Leofranc Holford-Strevens
Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:17:40 -0700
By 'racism' I mean 'irrational prejudice on grounds of race or nationality',As opposed to a rational one? But of course if one believed the scientific theories in fashion before the Second World War, rational is precisely what racial hostility was.
I quite agree that the legal story, as far as the Young Caesar was concerned, of the Actium campaign was of a war of Rome against Egypt, where certain traitors appeared, most nefariously, on the Egyptian side. But this story is not quite what we get in V's account of the Shield, which I suppose puts a case to Republican sympathisers that they have a better deal from the Augustan than they could ever have obtained from the Antonian system.Which was indeed an Augustan line, at least in Latin literature, as Syme shows; true, a great temple of Mars Ultor celebrating Augustus' avenging of Caesar is not the stuff to give Republicans, but it was aimed at a wider public than the narrow readership of literature.
Certainly by then (even by Actium, if one took seriously the speech Dio puts in Imp. Caesar's mouth) there was no need to maintain the pretence that the enemy was Egypt; but Antony's relation with Cleopatra is symptom, or cause, of his treasonable alliance with the Orient--at best Greek-speaking, at worst barbarians--against Rome, all Italy, and all decent Latin-speakers everywhere.Antony does not appear as a love-slave tied to Cleo's ample apron but as a vigorous and menacing leader, using his position as a Roman victor in the East to carry the Eastern peoples (some reluctantly, perhaps) in an attempt to secure domination for himself in Rome. She follows him, not he her. No one thinks it nefarious for a wife to follow her husband and within the scheme of the Aeneid it is not forbidden for women to appear on a battlefield for a cause she believes in: Cleo and Antony would seem to have a Camilla-Turnus, rather than a Dido-Aeneas, relationship.
I would think that the nefarious act in this passage, for the sales pitch to the Republican diehards, seems to be the introduction not just of a form of monarchy but of a form that brings Eastern political and religious forces into the Roman political equation: a sudden and unmanageable transition. It is better for everyone, including the easterners, whose rivers will now run more gently under Augustan tutelage, to establish a regime that will from now on respect Western-style religious restraints. The unpleasantness of the Triumviral period is over, and was Antony's fault anyway.
Certainly.
But is that meant to be present in the mind? If Theseus can have two different fates in one book (Aeneid VI), it seems a little much to worry about what might have been said in another work all those years ago. And moderns are quite capable of doublethink about foreign countries too. France, in early nineteenth-century Britain, was both the deadly enemy and the source of wine; Grandfather Buddenbrooks heartily damns the French, but quite unselfconsciously uses the French expressions of his eighteenth-century education that no subsequent generation would have dreamt of uttering. Come to that, in more recent times much American culture and ways of thought have been imported into other countries by left-wingers who denounce American policies at every turn.Yet the reference to Egypt in the Georgics as the home a fortunate race that Eastern influences of all kinds on a united Empire would inevitably arrive and we should make the best of them.
Leofranc Holford-Strevens -- *_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* Leofranc Holford-Strevens 67 St Bernard's Road usque adeone Oxford scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter? OX2 6EJ tel. +44 (0)1865 552808(home)/353865(work) fax +44 (0)1865 512237 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (home)/[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) *_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub