David's suggestion of a connection between the "bad air" of Albunea and that of Lake Avernus is fascinating, and worth pursuing. But I hope I don't rouse "hippothanatophobia" (fear of a man beating a dead horse--can someone make that Greek more elegant?) by picking up on part of his introductory comments, the suggestion that
> Aeneas exits through the gate of > "falsa insomnia" not because the Roman Empire is a nightmare, but because > the underworld journey is a fiction: in real life, nobody goes to hell and > lives to tell about it. On this reading, the ivory gate is the literary > equivalent of a wink. This is attractive in many ways, but problematic in how it deals both with the Homeric model from which Vergil draws the notion of the gates, and witb the flow of Vergil's Latin. Latin first. David's notion requires that "falsa" mean "fictional" but not deceptive, false, or untrue in terms of underlying content. But in the lines: altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto, 895 sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes. this reading is hard to square with "sed." The gate of falsa insomnia is said to be shining and gleaming, BUT it sends falsa insomnia. I don't see how "fictional but true dreams" would be sufficiently adversative to the shining ivory. I'd expect "the gate is shiny, AND sends fictional (but true) dreams." There is no such problem with "the gate is shiny, BUT sends false/deceptive/lying dreams." Homer next: Penelope in Odyssey 19 dreams of a eagle that has killed her geese, which then speaks to her and says it's her husband, who has come home to kill the suitors. Penelope then says there are two gates of dreams, one for false dreams, one for true dreams, and she says she fears her dream is a false dream. Does this mean she thinks it's fitcional, but basically true, as in David's reading of Vergil's falsa insomnia? I don't think so: since eagles don't talk to women much in real life, it's clear that her dream is fictional, but by false she means that what the dream says will not come true: that her husband will not come home to kill the suitors. If she thought her dream was fictional (talking eagle) but had valid content (O will come home), surely she would have called it a true dream. So I can't get myself to accept reading "falsa insomnia" as fictional dreams the truth value of whose content is not being called into question. Falsa insomnia are dreams that do not say true things, in Homer and I think in Vergil. What this means for Vergil is not easy to say. Certainly Aeneas is in some way associated with false dreams. Exactly how he is is not really specified. Sorry to be wordy; it's hard to be concise in haste. -- Jim O'Hara Paddison Professor of Latin 206B Howell Hall phone: (919) 962-7649 fax: (919) 962-4036 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www: http://www.unc.edu/~oharaj surface mail: James J. O'Hara Department of Classics CB# 3145, 101 Howell Hall The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3145 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
