At 11:03 AM 10/18/01 +0100, Patrick Roper wrote: >I thought that that might be the case, after all most creative people >feel they could have done better - the stuff on the page, isn't quite >what seemed to be in the mind. But do we know this is what Virgil >thought? Did he say so somewhere? Or did one of his contemporaries >say that of him?
As Patrick Roper and Jim O'Hara point out, we need to be skeptical. In addition to Thomas, see, for instance, Nicholas Horsfall, "Virgil: His Life and Times," in _A Companion to the Study of Virgil_, ed. Nicholas Horsfall, Mnemosyne Supplement 151 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 1-25. For the record, though, here's what Virgil's first biographer, Aelius Donatus (fl. 350), had to say on the subject. (On dating, keep in mind that many people think Donatus is working over material collected by Suetonius; note also that text in angle brackets does not appear in early MSS.) 123. In his fifty-second year, Virgil decided to retire to Greece and Asia [Minor], in order to put the finishing touches on the Aeneid. He meant to do nothing but revise for three straight years, so that the remainder of his life would be free for philosophy. But while he was making his way to Athens, he met up with Augustus, who was returning to Rome from the East. He decided not to retire, and to turn back immediately. While he was getting to know the nearby town of Megara, he took sick under the blazing sun. His journey was suspended, but to no avail, so that when he put ashore at Brindisi somewhat later, his condition was more serious. He passed away there, after a few days, on 21 September [19 BC], during the consulship of Gnaeus Sentius and Quintus Lucretius. His bones were transported to Naples, and buried under a mound, which is on the road to Pozzuoli, less than two miles out from the city. Someone made a distich on it as follows: Mantua gave birth to me, the Calabrians snatched me away, now it holds me fast-- The city where Parthenope is buried; I sang of pastures, fields, and princes. 138. He bequeathed half of his estate to Valerius Proculus, his brother by an other father; a quarter to Augustus; a twelfth to Maecenas; and the rest to Lucius Varius and Plotius Tucca, who corrected the Aeneid after his death at Caesar's behest. Sulpicius of Carthage's verses on the subject are extant thus: Virgil had given instructions that it was to be destroyed, The poem that sang of the Phrygian prince. Tucca refused, and Varius; likewise you, greatest Caesar, You do not refrain; you look out for the Latian narrative. Luckless Pergamum nearly fell in a second fire, Troy was almost consumed on another pyre. Before leaving Italy, Virgil arranged with Varius to burn up the Aeneid if something should befall him; but [Varius] had insisted that he would not do so. Wherefore, when his health was failing, [Virgil] demanded his scroll-cases earnestly, intending to burn them up himself; but since no one stepped forward, it was to no purpose, even though he gave precise stipulations in this matter. For the rest, he committed his writings to the aforementioned Varius and Tucca, on the condition that they publish nothing which he himself had not revised. Nonenetheless, Varius published them, acting under the authority of Augustus. But they were revised only in a cursory fashion, so that if there were any unfinished lines, he left them unfinished. Many soon endeavored to mend these lines in the same style, but they did not succeed; the task was too difficult, for nearly all of the half-lines were free-standing and complete with regard to sense, except this: "Whom Troy to you now..." [Aen. 3.340]. Nisus the grammarian says that he heard from older men that Varius changed the order of two books, and that which then was second he moved into third place, and even smoothed out the beginning of the first book by subtracting these lines: I am he that once played a song on the slender pipe; Leaving the forests, I marked off the lands nearby, That the fields might yield as much as possible to the eager husbandman-- A labor that pleased the farmers. But now Mars' shuddering Arms and a man I sing... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] Macalester College Virgil Tradition: discussion, bibliography, &c. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
