Re: VIRGIL: Ancient Geography

[Leofranc Holford-Strevens]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Hippolyte 
Menshikov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
I would imagine that the main point, then, is not that these place 
names denote locations inhabited by barbarians, but that they all point 
to places far away (and ones that would have seemed pretty 
uninhabitable to an Italian of the time).
I meant that his extremities of the earth cannot be within the Empire, 
for then they would be semi-tolerable places for his exile. I am not 
sure that an Italian would have thought of the Orient as uninhabitable; 
after all Alexander had founded cities there. But it was certainly so 
far away that Vergil was shaky on the geographical detail; I take the 
portmanteau to be sheer confusion as in Shakespeare. (Roman poets did 
not need to pass examinations in geography, and all too often it shows.)

Best wishes

Leofranc Holford-Strevens
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Leofranc Holford-Strevens
67 St Bernard's Road                                         usque adeone
Oxford               scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter?
OX2 6EJ

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