In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Patrick Roper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>
>
>I usually use the Loeb Classical 'pony' edition of the Aeneid and the
>translation given there is "It was night and on earth sleep held the living
>world." The phrase "the living world" can, clearly, be understood as either
>the biosphere or the world itself being animate, and perhaps this catches
>the sense implicit in the Latin rather well.
>
>For someone reading alone, away from the scholarly world, some of these
>issues are problematic. Aeneid Book IV, line 539 reads "Nox ruit etc."
>Fairclough and Goold in my Loeb translate this as "Night is coming" but, a
>few lines earlier, dawn seems to be appearing so shouldn't it read "Night is
>going" or similar? But who am I to argue with such eminent Latinists?
>
Not just 'coming' but 'rushing': sie st�rmt aus dem Ozean auf Erde und
Himmel; so Norden ad loc., who in view of the contradiction with 535-6
regards the phrase as a mere Floskel. However, since 535-6 must refer to
midday (Aurora is riding with the Sun), the precipitate transition from
noon to night matches that from midnight to dawn in 5. 738-9, when
Anchises ghost departs :
torquet medios Nox umida cursus
et me saevus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis.
>
>
>While on this topic of poetic nightpieces, I was intrigued by the lines from
>Ovid "Nox erat, et somnus lassos submissit ocellos;/terruerunt animum talia
>vias meum" with its obvious congruencies with Virgil's "Nox erat et terris
>animalia somnus
>habebat". Is this simply coincidence?
Ovid knew his Vergil pretty well be heart. He imitates him, tropes him,
subverts him, does pretty well everything one poet can do to another
text except ignores him.
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
tel. +44 (0)1865 552808(home)/353865(work) fax +44 (0)1865 512237
email:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home)/[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
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