In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, David Wilson-Okamura
<david@virgil.org> writes
I'm sorry no one has picked up the "Christianus Maro" query. This is
the exactly the right place for that kind of question.
I did not reply because I supposed that someone else must have had more
dealings with Mantuan than I had: I quote his counter to leap-year
superstition in _The Oxford Companion to the Year_, p. 681 and note at
p. 128 (on his day 20 March) that 'He is the "good old Mantuan"
misquoted by Holofernes in _Love's Labour's Lost_, IV. ii' (though some
editions clean up the quotation). But when no-one had written, David's
kind words prompted me to contribute.
I have just finished watching a Spanish film, "Son de mar" (1998),
directed by Bigas Luna. The main character, Ulises, teaches literature
at a high school by the sea and wins the love of his landlord's
daughter by reciting lines (in Spanish, not Latin) from the Aeneid.
There's the cave, of course, and a passage which never seemed sexy to
me, the description of two snakes breasting the waves and squeezing
Laocoon. This second passage is apparently the girl's favorite, and he
recites it to her at key points in the story (either prior to or during sex).
Well, (near)-strangling is attested as an erotic practice, not least for
its effect on the male member...
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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