>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."
>
>Jim O'Hara
>Paddison Professor of Latin
> The University of North Carolina
> Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3145
Actually the gate doesn't send dreams at all: it is the Manes that send the
false dreams (and we have to infer that it is through this second portal
that they are sent) -- unless (and I assume that Manes is transmitted
securely here, not Manis) the "falsa insomnia" send Manes toward the
heavens (false dreams in which one sees ghosts?). Another grammatical
possibility, that Manes is in apposition to falsa insomnia ("false dreams,
i.e. ghosts"), is scuttled completely by the fact that "mittunt" would then
have no subject.
The other gate is explicitly the exit for uerae umbrae: Aeneas is not a
uera umbra or any kind of umbra at all, and presumably therefore cannot
take this route and must therefore take the only alternative. While that
other exit might be used by false dreams, Aeneas is real in this poem, not
a dream or a shade. And under what circumstances could we conceive of Manes
(which ones? all of them?) converting Aeneas from human to dream and then
sending him out not as a true dream but as a false one?
Not that I'm claiming to be any more sure about exactly what Virgil is
doing here than I am in any other passage ...
James Lawrence Peter Butrica
Department of Classics
The Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's, Newfoundland A1C 5S7
(709) 737-7914
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