Re: VIRGIL: Remember me?
Does Virgil actually put any such words into Dido's mouth (I tried to find such and failed)? No. It was Nahum Tate, who wrote the libretto for Purcell's _Dido and Aeneas_. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: heroic verse
My question is this: when did critics and poets start using the term heroic couplet? The online OED, which lets you search quotations, does not have an example of this phrase until 1857! As early as 1693, Dryden is using the phrase heroic verse, but this is still very late, and he doesn't write as if the term were a new one. The title of Harington's translation of Ariosto, first published in 1591, was Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse -- which, by the way, for him meant _ottava rima_. I haven't got a copy of Puttenham handy, but I'd be very surprised if he didn't use the word heroic or heroical in connection with some such noun as verse, metre, poesy, or perhaps even couplet. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: spelling: Virgil or Vergil?
I wrote: I once knew a learned autodidact who habitually spoke of 'Kikero'. Alice Conrad-O'Briain responded: Either spelling is viable and the kikero pronunciation comes from the Roman adoption of the greek letter kappa so when reading classical latin witht he correct pronunctiation rather than as church latin all c's such as in Cicero are said as kappa's and likewise all v's are w's I did actually know that (but note that in Church Latin, Cicero would be pronounced chichero with ch as in church, not sisero). I was speaking of the common spelling and pronunciation of these names in English. I learnt at school to pronounce and spell the names of Latin authors in anglicised ways, such as Virgil, Horace, Martial, Cicero, Livy, Caesar, Tacitus, Plautus, Terence, etc. Even Catullus was pronounced with an English u. However, fashions change. Perhaps it's become usual in some circles to say Cicero in the Roman manner. Perhaps Caesar and Tacitus, too, or even all the others. After all, radio announcers now speak of Richard Wagner or David Popper or Joseph Haydn, giving the forenames as well as the surnames a German pronunciation. Perhaps we should just go back to speaking of Maro rather than Virgil! From Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer 13 Riverview Terrace, Hamilton, New Zealand Telephone and facsimile +64 7 854 9229, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. You will just prove to everyone that you can't read directions. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body.
Re: VIRGIL: Context of A snake lurks in the grass
Well, here's one example of how the phrase is currently understood: Who has not known the fear of trust betrayed, when a cuckoo is uncovered in the nest, a viper in the bosom, a snake in the grass? (Louise Guinness, reviewing Sophia Watson's novel The Perfect Treasure in Literary Review, May 1998, p. 38). Learned disquisitions on the cuckoo in the nest and the viper in the bosom, anyone? (Like Nancy Charlton, I much enjoyed Peter Bryant's recent piece. I was beginning to wonder if Mantovanists had forgotten what the English word context means.) From Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer 13 Riverview Terrace, Hamilton, New Zealand Telephone and facsimile +64 7 854 9229, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. You will just prove to everyone that you can't read directions. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body.
Re: VIRGIL: Context of viper in bosom and cuckoo in nest
Look, sorry, I was joking: I didn't seriously mean to ask for learned disquisitions about the cuckoo in the nest or the viper in the bosom. For what it's worth, I believe JaneGC is quite right about the cuckoo, and I see from the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs that the viper in the bosom alludes to Aesop's Fables, I, x: a man warms a cold adder in his bosom, and the ungrateful creature, once warmed up, bites him. From Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer 13 Riverview Terrace, Hamilton, New Zealand Telephone and facsimile +64 7 854 9229, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. You will just prove to everyone that you can't read directions. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message unsubscribe mantovano in the body.
Re: VIRGIL: Mandelbaum in Chicago
Please, David, let us have a report about what he says. The translation thread reminds me that Allen Mandelbaum is giving a talk Saturday, October 24, 11am - 2pm, at the Newberry Library in downtown Chicago, entitled Gates of Horn, Gates of Ivory. Simon Cauchi Freelance Editor and Indexer 13 Riverview Terrace, Hamilton, New Zealand Telephone and facsimile (+64) 7-854-9229, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Translations in English
I'm with Randi on this one. The Latinisms don't bother me, but the couplets do: not because I don't like rhyme, but because Dryden's couplets tend to reduce everything that's said or done in the poem to a pithy little epigram; that works for some of the Eclogues (and even some of the Georgics), but for the Aeneid it's just wrong, wrong, wrong. Jasper Griffin agrees with David's point, yet strongly recommends Dryden's translation. I have quoted Griffin on Dryden before, but let me do so again, skipping part of my earlier quotation and adding the continuation: Dryden could not be kept out for ever, when the talk is of translating Virgil. A great English poet translated the greatest work of Latin literature. Dryden knew Latin, he had an eminent command of English, his mind moved naturally in tune with the rhetoric of the Latin poets: his version is inimitable in its energy, brilliance, panache. snip It is also very unlike Virgil in two obvious respects. Dryden's rhyming couplets break up the varied rhythms of Virgil into a uniform movement; and the hard cast of his mind, his deficiency in tenderness, deprives Virgil of many of his most individual notes. (TLS May 17 1991, p. 4) Dryden's couplets are particularly effective, I think, in the speeches: they can build up to some very effective tirades. If you want English imitations of the varied movement of Virgil's verse, you need to read the blank verse of Milton or Tennyson or, indeed, the rhyming stanzas of Spenser. As to the Latinisms, I notice, for example, that Dryden refers to the Purple Sky of Elysium, but I'd be most surprised if he and his readers didn't understand that to mean bright. Ruaeus's gloss on purpureo is pulchro, with a cross-reference to AE 1. 595 (= A. 1.591). As to other aspects of this question, Colin Burrow has said it all so much better than I could! (PS, and I've enjoyed the later posts from Leofranc Holford-Strevens and Caroline Butler too.) Simon Cauchi Freelance Editor and Indexer 13 Riverview Terrace, Hamilton, New Zealand Telephone and facsimile (+64) 7-854-9229, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Translations in English (tangential offshoot)
Greg Farnum writes of me (and to me): It sounds like you yourself are a poet. I'd love to know a little more about your work. I'm not a poet, but have sometimes attempted to translate poetry. I once did a translation of a famous ancient Roman epitaph in archaic Latin that begins hospes quod deico paullum est asta ac pellege, which I rendered: Stranger, these lines, they are but few, Stand and read through. But I wasn't happy with the rest of it. If anyone can complete the translation successfully, keeping to my verse-form (each line of the Latin becoming one rhyming couplet in English, with eight syllables in the first line and four in the second, the metre being the usual mixture of iambs and trochees), please send your version to me--privately, since this has nothing to do with Virgil. I happen to believe that poetry, like anything else, can be written collaboratively, and I'll award a virtual chocolate fish to the author of what I judge to be the best version. Simon Cauchi Freelance Editor and Indexer 13 Riverview Terrace, Hamilton, New Zealand Telephone and facsimile (+64) 7-854-9229, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Horace (for a change)
Could anyone provide me with a translation of HORACE'S Epistolae, II, 1, 93-94; it is the nugari and labier that confuse me. I haven't got the Latin to hand, but here is how Niall Rudd translates the passage (I quote lines 90-96 of his translation, which I gather is more or less line for line): Suppose the Greeks had resented newness as much as we do, what would now be old? And what would the people have to read and thumb with enjoyment, each man to his taste? As soon as Greece abandoned war and turned to amusements, lapsing into frivolity as fortune smiled upon her, she developed a feverish craze for either athletes or horses, or fell in love with craftsmen in ivory, bronze, or marble; ... Presumably nugari is rendered by lapsing into frivolity, but I can't guess where labier is translated (and can't find it in my Latin dictionary either). Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] 13 Riverview Terrace, Hamilton, New Zealand Telephone and facsimile +647 854 9229 --- 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
VIRGIL: source of quotation please
This is probably not Virgil, since it's clearly the second line of an elegiac couplet, but I've had no success in tracing the source of this line. Help from a classicist will be much appreciated: Sic mihi contingat vivere sicque mori. Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer, Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: source of quotation please
Re: Sic mihi contingat vivere sicque mori. Leofranc Holford-Strevens writes: Neither have I found it yet, but what classical author writes 'sicque'? Good point. This suggests (and, sorry, I should have mentioned it) that the line may be from a neo-Latin poem. The quotation concludes the Life of Ariosto which is part of the endmatter of Harington's translation of Orlando furioso (1591). This English life is adapted from three 16th-cent. Italian lives by Fornari, Pigna, and Garofalo: the quotation may possibly (or possibly not) be taken from one of them, but I don't have access to any of them at present. Fornari's life was first published in the first volume (1549) of his _Spositione_, and reprinted in the Valvassori editions of OF; Pigna's was first published in his _I romanzi_ (1554) and reprinted in the Valgrisi and Franceschi editions of OF; and Garofalo's was first published with Pigna's in the Franceschi edition. I have been reading an extremely interesting article about how Harington's own hopes of a career combining writing with modest public office may be inferred, inter alia, from the discrepancies between his own account of Ariosto's life and the accounts given in the three Italian sources he is known to have used. See Jason Scott-Warren, Sir John Harington's 'Life of Ariosto' and the Textual Economy of the Elizabethan Court, Reformation, 3 (1998), 259-301 (esp. p. 263). Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer, Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
VIRGIL: source of quotation please
Re: Sic mihi contingat vivere sicque mori. Many thanks to all of you for your various suggestions -- that my quotation is almost certainly post-classical, perhaps even from a Renaissance source, and possibly to be found in Ariosto's own Latin verse, some of which is written in elegiacs. I haven't access at present to a library that would enable me to follow up that last suggestion, but I have passed it on to Jason Scott-Warren, the author of the article I was reading, and he also is going to try to find the source of the quotation. If he or I ever manage to find it, I'll let all know. Inn the mean time I now know a lot more than I did about sicque and the possible reasons for its avoidance by classical writers! Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: MAGNA PECUNIA NUNC!!!!!
Can someone confirm or deny that ars est celere artem is from Ovid's Art of Love. It's celare. I haven't got Ovid's Art of Love to hand, but the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs cites the Latin merely as L., with no reference to a literary source, and so I suspect it's merely proverbial. Similarly a densely annotated edition of Sidney's Apology for Poetry, in which references to original sources are given for practically all the classical quotations and allusions, has no note for the passage that goes using art to show art, and not to hide art, as ... he [an orator] should do. If I remember rightly, Ovid does say something about the need for a seducer to conceal his intentions at the start of a seduction, but even if he does use those very words, how do you know he wasn't simply repeating a well-known proverb? Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: discussion group policies
Could I get subscription information for the Classics-L list? Many thanks. Please post the information to the list: I'd be interested in having it too. I have had no success finding it by searching on the web. Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
RE: VIRGIL: Aeneid Jokes
More humour in Vergil invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi (Bk 6) reference to Catullus' Lock of Berenice invitus, regina, tuo de cervice cessi, a singularly incongruous intertextualism at a singularly inapposite moment. I have always thought invitus, regina to be as bad as W. S. Gilbert's a thing of shreds and patches. But a closer analogy would be if The Yeoman of the Guard were an Elizabethan operetta and Hamlet a 19th cent. tragedy, so that we would find fault with Shakespeare's line rather than Gilbert's. Or rather, as Fletcher puts it better, the sense of incongruity is much as we should feel if we came upon a line from Pope's Rape of the Lock in Keats' Hyperion. I don't think Virgil intended the line to be humorous, though. Despite the source from which it is taken, the effect is pathetic (I mean, pathos is the intended effect). Isn't it? Aeneas does express a sense of desperation in this speech, and there's always something a bit ridiculous about any male -- let alone an epic hero -- making excuses and vowing he had no choice in the matter. But I suspect there is a bimillennial cultural gulf here (as in so much else to do with the Aeneid), and that interpretation is necessarily uncertain. Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Why is Aeneas like Berenice's lock?
Yvan Nadeau wrote: many years ago I wrote a brief note for Latomus: Caesaries Berenices (or, the Hair of the God), Latomus, 41 (1982) 101-3. I discovered after it had appeared in print that a number of my observations had already caught the eye of the lynx-like Agatha Thornton. But obviously both she and I wasted our sweat if this is still thought to be a joke, nearly twenty years later!! It's nearly 40 years since Agathe H. F. Thornton wrote her article, A Catullan Quotation in Virgil's Aeneid Book VI, AUMLA 17 (1962), 77-9. She argues that there is no incongruity because the Catullan line, if properly read, is not at all humorous, and Fletcher's reference to Pope is ill-considered: This Lock has been carried off by Zephyros, and laid in the lap of Venus, who has changed it into a brilliant constellation, assigning it its place between the Virgin, the Lion, Callisto and Bootes. It is this divine Lock that from the vault of heaven addresses her former Lady, the Queen of Egypt. The main burden of her speech is sorrow at her severance from her mistress. She laments the inexorable harshness of the iron that cut her off (47). She recalls with longing her sweet companionship with the queen. snip What more apt quotation could Virgil have put in the mouth of Aeneas to express his sorrow at his forced departure from Dido? And she concludes: What seems to be in the way of a serious interpretation of the above line is the fact that either the Catullan line is taken as comic or else the equation of a lock of hair with Aeneas is felt to be incongruous. Questions such as these depend on the taste of the time. Whether Catullus found cause to smile at this line is hard to decide, but not important, because he was translating, not composing himself. The corresponding Greek line could not possibly have been humrous in the Alexandrine original, because such humour would have been most irreverent from a poet to his queen. It is only when this line is taken as part of an elaborate homage, wrought with the highest art and dedicated by the poet to a great queen, that it can be appreciated. This is surely how Virgil took it, and together with all the association of its context placed it in the mouth of Aeneas, expressing in the most succinct way by this quotation all that is involved in the relationship between Dido and Aeneas. (I haven't yet seen Yvan Nadeau's Latomus article.) Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL:
I believe the correct spelling is Eclogues and identified. And it's Eclogue 4, not 6 -- but I think the rest of Cecilie Gerlach's information was sound enough. Simon Cauchi, Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: More Vergils
What's the British attitude? Doesn't anyone there give the name Homer or Virgil to their son? After all, one meets Englishmen named Terence, etc. To someone like me brought up in the UK, Homer and Virgil used as forenames sound distinctly American -- I didn't know they had a hillbilly ring. In England I don't think Terence is taken to allude to the Roman playwright. Nor Horace to the poet. I've never heard of anyone called Plautus or Catullus. I'm sure I've heard or read of a dog called Virgil (or perhaps it was Vergil) but I can't remember where. In Malta there was (is?) a fashion for Greek names, e.g. Sir Themistocles Zammit. Back to work! (I'm editing a book on a field of study I didn't even know existed -- the constitutional law of revolutions. Cases cited come from Restoration England, the secessionist South, UDI Rhodesia, Grenada, Fiji, Queensland, etc., but so far nothing from ancient Rome, unless you count a quotation from De Civ. Dei, IV, 4.) Simon Cauchi, Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Vergil
What is Vergil's influence? In brief, imitation by later poets (ancient and modern) of his matter or metre or manner. Simon Cauchi, Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: The Aneid, Book VI, Gate of Horn and Gate of IVory
In Book VI, Aeneaus descends to the underworld. At the end of Book VI, we are told that there are two gates through which dreams and ghosts ascend to the world above: true ones pass through the gates of horn, false ones through the gates of ivory. After his visit to the realm of the dead, we are told, Aeneas and the Sibyl return to the world above through the gates of ivory. I am stumped by the implications for what Aeneas has just witnessed and the future of his epic. I haven't been able to find (let alone search) mantovano's archives, but I remember someone writing to tell us of an article, published (I think) in a Scandinavian journal, in which it is argued that the text at the end of Book VI is corrupt. The passage about the gate of horn and the gate of ivory does not truly belong with the preceding narrative, but was placed there (presumably) by Varius and Tucca, Virgil's first editors who prepared his unfinished text for publication. Has anyone read this article? I for one would be grateful for a digest of its argument. (I remember the journal wasn't held in the local university library.) At all events, I long ago came to the conclusion that attempts to interpret this passage are futile, and I would very much like to know what evidence the authors of this article (I think there were two of them) put forward in support of their conclusion about the state of the text. Until I read about this new article in mantovano, I used to think that D. A. West's The Bough and the Gate, reprinted in S. J. Harrison (ed.), Oxford Readings on Vergil's Aeneid (1990), offered the last word on the subject. Simon Cauchi, Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: VERGIL: lost verses
These are the notorious verses alleged by Donatus and Servius to have been removed from the beginning of the Aeneid by its first editors: Ille ego qui quondam gracili modulatus auena carmen, et egressus siluis uicina coegi ut quamuis auido parerent arua colonis gratum opus agricolis, at nunc horrentia Martis It must be ages since any half-decent critic has believed in them; the likeliest explanation is that they were written above an author-portrait in an early manuscript. Apparently James Henry in his Aeneidea (1873-92) defended the authenticity of these verses. See C. Martindale (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (1997), p. 160, where there is also a reference to R. G. Austin, 'Ille ego qui quondam', Classical Quarterly 18 (1968), 107-115. Simon Cauchi, Hamilton, New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Re: Vergil, Donatus, and patentia
The article I got this from merely attributes the quotation to 'Fabricius'. The reference may be to the 'Observationes Lectionis Virgilianae' of Georgius Fabricius, which were printed (in more than one version) in Renaissance editions of Virgil. See, for example, Virgil's Opera (Basel, 1586) or the editions printed in London in 1580 and 1583 by 'I.H.' (J. Harrison) for H. Middleton. (The texts of the Swiss and English editions differ.) Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lpf.org.nz/free/directory/cauchi.htm --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Re: Vergil, Donatus, and patentia
I don't know why the mantovano listserv has distributed this message again. I sent it, and it was first distributed, in early July! The article I got this from merely attributes the quotation to 'Fabricius'. The reference may be to the 'Observationes Lectionis Virgilianae' of Georgius Fabricius, snip Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lpf.org.nz/free/directory/cauchi.htm --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: question
In Book I of Aeneid there is a reference to people of the sky (one translation) in relation to destruction of Carthage. I don't have a Latin text. How does that phrase read in Latin? I suspect the reference is to Book II and the destruction of Troy, and the phrase a translation of caelicolae (heaven-dwellers): me si caelicolae voluissent ducere vitam, has mihi servassent sedes. satis una superque vidimus excidia et captae superavimus urbi. (641-3) Translated by David West: If the gods in heaven had wished me to go on living, they would have preserved this place for me. I have already seen one sack of the city and survived its capture, and that is more than enough. (It is Anchises who speaks, or rather whose speech is reported by Aeneas.) Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lpf.org.nz/free/directory/cauchi.htm --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: question
This seems to be somebody's diseased, poetic conception Rather harsh? Provided you read Dryden's rendering as a poem not a crib it has considerable merits snip [The phrase People of the Sky] is a calque on _caelicolae_. From whom else should Juno hear rumours from her fellow skydwellers? It is the gods who report that the Fates are so contriving (sic uoluere Parcas, accusative and infinitive.) What is 'diseased' about that? It is what translators do all the time, make explicit what is merely implicit in the original; of course, critics then object either that in doing so they have lost a subtlety, or that it isn't actually implicit after all, but is either objection in place here? If there is fault to find, it is rather that the line adds nothing but a rhyme; but it is virtually impossible to writea rhymed transaltion without admitting some such verses. I'm delighted to read these words, and would add only that Dryden's expansion here of one Latin word into an English couplet is done with great skill, echoing similar passages in the poem where Virgil does use the word caelicolae; in other words, the translator's poetic licence is guided by deep familiarity with Virgil's poem and with his characteristic modes of expression. A few years ago our listowner (I think) posted some interesting comments about the strength and weaknesses of Dryden's version; unfortunately I cannot find them now. I wonder if you are thinking of these words cited from an article by Jasper Griffin in the TLS (17 May 1991): A great English poet translated the greatest work of Latin literature. Dryden knew Latin, he had an eminent command of English, his mind moved naturally in tune with the rhetoric of the Latin poets; his version is inimitable in its energy, brilliance, panache. It is, of course, now separated from us by 300 years, and the ability to read it with pleasure is perhaps hardly as widespread even as the ability to enjoy the original. It is also very unlike the original in two obvious respects. Dryden's rhyming couplets break up the varied rhythms of Virgil into a uniform movement; and the hard cast of his mind, his deficiency in tenderness, deprives Virgil of many of his most individual notes. But still: there are moments, I think, when poetry into prose won't go, and one example from Dryden can illustrate that. (Griffin goes on to quote West's and Dryden's translations of Aeneid 6: 882-9.) Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lpf.org.nz/free/directory/cauchi.htm --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: pronunciation of Virgil
Perhaps we should continue this debate privately, or over lunch in Paris, if you live here. Dear MM. Plantade and Dyer By all means have your discussion over lunch in Paris, but please don't withdraw your e-mail exchanges on this subject from mantovano. This is fascinating! No doubt cette question de la diction des vers latins ... intéresse peu de gens sur terre, but mantovano subscribers are a special group. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lpf.org.nz/free/directory/cauchi.htm --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: pronunciation of Virgil
A brief word of thanks to Robert Dyer and Emmanuel Plantade for taking the trouble to spell out in such careful detail their thoughts on the pronunciation of Virgil's hexameters. I won't attempt to comment on either post, for the question is altogether beyond me (and indeed even EP calls himself a neophyte!), but let me say merely that I had some vague awareness of the basic theory described by Robert Dyer, and have long suspected that it comes from or is at least supported among anglophone classical scholars by considerations of traditional English prosody. The metrical scheme is present in your head but you don't hear it is how it was once explained to me. If I remember rightly, the remark was meant to apply to both English and Latin verse. It was news to me that the theory is contested and that there's a Swiss web site which includes the terse assertion ictus -- n'existe pas. So I'm not alone in thinking that word accent (or stress accent, as Howatson calls it) is the main thing. But in English verse at least the metre does have some influence on the way poetry is read aloud, and sometimes it's a bad influence. For example, I have often heard Milton's line Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree? read with a heavy emphasis on the first and fourth words. No! it should be on the first and third. (By the way, when we read Samson Agonistes at school in the early 1950s, I remember the teacher pointing out to the one student of Greek in the form all the lines where Milton was imitating Greek lyric and dramatic metres. Is this right? Why have I never found references to those metres in annotated editions of the poem? But this is wandering rather far from mantovano's focus on Virgil.) Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lpf.org.nz/free/directory/cauchi.htm --- 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
RE: VIRGIL: anacolouthon
Aeneid VI.90-92 I wouldn't regard this as an example of anacolouthon, Then how about Aeneid VI.119-123: si potuit manis accersere coniugis Orpheus Threicia fretus cithara fidibus canoris, si fratrem Pollus alterna morte redemit itque reditque uiam totiens. quid Thesea, magnum quid memorem Aliden? et mi genus ab Ioue summo. None of the commentaries that I have seen call this an example of anacoluthon. H. E. Butler's gloss on 119 goes: The apodosis comes in 123 _et mi genus ab Ioue summo_, _quid ... Alciden?_ being parenthetical. But I find that unconvincing. If Orpheus ..., if Pollux ..., I too ...: what sort of a conditional sentence is that? Some of the translators render the passage with an anacoluthon in English. Harington's is very striking. Seamus Heaney's too: If Orpheus could call back the shade of a wife through his faith In the loudly plucked strings of his Thracian lyre, If Pollux could redeem a brother by going in turns Backwards and forwards so often to the land of the dead, And if Theseus too, and great Hercules ... But why speak of them? I myself am of highest birth, a descendent of Jove. The Lonsdale and Lee translation (a 19th cent crib) also has one: If Orpheus could summon the spirit of his bride, strong in his Thracian lyre and tuneful strings; if Pollux ransomed his brother by dying for him in turn, and so often goes and comes back along the path,---why should I speak of mighty Theseus, why of Alcides? my descent also is from sovereign Jove. I don't believe for a minute that _et mi genus ab Ioue summo_ is the apodosis answering the protasis of the two _si_ clauses. As Heaney's punctuation suggests, and likewise Lonsdale and Lee's, it's a continuation of the thought begun by the anacoluthonic (is there such a word?) _quid Thesea_ or _quid Thesea magnum_. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Lumen purpureum
In Thomas Hardy's novel A Pair of Blue Eyes there is this passage She looked so intensely LIVING and full of movement as she came into the old silent place, that young Smith's world began to be lit by 'the purple light' in all its definiteness. Apparently this is a translation of the Virgilian phrase 'lumen purpureum' signifying 'the light of love'. Can anyone tell where in Virgil this comes from and whether it was a general Roman expression, or one coined by V? See R. G. Austin's note on Aeneid VI:641, where there is a reference to an article by Donald Davie on Thomas Hardy's Virgilian Purples, _Agenda_ x (1972) 138ff. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
VIRGIL: Re: Virgil's influence on medieval and renaissance writers
I had never heard the suggestion that Virgil's work had a significant influence on the works of medieval and renaissance writers. Could you please inform me of some references that would confirm this postulate? To begin with, read the article on Virgil in the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Then follow that up by reading Colin Burrows' chapter, Virgils, from Dante to Milton, in The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, edited by Charles Martindale (1997), pp. 79-90, which has a list of recommended Further Reading at the end. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: trojan horse story
Besides the Aeneid, in how many other ancient writings (pre- and post-Virgil) does the story of the Trojan Horse and, particularly, the role of Sinon, appear? Lempriere in his Classical Dictionary cites the following references at the end of the article on Sinon: Dares Phrygius; Homer, Odyssey 8.492 and 11.521; Virgil, Aeneid 2.79ff.; Pausanias 10, chap. 27; and lastly Q. Smyrn. 10 (whoever and whatever that is). Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: call for help
At 11:03 AM 5/3/2002, Philip Thibodeau wrote: In an article on Astronomical Cruces in the Georgics (TAPA 79: 24-45), Robert J. Getty refers in passing to a conjecture made by a certain De la Rue (1675) - without offering any further bibliographical data. He/she may be Vergilian scholar or commentator, or perhaps a student of ancient astronomy, fl. c.1675. Do listmembers have any idea who this individual might be? He's the editor of a popular and much-reprinted annotated edition of Virgil's Works first published in 1675. I happen to possess a 1727 London edition in which the title-page reads as follows: P. Virgilii Maronis opera interpretatione et notis illustravit Carolus Ruaeus, Soc. Jesu, jussu Christianissimi Regis, ad usum Serenissimi Delphini. Juxta Editionem novissimam Parisiensem. The index vocabulorum of this edition runs to 223 pages. Dryden is known to have used the Ruaeus edition when making his translation of Virgil. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Writers should be read and not seen. (Denis Welch) --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Oaten music
Patrick Roper writes: Virgil often refers to shepherds etc. playing pipes, straws, reeds and so on and these were, presumably, instruments similar to modern penny whistles - easily made, and with six holes (usually). Can anyone suggest the best way of finding out what the music these shepherds played might have sounded like? I ask partly because I heard someone on the radio today playing a Stone Age bone whistle and it made a very acceptable sound. I don't think anyone has yet answered this query, or if they did so I missed it. And, sorry, I have no real information to offer. All I remember is hearing a classics lecturer telling my librarianship students that our knowledge of the ancient world is a patchwork of light and dark, and that music, unfortunately, is a dark area. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Humor in Eclogues
Is humor considered a characteristic of the Eclogues? I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I think there's quite a lot of humour in the Eclogues, e.g., in nos. 2, 3, 5, and 6. But then I read them mainly in English translation and through a haze of English imitation and parody. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Standard checks for Vergil texts
What would the list suggest as passages to use for tests of text affiliations in manuscripts or early printed books ? Helen COB Study the apparatus of (say) _P. Virgilii Maronis Opera varietate lectionis et perpetua adnotatione illustrata, a Chr. Gottl. Heyne. Ed. tertia emendatior et auctior_ (1793) and make your own selection. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Mantovano
I am not familiar with the name Mantovano as it relates to Virgil. Can you tell me the connection? Matovano is the Italian for Mantuan. The allusion is to the tenth and last stanza of Tennyson's poem To Virgil, written at the request of the Mantuans for the nineteenth centenary of the poet's death, which goes: I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. The inscription which was said to have been placed on Virgil's tomb declared that he was born in Mantua (Mantua me genuit), and it's clear from various passages in his works that he lived in or near Mantua and knew the countryside round about. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: Mantovano
Sorry, I mistranscribed the title of Tennyson's poem. It should be: TO VIRGIL WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE MANTUANS FOR THE NINETEENTH CENTENARY OF VIRGIL'S DEATH (Imagine the lines centred.) Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
Re: VIRGIL: latin translations of Homer
I sent a question about Latin translations of Homer. Would someone tell me how to find any such works in print? I don't know of any such works currently in print (if by that you mean new books available in a bookshop or in a publishing company's warehouse), but various 18th and 19th century editions of Homer's individual or collected works in Greek and Latin are available on the secondhand market or held by academic libraries. Simon Cauchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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
