In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Hippolyte
Menshikov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
I have been trying to make some sense of the geographical place names
listed by Meliboeus at Eclogue 1.64-66. In his commentary, Page
suggests that they constitute the 4 points of the compass: North
(Scythia), East (Oaxes), South (Africans) and West (Britons).
This took me somewhat by surprise. According to modern cartography,
Which has nothing to do with the case; not even ancient cartography.
What we need is neither the Barrington Atlas nor Strabo, but a poetic
map in which the barbarian peoples are located where they need to be,
because it is barbarians amongst whom Meliboeus, in disgust or despair,
must go. The Africans are obvious; Oaxes is a portmanteau of Oxus and
Araxes (if Shakespeare can speak of 'Ariachne's woof', why can't Vergil
blend names too), and therefore stands for the east; obviously not
Crete, a Mediterranean island in the empire, which as Clausen puts it
would not 'be compatible with the African desert, distant Britain, and
the frozen North'. The West has to be the cut-off Britons because Spain,
due west of Italy as it lies, and even Gaul are under Roman rule.
Scythia did indeed stand for the frozen North in the classical imaginary
(think of the Riphaean mountains) because it was cooler than Greece or
Italy; after all, the Straits of Kerch had frozen over in the lifetime
of Vergil's father.
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:
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