Scholars:
If I ran across the name (?) inscription (?)
"REQUITUR"
what, if anything, might it signify?
Declined from "requiro?"
Many thanks.
Geo. H.
...
Agnew Moyer Smith Inc.
p: 412.322.6333
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e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: M W Hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 19:02:14 +0100 (BST)
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: VIRGIL: Did Aeneas inhale?
>
> My suggestion about the Gates of Sleep is that this is a key passage, very
> carefully integrated into the whole poem, and that sufficient structural
> clues to the real meaning are provided. The theme of drugs provides one
> of these clues.
> 1. INITIATION-PROPHECY. Aeneas, desceding into the darkness, is initiated
> into a religious cult whose members know of certain great prophecies.
> 2. CONTROL. Aeneas, the initiate, obeys Anchises, the hierophant. It is
> by Anchises' choice that Aeneas uses the Ivory Gate. The linkage of
> the initiate with false dreams is actually part of the initiation
> ceremony.
> 3. HIEROPHANT-POET. The voices of Anchises and of V himself merge: it is V
> rather than A who will lay flowers on the new tomb dug for Marcellus,
> though A rather than V who can call Marcellus his descendant (884). The
> description of the Gates (his dictis) belongs to both of the merged
> voices, one talking to Aeneas, one to us. Aeneas is initiated; so are we.
> The ideology of the New World Order, based on religion and enlightened
> imperial power, is laid before us citizens of the Western world: we have
> never forgotten it, though we may have become critical of it.
> 4. 'PROSEQUITUR'. Aeneas' partings from Anchises and Dido are
> linked by the mutually echoing 'prosequitur' verses (476, 898), implying
> that both he and Dido deserve compassion and also that both of
> them cherish a false dream. So V and Anchises think of the initiation
> rather as a sad necessity than as an unmixed good. The danger of the
> fumes of Avernus and the Kill or Cure nature of the whole process has been
> made clear all along.
> 5. INHALATION/POISON/CONVERSION. Drugs appear frequently, linked in the
> poem to processes of persuasion and in philosophy to Epicurean theories (V
> always recalls Epi, but never repeats Lucretius' commitment to him) that
> mental events are physical events. Palinurus, Latinus and Amata are all
> drugged and all influenced profoundly; so, I think, is Turnus, brutally
> injected with infernal fumes. Fumes are both benign (Albunea) and
> terrifying (Amsanctus) - Albunea and Amsanctus form another pair of Gates.
> The very fact that Aeneas 'passes through the Gates of Sleep' means that
> he wakes: if he wakes he was in a trance, since he cannot have been
> normally asleep. So to some extent this is an Epicurean story of
> religious initiation/indoctrination under the suspect influence
> of drugs - also of course a post-Epicurean story in which religion turns
> out to be utterly unavoidable.
> 6. LETTING THE DOGS OUT. The male heroes, Aeneas and Turnus, have both
> been indoctrinated by wise (or at least intelligent) women, the Sibyl and
> Allecto. One pacifies Cerberus, the other injects madness into the Trojan
> hounds. Both maintain the theme of control by drugs, but both the
> Albunea/Amsanctus//Sibyl/Allecto pairings reflect better on Aeneas than
> on Turnus.
> 7. THE GATES OF WAR. The scene at the Gates of Sleep is peaceful and
> controlled: the Hierophant keeps control of the situation. The fact that
> it is he who sends Aeneas through the Gate of False Dreams implies that
> the cult recognises its limitations. The scene at the Gates of War
> (VII 607) is correspondingly violent and disordered: Latinus will not act,
> and the Gates fly open under the terrific blow delivered by Juno and by
> an angry crowd which follows intoxicated leaders, a blow which leaves both
> the posts of the Gates and the unwritten constitution of the kingdom
> ruptured. Two natural but opposite effects of drug use, serenity and
> violence, are seen; two ideologies show something of their colours. The
> ideology of Book VI is for educated minds, drawing on history and
> philosophy, that of Book VII is for the masses, drawing on and enhancing
> natural fears and moral principles about country, family, property. But
> the mass ideology has the higher authority: Anchises is a wise spirit, but
> his authority is very little compared with that of the Queen of Heaven in
> the fulness of her conviction. The only higher authority, that of
> Jupiter, has not yet been revealed except in secret to Venus: when Jupiter
> at last speaks decisively, he will stop the movement that Juno has started
> but will still make concessions to Juno herself. All this surely amounts
> to a statement that the Book VI Augustan ideology is somewhat contrived,
> the work of an intellectual clique and contrary to many normal intuitions:
> but still it must be
