in order to distinguish their different destinations. Something, for example, like “the brands [i.e.] which calves they prefer for…”. In short notas would be, as it were, the deictic of the indirect interrogative and would anticipate whatever is set out in the following interrogative. But then the two syntactical elements (notas – quos) could not be joined by a copulative et, as if they were two things parallel but different one from the other; in reality a logical relationship of implication, not of coordination, would bind them. The conjunction et, in short, seems absurdly redundant in this instance, and logically out of place. We may escape from this aporia if we abandon the belief that quos is a relative pronoun or pronoun that introduces an indirect interrogative, in which case the emendation si quos instantly comes to mind. The result is a limpid and fluent sequence: continuoque notas et nomina gentis inurunt,/SI QVOS AVT pecori malint… AVT aris seruare… AVT scindere terram: “according to whether they prefer to designate some for reproduction or butchery or field work.” The same syntactical structure, in which si quos is followed by a triple enumeration introduced by aut, is found in Bucolics 5.10–11 incipe, Mopse, prior, SI QVOS AVT Phyllidis ignes AVT Alconis habes laudes AVT iurgia Codri (the construction is fully identical, but below we will see even more clearly how many functional similarities these two passages share). It seems to me difficult to overstate the impressive affinity between the two passages in Virgil; this is one of the most

Georg. 3.157–165

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11

obvious instances of the “internal ear” to be met with in any poet and an extraordinary linguistic-syntactic analogon acting like a productive mould in the new Virgilian text. And it was just because I discovered such a model deposited in my own memory that I came to conjecture si quos. Many other examples witness how strongly Virgil was inclined to use the link si quis/si qua and the like (about a hundred cases); in particular, for phrases constructed with si quis followed by the disjunctive aut, it will be enough to quote Georg. 2.49–50 Tamen haec quoque, si quis/inserat aut scrobibus mandet mutata subactis, or Aen. 1.577–8 … Libyae lustrare extrema iubebo,/si quibus eiectus siluis aut urbibus errat, or again 9.406–8 si qua tuis umquam pro me pater Hyrtacus aris/dona tulit, si qua ipse meis uenatibus auxi/ suspendiue tholo aut sacra ad fastigia fixi. S. Heyworth⁷ also follows the idea that the incriminated phrase is “an indirect question, the third object of inurunt”. The subjunctive malint («which lacks point in the emended text») makes him sure of this; but his sureness is illusory. In reality here the subjunctive is absolutely at home in a structure introduced by si quos, since it is the normal “mood of eventuality”. The standard grammars deal thoroughly with this use of the subjunctive (in any case so unquestionable as to be obvious) defining it as “Ausdruck einer unentschiedenen Möglichkeit”: the usage is so common that it would be a burden to give examples of it. Finally I should say (something that escaped me when I conjectured si quos) that Heyne, besides the transmitted et quos accepted by him, had already tried to propose the corrections ecquos and si quos, both of which he rejected in his third edition. Heyne had really behaved like a punter who asks the bookmaker to bet on three different horses to win or place; his vacillations underscore his uncertainty. 2) The correction si quos entails that all the categories of calves are branded, whether intended for procreation, for sacrifice or for field work. I note explicitly in my apparatus “uituli notis inuruntur omnes siue ad procreationem siue ad sacrificia siue ad agros arandos destinentur”. This is true, I believe, for both practical (as we shall soon see) and rhetorical reasons. Let us begin with the latter. The tripartite structure of a totality is a rhetorical formulation that conventionally serves to represent this totality as integral and complete, without residual material being left outside it.⁸ Examining it properly we see it concerns the same exhaustive structure present in the parallel passage quoted from the Bucolics (5.10–11) incipe, Mopse, prior, si quos aut Phyllidis ignes/aut Alconis habes

7 «BMCR» 2014.02.47. 8 Cf. H. Lausberg, Elemente der Literarischen Rhetorik, Munich 1963, p. 31, § 51.2: “Die Dreiteilung eines Ganzen betont dessen lückenlose Vollständigkeit”.

12  Georg. 3.157–165

laudes aut iurgia Codri. Here Menalcas invites Mopsus to sing a pastoral song of his choice; for the theme he can choose either the love of a girl or the affectionate praise of a friend, or the jesting mockery of a rival associate. These are the themes that characterize shepherd’s songs, and there are no others in the little bucolic Parnassus; here too tripartite enumeration implies the whole spectrum of possibilities. So if it is true that, by a common rhetorical scheme, triadic formulation signifies a totality, it is also true that considerations of practical sense make us think that the three categories represent the complete range or ensemble of newborn calves. In fact it is probable that the calves are all subjected to branding without exception so that their ownership and intended use is clear. On the other hand, what other category of calves could be mentioned besides the three that are expressly indicated? They can be assigned for stud (first group), or destined for sacrifice and for food (second group), or diverted to labor in the fields (third group). I cannot think of another category of calves that is not in practice included in this classification. Some interpreters imagine a fourth group of calves that did not undergo branding; these scholars follow the exegesis of Servius Danielis, who understood cetera in v.162 as quae non inuruntur, as if Virgil had divided the animals into two groups: the branded (subdivided into three categories) and the unbranded. We shall soon see (in section 3) that Servius Danielis fell victim to a mirage when we occupy ourselves with cetera pascuntur …armenta. For the moment I want to fend off a misunderstanding, the mistake of someone who wants to believe in the existence of a fourth category of calves which would not have been branded perhaps because they were generically destined for butchering. But the animals designated for butchering and feasting are already included in the second group of those branded. In his commentary Mynors (p. 208) had already explained that the formula aris seruare sacros «is also a tactful way of referring to those who are destined for the butcher». A glance at Daremberg – Saglio (Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines, vol III, 2, pp. 922–24) s.v. lanius is sufficient to confirm that the equation between the sacrifice and butchering of animals – and therefore between cultic and alimentary use – was fully observed among the Greeks, for whom the practice and vocabulary of butchering always remained bound to the sphere of sacrifice and cult (various passages of Athenaeus are cited). The association persisted at Rome until the public function of lanii asserted itself in the imperial age; the cultic aspect gradually faded away and meat for secular consumption was purchased directly at the macellum. In short I am convinced, as I wrote in the note of my apparatus criticus, that all the calves were subsumed in the triadic classification and all were branded so that their ownership and destined use was recognizable.

Georg. 3.157–165

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13

3) Directly connected to this is the problem of v. 162 Cetera pascuntur… armenta, a verse deleted by Ribbeck because it was difficult to reconcile with the previous enumeration, which seemed to him to have exhausted all the possible destinations of the calves. On the other hand (he reasoned in Proll. crit., p. 51) if we accept that “all the herds” pasture in the open, we would have to argue that the three categories of calves mentioned above are held in an enclosure and hence excluded from the pastures – an absurdity that disturbed Ribbeck’s common sense, driving him to athetize. And in fact we should assume that all the calves are let out to pasture. The way to resolve this aporia is quite different. Mynors indicates it in his commentary (following J. Martyn).⁹ Cetera “looks forward”, inaugurating a new phase bound to what follows, and does not refer to what has preceded. Cetera means ἄλλα μέν, to which the imperative tu hortare… insiste replies in opposition (“while all the other herds … do you select a few calves…”). In short cetera are “all the other herds” as opposed to the few calves quos ad studium atque usum formabis agrestem, i.e. those whom you must tame and take in hand as long as they are fresh from birth and their spirits are still easily moulded to the toil of the yoke. The thought is this: “take the calves that you should send to work in the fields, but leave the others free”. But the Virgilian formulation is as it were inverted and becomes “all the other calves are free to graze, but you must occupy yourself with taming those that have to work the fields” (this means you must exclude them from the common pasture, and keep them separated). There is perfect continuity of thought between the tripartite enumeration and v. 163 tu quos ad studium atque usum formabis agrestem. The train of thought (Gedankengang), as Friedrich Klingner would say, is not interrupted. So no sooner is the category of calves destined for ploughing mentioned (vv. 160–61) than the poet directly concerns himself with them; he actually recommends drilling them for work and hence isolating them from the others. 4) To give proper consideration to this same syntactical movement in which the indefinite “others” (ἄλλοι μέν) are opposed to a successive tu (δέ) followed by the imperative, it is found again in the famous passage of Aen. 6.847 ff. excudent alii spirantia … aera…/tu … Romane memento “others will forge bronze; but

9 P. Virgili Maronis libri quatuor. The Georgicks of Virgil, with an English translation and notes by J. Martyn, London 1755 (3rd edn.), p. 310: «I take a new sentence to begin with v. 162. Caetera pascuntur “The rest of the herd, that is those that are designed for breeding, or sacrifice, may feed at large in the meadows, for they need no other care … But those which are designed for agriculture require more care; they must be tamed, whilst they are but calves, and tractable in their tender years».

14  Georg. 3.157–165

you, Roman, remember …”. Given the force of this analogy, we could perhaps reassess the reading pascantur (in a Carolingian manuscript and some recentiores) in place of pascuntur, which is the unanimous reading of the most ancient witnesses. The hortatory subjunctive would be perfectly coherent with the sequence of successive verbs, which all have the character of precepts (hortare, insiste…., ducantur, signent…. carpes, consument). In my apparatus I noted “fortasse recte”. I do not regret my cautious approval, even if I shall not be so wary here. Nevertheless, the reading pascuntur, which in this context is less effective, is inherently plausible.

Georg. 4.92 I would like to offer this note as an homage to George Goold. Although I do not agree with his treatment of this passage – my conception of it is different from his – there would be no need for me to argue explicitly against Goold; I could simply pass over his decision in silence as I have done on other occasions with the proposals of critics with whom I disagreed. But it is precisely the remarkable respect (noblesse oblige) which I have in general for his shrewd revision of the text of the Georgics that drives me to involve myself in an argument. On the other hand I believe that a careful examination of Goold’s proposed text will reveal more clearly the desultory nature of Virgil’s exposition in this passage, and even win appreciation for all its vivacity of expression. Editors agree essentially on this text: Verum ubi ductores acie reuocaueris ambo, deterior qui uisus, eum, ne prodigus obsit, dede neci; melior uacua sine regnet in aula. alter erit maculis auro squalentibus ardens; nam duo sunt genera; hic melior insignis et ore et rutilis clarus squamis; ille horridus alter desidia latamque trahens inglorius aluum.

90

Virgil is contrasting the two kings of the bees (in reality two queens) that can be found cohabiting in a hive, one superior and one inferior. The inferior king is gluttonous of honey and drone-like, but also unpleasant in appearance, bloated and worn out – πλατυγάστωρ, as Aristotle describes him in H.A. 553a25 and 624b21 (a definition which Virgil translates here with latamque trahens inglorius aluum; νωθρός is adapted as horridus…desidia). The notes of Mynors’ commentary on pp. 270–71 are more than exhaustive; there is also good supporting material in Richard Thomas’s commentary, pp. 162–63, which casts opportune light on the anthropomorphic and moralistic coloring that Virgil imposes on the details offered by the technical tradition. The inferior of the two kings (deterior qui uisus) – so the poet recommends – should be eliminated so that peace may be restored in the swarm of bees and civil war thus averted. This is why Virgil teaches his readers how to distinguish the two contrasted models. At a superficial glance the poet’s descriptive details can appear excessive or pointlessly repetitious to such a degree that some critics have suspected an interpolation. Could the integrity of the text have been compromised through the addition of foreign elements? Indeed, if there are but

16  Georg. 4.92

two contrasted kings, how can we explain the excess of pronouns, alter (91), hic (92), ille…alter (93)? Ribbeck mistrusted v. 91 but did not force himself to delete it; he stopped short with the observation that «Melius deesset, quamquam legit eum Servius. Suspicionem praeterea et Columella movet et in Palatino erasum hemistichium 92 hic melior insignis et ore». But in fact the hemistich in question is not really erased; as Sabbadini wrote in his apparatus «lineamenta huius scripturae evanida suis litteris renovavit P¹». Was this due to the initiative of a copyist troubled by the piling up of pronouns, or was it instead an error of the scriptorium? This at any rate was the point of departure of J. van Wageningen¹⁰ in proposing the deletion of v. 92. And Goold followed him, excluding the line between square brackets in his edition. But this change is unacceptable. Despite appearances, a continuous line of argument can easily be traced in these lines. I admit that there is an effect of praeposterum in these lines, as if the natural order of thought restored itself only afterwards, after the addition of the second thought. Let us look closer at the text. The recommendation which the poet gives at first is as follows: “eliminate the inferior of the two kings” (deterior qui uisus, eum …/dede neci.), so that he will not be harmful and generate civil wars within the hive; it is good that the superior king survives and becomes the sole monarch. The other (alter, referring to the inferior king) you will recognize from his scaly gold blotches: alter erit maculis auro squalentibus ardens. At this point the poet, having spoken about an inferior king and another who is superior, inserts the note nam duo sunt genera – a note which, strictly speaking, he ought to have set before his didactic exposition, in accordance with the particular usage of prose technical treatises. Thus this note, which should have been preliminary (“know that there are two varieties”), appears only now, like a delayed clarification. And nam introduces the information that had remained buried in the poet’s mind. We cannot fail to marvel at the artistic efficacy of this “reversed order”, which helps Virgil to escape the conventional ordering of prose treatises. Once he has returned to the normal tracks, the didactic argument runs without problems: hic…melior…/ille… alter. The two types of king mentioned above are freshly described; now, however, the description is more precise and varied, with details that make it easier to recognize each of the two kings. This is the development of thought in the passage; Wageningen’s conjecture, which Goold adopts, not only cuts off an indispensable part, but runs up

10 Dissertatio litteraria inauguralis de Vergili Georgicis, Trier 1888.

Georg. 4.92

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17

against a double inconvenience. The first counter-indication is given by the fact that only a few decades after Virgil’s death Columella (9.10.2) quoted the Virgilian verses from memory, but in truth his quotation is very loose, since it drops several words and alters the sequence in different ways: nam duo sunt regum facies, duo corpora plebis: alter erit maculis auro squalentibus ardens et rutilis clarus squamis insignis et ore. As he moves on in the treatise de re rustica he cites – in random order – several verses following (96–97, and 93) and one preceding this passage (89). I cannot say whether Columella’s memory betrayed him, or if in this case he intended to take the liberty of recombining the Virgilian elements at his whim (this last hypothesis seems less likely). At any rate the fact is that the quotation closes with the words insignis et ore – exactly the clausula of the verse excised by Goold. It follows that, despite Goold, v. 92 emerges as authentic and original. A second counter-indication comes into play if we re-read the series of lines as they appear after the excision. V. 91 joins itself immediately in enjambment with 93 – alter erit maculis auro squalentibus ardens/et rutilis clarus squamis – yielding a text partly identical with what was recovered from the patchwork assembled by Columella. We saw above that the poet mentions twice both the “inferior type” (the one to eliminate) and “the superior”; but Columella through a lapse of memory simplified and eliminated a part of the second reference to the superior king. Goold’s excision provides a text that only functions superficially: deterior qui uisus, eum … dede neci … alter erit maculis auro squalentibus ardens [nam duo sunt genera, hic melior insignis et ore] et rutilis clarus squamis; ille horridus alter desidia latumque trahens inglorious aluum.

90 92

The removal of v. 92, in fact, comes at a great cost: ille horridus alter loses its antecedent hic melior. While the excision seems to rationalize the text, it actually mutilates it.

Georg. 4.203–5 F. Klingner, one of the greatest Virgilianists of the last century, would have repeated even in this instance that to understand a text thoroughly one must follow its train of thought (Gedankengang). In fact the various units of thought follow each other, developing one from the other – like musical phrases, Klingner would have added, since he loved to read texts as if they were scores composed for song and orchestra; every melodic phrase develops and completes itself in a motive. The reader of Georg. 4.149–227 observes in admiration the collaborative life of the bees, their division according to their functions and chores, their distribution in various lodgings, and he comes to know their significant behaviour. Within this long section four ideas follow each other. 1) The exaltation of the bees’ industriousness begins at v. 184, as they dedicate themselves tirelessly to gathering nectar from the flowers: labor omnibus unus. 2) From v. 197 to v. 209 a new theme presents itself, that of reproduction and the uninterrupted continuity of the species. 3) From v. 210 the poet declares the importance of the king and their loyalty to him. 4) Finally the enthusiastic encomium ends by proclaiming the bees participants in divine nature. If we analyze the second theme of the presentation we see that there is an intrusion between the part dedicated to the constant reproduction of the newly born (vv. 197–202) and the part dedicated to the logical conclusion (“hence the race of bees is immortal”: vv. 206–209). In fact three lines interrupt the consistent sequence of thought, but the logical thread, as soon as it has overcome this trap, vigorously resumes developing. The trap comprises the whole group of lines 203–205: Saepe etiam duris errando in cotibus alas attriuere ultroque animam sub fasce dedere: tantus amor florum et generandi gloria mellis.

205

Long ago (starting with Richard Bentley) some critics reconsidered and denounced the foreign nature of the three lines, but, even though they agreed on the necessity of removing them as a block, they transposed them to various nearby positions. Ribbeck thought of placing them after v. 218; Goldbacher¹¹

11 «WS» 31, 1909, pp. 169 ff.

Georg. 4.203–5



19

and Franco¹² wanted to treat them as a parenthetic addition to follow 207. As soon as the foreign body was removed, the first part of the second theme (the constant reproduction of newborns) reconnected itself directly to the verses that provide the conclusion of the argument (on the continuity of the race and its consequent immortality): 206–9 ergo … genus immortale manet, multosque per annos/ stat fortuna domus, et aui numerantur auorum. Once the continuity of the train of thought is recovered, the logical movement is ipso facto restored. But if every individual critic had his own idea about the dislocation of the intrusive verse, Ribbeck had two: either to transplant the lines after v. 218, as already mentioned, or to leave them where they were, hypothesizing that they were an addition introduced by the poet himself in a subsequent revision of the poem. This was a real obsession of Ribbeck (inherited from Wagner and bequeathed to Sabbadini). These philologists of the heroic age, almost too subtle in their investigations, firmly believed in the secundae curae of the poet who, they maintained, had changed and expanded the text of his first edition at many points when he produced a (phantom) second edition of the Georgics. In my Praefatio (pp. 97–99) I have tried with special diligence to counter their illusion. Every time the Virgilian text seemed somehow superfluous or out of place, it provoked in them the suspicion (sometimes the certainty) that a post eventum intervention of the poet was lurking, due to some second thought. As if Virgil, while aiming at perfection in his text, had unwittingly damaged it, now by overloading it and now by wrongly combining it with imperfect grafts. I would call this prejudice “the paradox of a clumsy Virgil interpolating himself.” Now let us turn our attention to the 1st theme. The poet contemplates with admiring gaze the passion and dedication to their task which compel the bees incessantly as if they were a regiment of disciplined soldiers, until rest comes at nightfall (184–190). Even when it rains, they set to work spasmodically in searching for nectar, without getting too distant from the hives. If the winds are blowing, they do not risk going too far, and often so as not to be driven off course by the gusts of air, they ballast themselves with little pebbles to increase their weight (191–196). So here, I believe, we may see how the three verses that accidentally ended in the body of the 2nd theme now graft themselves here. Transposed here, they take up with perfect continuity the leading thread of the argument: the insatiable passion of the bees, already admired in vv. 194–196, often drives them to sacrifice their lives. Wandering suspended on the wind (errando 203), the little

12 «Gymnasium» 11, 1912, pp. 418 ff.

20  Georg. 4.203–5

creatures are often battered against the hard rocks, and in return for their renunciation (ultro v. 204) find a heroic death. Here is the reconstructed sequence: Nec uero a stabulis pluuia impendente recedunt longius, aut credunt caelo aduentantibus Euris, sed circum tutae sub moenibus urbis aquantur excursusque breuis temptant, et saepe lapillos, ut cumbae instabiles fluctu iactante saburram, tollunt, his sese per inania nubila librant. Saepe etiam duris errando in cotibus alas attriuere ultroque animam sub fasce dedere: tantus amor florum et generandi gloria mellis.

191

196 203 205

The link between saepe (194) and saepe etiam (203) is obviously quite firm. These represent the two occasions of a ‘crescendo’, of a Steigerung in progression. Analogously in Georg. 1.316 saepe is taken up a few verses after saepe etiam (322), in what Mynors in his commentary (Oxford 1990) defines as the “second movement of the storm symphony.” In our case too we are dealing with connected scenes, in which the second ‘amplifies’ the first. Both of them illustrate a single theme: the inexhaustible passion of the bees, who, driven by the glory of being able to produce honey, weary themselves in every way to draw nectar from the flowers. This is what the concluding epiphonema of v. 205 proclaims in a sentence, tantus amor florum et generandi gloria mellis, that compresses into itself the argumentative logic of a thought which is unitary, even if articulated in two groups of lines. In short there is no doubt that the suggestion of Bentley, our standard-bearer, should be welcomed as the only text truly satisfactory, and that vv. 203–205 should be relocated in their original position, after v. 196.

Georg. 4.221 His quidam signis atque haec exempla secuti esse apibus partem diuinae mentis et haustus aetherios dixere; deum namque ire per omnia, terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum.

220

Peerlkamp, who often suggested unnecessary conjectures, has in this instance diagnosed the damage and repaired it. At v. 221 the manuscript tradition has omnis, which in harmony with terrasque tractusque maris in the next line does not cause much difficulty (at least at first sight). Peerlkamp (on Aen. 7.237) had neatly emended it to omnia, basing his choice on the paraphrase of the Virgilian lines provided by Ambrose in de Officiis 1.13: per omnia deum ire ipsi adserunt […] uim et maiestatem eius per omnia elementa penetrare, terras caelum maria. With this correction the text also shows itself more faithful to the ‘pantheistic’ conception offered by Virgil in this particular passage. The fine emendation was appreciated by Ribbeck and Sabbadini, who accepted it; but Hirtzel and Mynors (influenced by Conington) did not see the need for it, and their decision influenced in turn Geymonat and Thomas, who rejected it. On the other hand Goold, unencumbered by any superstitious deference to the manuscript tradition, recognized its value in his recent text published in the Loeb Classical Library. With the adoption of the neuter plural omnia, v. 222 becomes an appositional tricolon and so restores a poetic formulation that already appears in Empedocles: fr.38 D-K ... εἰ δ᾽ ἄγε τοι λέξω πρῶθ᾽ ἥλικά τ᾽ ἀρχήν,/ἐξ ὧν δῆλ᾽ ἐγένοντο τὰ νῦν ἐσορῶμεν ἅπαντα,/γαῖά τε καὶ πόντος πολυκύμων ἠδ᾽ ὑγρòς ἀήρ/ Τιτὰν ἠδ᾽ αἰθὴρ σφίγγων περὶ κύκλον ἅπαντα. The cliché is taken up in Latin poetry from Ennius (who knew Empedocles) Ann. 543 Vahl.² = 556 Sk. … qui fulmine claro/omnia per sonitus arcet, terram mare caelum, and by Plautus Amph. 1055 ita mihi uidentur omnia, mare terra caelum, consequi/iam ut opprimar. Virgil himself had already used v. 221 in Eclogue IV, where he maintains the same syntactical flow: 4.50 f. aspice conuexo nutantem pondere mundum/ terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum; there too the line is an appositional tricolon specifying nutantem… mundum, just as in the present case it specifies omnia. The corruption of omnia to omnis is easily explained by a failure to understand the phenomenon of synizesis that makes omnia bisyllabic: cf. Aen. 6.33 f.

22  Georg. 4.221

quin protinus omnia/perlegerent oculis, where several manuscripts, seeking a prosodic normalization, have changed omnia to omne or omnem (Servius’s lemma); cf. Norden Aen. VI, pp. 130–31. Here in the sixth book of the Aeneid the reading omnia managed to survive because Macrobius Sat. 5.14.4 legitimized it by citing it among examples of ‘hypercatalectic’ hexameters.

Georg. 4.287–294 Nam qua Pellaei gens fortunata Canopi accolit effuso stagnantem flumine Nilum et circum pictis uehitur sua rura phaselis, quaque pharetratae uicinia Persidis urget, *et uiridem Aegyptum nigra fecundat harena et diuersa ruens septem discurrit in ora usque coloratis amnis deuexus ab Indis, omnis in hac certam regio iacit arte salutem.

290 291 292 293

291 hunc u. post 290 habet Pω, post 292 Mrtγ, post 293 R; uu. 291–293 secl. Wagner, alii alia coniecerunt.

I present the text of my edition above, but only as a basis for discussion; in any case everyone knows that this is one of the most tormented passages of the Georgics. The numbering of the verses follows the order transmitted by P. Like the order transmitted by M (which reverses the two lines 292–291) it is difficult to accept because it presents two successive verses each opening with et: the period as a whole seems cluttered, weighed down by the accumulation of coordinates. Wagner deleted vv. 291–93, believing them to be interpolated (other editors had raised the same suspicion). Ribbeck and Sabbadini maintained that the three lines had been added by the poet in a later revision. Both these critics were obsessed with the poet’s secundae curae, but to stay faithful to their preconception they also had to believe in a great absurdity, that Virgil – in this phantom new edition of the Georgics – was making clumsy interpolations in his own text; the poet’s changes, according to them, were recognizable as “extras”, as badly integrated supplements. To save all three verses Mynors adopted the order transmitted only by R (with v. 291 after v. 293) so as to separate the two lines opening with et, but this is merely a rearrangement rather than a solution. The uncertainty of the text depends above all on v. 291, which is as it were “erratic”; in P and the majority of Carolingian codices it is placed after v. 290, in M and a smaller group of Carolingians, after v. 292, in R after v. 293. It seems to me, however, that v. 291 and v. 292 would not have followed each other without some awkwardness in a definitive version of the poem. Rather, let us try to establish which of the two lines is indispensable and which superfluous. The entire passage is a learned periphrase that evokes Egypt by marking its extreme limits. The topographia singles out Canopus in the west, in the

24  Georg. 4.287–294

neighbourhood of Alexandria (v. 287); in the east the Parthian kingdom (“where the proximity of quiver-bearing Persia looms threateningly”: v. 290); and in the south Ethiopia and the river Nile coming down from the land of the black Indians (v. 293). V. 292 is obviously linked to v. 293: in fact the two verses describe in a single syntactic movement the immense course of the Nile, which pours into the Mediterranean through seven mouths, but was born in the heart of Africa: discurrit (v. 292), …deuexus (293). Each of the two verses is the necessary complement of the other; from the estuary one turns back to the most remote source. The verse et diuersa ruens … in ora seems for this reason an indispensable part of the text. This escaped the notice of Nettleship, who deleted the verse, believing it superfluous. V. 291, however, does not seem so indispensable. I would not dismiss it as an interpolation, for it does not contain anything that cannot justifiably be ascribed to Virgil. I would simply say that it belongs to a different context. The fact that the three best manuscripts have it out of place, as I have mentioned, suggests that it is a remnant from some previous draft of the poem, a remnant that survived in the margin of an ancient edition of Virgil and was subsequently inserted by copyists at different points in the text. So it is a ‘wandering’ verse that probably originated in a different context and has been copied into different positions in the different manuscripts. One important piece of information supports this thesis. Servius (on Georgics 4.1, compare on Bucolics 10.1) passes on a notice that has a nucleus of fact, even if he uses it as the basis for a fantastic fiction: that Virgil at Augustus’s request had to remove from the last part of the Georgics his eulogy of his friend and fellow poet Cornelius Gallus, the governor of Egypt who fell into disgrace and was driven to commit suicide. This is the credible kernel in Servius’s tale. The damnatio memoriae – and here Servius is exercising his imagination – would have driven the poet to replace the pre-existing laudes Galli with the fabula Aristaei, the long epyllion which occupies the second half of the fourth book. But I think I have shown (more than once, and most recently in the preface of my edition pp. 95–97) that the episode of Aristaeus and Orpheus goes back to the first draft of the Georgics; conceived during the original planning of the poem, the episode represents its comprehensive ideology under the guise of an instructive exemplum. For this reason we can be sure that the epyllion featured in the text of Virgil long before Gallus fell into disgrace. In short there certainly was a damnatio memoriae, and it must have been followed by the cancellation of Virgil’s eulogy of the governor of Egypt and his poet-friend. But presumably that eulogy consisted simply of a brief and passing allusion conveying affectionate respect; it is enough to recall how rare are the flattering words reserved by Virgil for his authoritative inspirer Maecenas, and

Georg. 4.287–294

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25

how few lines are dedicated to the emperor himself. So it is impossible to believe that the words written in praise of Gallus occupied such a large portion of the text that they had to be replaced with the entire Aristaeus epyllion. In this respect, Servius’s information is certainly false. The only true element, in the last analysis, is that Virgil had to remove the few lines containing the name of his unlucky friend. Probably Gallus was mentioned incidentally in the description of Egypt as governor “of that land which the Nile makes green by fertilizing it with black sand”. In conclusion, v. 291 et uiridem Aegyptum nigra fecundat harena is a scrap left over from a phase of the text that preceded the removal of Gallus’ name. If this hypothesis is sound, the verse (which survived by accident) seems to me an example of the reworking that Virgil was compelled to employ in obedience to the emperor’s will. For this reason I maintain that the line mentioned above played no part in Virgil’s definitive edition. Once the intrusion is eliminated the descriptive sequence flows without any obstacle. The poet offers us a typical literary topothesia, a carefully worked introduction to the new episode that he is about to unfold.

Georg. 4.348 In Georgics 4.348 all the editors read as follows: carmine quo captae dum fusis mollia pensa deuoluunt… fusis dum Mγ¹ (fusisis dum γ): dum fusis PRω: dum fusi G

The convergence of M and γ on the reading fusis dum is of particular importance, given that the codex γ, which is an apographon of P for the text of the Aeneid, or better, descends from a codex corrected on the basis of P, does not depend on P for the text of the Georgics.¹³ This is the order required by “Marx’s norm”, of which the best known example is the sequence Troiae qui primus ab oris in the first line of the Aeneid, a sequence which is accordingly preferred to qui Troiae primus ab oris. In the formulation of Friedrich Marx¹⁴ the norm seems to be absolutely valid: «if after a caesura semiquinaria in a hexameter a long monosyllable is associated with a spondaic word, the spondaic word precedes in the sequence»; but in reality there are some cases in which Virgil deviates from this rule, a rule which the Catullan hexameter already observed in large part. The exceptions affect particular typologies: if there is a strong pause after the semiquinaria and a new syntactical movement begins (e.g. Georg. 2.159 anne lacus tantos? te, Lari maxime, teque; 4.358 duc age, duc ad nos; fas illi limina diuom; Aen. 6.539 nox ruit, Aenea: nos flendo ducimus horas); or again if a particular emphasis falls on the monosyllable, e.g. where there is an anaphora or antithesis that includes the actual monosyllable, like Buc. 6.10 … si quis//captus amore leget,/te nostrae,/ Vare, myricae//te nemus omne canet; Aen. 7.352 … fit tortile collo//aurum ingens coluber,/fit longae/taenia uittae; compare 7.328. Although it is not an inescapable law, Marx’s norm prevails as a tendency generally followed by Virgil. And I believe one ought to conform to it even in this passage, and choose the reading fusis dum offered by M and by γ. On the other hand I felt some doubt in my edition of the Aeneid about 4.186f where, like

13 I pointed to this in the Praefatio to my edition (pp. 105–6), but for fuller information see G. Ammannati – A. Pittà, L’indipendenza dei codici P e γ di Virgilio nelle Georgiche, «MD» 70, 2013, pp. 63–76. 14 Molossische und Bakcheische Wortformen in der Verskunst der Griechen und Römer, in «Abh. Sächs. Akad.» XXXVII, 1, 1922, p. 198.

Georg. 4.348

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27

the other editors, I too read luce sedet custos aut summi culmine tecti//turribus aut altis/et magnas territat urbes: instead M reads magnas et (in conformity with Marx’s norm), whereas MA (the corrector Asterius) changes the order. A trace of doubt still persists in me, but I maintain that, given the two alternatives, the repetition of a double anastrophe in the same line would have been something to avoid; I note also that the cacophony that would arise from the juxtaposition of et and territat would argue against it.

Some cases of interpolation: Aen. 1.378; 4.126; 9.151 Aen. 1.378 sum pius Aeneas, raptos qui ex hoste penates classe ueho mecum, fama super aethera notus; Italiam quaero patriam [et genus ab Ioue summo.]

380

I believe we must excise the second part of v. 380. The oldest manuscripts agree in transmitting the text of 380 as Italiam quaero patriam, et genus ab Ioue summo. Only R – which, however, presents this as a complete line – offers a small divergence: magno instead of summo. Ribbeck and Mynors read summo, while Sabbadini, Castiglioni and Geymonat prefer R’s magno, obviously thinking that Virgil is introducing a slight variation on his line 6.123 et mi genus ab Ioue summo. But the matter is a bit more complex. Let us look first at 6.119–123: si potuit manis accersere coniugis Orpheus Threicia fretus cithara fidibusque canoris, si fratrem Pollux alterna morte redemit itque reditque uiam totiens. quid Thesea magnum, quid memorem Alciden? et mi genus ab Ioue summo.

123

Here the hemistich et mi genus ab Ioue summo rounds off an argument that resembles a syllogism; Aeneas presents himself to the Sibyl and enumerates to her the names of heroes of divine parentage who had come while still alive to visit the impenetrable kingdom of the dead. The same privilege that had been granted to Orpheus, Pollux, Theseus, and Hercules on the grounds of their divine origin should now be granted to himself, since he is equally an offspring of the gods: et mi genus ab Ioue summo: “My descent too comes from almighty Jupiter.” This is how Aeneas presents his extraordinary credentials, the grounds on which the Sibyl is logically obliged to grant him access to the kingdom of the dead. In contrast to the repetition of the same hemistich in 1.380, the verse under consideration here seems completely out of place. Indeed Aeneas, who is introducing himself to an unknown but beautiful huntress, in full admiration puts forward the hypothesis that he has come upon Diana or a wood nymph, but she denies it: “I am just a Tyrian huntress, like so many other girls in this area.” At this point Aeneas reveals his name, indicates his Trojan origin and recent

Aen. 1.378

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29

sufferings, finally announcing his destination: Italiam quaero patriam. These are three precise replies to the three explicit questions which the beautiful huntress has addressed to him in the preceding lines (369–70): sed uos qui tandem? quibus aut uenistis ab oris?/quoue tenetis iter? But after Italiam quaero patriam, the final half-line has Aeneas add “and I descend from almighty Jupiter.” This fancy phrase sounds quite tasteless and out of place here, almost striking a note of foolish vanity. One might add that Servius strained himself to find a logical motive for the phrase and made genus ab Ioue summo depend on quaero, implying that he had to make for Italy because it was the native land of his ancestor Dardanus, son of Jupiter – as if Aeneas himself was not already a descendant of Jupiter through his mother Venus! “I am making for Italy and I am a descendant of Jupiter”: note that the conjunction et binds together two completely unrelated phrases. I think a clumsy interpolator completed the half-line Italiam quaero patriam by adding a hemistich taken from another passage in Virgil himself. It is hardly a mere chance observation that the conjunction et sounds absolutely appropriate in the passage (from which it comes) from book 6, given that there it means etiam: et mi genus ab Ioue summo, “my descent too is from almighty Jupiter”. The texts of Virgil’s works that circulated in antiquity, above all those of the Aeneid, began very early to offer various types of supplements. Readers tried to integrate the tibicines (“props,” as these half-lines which Virgil left incomplete incorrectly came to be called). An example: in 2.640 uos agitate fugam was supplemented with the half-line et rebus seruate secundis, carved out of 1.207 Durate et uosmet rebus seruate secundis. Again in 10.284 the ‘tibicen’ audentis Fortuna iuuat is quoted by Seneca (Ep. 94.28) with the supplement piger ipse sibi obstat. But examples could easily be multiplied; the most amusing, perhaps, in 3.660–661, describes poor Polyphemus after his blinding: the half-line ends with solamenque mali, and the interpolator cheerfully adds de collo fistula pendet. In conclusion I maintain that Virgil closed his sequence with Italiam quaero patriam. What follows in the manuscripts is simply an ancient interpolation constructed by repurposing Virgilian materials. Hence it should be excised. E. Kraggerud¹⁵ does not seem to agree and, perhaps unwisely, dons the costume of a champion for the occasion – a rare choice of wardrobe for a scholar more inclined to choose the risky path. I have difficulty in understanding his arguments: «If no more than the first hemistich of 380 had been transmitted, it would not only have been an incomplete answer [this seems to me not true: Aeneas’s three replies match the huntress’s three questions comprehensively], but also an

15 «S0» 85, 2011, p. 212.

30  Some cases of interpolation: Aen. 1.378; 4.126; 9.151

enigmatic one. How could Aeneas be Troianus and at the same time have Italia as his fatherland? The supplement et genus ab Ioue summo would actually serve “as an elucidation:” genus ab Ioue summo ». But this seems to me a captious argument. In other cases the reader’s ingenuity was exercised in attempting to enrich the Virgilian text by interpolating entire verses, mostly derived from Virgil’s own works. Such is the case in Aen. 4.124–27, where the setting is the bargain between Venus and Juno. The two goddesses agree to keep Aeneas far from Latium: Juno for her part is afraid of Rome’s future power, while Venus is preoccupied by the war that Aeneas will have to confront on Italian soil. Juno sets out her plan: “Aeneas and Dido will go hunting together, I will make a violent storm break out and ensure that they find each other alone in a grotto, where they will take shelter to escape the fury of the skies.” speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem deuenient. adero et, tua si mihi certa uoluntas, [conubio iungam stabili propriamque dicabo.] hic hymenaeus erit.

125

As the brackets indicate I believe v. 126, conubio iungam stabili propriamque dicabo, should be excised. This line is identical with 1.73: sunt mihi bis septem praestanti corpore Nymphae, quarum quae forma pulcherrima Deiopea, conubio iungam stabili propriamque dicabo, omnis ut tecum meritis pro talibus annos exigat et pulchra faciat te prole parentem.

75

Let us consider the scenario in this passage of book 1. Here too Juno is speaking. She has spotted the hated Trojan fleet sailing on a calm sea. Possessed by fury, she flies to Aeolus’s island and tells him to unleash his winds and raise a seastorm to destroy the Trojan fleet. To convince Aeolus, the great goddess promises him the most beautiful of her nymphs. In this passage everything runs smoothly and appropriately: conubio iungam stabili propriamque dicabo, “I will unite her with you in a stable marriage and consecrate her as your own”. Juno is talking to Aeolus and her words signify “I will consecrate her as your own”, just as if she had said ‘propriamque TIBI dicabo’. But the declaratory situation is quite different in the passage in book 4 that we are examining: ‘propriam for whom?’ we may ask. For Aeneas, naturally, and not for Venus, whom Juno is addressing and to whom the adjective pro-

Aen. 9.148–53

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31

priam would relate, for obvious grammatical reasons. Indeed the beneficiary in book 1 is the person to whom Juno is speaking (“your own, that is belonging to you, my Aeolus” says the goddess). Here in book 4 it is only apparently possible to refer propriam to Aeneas; in reality it is an absurd forcing of the syntax. Not only does the interpolation introduce this difficulty, it creates a comparable difficulty insofar as Dido alone must be construed as the complementary object of iungam, whereas in the previous phrase Dido et dux Troianus both stand as subjects. In conclusion, the interpolation probably originated with a marginal note by a reader who simply wanted to comment that the same Juno (as goddess pronuba) had already once organized a marriage; but the marginal note subsequentely infiltrated the text. Once restored by eliminating the intrusive line, the sequence runs sensibly and above all is soberly euphemistic: adero et, tua si mihi certa uoluntas,/hic hymenaeus erit, “I shall be present and if you guarantee me your consent, this will be their wedding.” In short, the text offers just a fleeting, discreet hint at marriage. That is Virgil’s style. We may simply add that the formulation hic hymenaeus erit sounds bitterly equivocal: Juno is talking of a wedding, but a treacherous ambiguity lurks in her choice of language.

Aen. 9.148–53 Here the interpolation of 9.151 seems equally clumsy. This is the text of all editors: non armis mihi Volcani, non mille carinis est opus in Teucros. addant se protinus omnes Etrusci socios. tenebras et inertia furta Palladii caesis late custodibus arcis ne timeant, nec equi caeca condemur in aluo: luce palam certum est igni circumdare muros.

150

151 late FRbr, Tib.: summae (A. ii 166) MPω

Turnus is rousing the spirit of his men, who were stunned by the prodigy of the ships transformed into nymphs. Fearlessly he encourages them: “we shall take the field of the Trojans by force of arms, fighting face to face, without trickery. To defeat them we have no need of arms forged by Vulcan, nor of a fleet of one thousand ships, nor of a wooden horse (all things employed by the Greeks to triumph in the Trojan war). The Trojans must not be afraid to be surprised by stealth for a second time, nor to be attacked under cover of darkness. We are

32  Some cases of interpolation: Aen. 1.378; 4.126; 9.151

resolved, in full daylight, to engulf their walls with fire”. All of Turnus’s boldness, and all his heroic loyalty, are condensed into these proud words. He condemns the furta – the tricks and stratagems of war, the guileful treachery – as base and unworthy of a true warrior. But the interpolator did not realize that here furta means ‘deception’; instead he believed it meant ‘thefts’, ‘robberies’. So to the memories of the sack of Troy (a thousand Greek ships, Achilles’s shield forged by Vulcan, the wooden horse) he adds the theft of the Palladium, the sacred statue of Athena Promachos, the protectress, which Diomedes and Ulysses had impiously stolen from the temple after killing the guards of the citadel. That is how Virgil reported events in the second book of the Aeneid, and it is from this context that the interpolator extracted his verse. So let us look at the passage in question (2.164–67): Tydides ...scelerumque inuentor Vlixes, fatale adgressi sacrato auellere templo Palladium, caesis summae custodibus arcis, corripuere sacram effigiem

165

If we reread the interpolated verse attentively and put it alongside its model, we realize straight away that the syntax of the intruded verse is only superficially tolerable. In fact the ablative absolute caesis … custodibus arcis is connected through the substantive inertia furta and not a verbal link: a real linguistic blunder.

Readings from the indirect tradition: Aen. 5.720; 7.110 talibus incensus dictis senioris amici tum uero in curas animo diducitur omnis.

720

The direct tradition unanimously reads animo diducitur, and is followed by all the editors. After the advice of the old man Nautes and before the vision of Anchises’ shade which will instill courage into him, Aeneas is deliberating, anxious and undecided on what to do. I translate “roused by the words of his old friend, Aeneas divides himself in mind among a thousand reflections.” Servius and Pseudo-Probus have animum diducitur (“he divides his mind among all his anxieties”); this reading is also found in some Carolingian manuscripts (although there remains a suspicion that the manuscripts have dug it up from precisely those scholars). As Servius notes, this is an elegant syntactical Grecism that has been “normalized” in the direct tradition to animo diducitur. Virgil loves the “middle-passive” construction with the accusative of respect; most often the verb refers to parts of the body. The many cases are highly varied, as one can easily see: e.g. Aen. 1.579 his animum arrecti dictis; 658 faciem mutatus et ora Cupido; 713 expleri mentem nequit [Phoenissa]; 3.47 ancipiti mentem formidine pressus; 3.65 = 11.35 Iliades crinem de more solutae; 4.395 magnoque animum labefactus amore; 6.156 Aeneas maesto defixus lumina uultu; 470 nec magis incepto uultum sermone mouetur; 8.265 ...nequeunt expleri corda tuendo; 12.224 [Iuturna]… formam adsimulata Camerti. Obviously the risk of syntactical banalization threatened (provided there was metrical equivalence between the two forms): thus in 9.646 f. … formam tum uertitur oris/ antiquum in Buten quite a number of manuscripts have the ablative forma; in 1.561 Tum breviter Dido uultum demissa profatur an ancient corrector of the Codex Palatinus has yielded to the temptation of “normalizing” the accusative into the ablative uultu. This seems a feature of high poetic diction; besides his epic poem Virgil has one or two examples in passages that savor of an elevated style. Like Buc. 6.14–15 Silenum... inflatum hesterno uenas Iaccho; 53 latus niueum molli fultus hyacintho; 68 floribus atque apio crinis ornatus amaro; 75 candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris (four cases within the sixth eclogue, all dedicated to

34  Readings from the indirect tradition: Aen. 5.720; 7.110

a lofty Hesiodic-cosmogonic theme) and Georg. 1.349 …torta redimitus tempora quercu; 4.15 manibus Procne pectus signata cruentis.¹⁶ In conclusion I believe that in this case we should follow the indirect tradition and read animum diducitur.

Aen. 7.108–11 This is a case somewhat comparable to the previous example. Consider how the verses are read by all the editors (apart from Heyne and Conington): Aeneas primique duces et pulcher Iulus corpora sub ramis deponunt arboris altae instituuntque dapes et adorea liba per herbam subiciunt epulis (sic Iuppiter ipse monebat) et Cereale solum pomis agrestibus augent.

110

The point of interest for us is in the parenthesis of v. 110 sic Iuppiter ipse monebat, “this Jupiter himself suggested”. Almost all the manuscripts read ipse. Instead Priscian, Servius, Servius Danielinus (on 1.617) and Tiberius Donatus have preserved the reading ille, confirmed by the most authoritative corrector of the Codex Mediceus, the consul Asterius who first revised and emended the text itself in the year 494 CE, probably with the aid of an older manuscript. The reading Iuppiter ille is to be preferred. Even Heyne preferred it, while mistakenly following the exegesis of Servius, who judged ille to be the Jupiter who had inspired the prophecy of the harpy Celaeno in 3.251. Conington, on the other hand, had correctly recognized in Iuppiter ille an ancient sacral formula by which Jupiter was originally indicated “deictically”, that is by thrusting one’s finger towards the sky or raising ones’ hand as a mark of devotion (“Jupiter up there”; Bulhart in TLL VII/I 357.5 ff. “vice articuli definiti in appellatione dei”) – a reverential gesture which subsequently became a residual fossil of religious language. There are abundant examples from various texts. It will be enough to quote Plaut. Mostellaria 398 ita ille faxit Iuppiter; Amph. 461 quod ille faxit Iuppiter; Curc. 27; Pseud. 923; Cic. Catil. 3.29 uenerati Iovem illum; Ov. Met. 2.848 ille

16 There is an excellent discussion in E. Courtney, The Greek Accusative, «Class. Journ.» 99, 2004, pp. 425–31; cf. G. Landgraf, «ALL» 10, 1896–8, pp. 215–224 with a full collection of materials; E. Löftstedt, Syntactica II, pp. 421–22.

Aen. 7.108–11

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35

pater rectorque deum; Stat. Theb. 5.688 haec uidet ille deum regnator; in Aeneid itself: 2.779 aut ille sinit superi regnator Olympi; 7.558 haud pater ille uelit, summi regnator Olympi; 10.875 sic pater ille deum faciat! (well discussed by S.J. Harrison ad loc.).¹⁷

17 Compare R.S. Conway – W.C Walters, «Cl. Qu.» 4, 1910, p. 269, and the discussions of Timpanaro Per la Storia della filolologia virgiliana antica, Rome 1986, 158–9; more hesitant in Virgilianisti antichi e tradizione indiretta, Florence 2001, p. 121. Timpanaro’s doubts may arise from the fact that the examples would seem to show that the formula is usually pronounced by a speaker and therefore seems linked to an invocation as if in prayer (the celestial deity is called to witness what the speaker himself is saying), whereas in Aen. 7.110 Iuppiter ille is to be referred to the objective impersonality of the narrator. But I believe the surviving attestations (of Asterius and the indirect tradition) rather make us believe that the genuine reading has been largely “normalized” by the direct tradition.

Aen. 3.684–86 This passage is one of the most vexed in the epic, at least in the sense that critics have manhandled it far too much, as each one tried to bend it to the formulation he wished to find. I do not know whether Ribbeck was the most invasive editor, but Wagner certainly was the most impatient, because he rejected the three verses (already labeled as suspect by Heyne) as the product of an interpolation. Indeed he maintained that contra iussa monent Heleni was the first part of a line left unfinished by the poet and completed by everything that followed as far as dare lintea retro. Disoriented by the uncertainty about punctuation that prevailed among the interpreters and by the implausibility of the syntactical connections that followed, Wagner stitched together a three-page indictment against the clumsy interpolator: “ne igitur patiamur diutius uerba nobis dari ab insulso nescio quo homine!”. Nor did Ribbeck spare any words as he raged about the text over some two pages of his Prolegomena: “impeditissimus est de Scylla et Charybdi locus, qui dignus Vergilio haberi non potest, nisi simplicem ac veram sententiam claris usitatisque verbis expressam elicere contigerit” (pp. 75–76). Above all he was disturbed (and rightly!) by the idea that he was obliged to attribute to iussa monent two complementary objects, Scyllam atque Charybdin. He remedied this inconvenience by choosing the reading of F Scylla atque Charybdis, two nominatives coordinated with iussa and also serving as subjects of iussa monent (a solution followed by Sabbadini, and then repeated by Castiglioni and Geymonat.) After various deliberations Ribbeck convinced himself that inter utramque uiam leti did not mean the two distinct dangers of Scylla (“on one side”) and Charybdis (“on the other”): of “the two paths of death,” according to him, the first represented the Sicilian strait (or Scylla and Charybdis considered as a single hazard) and the second the Cyclopes, on whose inhospitable land the Trojans would surely have disembarked if they had turned their prows around. “Atque Aeneae socii prorsum si pergebant, in Scyllam atque Charybdin incidebant; sin adverso vento redibant unde venerant, verendum erat ne ultro citroque navigare coacti ad Cyclopum litus adpellerentur. Ergo ab utraque parte letum minabatur, a quo tenui discrimine separabantur.” Then he transposed v. 685 after 686 and wrote: contra iussa monent Heleni, Scylla atque Charybdis, ni teneam cursus – certum est dare lintea retro, inter utramque uiam leti discrimine paruo.

686 685

Aen. 3.684–86



37

Thus the two routes of death became the fretum Siculum with Scylla and Charybdis, and in the opposite direction the Cyclopum litus. The syntax that this causes is unclear; certum est governs either inter utramque uiam leti (as if it were “he chose between the two ways of death”) or dare lintea retro (“he decided to turn back”). Then the discrimine paruo is not “the little distance” that separates Scylla from Charybdis, but the “trivial difference” between two routes that would both carry them to shipwreck. In short this is the improbable meaning obtained by the transposition. However, Heinsius had long since found the right solution to the problem. He started from the idea (already mentioned by the ancient scholiasts) of punctuating after inter, so as to have the combination Scyllam atque Charybdin/inter with anastrophe of the bisyllabic preposition and consequent enjambment with the following line. He had certainly observed that atque in Virgil appears mostly in elision before a vowel and thus is only rarely found before a consonant; he also knew that in the manuscript tradition many hypermetric verses (elided into the following line) underwent the fate of being “normalized” by copyists. And so he reached the point of conjecturing that the correct text, before someone unjustifiably eliminated the verse’s hypermetric form, should be Scyllamque Charybdinque/inter. Above all he found comfort in the Virgilian examples of inter in anastrophe governing two coordinated words, as in Georg. 2.344–45 si non tanta quies iret frigusque caloremque/inter, also in Aen. 1.218 spemque metumque inter dubii, or again 11.692 loricam galeamque inter. Mynors appreciated the value of the correction (which Conington had already accepted) and welcomed it into his text as an obvious improvement. Ribbeck had also made another change; he had adjusted to teneam the transmitted reading teneant because the third person plural in the first person narrative of Aeneas caused him trouble. In truth the sequence ni teneam cursus is the result of an ancient correction; the entire direct tradition has the reading teneant but Servius Danielis also reports “teneam alii.” I believe this reading of the indirect tradition is to be taken for what it is: a “normalizing” adjustment by someone who wanted to match the termination of the verb to the grammatical form of the “first person speaker.” It was precisely the same necessity that drove Ribbeck to his correction. Mynors followed Ribbeck, and I in turn have followed both of them, thinking that the reading teneam deserved respect because it had been preserved in the indirect tradition. But now I am ready to ask pardon and shall present the reasons for my pentimenti with my admission of error. Unfortunately an occasional equivocation served to validate teneam. Sabbadini believed he could see in teneant proof of a bold hypothesis about the origin of the third book; it was thought that in a first draft this would have had the form of a third person narrative; then the poet would have transformed it into a

38  Aen. 3.684–86

narrative offered by Aeneas himself in first person (in imitation of the Odyssean personal tales). A trace of this original draft would have survived in teneant, a vestige of a previous phase of composition. Scholars who believed this hypothesis did not fail to write useless pages on the ‘prehistory’ of the Virgilian text. The idea is certainly poorly grounded, yet the reputation of teneant suffered because it was associated with this unfortunate idea. Some editors preferred to validate, as I said, the alternative reading because it was less problematic, even though in reality it was easy to supect this was nothing else but a “normalization.” Now I realize that the chief error of Ribbeck and Mynors – and of the many others, including me, who had mistakenly chosen teneam – was to neglect the special nature of the particle ni. All of us, in the wake of Donatus and Servius («antique ni pro ne ponebant»), not to mention Priscian, have seen in this conjunction nothing but a morphological archaism, an outdated equivalent of prohibitive ne, in any case a pure “preciosity” of Virgil, who sometimes has recourse to obsolete linguistic forms to give gravity to his epic style. This too is true, and it is also a rhetorical-stylistic feature. But in the case in question the particle does not have the function of a decorative archaism; instead it is a special feature of “sacral language”, a most conservative form of speech because of its fixed nature. In fact the particle ni is formulaic in deprecationes and liturgical ordinances. Furthermore we must consider that this is the only example of ni used in deprecation to be found in all the works of Virgil (Sabbadini writes it with the original spelling nei). Hence I believe that the Virgilian lines are the faithful and mimetic reproduction of the inspired voice of the prophet Helenus. I would write it like this: Contra iussa monent Heleni: “Scyllamque Charybdinque inter, utramque uiam leti discrimine paruo, ni teneant cursus”. Certum est dare lintea retro.

685

“May it never befall that the people of Aeneas hold their course between ...”. These ipsissima uerba resound in Aeneas’ ears, although they are not addressed to him in person (ni teneam) but pronounced as a solemn prohibition, like an indefinite prayer (ni teneant). That is how oracles speak. Here my palinode comes to an end. I need only confirm my preference for the text offered by the manuscript tradition in the case of utramque uiam leti discrimine paruo. I see no difficulty in this text, and indeed it seems appropriate that it should say “one or the other path is a passage equally destined to death, even if with some difference between the two hazards”. Nisbet’s elegant conjecture utrimque is accepted by Mynors, but it seems to me that he errs in an excess of rationalism, inasmuch as he is aiming to make explicit that the danger of

Aen. 3.684–86



39

death comes “from one side and the other”. The fact is that for Aeneas “both roads” must be avoided. Perhaps Nisbet was prompted by the dilemma set before Odysseus in the Homeric model; on the advice of Circe he chooses the side near Scylla, which cost him the sacrifice of six victims, over Charybdis, who would wreck the ship and drown its entire crew. Odysseus’ calculating pragmatism is not in Aeneas’ nature (or in the recommendations of Helenus). Aeneas changes his route because his “ethos of responsibility” does not tolerate a calculated risk of casualties. Father Aeneas is the commander of a collectivity of suffering exiles, bound to carry them all to safety. The change in the wind sustains Aeneas’ decision miraculously (v. 687 f. ecce autem Boreas… missus adest).

Aen. 5.323–26 Here I pay homage to the Reverend Richard Bentley, the most glorious master of philology that Cambridge has ever known, even among the many of whom she can rightly boast. Editors before me, apart from Ribbeck, read as follows: Euryalumque Helymus sequitur; quo deinde sub ipso ecce volat calcemque terit iam calce Diores Incumbens umero, spatia et si plura supersint Transeat elapsus prior ambiguumque relinquat.

325

The transmitted ambiguumque relinquat offers resistance to a sound interpretation: “immediately behind him see how Diores flies and flicks his foot with his own, pushing him with his shoulder, and if more paces had remained he would have flashed past and left him uncertain”. This is more or less Servius’s exegesis: in fact he notes «ambiguum minus firmum ad celeritatem». Sabbadini is not far off from this, although his skill in exegesis seems to be equally unsuccessful: “incertum, haesitantem utrum cursum pergat an reprimat”. In short this seems a dead end. The solution of this dilemma is offered by Bentley’s beautifully economical conjecture ambiguumue (Nicholas Heinsius claimed he had found ambiguumue in some of his manuscripts, but this reading is surely a conjecture of his): “if there had been more space to run, he would have outstripped him by slipping ahead or he would have left victory uncertain”. It is well known that often the best Virgilian manuscripts oscillate between ue and que, usually by misunderstanding ue. It is enough to observe for example 1.593; 2.741; 3.629; 4.112; 5.784; 7.232; 7.264; 10.71; 10.110; 10.558; 10.709; 10.712; 11.21; 11.324; 11.592, etc. (compare G.Ph.E. Wagner, Quaest. Vergil. XXXVI, Leipzig/London 1832, pp. 573–77; Ribbeck, Proll. p. 451). The best confirmation of this brilliant correction by Bentley is offered by a line which Virgil has reproduced here with allusive zêlos Homerikós, actually a line from the episode of the chariot race in the book of the Games in honour of Patroclus (23.382): καί νύ κεν ἢ παρέλασσ᾽ ἢ ἀμφήριστον ἔθηκεν “he would have outstripped him or left it in doubt”. This is exactly ambiguumue reliquit.

Aen. 6.602 The wealth of information provided by the huge commentary of Nicholas Horsfall (De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2013) exonerates me from setting out all the details of this passage; there, on pp. 416–22, the problems are accurately discussed with a full bibliography. In my opinion there is no doubt that in the damned man of vv. 602–607 we should recognize Tantalus, and that these lines are tailored to fit Tantalus alone. The penalty of the mass suspended over his head and always on the point of plunging down upon him is enough to identify him with certainty; this is the version preserved in Greek lyric (Pindar Ol. 1.87 ff.; compare schol. ad v. 97), but also known to Euripides (Or. 4–6) and Lucretius (3.980 ff.). A different mythographic tradition going back to the Homeric Nekyia (Od. 11.582–592), which is also accepted by Horace, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid, condemned Tantalus to suffer hunger and thirst without ever being able to satisfy them. In Hellenistic fashion Virgil has blended the two traditions into a single image which features the two punishments together; a rock ready to crush him looms over Tantalus, while in the background loaded tables glitter, which he cannot approach since he is obstructed by a Fury that howls and threatens him with a blazing torch. The two punishments of Tantalus were represented together as early as the celebrated wall-painting of Polygnotus at Delphi (as reported by Pausanias 10.31.12) and often reproduced in ceramics. Furthermore, we should note that Virgil represents the banquet as particularly sumptuous to commemorate the proverbial riches of Tantalus and at the same time to allude to the banquet which he himself had set out for the gods as his guests when he had committed his savage offence. For this reason it seems impossible to believe that these characteristic tortures of Tantalus could be attributed to the condemned mentioned in v. 601, who in their turn are punished with equally individualized torments. Hence I do not believe we can follow the text given by some manuscripts and accepted by many editors: quid memorem Lapithas, Ixiona Pirithoumque? quos super atra silex iam iam lapsura cadentique imminet adsimilis; lucent genialibus altis aurea fulcra toris, epulaeque ante ora paratae regifico luxu; Furiarum maxima iuxta accubat et manibus prohibet contingere mensas exsurgitque facem attollens atque intonat ore.

601

605

42  Aen. 6.602

Quos super is the reading of MP, of a corrector of F and of many Carolingians. Quo super is from Ru and Servius Danielis at v. 616. I believe that quos originated in an ancient patchwork aimed at adjusting the agreement of the relative pronoun with the proper names of the previous verse. This adjustment was necessary because a line had been omitted, the line which named Tantalus, and so an incorrect contiguity had arisen between v. 601 and v. 602. With the lightest of corrections an easy syntactical link had been won, but the whole passage had been thrown into confusion. Hence the correct reading was preserved in the singular form quo super, which concerns a single condemned person, namely Tantalus, whose torments are recognizably described in vv. 602–607. It is not really possible to imagine that the plural quos is a “generalizing plural” contained in a second interrogative phrase and coordinated by asyndeton with quid memorem … Pirithoumque, as Horsfall would prefer (he credits the idea to J.C. Jahn: eos quos super … imminet adsimilis?). It is not possible because the torture undergone by Tantalus singles him out and distinguishes him; his punishment is his alone, sanctioned by the mythic tradition, peculiar to him as his offence was also peculiar. In short Tantalus cannot constitute a category, and cannot be confused with the mass of those who are indicated in the following lines with a “generalizing plural” (608 ff. quibus inuisi fratres… aut qui …quique): these are anonymous and indefinite offenders who share with Tantalus only the dreadful seat of their damnation (v. 608 hic, that is “in Tartarus”). A similar connection (even if without asyndeton) was imagined by Madvig who tried Pirithoumque et. This is a correction to reject for at least two good reasons: 1) Virgil never uses the conjunction et in the last foot of a hexameter; 2) the coordinate et/quos super entails that the penalty “individualized” for Tantalus would be attributable in this case to an entire typological group of the damned. Hence, if the singular quo super is a sound reading, and if vv. 602–607 refer to the punishment of Tantalus, we must inevitably suppose that a verse has fallen out in which the name of Tantalus was mentioned, as the unique “titular” claimant to these torments. In fact, even if the description of his punishments had been a periphrasis in itself sufficient to identify the condemned man in question, the original mise en scène of the myth leads us to believe that Virgil should also have made explicit the name of this condemned man so that he would be instantly recognizable. So in my edition between vv. 601 and 602 I have indicated the loss of a verse. For clarity, and to provide an example (and nothing more) I proposed a hexameter in my apparatus to serve as a provisional remedy, just as when we slide a block under the leg of an unbalanced table, or put a patch over a hole in a

Aen. 6.602



43

piece of cloth. But I swear that I never expected to provoke a bilious attack in poor G. Liberman. He does not like the line. I am not surprised. When a finger is pointed at the moon, the fool watches the finger. The purpose of my attempt was to give a concrete example of what could be concealed in the lacuna. I leave the wistful ambition of competing with the poet for some young student of the Jesuits. How do we usually assemble a supplement exempli gratia? First and foremost we ask what was the probable content of the part of the text we suppose lost, then we try imagining what could have caused the omission (homoearchon?), then we seek out some turn of discourse peculiar to the poet which lends itself to cover over the mutilation by analogy (Aen. 6.122 f. quid Thesea magnum/quid memorem Alciden?). And finally we place our trust in some eventual imitation from which one hopes to recuperate a metrical-verbal simulacrum of the lost words (e.g. Ovid, Met. 4.458 …tibi, Tantale, nullae). If these passages correspond to each other, there is a likelihood we will get near to our objective. And it is simply by applying such criteria that I made a trial version: . In this connection I should mention that poets often interrupt an ordered list of characters in a catalogue to apostrophize one or two of them in the vocative: this uariatio avoids the monotony of a serial listing. For example in Aen. 10.166 ff. (the Etruscan catalogue) we have first a bare list of warriors: Massicus … secat, … una toruus Abas, … tertius Asilas, … sequitur pulcherrimus Astur; then the listing is varied by a direct address (v. 185) non ego te, Ligurum ductor fortissime bello,/ transierim, Cunere, et paucis comitate Cupauo,/cuius olorinae surgunt de uertice pinnae. Note that even in this case a relative phrase depends on the vocative. Similarly in Georgics 2.101, within a catalogue of famous grape-varietals, named one after the other, Virgil had playfully inserted an apostrophe in the exalted tones of high epic: non ego te, dis et mensis accepta secundis,/transierim, Rhodia et tumidis bumaste racemis. Obviously when I assembled my supplement exempli gratia, besides the criteria cited above I had in mind the use of this poetic artifice; the direct apostrophe te, Tantale, followed by the explanatory relative clause, seems to match the Virgilian manner. But it is obvious that the example only means to be a surrogate for the lost verse, a convenient replacement, a substitute with the function of making the text flow as if it were continuous. The philologist’s reconstruction, not granted the same liberty of invention that poets enjoy, can only follow the path of predictability – a path marked by comparisons and analogies. Ribbeck too read quo super, thus referring the relative pronoun to a single offender, and hypothesized that the poet named Tantalus explicitly before v. 602, inasmuch as the penalty was associated with him. Norden, in «Hermes»

44  Aen. 6.602

XXVIII, 1893, p. 402, agreed. But Ribbeck, who believed in the omission of a verse containing the name of Tantalus, deleted all of v. 601 quid memorem Lapithas, Ixiona Pirithoumque, since he thought it a remnant from a previous or at least provisional draft that had been incorrectly inserted at this point of the text; indeed he would have preferred that v. 601 stood near v. 618 (the reference to Theseus) or 616 (referring to Ixion and his wheel): see his Proll., pp. 62–3. Was this an improper insertion leading as a consequence to an accidental omission – a foreign line that had “expelled” a genuine one, thus doubly corrupting the text? It is too fantastic a coincidence. Ribbeck’s heroic philology certainly did not lack courage – and it often let him take risks. I also asked myself if the reading of R quo super could not introduce a new direct interrogative. The Sibyl, finding herself in front of a condemned man exposed to physical punishment, would ask “over whom does a black rock loom teetering as if ever ready to fall?” (a way of asking “who is the one over whom looms…?”). It seems to me improbable that the Sibyl, while serving as guide to Aeneas, would put such a question (even as a rhetorical question) in order to point out to him the individual damned, as if she herself were straining to recognize Tantalus by the signs of his torment. The Sibyl, as omniscient priestess of Phoebus, could not be unaware of the condemned man’s identity. This interpretation was expressly ruled out by Heyne (IV ed., cur. Wagner, Leipzig 1832, vol. II, p. 939), who instead proposed “(Quid porro memorem eos) quos super atra silex…/imminet adsimilis?”, the same interpretation as that of J.C. Jahn which I had to refute above. But this version had already been rejected by Wagner.

Aen. 6.901 Perhaps the task on which J. Wills displayed such subtlety and critical intelligence, in his comprehensive study on Homeric and Virgilian doublets,¹⁸ was not worthwhile. Let us be clear: the article itself is quite instructive and sustained by expertise and valuable stylistic comments, but the battle he is fighting does not deserve all that effort. In fact his purpose is to prove the authenticity of 6.901 – a line that is certainly interpolated. The book of the dead, after Aeneas has left Avernus, closes with the lines: ille uiam secat ad nauis sociosque reuisit; tum se ad Caietae recto fert limite portum. ancora de prora iacitur: stant litore puppes.

900

The last line is identical with 3.277. Ribbeck deletes it, writing in his apparatus criticus “solum in ultima libri pagina exhibent MPR, damnavit Bentleius” (but he neglects to mention that Servius does not comment on it). In short, in three of the most authoritative manuscripts the verse is introduced only at a later time. Only in F does it feature in the regular text. Nonetheless the condemnation issued by Bentley and confirmed by Ribbeck did not greatly trouble later editors; they all continued to preserve the suspect verse – with the exception of Norden, Goold, and my text. The three lines 899–901 belong to a particular typology and are examples of what we might call “monostich-verses.” In fact each of them is a verse-length phrase, inasmuch as the verbal utterance is entirely contained within the bounds of the hexameter and does not spill over into the following verse; thus metrical and phraseological units coincide. Monostichs are not frequent in the Aeneid. As is well known, the flow of Virgilian narrative is usually articulated in cola which tread on the heels of each other; the Periodik moves forward according to syntactical sequences that continually breach the borders of the hexameter-unit. While the metrical frame is fixed, within it the syntactical structures move freely; they draw back or spread forward according to the needs of expressivity. In short, the disjunction of meter and syntax ensures that each sense unit (now a proposition, now a group of syntactically connected words) does not end at the border of the verse, but prolongs itself into the next line thanks to a skillfully varied use of enjambment. Thus the hexameter builds up pace and frees

18 «MD» 38, 1997, pp. 185–202.

46  Aen. 6.901

itself from its (intrinsic) monotony. The liberation of syntax from meter not only gives energy to the language but also favours particular effects of meaning; it can add emphasis to thoughts, feelings and emotions. I said that so-called monostichs are infrequent in the Aeneid. Their rarity underscores their stylistic function: they are metrical-verbal clichés conspicuous in a narrative which is otherwise composed of urgent cola. They mark a pause or a new point of departure; their function is to punctuate the conclusion of a narrative moment or to give dry and concise information. Thus e.g. in: 2.39 scinditur incertum studia in contraria uolgus. 2.234 diuidimus muros et moenia pandimus urbis. 2.409 consequimur cuncti et densis incurrimus armis. 2.804 cessi et sublato montis genitore petiui. 3.83 iungimus hospitio dextras et tecta subimus. 5.136 considunt transtris, intentaque brachia remis. 11.915 considunt castris ante urbem et moenia uallant. 12.450 ille uolat campoque atrum rapit agmen aperto. Sometimes the monostich marks an immediate consequence, as in: 10.590 excussus curru moribundus uoluitur aruis. 12.696 discessere omnes medii spatiumque dedere. (which resembles 2.1 conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant). Often it is used in association with the end of a direct speech, as in: 3.718 conticuit tandem, factoque hic fine quieuit. 4.499 haec effata silet, pallor simul occupat ora. 4.553 tantos illa suo rumpebat pectore questus. 6.547 tantum effatus et in uerbo uestigia torsit. 11.132 dixerat haec unoque omnes eadem ore fremebant. 11.376 talibus exarsit dictis uiolentia Turni. Sometimes it functions as a chronological indicator: 8.369 nox ruit et fuscis tellurem amplicitur alis. 11.1 Oceanum interea surgens Aurora reliquit. 11.210 tertia lux gelidam caelo dimouerat umbram. In other cases the ‘isolated’ structure of the monostich lends itself to epigrammatic sententiousness, placing a seal on an entire movement of thought: 2.354 una salus uictis nullam sperare salutem. 4.172 coniugium uocat, hoc praetexit nomine culpam.

Aen. 6.901



47

Then there are some examples in which the monostichs imitate the versifying style of Homer and come in pairs with descriptive ‘coldness’ one after the other: 5.280–81 tali remigio nauis se tarda mouebat; uela facit tamen et plenis subit ostia uelis. 5.778–77 certatim socii feriunt mare et aequora uerrunt; prosequitur surgens a puppi uentus euntis. 9.182–3 his amor unus erat pariterque in bella ruebant: tum quoque communi portam statione tenebant. 10.486–7 ille rapit calidum frustra de uulnere telum: una eademque uia sanguis animusque sequuntur. 10.760–1 hinc Venus, hinc contra spectat Saturnia Iuno; pallida Tisiphone media inter milia saeuit. 12.9–10 haud secus accenso gliscit uiolentia Turno; tum sic adfatur regem atque ita turbidus infit. But three consecutive verse-lines of this type never occur in the Aeneid. Virgil does not tolerate their monotonous static nature, he feels the need to imprint mobility and nervous tension on the narrative. If anyone wanted to prove me wrong, he could cite two examples to invalidate my claim, but they would be inconsistent objections. The first is 1.210–12: illi se praedae accingunt dapibusque futuris: tergora deripiunt costis et uiscera nudant; pars in frusta secant ueribusque trementia figunt, litore aëna locant alii flammasque ministrant. The other is 2.483-5 apparet domus intus et atria longa patescunt, apparent Priami et ueterum penetralia regum, armatosque uident stantis in limine primo. In fact both sequences are experiments in Ennian style and are thus structured in imitation of archaic versification; indeed both are marked by symmetries and parallelisms, rhymes and homoeoteleuta, the most conspicuous of the features that characterized the famous fragment of Ennius (preserved by Macrobius 6.2.27 = Ann. 175–79 Sk.) which describes the felling of trees in a forest. Hence I confirm that Virgil would never have allowed three mutually disconnected monostichs to accumulate in immediate succession, because this

48  Aen. 6.901

jarred against his own inclination to make full use of enjambment between the verses – his technique of ‘arching’ phrases beyond the bounds of the hexameter to impose vivacity on poetic expression. This tendency leads me to think that v. 901 ancora de prora iacitur; stant litore puppes was due to an interpolator who wanted to repeat 3.277 here. But there is another argument. The verse which opens the following book, the seventh, is an apostrophe to Caieta, Aeneas’s nurse; it is from her that the city takes its name, destined to preserve forever her honoured tomb. The aition of the city’s name is delayed artistically by this form of solemn dedication (7.1–2): Tu quoque litoribus nostris, Aeneia nutrix, aeternam moriens famam, Caieta, dedisti. Hence it is obvious that the last line of the sixth book should be v. 900, so that the mention of the port of Caieta in this verse and its celebratory naming at the opening of the seventh book should come into immediate contact (and in consequence find their motivation). The interposition of v. 901 obstructs this aitiological procedure, cancelling the effect of paronomasia between the geographical name and that of the nurse. For this reason the sixth book should certainly close with tum se ad Caietae recto fert litore portum. Furthermore, the interpolation of v. 901 would lead to the unexpected repetition of litore in two successive verses; editors sought to eliminate this inconvenience by arbitrarily changing the text to recto fert limite portum. To confirm this line of reasoning we need only note that the division imposed on the Homeric books (compare Il. 7.1 and Od. 13.1) cut the narrative so that the last line of one book would find immediate continuation in the first verse of the following book – a suggestion Virgil could not refuse. In conclusion there is no doubt that line 901 was interpolated.

Aen. 7.543 The subject is a passage that has been tackled by critics using different approaches and on which much, indeed too much, has been written. Juno has ordered the Fury Allecto to stir up discord between the Rutuli and the Trojans to the point of sweeping them into war. When she has completed her loathsome mission, the infernal goddess deserit Hesperiam et caeli conuersa per auras Iunonem uictrix adfatur uoce superba.

543

This is the text accepted by the majority of editors. Suspicions of corruption have focused especially on conuersa, given that the manuscript tradition divides precisely on this word; while the Mediceus (M) reads conuersa, all the other manuscripts (as well as the second hand in the Mediceus) read conuexa. Servius too, with a large part of the indirect tradition, read conuexa, but their exegesis is incredibly contrived and quite impossible. The preposition per would be “bis accipiendum”, that is it would have a double object: “Allecto adloquitur Iunonem per caeli conuexa et per auras”: an absurd invention of desperate grammarians! There is no lack of conjectures, ancient and modern – caeli conuecta per auras, caeli co(n)nixa per auras, caeli euecta per auras – but all are inadequate to solve the problems of the passage.¹⁹ I believe the text is corrupt, but for me the corruption is not lurking in conuersa, a reading we should accept, but in another word in the verse. Now we shall see what it is and why. Let us begin by observing that the sequence of Allecto’s flight could be dissected into three successive moments: the first (1): deserit Hesperiam, “she leaves Hesperia” next (2): the moment contained in the problematic hemistich caeli conuersa per auras finally (3): Iunonem uictrix adfatur “she speaks triumphantly to Juno”. Between the first moment (1) in which Allecto leaves Hesperia and the third (3) in which we see her speaking to Juno, the text must of necessity indicate where

19 A complete review with full discussion of various attempts, can be found in S. Timpanaro, Virgilianisti antichi e tradizione indiretta, Florence 2001, pp. 56–61; see also M.L. Delvigo, Testo Virgiliano e tradizione indiretta, Pisa 1987, p. 41; G. Moretti, «SIFC» 3rd series, 9, 1991, pp. 112–20, and above all N. Horsfall in his commentary on book VII of the Aeneid (Leiden, Brill, 2000, p. 358 ff.).

50  Aen. 7.543

she is going in order to meet Juno herself: in fact it is just this moment (2) which has no explanation in the text. In short Ribbeck was right in a way when he suspected the loss of a verse after the clausula per auras: “mihi omissum uidetur aliquid uelut adpetit”, something along the lines of “she directs her path.” So Ribbeck expected that the text must have made explicit where Allecto was going once she left Hesperia. Well then, where is Allecto going? Obviously she can only be meeting Juno to report to her the success of her mission. And where can she find Juno? Obviously in the heaven, in the abode of the celestial gods. Schaper must have argued along similar lines. I accepted his conjecture caelo conuersa in my text because it is utterly convincing and extraordinarily economical to boot. “Allecto leaves Hesperia, and, aiming for the heaven through the air, she speaks triumphantly to Juno.” Caelo is dative of direction, common enough in Virgil with verbs of movement, equivalent to a construction with the accusative after in or ad. It is enough to compare 2.688 caelo palmas cum uoce tetendit; 3.678 caelo capita alta ferentis; 5.451 it clamor caelo; 8.591 [Lucifer] extulit os sacrum caelo; 9.681 ff… quercus intonsaque caelo/attollunt capita; 10.548 caeloque animum fortasse ferebat; 11.192 it caelo clamorque uirum clangorque tubarum. One need only note that the middle voice form conuertor is appropriate for indicating movement towards an explicitly expressed objective. In conclusion, vv. 543–4 may be paraphrased thus: “Allecto deserit Hesperiam et, cum ad caelestium sedem conuersa sit, sic Iunonem adfatur”, as I wrote in my apparatus criticus. First caelo was corrupted into caeli to provide a complement to per auras (“through the breezes of the sky”), and this in turn facilitated the banalization caeli conuexa “the vault of heaven”, a combination with a Virgilian precedent (4.451); or, vice versa, an initial corruption of conuersa to conuexa produced, as a secondary outcome, the genitive caeli so that it took the form of the familiar combination caeli conuexa. Whatever the process that led to the corruption, it seems to me that Schaper’s adjustment resolved every problem and fully restored the broad meaning of the passage.

Aen. 10.366 and 9.461 I have too much respect for the philological accuracy of Egil Kraggerud (cf. above n. 1, p. VII) to believe that he has really considered these two passages and the solutions I have proposed in each instance. Rather I believe he has been held back by his preconceptions so that in the end he does not recognize what I had in mind. How strange, for a virtue which I have always esteemed in him is the very patience with which he usually examines texts! But in these instances he may have been too impatient. Let us start with 10.362–68: at parte ex alia, qua saxa rotantia late impulerat torrens arbustaque diruta ripis, Arcadas insuetos acies inferre pedestris ut uidit Pallas Latio dare terga sequaci, aspera aquis natura loci dimittere quando suasit equos, unum quod rebus restat egenis, nunc prece, nunc dictis uirtutem accendit amaris:

365

366 aquis Madvig: quos P: quis ceteri

This is the text of Mynors, Geymonat and Harrison, all three of whom accept Madvig’s conjecture aspera aquis in place of the transmitted aspera quis. The conjecture is certainly “elegant” as Kraggerud maintains, but it seems unfortunate to me: indeed I cannot understand how the configuration of a landscape (natura loci) can be defined as aspera aquis (“made rough with streams”). Aspera means ‘uneven, rugged, obstructed’ because it is rocky, encumbered by great boulders (saxa rotantia v. 362), that hampers the horses’ advance and force the Arcadians to abandon them so as to move forward on foot. Even Kraggerud admits this in the end. To me the transmitted text does not seem at all corrupt, but clear and fluent. One must simply realize that aspera quis natura loci dimittere quando/suasit equos is a causal clause governed by quando: “Pallas, when he saw the Arcadians, unused to making attacks on foot, turn tail before the pursuing Latins, since the nature of the place had made it advisable for them (quis …/suasit) to send away their horses…”. Another matter to notice is that the pronoun quis (a poetic and archaic form of quibus frequent in Virgil; e.g. Georg. 1.161; Aen. 4.294; 5.511; 7.444; 7.799; 10.168) refers by “coniunctio relativa” to Arcadas two lines before. This connection, or apparent relative, is a common construction, called “relativischer Anschluss” by the Germans. For a good example of “relative

52  Aen. 10.366 and 9.461

connection” in a subordinate clause, as in our case, compare Aen. 4.90 ff. quam (sc. Dido) simul ac tali persensit peste teneri/cara Iouis coniunx nec famam obstare furori,/talibus adgreditur Venerem Saturnia dictis (quis … quando suasit ~ quam simul ac persensit). So I feel uncomfortable with Kraggerud’s criticism of my text and, by implication, apparatus; he claims that my text would require a full stop after sequaci. Leaving aside idiosyncrasies or preferences in punctuation, printing the dependent subordinate clause in parentheses only serves to make clear that it is a dia mesou (intrusion), a self-contained motivation that interrupts the main flow of the discourse. In conclusion the emendation eos is banal. The text fits perfectly, even if the entire passage is complex in its formulation: Arcadas insuetos acies inferre pedestris ut uidit Pallas Latio dare terga sequaci, (aspera quis natura loci dimittere quando suasit equos), unum quod …..

365

9.461–64 iam sole infuso, iam rebus luce retectis Turnus in arma uiros armis circumdatus ipse suscitat: aeratasque acies in proelia cogunt, quisque suos, uariisque acuunt rumoribus iras. 463 cogunt Wagner: cogit codd., Serv. 464 suos PRω, Seru.: suas Mdr This is Mynors’ reading, which clearly means “Turnus, clad in arms himself, rouses to arms his men. And they draw up their heavily armed squadrons – each man his own – and inflame their fury with different battle-cries”: this turns quisque suos into a kind of parenthetic intrusion. But all the manuscripts read cogit, which is also Servius’ reading; cogunt is the emendation of Cunningham and then Wagner, an attempt to adjust the unanimously transmitted cogit to the verb acuunt of the next line. Sabbadini (followed by Castiglioni and Geymonat) makes quisque the subject of cogit, reading aeratasque acies in proelia cogit/quisque suos. In other words the three Italian editors retain the reading of the manuscripts, but the result is that the verb cogit governs two accusatives which can only superficially be set alongside each other. The expression does not make sense, unless one accusative is understood to be in apposition to the other, like an explanatory addition:

Aen. 10.366 and 9.461



53

“each of them draws up his men in battle formation, the armoured troops.” But the combination seems to me rather strained. Ribbeck adopts a more reasonable solution to confront this difficulty: he accepts cogit but rejects suos, preferring suas, even though suos is much better attested. Suas matches aeratas acies, but is clearly a correction devised by some ancient copyist to guarantee syntactical concord. Every difficulty disappears if we punctuate after aeratasque acies. With the change of punctuation aeratasque acies no longer depends on cogit, but on Turnus suscitat, and it is coordinated with the accusative uiros in the preceding verse: Turnus…uiros…/suscitat aeratasque acies; then, in asyndeton, the phrase in proelia cogit/quisque suos, “each man arrays his men for battle.” The asyndeton (with the change of rhythm after the caesura) indicates, as on other occasions in the Virgilian periodic structure, that the execution follows immediately after the call to arms: every officer, like a centurion of the Roman army, promptly obeys and orders his squadrons in battle formation. Servius too would seem to have understood it like this: “nam plenum est aeratasque acies”. My friend Michael Reeve brought to my notice that Heyne too originally had the same idea, but was not satisfied and discarded it (in the edition of 1793): «Potest quoque sic distingui et interpungi: Turnus in arma uiros – suscitat aeratasque acies; in proelia cogit/quisque suos, uariisque acuunt rumoribus iras. Ita vero in uiros aeratasque acies est otiosi quid». I do not understand Heyne’s self-criticism (what is the meaning of «otiosi quid»?). I do not understand what disturbed him to the degree that he rejected a solution which seems to me straightforward and linear (as I will try now to make clear). However, at this point I must interrupt myself, even though I have almost concluded my argument, to confess that I remain baffled – more amazed than worried – by Kraggerud’s comment that my syntax (Turnus in arma uiros…/suscitat aeratasque acies: in proelia cogit/quisque suos…) implies there were two groups of men in Turnus’s camp, one unprepared for action and another in a sort of stand-by position. This is quite unreasonable and seems to me just sniping. Kraggerud is relying on myopic literalism in his arguments and on captious quibbling. The warriors driven by Turnus into battle were not, as he says, “sleeping”. That is what Kraggerud has persuaded himself of. What Virgil says is that Turnus calls his men to battle, urges them to take up arms, in arma suscitat. I have already said that the poet imagines Turnus as the commander of a Roman legion which is called to arms to face the enemy. Every Roman legion, as we know, was composed of single maniples each headed by centurions, who took care to array the combatants according to a prearranged order of battle (cogit quisque suos). The battle line included both light-armed soldiers (for the first charge) and heavy infantry (equipped with breastplates, hasta and

54  Aen. 10.366 and 9.461

large scutum), the latter of which can be identified as aeratas acies. After the light infantry had launched the first assault, it withdrew behind the lines of the armoured infantry, which in turn advanced in a compact and well protected formation.²⁰ Virgil takes his inspiration from this contemporary model. Turnus’s command to take up arms for the forthcoming battle is addressed both to the regular combatants (uiros) and to those assigned to the heavy infantry (aeratas acies). In fact the combatants form mixed detachments, in which each group has a different function and follows different tactics. The warriors marked out for the armoured infantry would surely have known how to present themselves fully armed to take up their position in the aeratas acies. We have not forgotten that the heroic and truly brave Lausus died in battle because his light arms could not protect him: transiit et parmam mucro, leuia arma minacis (10.817). Prisoner of his own prejudice, Kraggerud attempts a final shot: “frankly, to call bronze-clad men to arms borders on nonsense”. This seems a reasonable comment, and so I beg to be excused for saying that it is instead simply a demonstration of a closed mind. What is the point, one finally wonders, of so much effort and nervous stress? The answer is simple: to set forth – triumphantly – one’s own text, in which a lectio facilior (suas) and a trivializing emendation (cogunt) make a poor showing. What a demonstration of method! To sum up, all that is needed to restore a coherent and readable text is an adjustment of the punctuation: Turnus in arma uiros armis circumdatus ipse suscitat aeratasque acies: in proelia cogit quisque suos, uariisque acuunt rumoribus iras.

20 These familiar details are well set out not only in A. Goldsworthy (The Roman Army in war: 100 BC–AD 200, Oxford 1998) but also in the rich study of G. Cascarino (L’esercito romano. Armamento e organizzazione, Vols. I and II, Rimini 2007–2008, using primarily Polybius, Caesar and Livy as sources).

Aen. 12.53 I know I am exceeding my responsibilities. Indeed I had already done that when I thought of including an exegesis of this passage in the apparatus criticus of my edition – an explicit exegesis which would not in propriety be among the editor’s tasks. The text is actually certain; the uncertainty lies with the interpreters. But I felt challenged by the passivity of the commentators and translators, who were content with a meaning that was only apparent. As always in Virgilian matters a full history of the passage would be quite long. But I will limit myself to mentioning just a few scholars who have interpreted v. 12.53 Longe illi dea mater erit, quae nube fugacem feminea tegat et uanis sese occulat umbris.

53

That is also my text. The words are uttered by Turnus answering king Latinus, who has been trying in vain to dissuade him from combat with Aeneas. Turnus replies proudly that he will confront his rival, all the more since “his mother will be far away from him, she who could cover the coward with a womanish cloud, and he could hide himself in fraudulent shadows”. This is my interpretation. Heyne-Wagner too maintained that the subject of sese occulat was Aeneas, and they disputed anyone who “incommode sese ad Venerem trahit sententiam, cum de Aenea id melius dicatur”. Schrader (apud Heyne-Wagner ad l.) had conjectured ut uanis instead of et uanis to eliminate the grammatical anomaly, an economical but superfluous emendation. Conington had adopted a compromise solution and sorted out the question like this: “Venus conceals him while she hides herself” – something close to what Damsté²¹ must have been thinking when he conjectured secum occulat instead of sese occulat. However, these suspicions and attempts do not disturb two excellent – in fact the most recent – commentators: Alfonso Traina and Richard Tarrant do not seem to have felt any doubt. Traina (Turin 1997, ad l.) notes “it would be syntactically forced to refer sese occulat to Aeneas”, and Tarrant confirms “some interpreters (most recently Conte) understand Aeneas to be the subject of uanis sese occulat umbris, supplying a subject ille for occulat on the basis of illi in 52, but this seems syntactically difficult.”

21 P.H. Damsté, Annotationes ad Aeneidem, “Mnemosyne” 38, 1910, pp. 51–63.

56  Aen. 12.53

We are in complete agreement: this does violence to the expression. Speaking rhetorically, we call it a case of anacoluthon. As is well known, anacoluthon is a hybrid structure, a rhetorical construction in which the coherence between the different parts of the phrases is not respected. Precisely by enacting an obvious violation of the rules of syntax, it imitates the uncontrolled spontaneity of the spoken language: granted that the speaker’s attention is fully turned towards the “substance” of the speech, in its immediate impetus the linguistic formulation does not receive as much attention. This kind of “derailment” is conceived artistically to emphasize the dominant thought, that is to reveal it as an obsession. To me this case does not seem any different. At the beginning of book XII Turnus seems already possessed by the most uncontrollable rage: v. 9 … gliscit uiolentia Turno. Latinus’ words, rather than placating him, infuriate him even more: vv. 45–6 haudquaquam dictis uiolentia Turni/flectitur: exsuperat magis, aegrescitque medendo. The young hero does not manage an immediate reply: he has long since lost all control, and the drive of passion robs him of his words. He only succeeds in speaking with difficulty: ut primum fari potuit (v. 47). And he plans to exchange his life for glory like a hero. But in his paroxysm of rage he is also seized by the mania to harm his enemy Aeneas, and he exalts himself with murderous fury: v. 50–51 et nos, tela, pater, ferrumque haud debile dextra/ spargimus, et nostro sequitur de uolnere sanguis. He voices personal pride and even scorn for Aeneas, that enemy so strong and brave that he needs (once again) an intervention of his mother Venus to save him from death by enveloping him in a protective cloud to allow him to escape in panic (nube fugacem/feminea tegat). Nothing is more shameful for a warrior than the aid of a woman – an implicit accusation of effeminacy that Numanus Romulus, Turnus’ kinsman, had already hurled at the Trojans: 9.617 O uere Phrygiae, neque enim Phryges. In short it is Aeneas who finds shelter in the divine cloud, not Venus. In his heroic ethics Turnus would have no reason to direct his scorn at a goddess that vanished into air; gods often disappear in misty clouds (compare, e.g. Aen. 10.634). Turnus is not the Diomedes of the Iliad; the sense of prepon that guides Virgil cannot accept mortals wounding gods. What really grips Turnus’ spirit is the obsessive thought of his hated enemy, the man who had already on other occasions – beneath the walls of Troy – saved himself dishonorably thanks to his mother’s intrusion. This is what Homer reports in Iliad 5.312–15, in the scene where Aeneas’s mother wraps him in the fringed hem of her peplos after Diomedes has floored him with a huge boulder. On another occasion Poseidon had covered Aeneas with a cloak of blinding mist to save him from Achilles’ fury (Il. 20.318–22). Gods’ protection was certainly a sign of concern for a hero who always showed himself respectful and pious towards them – an act of recogni-

Aen. 12.53



57

tion honorable in itself, but not in the eyes of Turnus, who even turns the fact of divine protection against Aeneas: a real warrior should rely on his own strength. Jupiter himself in Aen. 5.810 reminds his daughter Venus that he once saved Aeneas from certain death: nube caua rapui. But divine favor has become a dishonorable stain on the Trojan hero, as if he had always drawn an illicit advantage from it. If he on one occasion hid himself in a protective cloud – thinks Turnus with scorn – he would do so again at this time. Even Juno, in the famous scene on Olympus in which she reproaches Venus, had hurled the same accusation in malice, and in the same terms: Aen. 10.81–82 tu potes Aenean manibus subducere Graium,/proque uiro nebulam et uentos obtendere inanis! So these are the presuppositions on which Turnus founds his contemptuous verdict; it does not interest him, nor could it, that Venus makes herself invisible. His mind is only on Aeneas. The uncontrollable fury with which he seeks the confrontation confounds his speech. This is how Aeneas becomes the polemical target of his animosity (illi…/fugacem) and finally becomes the grammatical subject of the action: sese occulat. Turnus’ speech is disintegrating and the anacoluthon imitates the instinctive nature of colloquial language. The syntactic inconsistency is an effective gauge of the psychological impulses that predominate in the phrases; the anacoluthon is purposeful, what grammarians call constructio ad sensum (kata synesin), and in this way the poet reproduces to good effect a feature of emotive Umgangssprache. The previous line had already taken on the character of lively dialogue: longe illi dea mater erit (the simple verb instead of aberit), a turn of speech that does not appear elsewhere in Virgil. So the anacoluthon presents itself as a marker of expressivity, and one should not blur it without reason. As always in the language of poetry a grammatical phenomenon becomes a stylistic feature and a factor of artistic rhetoric. Not only does psycholinguistics, the science that studies language in relation to the emotional state of the speaker, support the claim of anacoluthon here, where the syntactical disturbance reproduces Turnus’ uncontrollable mania. We should also consider the totally Virgilian predilection for parataxis, or at any rate for the collocation of elements that present themselves as complementary rather than subordinating themselves one to the other; the equally Virgilian taste for uariatio frequently reacts to this juxtaposition. Often, for example, two coordinated relative clauses meet in which the second part does not match the relative pronoun that introduces the first; the syntactical structure is varied in the coordinate part, which as a result, seems ‘disconnected’. We could cite many cases but it is enough here to quote 11.305–7, where king Latinus tries to restrain his people from war: bellum importunum, ciues, cum gente deorum/inuictisque uiris gerimus, quos nulla fatigant/proelia nec uicti possunt absistere ferro. It is clear that

58  Aen. 12.53

Latinus’ spirit is dominated by the oppressive memory of those inuicti uiri: it is precisely they – in disagreement with the relative pronoun quos – who loom in the foreground and become the grammatical subject of the second part of the relative phrase. Hence we could consider this second part of the relative as connected by simple coordination; to cite the title of a well-known book of Adelaide Hahn (Geneva/New York 1930), it is a form of Coordination of non-coordinate elements in Vergil. Thus the connecting et of the half-line could be considered as an “illative” conjunction: the same as “and so”. This explains the reasoning of Schrader who (banalizing the thought, as I said above) conjectured ut uanis – a subordinate phrase instead of the inconvenient coordinate. Before concluding I should admit that for the sake of logical distinctio, I would probably have done better if I had marked with a comma the syntactic disarticulation produced by the anacoluthon: Longe illi dea mater erit, quae nube fugacem feminea tegat, et uanis sese occulat umbris.

 Appendices

I Georg. 3.230: pernox vs. pernix “Different witnesses produce different reports” said Perry. John le Carré, Our Kind of Traitor

The formula lectio difficilior potior incorporates a criterion worked out in an illuminist spirit by Bengel and subsequently disseminated by Wettstein. It is a criterion quite dear to philologists, but we would do well not to forget that its use requires appropriate precautions. Stories are passed from mouth to mouth that Giorgio Pasquali, when he wanted to shake the convictions of some young student too sure of his first scholastic acquisitions, would rattle him by mentioning in a provocative fashion that every tradition contains improbable innovations which, just because they are difficiliores in relation to the correct reading, will find someone who will treat them as precious inventions of the author. Pasquali’s remark was a jeu d’esprit, a jesting intimidation to cultivate critical suspicion, but his comment had a serious basis. The criterion of the lectio difficilior rests on a principle of probability. Its justification is intuitively obvious: we assume that in the course of the tradition some unusual words or difficult expressions will be substituted with more current and common language. In short we are aware that the danger of banalization is always impending, while the opposite process has little or no chance of occurring. Hence, if we must choose between two competing lectiones, the less banal one is probably the original. So far we all agree. But we still have to agree about the meaning of “banalization”. We shall see that in some instances we cannot come to agreement on this point. As proof of this, take an elegant short article that Alfonso Traina, acknowledged master of Latin literary semantics and stylistics, to whom I have long been bound by a rare friendship, has just published in «Eikasmos» 25 (2014). We linger over these pages in admiration not only of their finesse but also of the style in which the argument is conducted, far removed from the tone of controversy. In short, a lesson in intellectual refinement which I shall try for my part to emulate, even if I am compelled (and I say it straightaway) to differ from the distinguished writer. In a passage of Virgil’s Georgics (3.230) I chose pernox, but Traina defended and continues to defend pernix. The reason is that for him this latter form is “incontestably lectio difficilior banalized by the transparent pernox” (as he wrote fourteen years ago in «Boll. Stud. Lat.» XXIX, 1999, 441–58 = La lyra e la libra, Bologna 2003, 50 ff.). And now he does not fail to reaffirm it, slightly skirting my argument: “The lectio difficilior [i.e. pernix] would be a conjecture and the lectio

62  I Georg. 3.230: pernox vs. pernix

facilior, which should be the obvious banalization, would be the original reading. A grammarian would have dreamed up a conjecture apparently utterly incongruous with the context (the semantics of pernix) in order to substitute it for a pernox which seems to match perfectly this context.” There is no shade of malice in this reconstruction of events, but just a touch of partisanship. In fact the criterion of lectio difficilior is not at all involved here. Nor can we invoke in this case the complementary criterion of utrum in alterum (“which text might be changed to the other”). What I want to dispute is precisely the claim that pernix is “incontestably lectio difficilior, made banal in the form of the transparent pernox.” There is no banalization. These are two apparently sound readings of which (and this is my opinion) one is correct, the other so to speak a lectio aemulanter excogitata. Did not Cornutus on Aen. 1.45 turbine corripuit scopuloque infixit acuto propose to correct it to inflixit? Servius Danielis cites the reasons for his preference: uerius, quod sit uehementius. Here too Traina should have concluded that the genuine infixit is incontestably the lectio facilior. And perhaps the good Julius Hyginus, learned grammarian and erudite encyclopedist of the Augustan age, would not have maintained that in Georgics 2.247 at sapor indicium faciet manifestus et ora/tristia temptantum sensu torquebit amaro Virgil would have written … sensus torquebit amaror? Gellius and Favorinus were enthusiastic supporters of this reading, whereby the notorious ‘Lucretianism’ amaror succeeded in removing a pleonasm that must have wearied readers. In fact the other formulation, from a logical-syntactical point of view, is certaintly excessive in as much as the subject of the phrase (sapor) is echoed by a substantive of equivalent meaning (sensu). Yet with its ‘undisciplined’ surfeit it achieves an artificial expressive scheme by no means very rare in Latin poetic diction, a scheme which has been well studied by Housman and Shackleton Bailey, and which La Penna has called “nominis commutatio riflessiva” (see now P. Dainotti in «MD» 60, 2008, 225–36). The debate around the reading amaror has seen many participants. They are all hauled into court and fully discussed by S. Timpanaro in Per la storia della filologia virgiliana antica (Rome, 1986, 51–58) and in Virgilianisti antichi e Tradizione indiretta (Florence 2001, 17–23), so there is no need for me to add myself in the rear. For me it is only important to observe that even in this case, as in the previous one, we guess at the disingenuous self-promotion of an artifex artifici additus, that is the ambition of someone who wanted to “improve” the Virgilian text with the indiscreet imposition of a personal touch. So now the authentic reading sensu torquebit amaro, while not inherently banal, could be claimed by some as being “incontestably” the lectio facilior, if one confronts it with the precious Lucrezian pearl sensus … amaror. Reclaiming the importance of the rich indirect Virgilian tradition, Timpanaro has won his campaign against the militant skepticism of J.E.G. Zetzel (Latin

I Georg. 3.230: pernox vs. pernix

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Textual Criticism in Antiquity, New York 1981). In my editions I too have derived many advantages from this wise re-evaluation (I remember limo, relinquunt, floros alongside some other incidental restorations, even if some following reconsiderations of the second volume [Florence 2001] have not convinced me so strongly). Timpanaro’s thesis has emerged victorious if only because he succeeded in dismantling a consolidated preconception. It is obviously his merit to have faced the problem of readings extra codices not by evaluating them en bloc, but by sorting the aggregate into specific instances and types, taking each one as unique. Before him the presumption was dominant that these readings were to be treated – almost all and almost always – not as valid subsidiary testimonies but as idle conjectures floated by enthusiastic improvisers. It is nevertheless certain that Timpanaro did not want to replace this old prejudice sic et simpliciter with its opposite, as if the indirect tradition should be taken entirely as sieved gold. The only welcome that can help the philologist concretely and defend him from possible illusions is to learn to distinguish all the time between resemblances and differences. This needs caution and learning, and often suspicion. It is no easy task, just as it is not easy to separate wheat from darnel. Their seeds are not too different. However, it is good to recognize that the defeated Zetzel was not wrong in all instances (if we discount his prejudiced taking of sides). There are a considerable number of nonsensical or capricious readings which an editor can meet every so often and which are undeniably due to the extempore invention of readers. So it will be enough to mention here one that, born doubtless from the indirect tradition, invaded the direct tradition to the point of earning incredible credit even with cunning students. I am referring to poenigenam in Aen. 7.773; this is what the Mediceus reads and virtually the Romanus along with the mass of Carolingian Mss; the Palatine dissents (followed by a few Carolingians) keeping the correct reading Phoebigenam, and that is the reading accepted by Ti. Claudius Donatus. In every case the reference is the same, that is Aesculapius/Asclepius son of Apollo and the nymph Coronis. According to one reading the demi-god was identified by antonomasia as “born of Phoebus”, according to the other as “born of the punishment inflicted on his mother”. Servius knows both readings: ‘poenigenam’ matris poena genitum, alii ‘Phoebigenam’ legunt ut Probus. The myth is very well known (Pind. Pythian 3.43 ff.; Ovid Met. 2.629 f.; Hygin. Fabulae 202) and tells how Coronis, pregnant by Apollo, betrayed the god by sleeping with a mortal and paid for this offence with her life; but in extremis the god extracted by a caesarian section his son Asclepius from the stomach of his dead mother. Consider especially that Phoebigena is the ritual invocation of Asclepius (venerated as a god at Rome, he had a temple on the isola Tiberina); the significance of this epithet returns in Statius Silvae 3.4.6 iuuenis Phoebeie.

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In short, to allude to the divine discoverer of medicine the poet identified him with the current name of “descendant of Phoebus”. Then consider that even the formation of names follows mandatory rules. The suffix-gena produces composite forms in which the first part always indicates origin by birth or by geographical locality, i.e. it notes the name of the father or mother or native land as in e.g. Caeligena (or Caeligenus), Opigena, Terrigena, Graiugena, Nysigena. These compounds are designations that function linguistically as if they were epithets of origin whose explicit form would be ex with the ablative of a proper name connected to a participle such as natus or prognatus, genitus, satus, oriundus. In conclusion it is not in the linguistic nature of this suffix to indicate birth in a figurative sense, as in the case of poenigenam ‘matris poena genitum’, “born from the punishment inflicted on his mother”. This case cannot be rendered acceptable, not even by attributing it to Virgil’s extraordinary linguistic creativity: no poet’s capacity for invention can (even allowing for forced and contorted usages) ever violate the functional proprieties of language. Never, and again never, has Virgil’s expressivity forced itself to blur grammatical discipline. For many years and more than once, the long-serving Virgilian scholar Nicholas Horsfall has been conducting a strenuous campaign in defence of the reading poenigenam, admittedly meeting more resistance than agreement. He most recently took up the question in his commentary on Aen. VII (Leiden/ Boston/Köln 2000, pp. 501–2), where he cites the previous bibliography and reaffirms his conviction with new arguments. But his efforts do not make me change my mind. They did to some extent lead Timpanaro to reconsider (Virgilianisti antichi e tradizione indiretta, pp. 65–66); on the basis of some examples cited by Horsfall, Timpanaro has surrendered: the formation in -gena would seem “quite flexible”, enough to permit the reading poenigenam. But there is no flexibility: all the instances fit into the same unique semantic function and comply with the unique rule of formation. In short the new examples quoted, if we examine them attentively, do not at all dislodge the arguments which I offered above. Two of them, in fact, urbigena and rurigena, “coming from the city” and “coming from the country”, from the linguistic point of view function as if they were two concrete ‘complements of origin’, coming under the general condition that I set out for the formation of these compounds. The other two, unigena “born together” or else “unique in its nature”, and alienigena “a stranger or foreigner”, are words compounded with a prefix that has the adverbial force (an adjective functioning adverbially), and not with a concrete name that could be a proper name or that of a region (as in the customary form of epithets of origin). Poena is an abstract substantive, which semantically and functionally cannot be the same thing as a real ‘complement of origin’. The reading must have arisen

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from the vanity of some erudite reader eager to ‘enrich’ the text of Virgil and render it more precious with an Alexandrian griphos implied by the aetiological peripety of the myth of Asclepius. Probus, whether he conjectured it or followed a text not yet corrupt, emended the clumsy innovation. Thus he eliminated what might seem to some a lectio difficilior. In reality quite a lot of improbable lectiones difficiliores (I hope Traina will not mind if I call them so in jest) are found in the text of Virgil, all equally the product of the itch of enthusiastic manipulators. See Georgics 2.344 ff. si non tanta quies iret frigusque caloremque/inter…, where disdain for the hypermetrical line generated the reading frigusque calorque; some learned man, perhaps basing his decision on Plautus Mercator 860 nec calor nec frigus metuo, imposed the neutral gender on calor, to restore what seemed to him a precious and anomalous archaism («fuit autem prior lectio frigusque calorque»: Servius Danielis). On other occasions it is erudition itself – or better the eagerness to show themselves supersize encyclopedists – that kindles the fantasy of these improvisers. Here is another sample. In book IX of the Aeneid, at the siege of the Trojan camp, Pandarus and Bitias tower over the two sides of the gate, soaring like two lofty oak trees in the sky, among those that rear up “around the limpid currents of rivers, on the banks of the Po or the smiling Adige”: … liquentia flumina circum/siue Padi ripis Athesim seu propter amoenum (679–80). Virgil is recalling the Po and Adige; but he cannot have forgotten the Livenza! Hence Servius puts down the lemma Liquetia flumina and notes «iuxta Padum et Athesim, Venetiae flumina, est etiam fluvius Liquetius, quem nunc commemorat: ergo Liquetia proprium est nomen, non epitheton». In this way the flumina would lose their ornamental attribute of liquentia and the Livenza would enter the text of the Georgics with full honors! I don’t want to give the impression of overdoing it, yet I can’t refrain from citing a last example in which the usual approximative erudition provides a truly amazing reading. At Aen. 7.568 spiracula Ditis “the breathing holes of Dis” Servius does not fail to report «antiqui codices piracula habent, quae dicta sunt ἀπὸ τῶν περάτων, hoc est a finibus inferorum». Would there ever in the course of time have been anyone inclined to believe this? I realize that I have let myself be distracted far from the problem of pernix. In my apparatus I had written – not irresponsibly, I think – «Alucinantur grammatici qui, deriuatione ob opinabili uerbo ‘pernitor’ excogitata, pernix explanant tamquam ‘perseuerans’». This is why I felt obliged to recall with what fanciful details certain learned readers of the first phase had threatened the integrity of the Virgilian text; some of their many intrusions were treacherous, so treacherous that they even succeeded in replicating themselves in the direct tradition. I am not saying anything truly new; and Alfonso Traina knows all this well, but

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does not believe that the idle invention of a whimsical grammarian could be rewarded with such wide-spreading diffusion. “No-one” – Traina argues on p. 2 f. – “would have dreamed up a conjecture apparently utterly conflicting with the context (the semantics of pernix) to substitute it for a pernox which seems to match this context perfectly”. Even to Traina it seems that the so often hymned lectio difficilior proves really incongruous on account of the meaning of pernix. So one must do some work to flex and twist the meaning of pernix, and to this end is directed all the force of his argument. Following this reasoning we would at least have distinguished one fact: that pernix must be an authentically Virgilian reading, since a grammarian could never have invented it, or at least would not have invented it so unsuccessfully. To me this seems a plain version of the ontological proof which Saint Anselm gave for the existence of God. St Anselm’s logic (even if it was destined to arouse in the course of centuries the interest of first Leibniz, then Kant, not to mention Gödel) is not something I see as effective in an investigation like ours, where we need instead an entirely empirical logic. To stay at the empirical level, Servius says – and this is a fact – that he finds pernix convenient in its meaning, and re-derives the adjective from an improbable verb pernitor, which ought to mean (even if Servius does not say so) “continue to make an effort”, “ persist at length”. I admit that I do not understand Traina’s disappointment when he writes (p. 3) “the phantom verb pernitor, which logically appears to be an attempt to justify the original reading, must instead be the justification of an illogical conjecture”. There is no involuntary paralogism nor intentional sophistry in my reconstruction. To me it seems that Servius simply wants to explain the meaning that the adjective could have in this context (“just persisting”, modo perseuerans) and to provide a paretymology by associating it morphologically with the mirage of the verb pernitor. However, there is one fact: pernix is in reality a derivative of perna “leg” (or better “thigh”) and so means “agile”, “nimble”, “capable of moving swiftly on one’s legs” – everyone knows that. A lexicologist beyond compare like Traina can feel weary of hearing a hackneyed banality of this kind repeated. But he must allow me to stay anchored to it and not dislodge me from it even after his subtle attempts to disguise, or better to downgrade the possible meanings of pernix in order to find one that is acceptable. The semantic nucleus of the adjective, its denotative value, cannot be anything else than that of speed and agility; and even the collateral significances – the connotative senses remotivated from time to time by different contexts – cannot be decoupled from its basic sense (which implies movement, slenderness, energy); still less, I believe, can they conflict with it. Traina’s analysis of two Horatian passages (Epodes 2.42 and Odes 3.16.26) is a true masterpiece of exegetic dexterity but the conclusion he

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derives from it seems somewhat forced; I don’t know how many would be inclined to accept as a general semantic rule a postulate that “if pernix coincides with one of the senses of impiger, it is natural that it assume the other sense by contagion”. Maybe, but I have my reservations. On the other hand, if this were the only case of pernix in Virgil, I would be honestly driven to rethink my choice. But Virgil uses the adjective elsewhere. On one occasion he wants to indicate the incredible rapidity with which Fama flies (Aen. 4.180 pedibus celerem et pernicibus alis); another instance refers to the supernaturally swift Camilla who follows and overtakes at a run the horse of a fleeing enemy (Aen. 11.718 pernicibus ignea plantis). In short the poet always wants to imply movement and agility if not downright lightning speed, as in the case of Camilla (ignea). Another example appears in the very same book of the Georgics, a few verses before our passage on the bull that lies defeated (3.93), where the idea of a sudden leap seems to be added to the swiftness of flight: the god Saturn, surprised by his wife in adultery with a lovely nymph, turns himself into a horse and escapes pernix tossing his mane in the wind. A shameful withdrawal but certainly a fast one. In short I am unfortunately convinced of the inelasticity of facts. The historian Carlo Ginzburg says somewhere that “facts are pigheaded”, and so am I. A post-script to add a brief final hint about pernox. It may not be the lectio difficilior but neither is it weakened by banality. Pernix could also have arisen from an ancient error of reading by someone who found himself before an unusual adjective like pernox (compare Homeric παννύχιος), but this seems improbable to me. In any case the essence is unchanged. I do not want to defend pernox by arguing about criteria of philological method and readings in the indirect tradition; the picture is clear to us all. Rather we should re-read the entire context in which the adjective is inserted and by which it is intimately motivated. After a grandiose representation of the ‘epic’ duel of the two bulls, the poet writes at vv. 224 ff.: Nec mos bellantis una stabulare, sed alter uictus abit longeque ignotis exulat oris, …………………………………………. …………………………………………. et stabula aspectans regnis excessit auitis. Ergo omni cura uiris exercet et inter dura iacet pernox instrato saxa cubili… When evening falls, the animals normally withdraw into their stalls for the night. The victorious bull enters the stabula, but the loser must remain outside, condemned to exile. He can only turn and gaze with a lament at his old kingdom

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from which he has been exiled (here the pathetic humanization is obvious). Ergo – says Virgil – i.e. ‘in consequence of this exile’ – he passes the entire night in the open. It is assumed that he does not sleep; he is seething with anger and humiliation. He stays stretched out on the hard rock, feeding on the reeds of the marsh, he works his muscles to exercise them for battle, he smothers his rage by beating the air with his horns, and scrapes the ground with his hooves to prepare himself for a new confrontation. It is just these emotions of revenge, this insistent will to fight, that might have prompted some adventurous ancient to make his mark by dreaming up the reading pernix, which would be understood in the sense of perseuerans (although it is lexically inadmissible, at least for Virgil). The poet had something else in mind. He was seized by the thought that the defeated bull driven out of the stall would be compelled after his defeat to pass the nocturnal hours far from his habitual lair: ergo… inter/dura iacet pernox instrato saxa cubili “hence he lies the whole night long on the hard rock”. For the exile displaced from power, it is a whole night spent in brooding obsessively on revenge and awaiting with impatience the light of the new day – the day of vengeance. I do not think we can find in the poet’s sympathetic note any idea more banal than the one contained in the imaginary reading pernix. If indeed pernix – admitting and not granting that it can mean “persevering” – is a banally applied and idle epithet, it preaches one more time the undefeatable nature of the battling bull and seems a superfluous attempt to make explicit what is fully conveyed by the context itself (omni cura uiris exercet). A typical autoschediasma of grammarians’ improvisation!

II The dossier on the Helen episode (Aen. 2.567–588) To doubt everything or believe everything are two equally convenient solutions, which spare us, the one as much as the other, from reflection. Henri Poincaré Science and the hypothesis. I am well aware that given the long duration of the dispute and the repetitiveness of the arguments, the polemic on the authenticity of the so-called Helen episode in the second book of the Aeneid has long since risked becoming tedious. Some years ago I tried to shift the debate in a new direction, away from the uncertainty of the arguments that were adduced; it seemed to me that I could provide a proof that was as it were extrajudicial, able to overcome the traditional limits of the question. Both those for and those against authenticity had kept their dispute within these long since entrenched limits: the challengers tackled the passage with suspicion and preconceptions, while the defenders constantly retaliated. For my part I contributed to the discussion on three different occasions.²² In this note I will make free and full use of many of the materials and comments which I provided on each occasion, but I will try to limit myself to essentials. If I repeat my text-critical arguments here it is only because I mean to help readers understand how I was reasoning when I welcomed the verses in question into the text of the Aeneid (although printing them in italics to mark them off.) Dubium sapientiae initium, Descartes declared when he established systematic doubt as the foundation of critical judgment. This is a thought that all sound philology has long accepted as its own professional banner. It could hardly be otherwise. Only through doubt can truth be tested, and it is through testing that factual data and effective evidence are ensured. In short doubt will always be praised as the best servant of truth, given that it is the only remedy against falsifications and errors. But systematic doubt is quite different from the doubt of skepticism. The first is positive, open to development; we doubt in order to learn. The second is negative, closed in the face of dialogue; we doubt for its own sake. The first is anti-dogmatic, the second ends paradoxically by lapsing into another dogmatism.

22 «RFIC» 106 (1978), pp. 53 ff. (= G.B. Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation, Ithaca/London 1986, pp. 196–207); Enciclopedia Virgiliana, vol. II, s.v. Elena, Rome 1985, pp. 190–93 (with bibliography); «MD» 56 (2006), pp. 157–74.

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This may not always happen, but it certainly does in the case of the most recent discussions of the Helen episode. The recent commentary of Nicholas Horsfall (Virgil Aeneid 2, Leiden/Boston 2008) dedicates thirty-four pages to the twenty-two lines in question. This is a diligent compilation of well-known matters, in effect a doxography prepared with Manichean rigor, just as in some old elementary schools where the teacher had pupils write on the blackboard the list of “good” and “bad” boys. That is what Horsfall does: he hymns the exclusionists and rates the acceptors as deficient. In the list of the good he includes only those who deny the hand of Virgil, Goold and Murgia foremost. The whole complex seems like an exercise in lazy factionalism. It is the case that a fashion has imposed itself in the monochrome province of classical philology: to drive off preemptively as false inventions all the information provided by secondary ancient and late-antique literature. This cautious diffidence, as long as it was accompanied by good sense, remained within the limits of reason, but recently it has transformed itself into an obsession and has become, as it were, almost a manic feature. In fact, as a healthy prophylaxis, the preference now is to trust nothing; better not to take risks! Timpanaro, who hated all fashions as such, on many occasions lamented this dominant habit. I see nothing in it but unreasonable superstition. Timpanaro, however, considered it a form of intellectual arrogance. That is why in 1986 and 2001, he chose to publish two books in defence of Servius and the indirect tradition of Virgil. And now he is getting the punishment he deserves. Horsfall chastises him. “Strike down one of them to educate a hundred,” was Chairman Mao’s recommendation. In a note (44, p. 567) Horsfall condemns “the anxious conservatism of Timpanaro’s later period.” Here is the fretful reaction of someone who cannot deal with disagreement. It is really absurd to hurl the charge of conservatism at two innovative and self-supporting studies, based on a “criticism of the sources” so rigorous that it would probably have earned the admiration of Droysen the methodologist himself. On the other hand, I am tired of trying to understand the disdain which Horsfall shows for poor Servius. I would have expected him to grant Servius some credit at least out of fellow feeling, given that both men based their comments on the same accumulation of material and information. In fact both seem unaware that information is not the same as knowledge.

I) Certainly the fashion for negativity will have been fed by the enthusiastic reception of some examples of rejection in the past. This is a precedent that easily

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produces imitators. It would be enough to recall the declamation de falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione of Lorenzo Valla and Richard Bentley’s dissertation on the forged letters of Phalaris; studies of this kind have an additional merit, a heroic touch. In fact the critical vigor of a philologist seems worthy of special admiration when he knows how to resist triumphantly the deceit of forgers and interpolators, when he confronts the assaults of an opposing faction with a skeptical spirit and cunning ability. Then the watchful philologist becomes a kind of champion in the crusade fought in defence of truth. More than one of those critics who have refused to believe that the passage about Helen is from Virgil’s hand has imagined himself dressed in these holy vestments. The lines in question, preserved for us by Servius Danielis on Aen. 2.566 and in the Servian Praefatio, are missing from the manuscript tradition (they appear only in a few late codexes without independent value). Servius and Servius Danielis do not comment on them, nor does Tiberius Claudius Donatus include them in his paraphrase. At Aen. 2.566 Servius Danielis cites the notice that they were “removed” by Varius and Tucca; at 592 Servius gives two explanations of their elimination: the first is that turpe est uiro forti contra feminam irasci, the second that the verses would contradict the episode of Helen and Deiphobus in 6.511 ff. The latter is in fact true. So the testimonia are exclusively from the indirect tradition and probably go back to Aelius Donatus, as has been shown convincingly by H.T. Rowell.²³ Even so the exclusionists, confirmed in their radicalism, have not had an easy game; the opposing team have beaten off their attacks and succeeded in legitimizing almost every feature of phraseology, metre and syntax that was the object of dispute. However they have not been able to drive away doubts and reservations completely, and the dispute has not always been edifying. If on one side we have seen arbitrary suspicions easily refuted, on the other there has been no lack of quibbling and subjective arguments. Often obstinate preconceptions have been confronted with shallow nonchalance. So those who out of caution did not want to accept these lines found themselves facing off against those who out of comparable caution did not want them thrown out. In the first years of the last century the contestants hatched an unexpected brood. It was then that the doubts advanced by the supporters of rejection seemed to attain certainty. E. Norden, resorting to a metrical argument (Aeneis 6, p. 255 and appendix XI.1.3), cut the throat of any balance; the vote was removed from mere opinions and given to precision instruments, objective, not arbitrary.

23 The Ancient Evidence of the Helen Episode in Aeneid II, in The Classical Tradition, ed. L. Wallach, Ithaca 1966, pp. 210–21.

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What Norden did was to identify in the Helen episode three cases of synaloepha of a spondaic word in the arsis of the third foot. One of these cases, v. 587 ultricis fam(ae) et cineres, is textually doubtful, but to the other instances should be added the case of 574 abdiderat ses(e) atque, which Norden did not consider. According to Norden Virgil would never present three instances of this phenomenon in fifteen lines. But Norden’s statement was based on prejudice; in fact it was based on a false criterion of measurement, one even methodologically incorrect (judging with hindsight). The authoritative scholar, great philologist as he was, was not comparably expert in statistics – a weakness quite common even among men of science, not just men of letters, in those years. His calculation limited itself (rather crudely) to a simple arithmetic average and neglected an important variable, that is the relative clustering of the phenomenon. Indeed it often happens that some metrical phenomena absent in long sequences of lines, feature repeatedly in limited clusters. An analysis that does not take this into account has no scientific basis and is thus completely deceptive. So years later there would be those who, even without isolating the methodological flaw of statistical assessment into which Norden had fallen, could show empirically that in other Virgilian passages immune from all suspicion (for example Aen. 10.757–771) there are concentrations of the same metrical feature, in other words clusters of synaloepha like that encountered and condemned by Norden. Indeed the contributions of F.W. Shipley («TAPhA» 56, 1925, p. 172 ff.) and S.K. Johnson («CR» 41, 1927, p. 123) were decisive. The fact that elsewhere in the Aeneid there are three synaloephae of this type within a space of fifteen lines forbids using this metrical peculiarity as a unique criterion for declaring the Helen episode the product of forgery. Fr. Leo and R. Heinze associated themselves with the peremptory judgment of Norden with equally brusque condemnations, though in different tones. But it was precisely the unopposed authority of these three scholars which made us forget for a long time that in reality none of them had ever produced a detailed analysis of the accused text. Even someone who wished to judge differently could not neglect the triple “ipse dixit” – after all had not Cicero’s interlocutor, committed to the principle of authority, frankly admitted errare mehercule malo cum Platone quam cum istis uera sentire? Instead there was a surprise. Finally, when after so many precautionary demurrals and oracular denunciations the first complete analysis free of prejudices was offered by R.G. Austin («CQ» n.s. 11, 1961, pp. 184–98), this was the conclusion: 1) No metrical or stylistic feature contradicted the claim of Virgilian paternity. 2) There are various indications that this text was not sufficiently polished.

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The philological debate of the last century reviewed two aspects of the problem: the external – questions of transmission – and the internal – the formal features of the text. When the problem was posed in these terms, neither of the two aspects allowed for an unambiguous and definitive conclusion. On the one hand, for all the reasonable doubts that might be accumulated, the state of the tradition did not authorize on its own a decision a priori. On the other hand the stylistic texture, when examined objectively, implied a most extraordinary kind of interpolator, one whose purpose was not merely to imitate an authentic text of Virgil, but to produce a Virgilian “first draft”.

II) There is an objective point of view on which exclusionists and accepters can agree. The shape of the contents of the episode – that is the organization of the narrative sequence – follows traditional schemes. The author, whoever he may be, has drawn them from very precise sources, which can be traced by the modern interpreter but have also been effectively integrated into the text. The author has his models, he works them up and he alludes to them. It was reflection on such models that provoked some questions among critics. F. Noack²⁴ remarks that the case of an interpolator capable of reworking the Ilioupersis (that is to say the Litte Iliad of Lesches) is exceptional. And Heinze, examining the passage with his customary precision (Virgils epische Technik, Berlin/Leipzig 1903, p. 49 n.1), recognizes that the author – for him Pseudo-Virgil – depends on and imitates Euripides’ Orestes. G. Funaioli, in a brief but remarkably clear investigation (Studi di Letteratura Antica II,1 Bologna 1948, pp. 241–47), puts the question more precisely, and asks why such a refined and alert interpolator would leave his work “incomplete” without a final formal polish. So we can take a step forward and prove that the interpolator not only worked on models which he shared with the authentic Virgil but worked precisely in the manner of Virgil. It has often been noticed that the composer of the Helen episode must have known the story contained in the Little Iliad of Lesches (cf. fr. 16 Kinkel = 20 Bernabé, p. 80) according to which Menelaus tried to kill his faithless wife and was held back either by her beauty or, according to the variant that interests us here, by the intervention of Aphrodite. The relationship with the Latin reworking is clear, in which Venus intervenes to stop Aeneas,

24 «Rh.M.» 48, 1893, p. 428 f.

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who is driven by the same frenzy for vengeance as the “cyclic” Menelaus. At this point two considerations surface: a) the interpolator shows an uncommon knowledge of the Greek epic sources, which are exactly those reworked by the authentic Virgil; b) there is a unitary narrative theme articulated in two successive scenes (the ‘Will to Vengeance’ and the ‘Divine Intervention’) which seems to be shared between a dubious part of the text and a certainly genuine one. But both the Orestes of Euripides and the Little Iliad of Lesches work only as secondary models in the Helen episode, being subordinate to the primary model which, as in other places in the Aeneid, is Homeric. I showed this years ago in my first contribution (see above p. 69 n. 22). Let us review very briefly my considerations at that time. Aeneas, roaming while still in shock over the barbaric assassination of Priam, sees Helen in the light cast by the fires. She is seeking shelter in the temple of Vesta. At the sight of the woman responsible for the collapse of Ilium and the Trojan race, indignation masters him and a mighty anger seizes him, and with it an uncontrollable impatience for vengeance. Another mighty anger is represented like this, the rage that is also the prototype of heroic anger, the menis of Achilles at the beginning of the Iliad. Offended by the outrageous words of Agamemnon, Achilles in fury is torn between two choices: to snatch up his sword and kill the son of Atreus, or to check the impulse and tame his rage. Verses 193–5 follow: ἧος ὁ ταῦθ᾽ ὥρμαινε κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν, ἕλκετο δ᾽ ἐκ κολεοῖο μέγα ξίφος, ἦλθε δ᾽ Ἀθήνη οὐρανόθεν. And Aeneas, in the same way, wavers between contempt and the desire for vengeance: Talia iactabam et furiata mente ferebar, cum mihi se… obtulit… alma parens.

590

It is easy to see how closely the Latin text adheres to the Iliadic model in this formula of transition. If talia iactabam echoes perfectly ταῦθ᾽ ὥρμαινε, the second half of the Homeric line κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν is taken up in furiata mente ferebar. And just as Athena’s eyes glitter with a terrible divine light as she appears (Iliad 1.200), so Venus reveals herself in a ray of light (590 pura per noctem in luce refulsit).

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The Homeric model allows us to solve the question. It overlaps with both the suspect part (i.e. Aeneas’ rhesis against the guilty woman) and the following section which has been firmly transmitted. The Homeric action, let us say, bestrides the two sections which comprise the dramatic action of the Helen episode and guarantees that in the Aeneid the ensemble of the two sections has been conceived (under the structural influence of that famous passage in the Iliad) as a single and continuous whole in the same way that the span of a bridge is raised on two architectural members. If the second part of the action is firmly Virgilian, it follows that the first part too (the one suspected of being a forgery) is authentic, since both belong to the same structure, and together form a unique narrative sequence. Once we recognize the Homeric intertext for the episode and its connection with the context, it is useful to add that the author – not only in resorting to Homer but also in the ‘technique of interference’ – superimposes on the primary model other models that enrich it with new expressive drives. So here the entire scene is modulated with dramatic overtones, in keeping with the generally tragic color of the second book of the Aeneid: the entire style of Aeneas’ soliloquy reflects the characteristic language of Euripidean rheseis. The Homeric text expresses Achilles’ hesitation with a bare report: v. 188–9 …οἱ ἦτορ/... διάνδιχα μερμήριζεν “his heart was split.” Aeneas’s indecision, as he first hesitates then seemingly convinces himself to kill, has its starting point in the Homeric line, but immediately transforms itself into a dramatic deliberative monologue. A new model has imposed itself to provide a tragic development, a model offered by a scene from Euripides’ Orestes.²⁵ The tension of the episode is based on the alternative of two divergent images of Helen, to which one alternative in the behavior of Aeneas corresponds. But these two images in tension correspond with two different literary models; in fact there are two (secondary) models which the text mobilizes alongside the primary model (Achilles’ anger and indecision), and puts as a contrast between them. The reader experiences, first, in the monologue of Aeneas, the ‘tragic’ Helen (that of Aeschylus, of Euripides in the Trojan cycle, of Ennius) and then, in the intervention of Venus, the ‘Homeric’ Helen – in effect Venus acquits Helen and attributes all the responsibility to the gods, exactly as Priam did in the third book of the Iliad (164 “You are not guilty towards me, it is the gods who are guilty”). In this way the author of the episode succeeds, as happens often elsewhere in the Aeneid, in activating within the text models that conflict

25 See K.J. Reckford «Arethusa» 14, 1981, pp. 85–99; but my article in 1978 (cf. above p. 69 n. 22) already offered sufficient cues.

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with each other; the contrast produces an increase in tension and a greater density of implications. That is how Virgil works. It also follows that Servius Danielis in preserving for us the Helen episode passes on to us a first draft from Virgil’s hand, not fully worked out by the author and so eliminated by the editor of the Aeneid. These lines were excluded because of some contradictions with other parts of the epic or even for other more vague reasons, but probably because of their incompleteness (perhaps Virgil himself had somehow marked them as a first, provisional, sketch, still awaiting the labor limae.)

III) Now I must confront the arguments of C. Murgia, one of the most convinced exclusionists, who returned recently with some new arguments to condemn the passage as spurious («HSCP» 101, 2003, pp. 405–426). He sees in it the confection of a Flavian forger. Indeed there is a fashion of attributing to the Flavian period a whole unending production of complete forgeries at the expense of Augustan poets (until now Ovid was the most distinguished victim of this tendency to suspicion). This is not the place to discuss a critical tendency that has become a whim, but against which there has been a reaction largely of healthy skepticism. Not only do Murgia’s arguments fail to reinforce the thesis of forgery in any respect, their failure also makes the condemnation of this passage even more uncertain and invites us to seek out some other arguments in favor of its authenticity. The whole article is methodologically disconcerting, captious not only in its chief assumption but also in the details of the analysis. Even Murgia, naturally, is forced to admit what has for some time now been generally accepted, namely that Lucan shows obvious signs of having imitated the Helen episode. Heitland was the first to recognize this (p. CXXVI of his introduction to C.E. Haskins’ edition of Lucan, London 1887). R.T. Bruère²⁶ then demonstrated with abundant detail the obvious imitation. What does Murgia do? Unable to deny the echoes of Virgil that run through the text of Virgil (‘pseudo-Virgil’ for him) and that of Lucan, he inverts the terms of dependence and discovers a forger (a ‘PseudoVirgil’ of the Flavian age) who would be imitating Lucan. A real coup de théâtre, a grand maneuver; in fact the prejudice of inauthenticity emerges safe and sound (and that is above all what interests Murgia) and at the same time the

26 «Cl.Ph.» 59, 1964, pp. 267–8.

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inconvenience of an imitator who seems to know the episode during the time of Nero is forestalled and eliminated. In short it is not Lucan who imitates but Lucan who is imitated. The idea is sensational, let us admit: a pity that it is easy to prove its insubstantiality. It is enough to re-read the texts carefully. In Aen. 2.573 Helen is called: Troiae et patriae communis Erinys And a little further on in vv. 577–80 it is said of her: Scilicet haec Spartam incolumis patriasque Mycenas aspiciet partoque ibit regina triumpho, coniugiumque domumque patris natosque uidebit, Iliadum turba et Phrygiis comitata ministris? Compare this with Lucan 10.59–65: Dedecus Aegypti, Latii feralis Erinys, Romano non casta malo. Quantum impulit Argos Iliacasque domos facie Spartana nocenti, Hesperios auxit tantum Cleopatra furores. Terruit illa suo, si fas, Capitolia sistro et Romana petit imbelli signa Canopo Caesare captiuo Pharios ductura triumphos.

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The relationship of imitation that binds the two passages is made obvious by the parallel between Troiae et patriae communis Erinys, of Helen, and dedecus Aegypti, Latii feralis Erinys, of Cleopatra.²⁷ These two lines are the only ones in Latin poetry in which Erinys, used as an appellative in reference to a

27 Bruère marked another series of parallels between the two passages, and in particular between Aen. 2.578 partoque ibit regina triumpho and Lucan 10.65 [Cleopatra] Caesare captiuo Pharios ductura triumphos: but the two verses differ either in the idea (in Virgil Helen returns to her country as a queen participating in Menelaus’ triumph and that of the Greeks; in Lucan Cleopatra celebrates an Egyptian triumph – a sort of contradiction in terms – over Augustus her prisoner) or in its expression (the only common element is the word triumphus) and they cannot be put into direct relationship. Thus both Bruère and above all Murgia are mistaken in giving importance to this other parallel; among other details, in neither of these two passages is the image of a triumph at all related to that of the Erinys, as Murgia claimed (p. 410); in Virgil and Lucan two different images are concerned.

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female person, is accompanied by the genitive of a term denoting place; this resemblance could hardly be coincidental (as even Murgia is compelled to accept).²⁸ This use of Erinys has a precedent in Euripides’ Orestes, indeed referring to Helen, in a passage which has for some time been noted as model of the Virgilian verse: Eur. Or. 1388–90 δυσελένας, ξεστῶν περγάμων Ἀπολλωνίων ἐρινύν. This is the accusing cry of a Phrygian slave who in a long monody tells the chorus he has seen Orestes trying to kill Helen, his guilty mistress. In formulating the description of Helen as Troiae et patriae communis Erinys Virgil seems to have combined this Euripidean line (Helen as Erinys of Troy) with another line from the same tragedy, in which the same Phrygian slave a little further says of Helen (v. 1515) οὐ γάρ, ἥτις Ἑλλάδ᾽ αὐτοῖς Φρυξὶ διελυμήνατο; The parallel is quite important (but Murgia does not know it) because it justifies the bipartite description that Virgil gives of Helen, “Erinys both of Troy and of her own land” – a description that appeared strange to Murgia. In general Murgia admits he is perplexed by the description of Helen as Erinys. Obstinate in his prejudice, he considers it incoherent with the system of thought of the Aeneid, to the point of seeing in it an index of the inauthenticity of the line and of the entire episode (which according to him would derive from imitation of the verses of Lucan). Instead it is evident that all his perplexity is unjustifiable, simply because of the tragic ancestry of the image, an image which Virgil adapts here by incorporating the Euripidean model within the frame of the Homeric scheme. In short in v. 573 of the Helen episode Virgil blends successfully into the same image two passages from the same Euripidean tragedy, distinct but located at a relatively short distance and conceptually bound to each other (if only because they are both spoken by the same person in the same episode and both about Helen). This cannot fail to seem a sure proof of direct imitation.²⁹ In turn Lucan works directly from the Virgilian image in this line; he takes the description

28 The only other passage in which Erinys is referred to a woman in Latin poetry is Val. Fl. 8.395 f. (said of Medea) quemque suas sinat ire domos nec Marte cruento/Europam atque Asiam prima haec committat Erinys, which is later and seems to derive from a combination of Virgil’s verse with Catullus 68.89 Troia (nefas!) commune sepulcrum Asiae Europaeque (which in turn could have influenced the diction of the Virgilian verse; cf. also Seneca Agamemnon 273 ignouit Helenae; iuncta Menelao redit/quae Europam et Asiam paribus afflixit malis; cf. Lucan 4.187 f. iam iam civilis Erinys/concidet), a usage that could have been anticipated by Virgil Aen. 2.337 in flammas et in arma feror, quo tristis Erinys. This type of use returns with some frequency in Flavian epic. 29 A possible echo of v. 573 (noted by Austin ad loc.) would also be perceptible in the Virgilian Seneca; see Troades 892 (about Helen) pestis exitium lues/utriusque populi, and again 853 f. dum luem tantam Troiae atque Achiuis/quae tulit Sparte, procul absit. But if we want to believe Murgia, Seneca could also depend directly on Euripides.

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of a female character as an Erinys, but transfers it from Helen to Cleopatra. In this way Lucan suggests, using an allusively concentrated formula, a first parallel between the two figures of deadly women; the implied parallel is then made explicit in a comparison that follows this verse immediately (10.60–62): …Quantum impulit Argos Iliacasque domos facie Spartana nocenti, Hesperios auxit tantum Cleopatra furores. These lines – in which Cleopatra is compared to Helen, because both are women of ruinous beauty – are a paraphrase of the Virgilian definition Troiae et patriae communis Erinys (Argos corresponds to patriae as Iliacas domos corresponds to Troiae), and they gloss, as it were, the immediately preceding v. 59 (dedecus Aegypti, Latii feralis Erinys). Reconstructed in this way the intertextual relationship which binds the three authors (Euripides, Virgil, Lucan) emerges clear and consistent. So the lineage that we have constructed is as follows: 1. Euripides describes Helen as the Erinys of Troy. 2. Virgil takes up the description in the Helen episode, shaping it into an image that also condenses into itself the second Euripidean verse, still referring to Helen. 3. Finally Lucan imitates Virgil, but transfers the description from Helen to Cleopatra, and consequently establishes a parallel between the two women, as fatal causes of war; the parallel in a way paraphrases and explains Virgil’s verse.³⁰ The contrary hypothesis, supported by Murgia, seems much less logical and utterly uneconomic. Lucan having established the comparison of Cleopatra with Helen would be imitating Euripides by deriving from him the description of Helen as Erinys, but applying it to Cleopatra; the author and forger of the Helen episode would have imitated Lucan, but would be transferring the description as Erinys back from Cleopatra to Helen, and in so doing (as if the whole process were not already complicated enough) would also have recognized and reactivated the model implied in the passage of Lucan – that is Euripides – simply to

30 The comparison of Helen and Cleopatra, although at first sight it may appear foregone, is not attested before this passage of Lucan; we might see in it another small cue in favour of Lucan’s derivation from Virgil, if we assume it was precisely the imitation of Virgil’s verse that suggested the comparison to Lucan. In Cicero it is Antony who is compared to Helen in the second “divine” Philippic (55 ut Helena Troianis, sic iste [sc. Antonius] huic reipublicae belli causa; causa pestis atque exitii fuit.)

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convert it into one of the models of the entire pseudo-Virgilian episode. If philology is the science of the probable all of this seems to me to go against the rules of any sound philology. It seems to me a bizarre fantasy, an absolutely implausible hypothesis. For many all of this would be enough to chase away Murgia’s phantom of the Flavian forger of Virgil who imitates Lucan. But perhaps there are some for whom this simple form of reasoning is not enough. So I shall add another observation which seems inherently decisive, since it proves that Lucan knew the Helen episode in its context in Aeneid II. Here, when the sequence of firmly authentic Virgilian verses begins again, Venus scolds Aeneas for letting himself be possessed by anger (Aen. 2.601–603): Non tibi Tyndaridis facies inuisa Lacaenae culpatusue Paris, diuum inclementia, diuum has euertit opes sternitque a culmine Troiam. Lucan seems to have had these lines before him – with the precise purpose of challenging them – in the comparison between Cleopatra and Helen quoted above (10.60–62): Quantum impulit Argos Iliacasque domos facie Spartana nocenti, Hesperios auxit tantum Cleopatra furores. To the fatalistic vision offered by Venus (and by Virgil) according to which it was not Helen’s beauty but the hostility of the gods that caused the fall of Troy, Lucan now opposes, in a spirit of polemic, a vision much more hostile towards Helen, marking her as the real culprit, comparable to the loathed Cleopatra. The collapse of Troy and of Greece with it was caused precisely by the harmful beauty of the Spartan woman. The motif of Helen’s deadly beauty is of course a long-standing topos, with many precedents in Greek poetry and tragedy; but what seems to guarantee the direct relationship between the passages in Virgil and Lucan is not just the common use of facies (in one case inuisa, in the other nocens) but also the antiphrastic relationship that runs between the two passages. The aim to contradict is in fact typical of Lucan’s imitation of Virgil. Here too Lucan’s verse sounds like a retort to Virgil, a signal of polemic intertextuality, which often drives the Neronian epic to correct the Augustan epic. In Lucan’s strategy it lends a greater pregnancy to the comparison between Helen and Cleopatra, whose facies incesta (10.105) and forma nocens (10.137) have really endangered the security and very

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existence of Rome (do not forget how central the theme of deadly beauty is throughout the episode of Caesar and Cleopatra). I recapitulate and conclude. It is beyond doubt that in the image of v. 59 and the following parallel of 60–62 Lucan blends imitation of Aen. 2.573, a line from the Helen episode, with the polemical resumption of Aen. 2.601–3, lines immediately following the episode itself, and which are securely authentic. The obvious inference is that Lucan, in order to combine them, read the two passages within the same Virgilian context. Thus the disembodied phantom of the Flavian forger, acting with the intention imputed to him by the scholar who summoned him, would have aimed to deceive the readers of the Aeneid. But the only man deceived by the phantom is the man who conjured him up.

IV) I have already said that Murgia’s arguments, simply because they have no foundation, do not strengthen the thesis of the exclusionists; if anything, they stimulate the accepters to seek new proofs in favor of the passage’s authenticity. I would now like to add new arguments in the case, to strengthen the thesis that the Helen episode, as preserved for us in the indirect tradition, represents a first Virgilian draft which did not receive the extrema manus of the author, and thus to account for the abnormalities that have been identified here. This passage should appear all the more valuable because it provides an opportunity to enter into Virgil’s laboratory and to catch the poet in the very moment when he has conceived a poetic sequence – and left it temporarily at a preliminary stage, without the necessary polishing that would have followed. This is surely not the only case in which Virgil has left his text in a transitory condition (there are quite a few passages in the Aeneid which present themselves as provisional drafts, destined to undergo successive reworkings and remodeling), but this episode is the most significant of these, both for its extent and for being profoundly rooted in its context. Among its other qualities it is not a case of a simple dittography or an alternative draft; these are not lacking in the Aeneid and would surely have disappeared with the author’s final revision. This is why I think it unacceptable that honorable critics, just to protect themselves against any imputation of imprudence and naive credulity, prefer to expel from the text a draft which could instead become an exceptional field of observation for anyone interested in the formation of a uniquely original style like that of the Aeneid. Whether one accepts or rejects a suspect text, equal prudence is required: both judgments run the same risk of being mistaken. But in

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reality it often happens that suspicion prefers to turn into condemnation, leading a critic to dismiss what is otherwise a precious piece of evidence, lest he risk incurring the psychological stigma of being deceived by a false clue. Murgia prefers to see in the Helen episode a generic construct, a standard type-scene, and provides some alternative models drawn from Greek literature. But each of these models only partly matches the entire episode and its context. The well known scene of the Euripidean Orestes which has been invoked as a model because of its “dramatizing” effects, and even the passage at the beginning of Odyssey 20 where Odysseus plans to kill the faithless maids, are too general as parallels and apply only to one part or another in the Virgilian text, not the entire sequence. Here is an example of Murgia’s objections: the scene from the Iliad cannot be a model because it lacks the altar to which the Virgilian Helen flees. This is not the way to handle the use of models in literature. After years of intertextual research we have surely learned how to handle models in poetic memory and to distinguish the elements typical of imitation from other accessory and variable elements. I believe prejudice obnubilates all of Murgia’s arguments and so makes of them a discouraging example of obstinacy. Nineteenth century positivism has often been condemned for a mechanical approach, but some of its critical methods remain valid today. There is an example still effective for art historians, called ‘Morelli’s method.’ This powerful method takes its name from Giovanni Morelli, and became known to me chiefly through Carlo Ginzburg’s brilliant essay.³¹ Morelli developed his method in response to the fact that many museums are full of paintings with inexact attributions, and he sought to distinguish originals from copies. To do this – I am paraphrasing Ginzburg – we must not base ourselves, as is usual, on obvious features. We should not start from features which are more easily imitated, like the eyes raised to heaven by Perugino’s characters, or the smile of Leonardo’s figures, and so on. Instead we must examine the details most easily neglected and less influenced by the characteristics of the school to which the painter belonged: the shape of ears, of nails, the form of fingers and toes. In this way Morelli discovered and scrupulously catalogued the shape of ear preferred by Botticelli and that of Cosmè Tura and so on. These features were present in the

31 Cf. C. Ginzburg, Miti, Emblemi, Spie, Morfologia e storia, Turin 1986, p. 158 (English translation Clues: Roots of an evidential Paradigm, in C. Ginzburg, Clues, myths, and the historical method, Baltimore 1989, pp. 96–125, esp. pp. 96–102.) Cf. also R. Wollheim, Giovanni Morelli and the origins of scientific connnoisseurship, in: Id. On Art and the Mind. Essays and Lectures, London 1973, pp. 177–201; H. Zerner, Giovanni Morelli et la science de l’art, «Revue de l’Art», 1978, nn. 40–41, pp. 209–15.

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originals but not their copies. With this method he proposed dozens of new attributions in some of Europe’s leading museums. Often he achieved sensational results: in a Venus reclining in the gallery of Dresden, which passed as a copy by Sassoferrato of a lost painting of Titian, Morelli identified one of the very few certain paintings of Giorgione. In short, to recognize the author of a painting we must base ourselves mostly on imperceptible clues, since the artist’s hand must be sought where his personal focus is less intense. Then secondary details become significant – irrelevant details which usually go unnoticed and which the copyist fails to imitate, whereas every artist shapes them in a sharply distinctive manner. Our profession as philologists, too, I think, one that conspicuously depends on clues, can only gain from a similar lesson. In fact for Morelli and his followers who attempted to give scientific rules to connoisseurship and rescue it from random subjectivism, the method of looking for clues derived directly from the teachings of positivist philology, which in precisely that period was advocating the use of objective criteria in its studies. We are speaking of secondary details, elements undervalued or unnoticed or dismissed as marginal: traits that the author uses almost unconsciously and which the copyist (or forger) is not concerned to reproduce, like ear-lobes or the shape of nails or form of hands and feet. I believe that in the Helen episode at least two distinct elements of this type can be distinguished that bear witness to the Virgilian origin of the passage. Following the practice of linguists we may call them ‘Virgilian idiolects’ (idiosyncratic stylistic features). The first of these is marked by the recurrence of enallage, that most original figure which, nestling surreptitiously in Virgilian diction, characterizes more than any other feature the new sublime style of the Aeneid. I was recently able to demonstrate – thanks to a detailed analysis examining a very broad classification of cases – that enallage, and in general syntactical alteration, is the chief linguistic-stylistic principle whereby Virgil succeeds in achieving the “alienation” necessary to transform ordinary language into a new language rich in surprising effects.³² Essentially it consists in an increase of expressive strength applied to ordinary common diction, a disruption of syntax that – by means of the ‘transference’ of words and inverted or forced constructions – provides the megalegoria dear to the anonymous author of On the Sublime. I believe I have shown that through this kind of procedure Virgil activates a sort of linguistic

32 G.B. Conte L’Epica del Sentimento, Turin 2002, pp. 5–63 (the first chapter, Anatomia di uno stile: l’enallage e il nuovo sublime, printed as chapter 3 in the English edition The Poetry of Pathos, Oxford 2006.)

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agon, a contest which (along with frequent intrusions of subjective style) aims to impose on epic diction a pathetic color which through its emotional intensity recovers that of tragike lexis – a process in which Virgil manipulates and forces the language, driving it towards a “pathetic sublime” of his own invention. And, for all that it is surreptitious and almost unnoticeable, it penetrates the text to the point of becoming an original “trade mark”, a personal signature. In the Helen episode, then, there are two bold syntactical constructions of this kind that brand the text; real idiolectal experiments, they give a tragic flavor to the words which Aeneas utters in his passionate speech against Helen, marking it with emotional expressivity. I mean sceleratas sumere poenas (v. 576) and sumpsisse merentis/…poenas (vv. 585–6). The repetition of this conceit in the two phrases would probably have been eliminated during the revision of the sketch (in the end Virgil would have perhaps sacrificed one of the two innovations.) What concerns me now is to reaffirm that both syntactical experiments – the two forced modifications or examples of enallage, if we want to call them that – reveal Virgilian paternity; they are simply the spontaneous, almost instinctive product of a characteristic and unmistakable linguistic gesture. Each of them contains the stylistic identity of the author of the Aeneid, his autograph. They are just secondary details born of an unreflecting impulse; this is exactly why they are strong signs of authenticity. Probably Murgia did not think so. In fact years ago, in an earlier article,³³ confronting these two boldly experimental phrases, he bemoaned the “extravagance of expression”, for him an obvious sign of forgery. In this case too the scholar was conditioned by prejudice. But one would have to ask how Murgia would have reacted to “extravagances of expression” like 1.237 quae te, genitor, sententia uertit?; 3.362 omnis cursum mihi prospera dixit/religio; 4.477 spem fronte serenat; 4.506 intenditque locum sertis; 5.480 effractoque inlisit in ossa cerebro (meaning “smashed the bones of the skull and buried them deep in the brain”); 5.502 sagitta…uolucris diuerberat auras; 6.353 excussa magistro/deficeret …nauis; 7.533 f. sub gutture uolnus et udae/uocis iter (the regular form udum would have been metrically possible); 7.659–60 quem Rhea sacerdos/furtiuum partu sub luminis edidit oras (in place of the normal and metrically equivalent furtiuo); 9.66 ignescunt irae, duris dolor ossibus ardet (here too durus would have been metrically equivalent); 9.455 ff. tepidaque recentem/caede locum; 10.898 f. ut auras/suspiciens hausit caelum; 12.64–66 Lauinia…cui plurimus ignem subiecit

33 C.E. Murgia, More on the Helen episode, «California Studies in Classical Antiquity» 4, 1971, pp. 203–217, esp. p. 213.

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rubor (instead of the normal construction cui ignis subiecit ruborem); and 12.739 postquam arma dei ad Volcania uentumst. Examples could be multiplied. I simply note that the syntax of emotions is often the syntax of excess. In synthesizing a new sublime style for his poem Virgil resorts to an agonistic use of language, puts into play a pathetic vigor of gesture founded on his extraordinary ability as a linguistic inventor. It is in the jolts of expression that he hides the secret of his own style. Certainly it is his deep familiarity with tragike lexis that has prompted the linguistic virtuosity of the poet of the Aeneid in these instances. Years ago I noted that sceleratas sumere poenas has the same expressive density as some characteristic expressions of Greek tragic diction (especially monodies and choruses): for example Eur. Andromache v. 1002 πατρὸς φόνιον αἰτήσει δίκην “will demand murderous justice for her father,” conveying “reparations for the murder of her father”, but I could also cite Aesch. Septem 171 f. κλύετε παρθένων κλύετε πανδίκως/χειροτόνους λιτάς, meaning “hear from us virgins, hear with full sense of justice the prayers stretching their hands to heaven” (whereas it is the virgins who raise their hands in prayer); or from the same tragedy vv. 348–50 βλαχαὶ δ᾽ αἱματόεσσαι/τῶν ἐπιμαστιδίων/ἀρτιτρεφεῖς βρέμονται “bloodied bleatings of babes groan scarcely put to the breast” (the adjectives “bloodied” and “scarcely put to the breast” refer to the logical subject “babes” and not the grammatical subject “bleatings”); or again from Supplices 539 ματέρος ἀνθονόμους ἐπωπάς “the flower-gathering supervision of my mother”, where this bold phrase could be explained as “(towards the places in which) my ancestress Io was spied on (by the dog Argos) as she gathered flowers”. The same logical forcing is detectable in Soph. Ant. 862 ff. ἰὼ ματρῶιαι λέκτρων ἆ-/ται κοιμήματά τ᾽ αὐτογέν-/νητ᾽ ἐμῶι πατρὶ δυσμόρου ματρός “O! the maternal madness of the bed and the embraces that united the unfortunate mother to her son, my father.” An exceptional expressive violence springs from the distorted constructions. We can notice another syntactical violence a few lines earlier in the same tragedy: v. 793 f. νεῖκος ἀνδρῶν/ξύναιμον “the consanguineous strife of the men” to convey “between men of the same blood”. There is no need to multiply examples in order to show what expressive density and syntactical boldness is reached by the language of great Greek tragedy, especially in lyric sections or strongly pathetic harangues. Following this model the emotional tirade of Aeneas seeks out sharp and bold points in the tension of the language and the manipulation of syntax, even if Virgilian invention, authorized by the tragic model, knows how to show itself more moderate in expressivity in the last analysis. Now let us pass to another “Morellian” clue – another trace of Virgil’s idiolect, elusive, almost imperceptible, that the author uses automatically and a

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copyist could not be bothered to imitate. The clausula of 587 cineres satiasse meorum ends with the bacchiac meorum. There are a large number of recurrences like this in the Aeneid culminating in Aeneas’ outcry against Turnus spoliis indute meorum in 12.947; add to this the famous lament of Mezentius (10.853) patriae poenas odiisque meorum, and Jupiter’s solemn speech to Venus: 1.257 manent immota tuorum/fata tibi, and the pathetic farewell that Aeneas gives his son Iulus before the final duel with Turnus repetentem exempla tuorum in 12.439; or audita caede suorum in 9.778 and Juno’s angry words hac gener atque socer coeant mercede suorum in 7.317. There is no need to list all the passages in which the bacchiac of the genitive plural possessive adjective recurs in the Aeneid; there are an enormous number of cases where the ‘morpheme’ assumes, we might say, the function of a ‘styleme’, where for obvious metrical convenience it gravitates to the end of the hexameter as its fixed and exclusive position. This is a highly marked case of the ‘internal ear’, an expressive tic of the poet of the Aeneid. Unnoticed by an imitator (as Morelli would find of the shape of fingernails or a hand) it is an unambiguous example of Virgilian autograph, and a strong clue to authenticity. Indeed it seems to be an exclusive preference even in Virgil. There are no examples in the immediately preceding hexameter poets (it is unknown in Catullus’ hexameters or Lucretius, except for one instance we shall see below) nor does it ever appear in the Bucolics or Georgics. This last fact, combined with other marks, could make us believe that the poet of the Aeneid thought of this feature of métrique verbale as distinctive of a sublime or almost grandiloquent stylistic register. In fact the only case that can be cited from other hexameter poetry occurs in a famous poetic declaration by Propertius 3.3.3 reges Alba tuos et regum facta tuorum. Everyone knows that in this programmatic elegy Propertius stages his dream on Helicon as an aspiring epic poet and so claims as an authoritative model the dream in Ennius’ Annales, where he had been honoured as a “second Homer”. But the elegiac poet, ready to devote himself to carminis heroi … opus (3.3.16), is evicted by the god of poetry who redirects him instead to the soft poetry of love. Now it is probable, or at least plausible, that Propertius in those first verses of the elegy, where he reports his dream and his frustrated ambition to devote himself to lofty epic, is reworking or in some way imitating Ennius’ text; he does not limit himself to an implicit allusion, but explicitly names Ennius and cites some themes of the Annales. The clausula regum facta tuorum, if it is not a textual echo of Ennius, is at least a clausula in the style of Ennius. The genitive plural of the possessive tuorum set at the end of a hexameter should sound like an archaism in Propertius’ ear or at least as a signal of epic-heroic poetry. Besides, a similar bacchiac closes Ann. 8.269 Sk. sermonesque suos rerumque suarum. As I have already hinted, there is a single case in

II

The dossier on the Helen episode (Aen. 2.567–588)

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87

Lucretius 6.1247 populum sepelire suorum, a clausula with the same syntactic and metrical structure as the Virgilian sequence cineres satiasse meorum. So when Virgil ‘invented’ this recurring styleme he must have felt authorized by the Ennianizing effect that he felt in it. There is also the important fact that it not only enjoys a distinct preference in the Aeneid, it also never recurs, as I said, in other Virgilian hexameter poetry of a different color: not in the Bucolics nor the Georgics. In short it is not just a conspicuous feature but exclusive to the new style of the Aeneid. It is commonly said that three clues constitute a proof. I am not sure that is true. What I do think is true is that one could add to these two Morellian clues (even if different in type) other lesser features of high epic style which, as I showed years ago, display the typical signature of the author of the Aeneid: for example the Ennian-Lucretian phrase 2.582 sudarit sanguine litus (tragic diction) and the revival of the Lucretian praemetuens (2.573) etc. But the number of parallels is not so decisive for the verdict as their specific weight and convergence. It is enough that I have offered some new arguments for the idea that the Helen episode is a first draft shaped by Virgil, a draft not polished, that has survived at a provisional stage of elaboration in which we can spot quite a few signs of authenticity. Probably the querelle is destined to continue.³⁴ What seems more important is to maintain, on both sides of the debate, serenity of discussion and intellectual integrity; it is equally important to avoid abusing unduly in argumentative acrobatics the honorable steps of philological method. Prejudice has the great fault of becoming imperceptible to its victims and loves to disguise itself as dispassionate judgment. Instead it would be good not to forget that prejudice is the trap into which all true critical passion can fall. So, obviously, can mine.

34 For the sake of completeness I should mention here a brief note by Stephanie West, Crime Prevention and Ancient Editors (Iliad 9.458–61), «Liverpool Classical Monthly» 7.6, June 1982, 84–86. This short article is handled with great critical skill, and was drawn to my attention by my friend Michael Reeve. It discusses a group of lines (9.458–61) in Phoenix’s narrative in the Iliad (probably interpolated and preserved through the indirect tradition in Plutarch, aud. poet. 26 f.) and it advances some hypotheses about the history of the tradition of the Homeric text. Unfortunately I cannot bring myself to share the main assumption. The idea that there is a possible parallelism (even an effect of emulation) between the interpolator of the Homeric text and the hypothetical interpolator of the Helen episode seems to me, as it were, purely “speculative”. West’s verdict on the falsification of the Virgilian episode is based only on Goold’s article («HSCP» 74, 1970), from which the author derives the idea that Lucan could have been the author of the verses concerned with Helen.

 Indexes

Index locorum For the main passages discussed please see also the Table of Contents (p. XI). Aischyl. – Sept. 171 f. 85 – Sept. 348–350 85 – Suppl. 539 85 Ambros. – off. 1.13 21 Aristot. – H.A. 553a25 15 – H.A. 624b21 15 Catull. – 68.89 78²⁸ Cic. – Phil. 2.55 79³⁰ Claud. Don. – ad Aen. 3.686 38 – ad Aen. 7.110 34 Colum. – 9.10.2 17 Emp. – fr. 38 D-K 21 Enn. – Ann. 175–179 Sk. = Macr. sat. 6.2.27 47 – Ann. 8.269 Sk. 86 – Ann. 543 Vahl.² (556 Sk.) 21 Eur. – Andr. 1002 85 – Or. 73–74, 79, 82 – Or. 4–6 41 – Or. 1388–1390 78 – Or. 1515 78 Hom. – Il. 1.188–189 75 – Il. 1.193–195 74–75 – Il. 1.200 74 – Il. 3.164 75 – Il. 7.1 48 – Il. 5.312–315 56 – Il. 20.318–322 56

– Il. 23.382 40 – Od. 11.582–592 41 – Od. 13.1 48 – Od. 20 82 Hor. – carm. 3.16.26 66–67 – epod. 2.42 66–67 Lesches – Il. parv. / fr. 16 Kinkel = 20 Bernabé, p. 80 73–74 Lucan. – 4.187 f. 78²⁸ – 10.59–65 76–79 – 10.59 79, 81 – 10.60–62 79–81 – 10.105 / 137 80–81 Lucr. – De rer. nat. 1.383 VIII – De rer. nat. 3.980 ff. 41 – De rer. nat. 6.1247 87 Macr. – Sat. 5.14.4 3, 22 Ov. – Met. 4.458

43

Pind. – Ol. 1.87 ff. 41 – Schol. Ol. 1.97 41 Plaut. – Amph. 1055 21 – Merc. 860 65 Prisc. – inst. gramm. 8.85 4 – inst. gramm. 18.79 38 Prop. – 3.3.3 86 Ps.-Prob. – ult. syl. gramm. IV 253, 17 33

92  Index locorum

Sen. – Ag. 273 78²⁸ – Ep. 94.28 29 – Tro. 853 f. / 892 78²⁹ Serv. – praef. (ad Aen.) 71 – ad Aen. 1.380 29 – ad Aen. 2.592 71 – ad Aen. 3.686 38 – ad Aen. 5.326 40 – ad Aen. 5.720 33 – ad Aen. 6.33–34 22 – ad Aen. 7.110 34 – ad Aen. 7.543 49 – ad Aen. 7.568 65 – ad Aen. 9.461 53 – ad Aen. 9.679 65 – ad Bucol. 10.1 24 – ad Georg. 2.70 4⁴ – ad Georg. 3.230 66 – ad Georg. 4.1 24 Serv. auct. – ad Aen. 1.617 34 – ad Aen. 2.566 71 – ad Aen. 3.686 37 – ad Georg. 2.344 65 – ad Georg. 3.162 12 Soph. – Ant. 793 f. 85 – Ant. 862 ff. 85 Val. Fl. – 8.395 f. 78²⁸ Verg. – Aen. 1.1 26 – Aen. 1.71–75 30–31 – Aen. 1.257 86 – Aen. 2.164–167 32 – Aen. 1.207 29 – Aen. 1.210–212 / 213 47 – Aen. 1.369–370 29 – Aen. 1.380 28–30 – Aen. 1.579 33 – Aen. 1.658 33 – Aen. 1.713 33 – Aen. 2.39 46 – Aen. 2.234 46

– Aen. 2.337 78²⁸ – Aen. 2.354 46 – Aen. 2.409 46 – Aen. 2.483–485 47 – Aen. 2.588–591 74–75 – Aen. 2.601–603 80–81 – Aen. 2.640 29 – Aen. 2.688 50 – Aen. 2.804 46 – Aen. 3.47 33 – Aen. 3.65 33 – Aen. 3.83 46 – Aen. 3.277 45, 48 – Aen. 3.660–661 29 – Aen. 3.678 50 – Aen. 3.687f. 39 – Aen. 3.718 46 – Aen. 4.14 IX – Aen. 4.124–127 30–31 – Aen. 4.172 46 – Aen. 4.176 VIII–IX – Aen. 4.180 67 – Aen. 4.186–187 26–27 – Aen. 4.395 33 – Aen. 4.451 50 – Aen. 4.499 46 – Aen. 4.553 46 – Aen. 5.136 46 – Aen. 5.280–281 47 – Aen. 5.451 50 – Aen. 5.778–777 47 – Aen. 5.810 57 – Aen. 6.33f. 21–22 – Aen. 6.119–123 28 – Aen. 6.122–123 43 – Aen. 6.156 33 – Aen. 6.470 33 – Aen. 6.539 26 – Aen. 6.547 46 – Aen. 6.601 44 – Aen. 6.601–607 41–42 – Aen. 6.616 44 – Aen. 6.618 44 – Aen. 6.806 7 – Aen. 6.847–851 13–14 – Aen. 6.899–901 45, 48 – Aen. 7.1–2 48

Index locorum

– Aen. 7.108–111 34–35 – Aen. 7.317 86 – Aen. 7.352 26 – Aen. 7.543–544 49–50 – Aen. 7.568 65 – Aen. 7.773 63–64 – Aen. 8.265 33 – Aen. 8.369 46 – Aen. 8.591 50 – Aen. 9.182–183 47 – Aen. 9.461–464 52–54 – Aen. 9.617 56 – Aen. 9.646f. 33 – Aen. 9.679–680 65 – Aen. 9.681 ff. 50 – Aen. 9.778 86 – Aen. 10.81–82 57 – Aen. 10.166 ff. 43 – Aen. 10.185 43 – Aen. 10.284 29 – Aen. 10.362–368 51–52 – Aen. 10.486–487 47 – Aen. 10.548 50 – Aen. 10.590 46 – Aen. 10.757–771 72 – Aen. 10.760–761 47 – Aen. 10.817 54 – Aen. 10.853 86 – Aen. 11.1 46 – Aen. 11.35 33 – Aen. 11.132 46 – Aen. 11.192 50 – Aen. 11.210 46 – Aen. 11.255–258 IX – Aen. 11.305–307 57 – Aen. 11.376 46 – Aen. 11.718 67 – Aen. 11.915 46 – Aen. 12.9 56 – Aen. 12.9–10 47

– Aen. 12.45–47 56 – Aen. 12.50–51 56 – Aen. 12.52–53 55 – Aen. 12.224 33 – Aen. 12.439 86 – Aen. 12.450 46 – Aen. 12.696 46 – Aen. 12.947 86 – Bucol. 4.50–51 21 – Bucol. 5.10–11 10–12 – Bucol. 6.10 26 – Bucol. 6.14–15 33–34 – Bucol. 6.53 33–34 – Bucol. 6.68 33–34 – Bucol. 6.75 33–34 – Georg. 1.295 4 – Georg. 1.349 34 – Georg. 2.61 7 – Georg. 2.101 43 – Georg. 2.159 26 – Georg. 2.247 62 – Georg. 2.259–419 6 – Georg. 2.344 4 – Gerog. 2.344 ff. 65 – Georg. 2.420 6 – Georg. 2.426–428 6 – Georg. 2.438–439 6 – Georg. 2.443 4 – Georg. 3.74 7 – Georg. 3.93 67 – Georg. 3.123–124 7 – Georg. 3.224–230 67–68 – Georg. 3.242 4 – Georg. 3.449 4 – Georg. 3.377 4 – Georg. 4.149–227 18 – Georg. 4.191–205 19–20 – Georg. 4.194–196 19 – Georg. 4.206–9 19 – Georg. 4.358 26

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93

Index rerum et nominum addition – a. introduced by the poet himself 19, 23 Aeneid – drafts in the A. 73, 76, 81, 87 – Helen episode IX–X, 69–87 – ‘tragic’ Helen / ‘Homeric’ Helen 75 – hypothesis about the origin of the third book 37–38 – manuscripts 40 – types of supplements 29 anacoluthon 55–58 apostrophe 43 apparatus criticus VIII–IX apposition – double 9 Asterius 34 asyndeton 4 – a. in Virgil 53 athetesis 13 atque (in Virgil) 37 Austin, R.G. 72 Baehrens, E. VIII–IX Bentley, R. 18, 20, 40, 71 Butterfield, D. VII Castiglioni, A. 28 catalogue 43 cola (Virgilian) 45–46 colloquial language see style, spoken language (imitation of) “nominis commutatio riflessiva” 62 Conington, J. 3, 9, 21, 34, 37, 55 conclusion 18–19 conjecture 50, 51 – “diagnostic conjecture” VIII constructio ad sensum 57 context 6, 24 correction 4, 21, 41–42, 53 – palaeographical 9 corruption 9, 49–50 ‘crescendo’ 20 criteria VIII

critical edition VII–VIII – of the Aeneid and the Georgics

IX

Damsté, P.H. 55 dative of direction (in Virgil) 50 De Paolis, P. VII direct speech 46 disjunction 10 doubt (systematic d. / d. of skepticism)

69

editor VIII – editorial outcomes VIII enallage 83–84 enjambment (in Virgil) 45, 47–48 epigrammatic sententiousness 46 epiphonema 20 Erren, M. 10 error (errors of the tradition) 3 et – as “illative” conjunction 58 – Virgil’s usage of e. 42 Euripides 75 exegetical problems 8–9 expression (vivacity of e.) 15 forgeries (production of f. in Flavian Era) 76, 80 Funaioli, G. 73 Gedankengang see train of thought -gena (suffix) 64 Georgics 25 – codex γ 26 – episode of Aristaeus and Orpheus 24–25 – eulogy of Cornelius Gallus 24–25 – hypothesis of an updated revision 6, 19, 23 Geymonat, M. 3, 6, 21, 28 Goldbacher, A. 18–19 Goold, G.P. 3–4, 6, 15–16, 21 Harrison, S.J. VII, 25 Heinsius, Nic. 37, 40 Heinze, R. 72–73

96  Index rerum et nominum

Hellenistic fashion 41 hendiadys 9 Heyne, Chr.G. 3, 9, 11, 34, 44, 53, 55 Heyworth, S. VII, 11 Hirtzel, F.A. 3, 6, 21 Horsfall, N. VII, 41–42, 64, 70 (Julius) Hyginus 62 ille (“deictic” i.) 34–35 inconsistency 6 indirect question 9–11 inter (in anastrophe governing two coordinated words) 37 “internal ear” 10–11 interpolation 6–7, 15, 23, 28–32, 36, 45 (see also addition; verse, ‘wandering’ verse) intrusion 18 Jahn, J.C.

44

Klingner, F. 18 Kraggerud, E. VII, IX, 29–30, 51–54 “lectio aemulanter excogitata” 62 lectio difficilior / improbable lectiones difficiliores (in Virgil) 61–62, 65, 67 Leo, F. 72 Liberman, G. VII, 43 literature (secondary ancient and late-antique l.) 70 Lucan 80 Madvig, J.N. 42 Martyn, J. 13 metre 72 – bacchiac clausula (in the Aeneid) 86 – hexameter (Virgilian) 45–46 – ‘hypercatalectic’ hexameters 22 – hypermetric verse 3–4, 37 – lengthening ‘in arsi’ before caesura 4–5 – synaloepha of spondaic word in arsis of third foot (hexameter) 72 – “Marx’s norm” 26–27 ‘Morelli’s method.’ 82–83, 85–87 Murgia, C. 76–78, 81–82, 84

Mynors, R.A.B. 37, 38

3–4, 6, 9, 13, 20, 21, 23, 28,

Nettleship, H. 24 ni 38 Nisbet, R.G.M. 38–39 Norden, E. 71–72 normalization 22, 33, 35¹⁷, 37–38 omission

42–44, 50

Page, T.E. 9 parallelism 4 parataxis (in Virgil) 57 parenthesis 19 Pasquali, G. 61 passive – “middle-passive” construction with the accusative of respect 33 Peerlkamp, P.H. 21 Periodik 45 pernix 65–68 pernox 67–68 philologists 71, 83 Phoebigena 63–64 poenigena 63–64 polysyndeton 9 Pomponius Laetus 3–4 positivism (nineteenth century p.) 82 praeposterum 16 prepon (in Virgil) 56 prose treatises 16 prosodic normalization 22 punctuation 4, 53–54, 58 -que 40 quis (quibus)

51

readings extra codices 63 Reeve, M. 53 relative clause 9, 57–58 “relative connection” / “coniunctio relativa” / “relativischer Anschluss” 51–52 repetition 15 – r. of a double anastrophe in the same line 27

Index rerum et nominum

rheseis (Euripidean) see Euripides rhetorical question 6 Ribbeck, O. 3, 6, 13, 16, 18–19, 21, 23, 28, 36–38, 43–44, 50 Rivero Garcia, L. VII Sabbadini, R. 3, 6, 16, 19, 21, 23, 28, 37, 40 saepe (etiam) 20 Scaliger, J.J. 4 skepticism see doubt Schaper, C. 50 Schrader, Io. 55, 58 Schmitzer, U. VII Sidgwick, A. 10 si quis/si qua 10–11 Steigerung see ‘crescendo’ Stok, F. VII style 57 – elevated s. 33 – “sacral language” 38 – spoken language (imitation of) 56–57 – Virgilian 45–48, 83–86 – style of the Aeneid 86–87 – ‘morpheme’ assuming function of a ‘styleme’ 86–87 – ‘V. idiolects’ (idiosyncratic stylistic features) 83–86 – tragike lexis 84–85 subjunctive 11, 14 supplement exempli gratia 43 syllogism 28

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97

syntax 9–10, 13–14, 24, 33, 36–37, 41–42, 45–46, 56, 62, 85 – syntactical alteration 83 – syntactic inconsistency 57 Tarrant, R. 55 textual tradition VIII – indirect tradition 33–35, 63 Thomas, R.F. 3–4, 6, 9, 21 tibicines 29 Timpanaro, S. 62–64, 70 train of thought 13, 18–19 Traina, A. 55, 61–62, 65–67 transmission 9 transposition 3–4, 18–19 tripartite structure of a totality 11–12 Valla, Lorenzo 71 variatio/variation 16, 43, 57 -ue 40 verse – doublets (Virgilian) 45 – “monostich-verses” (in the Aeneid) 45–48 – ‘wandering’ verse 24–25 van Wageningen, J. 16 Wagner, G.Ph.E. Wills, J. 45 Zetzel, J.E.G.

3, 9, 19, 23, 36, 44, 55

62–63