In message <Pine.GSO.3.95-960729.1020118110908.24173A-
[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, M W Hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>This is mainly a reply to a reply of some time ago (I've been disrupted
>by my wife's death). I mentioned the reference to
>'pillars decorated with gold, barbarian-style' (A II 504; following, I
>think, words attributed to Cassandra by Naevius and admired by Cicero) as
>problem illustrating V's use of 'focalisation', or as an indication of V's
>readiness to exploit variant focalisation - uncertainty about whose point
>of view certain words represent - in order to create an interesting
>effect. ()Is Aeneas focalising 'barbarico' so that it refers to how the
>Greek conquerors think or is he beginning, after seven years of exile
>mainly amid Greek cultural influences, to think that there was something
>barbaric about Troy?
Since the verse as a whole runs 'barbarico postes auro spoliisque
superbi', a hendiadys denoting spoils consisting in barbarian gold, the
reference, at the most literal level, is to gold (a metal in which
barbarians were known to rejoice) captured from the Trojans' subject
peoples such as the barbarous-voiced Carians of Iliad 2. 867; likewise
in Ennius (not Naevius) 'adstante ope barbarica' means 'with your
barbarian auxiliaries for bodyguards'. On that footing, the Trojans
would not themselves be barbarians; there need be no more contempt or
disrespect than in images of fine manly Indian and African soldiers in
our own imperial days, but it would seem unduly reductive to interpret
the word as simply 'speaking foreign languages'.
On the other hand, if we assume a self-inclusive sense ('our
fellow barbarians'), the question is whether the appropriate parallel is
the use by Aeschylus' Persians of barbaroi to denote themselves, a term
put in their mouths by a Greek, or the Romans' self-referential use of
_barbarus_ in Plautus' day, which in principle might be due to ignorance
or to acceptance of a Greek view of things but in my opinion is far
likelier to be the proud appropriation of an insult (like 'Whig',
'Tory', 'Old Contemptibles', and more recently 'Iron Lady', a badge of
honour proffered to a grateful Mrs Thatcher by some dunderhead on TASS).
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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