The very beginning of the 4th book:
Quis novus hic nostris successit sedibus hospes,
quem sese ore ferens, quam forti pectore et armis!
->quem sese ore ferens: I understand what Dido is saying, but how does ‘quem’ function here? The only way I can make sense of it is to read it as predicative to ‘sese’ → bearing himself with respect to his face what a man (i.e. what an attractive looking chap), but that seems very strange somehow. Am I missing something obvious here?
No you’re not missing anything, in fact you’ve understood it perfectly: quem exclamatory, used as predicate. It’s analogous to quis in the line before, lit. “(As) what a man this new guest has turned up here!” i.e. “What a man this new guest who’s turned up here is!” The participial phrase is an add-on, lit. “bearing himself (as) what a man in looks!” Quis and quem naturally go up front. Here they’re exclamatory, but the construction would be just the same if they were interrogative (“Who is this new guest who’s turned up here, bearing himself as whom?”). It’s the predicative use coupled with the exclamatory sense that makes it look odd. “carrying himself so handsome” or tam (or quam) pulchrum se ferens wouldn’t seem so strange.
My favorite line so far: vulnus alit venis et caeco carpitur igni. (The imagery, the alliterativeness, …) And I swoon to the lush and extremely hellenistic postera Phoebea lustrabat lampade terras / umentemque Aurora polo dimoverat umbram.
Novus as well as meaning new also carries the connotation strange. I think this is more the sense here than simply new.
A bit late, but thanks!
Yes, it’s great. Out of interest: why would this be hellenistic?
I think the deer simile wonderful: the imagery, the multiple points of convergence between the metaphor and the thing under comparison -lovesick Dido wandering through the city- rythm, alliteration; Vergil in great shape.
uritur infelix Dido totaque uagatur
urbe furens, qualis coniecta cerua sagitta,
quam procul incautam nemora inter Cresia fixit
pastor agens telis liquitque uolatile ferrum
nescius: illa fuga siluas saltusque peragrat
Dictaeos; haeret lateri letalis harundo.
This has been foreshadowed by the seven deer killed by Achates in Book 1, 184ff.
Characteristically hellenistic features are the picturesque way of saying “At dawn”, the metonymic conceptualization of sunshine as the Phoebean torch and of daybreak as personified Aurora in action, the precious organization of the words in each line.
The simile, by contrast, is very Homeric, though its tacit merging of tenor and vehicle (your “convergence between the metaphor and the thing under comparison”) is more reflective of ancient Homeric scholarship. Virgil was familiar not only with Homer but with literary criticism of Homer, which tended to magnify relations between a simile’s two parts.
Unfortunately I do not have much time for Vergil these weeks so my progress is slow. Also, Austin’s commentary hasn’t arrived yet so I’m reading without much help.
Some questions:
-105: Olli (sensit enim simulata mente locutam,
quo regnum Italiae Libycas auerteret oras)
sic contra est ingressa Venus.
Quo = ut here. I’m familiar with this in final clauses before a comparative (quo facilius defenderet etc.) but have never seen it used without. Is something to be said about this use of quo instead of ut. Is it archaic, poetic, or just unusual?
-The Venus/Juno dialogue: it’s a nice interlude. Venus role in all this is is a bit ambivalent. After all by making Dido fall in love with Aeneas she puts the mission to lay the foundations of Rome in jeopardy. She is fully informed with respect to this mission, is she? It’s not just Juppiter who is completely in the know?
-165: speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem
deueniunt
Ah, there we have it. Anybody else around here who is reminded by this passage of Turgenev’s unforgettable Spring Torrents?
-314: mene fugis? per ego has lacrimas dextramque tuam te
(quando aliud mihi iam miserae nihil ipsa reliqui),
per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos,
si bene quid de te merui, fuit aut tibi quicquam
dulce meum, miserere domus labentis et istam,
oro, si quis adhuc precibus locus, exue mentem.
The rythm here is tremendous as is the hyperbaton. To be sure: istam goes with mentem, right? And me (in 314) is the object of oro?
-323: altem si qua mihi de te suscepta fuisset
ante fugam suboles, si quis mihi paruulus aula
luderet Aeneas, qui te tamen ore referret,
non equidem omnino capta ac deserta uiderer
That’s heartbreaking. No questions.
-382: spero equidem mediis, si quid pia numina possunt,
supplicia hausurum scopulis et nomine Dido
saepe uocaturum
Dido must be accussative, right? But then whence the form ‘Dido’?
-393: At pius Aeneas, quamquam lenire dolentem
solando cupit et dictis auertere curas,
multa gemens magnoque animum labefactus amore
iussa tamen diuum exsequitur classemque reuisit.
animum labefactus amore → strange. Is ‘animum’ perhaps a accussative of respect (as in Greek). Can’t make sense of it otherwise.
Is ‘animum’ perhaps a accusative of respect (as in Greek). Can’t make sense of it otherwise.
Yes, Vergil frequently uses Greek accusatives of respect or body part.
whence the form ‘Dido’?
It’s a Greek declension, like Sappho and other women’s names. I don’t remember the dative (Didoe? Didoi? but I don’t think Vergil uses it), but the genitive would be Didus.
And me (in 314) is the object of oro?
You mean te, don’t you?
Of course, ‘te’ not ‘me’. Thanks.
Just to pick up the residue of your questions Bart.
105 quo. I’d think of this as a simple relative, “by which (means).” Neuter, referring to the dissimulation, simulata mente locutam. With the subjunctive yes it’s effectively a final clause, different from ut only in its “dative of means” specification. It’s basically the same as the standardized use with a comparative.
Role of Venus, ambivalent? I think it’s the duality of Venus’ given roles that’s in evidence once again—she wants to further her son-protégé’s mission, while in her universal capacity as sex goddess her job is to foster love affairs, and this more general role interferes with the more particular. We briefly discussed this in the bk.1 thread, I think, and there was an earlier thread on this very point. —Yes, http://discourse.textkit.com/t/anticipating-greek-boards-converting-names/104/1 post of Apr.3 and link to the previous (rather unproductive) thread. It’s intriguing to see how Vergil handles it.
165 speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem: one and the same cave literally enclosing the two of them (a mannerism taken up by Ovid), and Dido dux physically so close you can’t even squeeze an et between them.
Turgenev. Now that you mention it, yes! And Turgenev will have known the Aeneid. Not that the experience is in any way unique.
382 Dido. Yes Greek accusative (-ω < -οα, 3rd decl.), unless it’s to be taken as nominative or vocative (as if in quotes). I suppose nomine tells against that, and it’s more effective as accusative anyway, but it’s hard for me to think of Vergil using any form other than Dido, resonant and essentializing.
Greek names in Latin poets tend to vacillate between Greek and Latinized forms, and I can imagine Didonem being coined as the accusative. But not by Vergil.
Thanks, Michael!
I’m too overburdened with work these days to read Latin or Greek. I hope to pick up the thread next week.
As always I appreciate your help and insightful comments (and Bill’s and Seneca’s too).
I managed to read a few lines, but they bring up all kind of questions.
460: hinc exaudiri uoces et uerba uocantis
uisa uiri, nox cum terras obscura teneret,
solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo
saepe queri et longas in fletum ducere uoces;
Very beautiful lines. ‘Verba … visa’ seems strange. Is ‘videre’ often used in the sense of ‘perceive’?
465: agit ipse furentem
in somnis ferus Aeneas, semperque relinqui
sola sibi, semper longam incomitata uidetur
ire uiam et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra,
→ videtur: not sure how to take this. Is she seen walking alone or does it seem (to her) as if she is walking alone? The latter seems better to me, but I’m not sure.
469: Eumenidum ueluti demens uidet agmina Pentheus
et solem geminum et duplices se ostendere Thebas,
aut Agamemnonius scaenis agitatus Orestes,
armatam facibus matrem et serpentibus atris
cum fugit ultricesque sedent in limine Dirae.
About the last part of this simile: ‘agitatus scaenis Orestes’ . That’s remarkable. Is Vergil really drawing a comparison here between Dido and a theaterplay based on a myth instead of the myth itself?
Book 4 is theatrical. It’s constructed somewhat like a tragedy, with “scenes” in which the characters, Aeneas, Dido and Anna, engage in dialogue. By alluding to two famous tragedies, V. emphasizes the “intertextual” relationship of book 4 with Greek drama. But I think it’s neither Aeschylus’ Eumenides nor Euripides’ Bacchae that is most closely related to Book 4–it’s Euripides’ Medea that’s in the background – the princess spurned or betrayed for dynastic reasons.
About the last part of this simile: ‘agitatus scaenis Orestes’ . That’s remarkable. Is Vergil really drawing a comparison here between Dido and a theaterplay based on a myth instead of the myth itself?
The furies and furor are a recurrent theme. Dido has already said she will pursue Aeneas (384-387)
"… Sequar atris ignibus absens,
et, cum frigida mors anima seduxerit artus,
omnibus umbra locis adero. Dabis, improbe, poenas.
Audiam et haec Manis veniet mihi fama sub imos.”
Later on we have Allecto and Turnus.
I think you have quoted very interesting lines although the Loeb prints a conjecture by Markland “Poenis” instead of “scaenis” presumably to tie up with 3.331
Ast illum, ereptae magno inflammatus amore
coniugis et scelerum Furiis agitatus, Orestes
excipit incautum patriasque obtruncat ad aras."
Anyway the theatrical allusion is very vivid and why wouldnt Vergil allude to tragedy, confusing genres as he confuses chthonic furor with pietas?
Edit: Hylander is spot on with medea.
460 visa. videri can of course mean just “seeming” rather than “being seen,” and Greek would more likely use δοκεῖν. But even the active can be used in describing imagined auditory events, 490 mugire videbis | sub pedibus terram—a touch of synaesthesia? It gives the effect of a prophetic vision, in a kind of anticipation of her upcoming dreams. visa extends the emphasis on seeing things that the passage started with: 453 vidit (along with that horrendum dictu so much associated with monstra), 456 hoc visum.
467 videtur. Same again. It doesn’t mean she’s seen (except by herself), more she seems (to herself). But it’s actually what she sees in her dream, so the distinction evaporates.
469 agitatus scaenis Orestes. George Goold strongly supported Poenis, but I forget why. I’m happy to accept scaenis myself, with its unique reference to stage performance (actual or imagined), but I’d respect Goold’s clear-eyed judgment over mine any day of the week—most days, anyway—, and the affinity of Dido’s plight to Greek (and Roman) tragedy is obvious enough without scaenis.
Jilted Ariadne in Catullus 64 is a strong intertext (semperque relinqui | sola sibi!—seneca will appreciate the always-already).
Orestes’ mother’s snakes and Dido’s prospective fires in the earlier passage quoted by seneca (i.e. the victim’s avenging Furies in either case) are both ater, a word we’ve noted before.
The conflicting/conflated images in this section seem eloquent of her insightfully drawn state of mind. Aen is driving her in her frenzy (furentem) as she will be driving him, etc etc. I like the polysemy of concepit furias at the exit, 474.
522: Nox erat et placidum carpebant fessa soporem
corpora per terras, siluaeque et saeua quierant
aequora, cum medio uoluuntur sidera lapsu,
cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes pictaeque uolucres,
quaeque lacus late liquidos quaeque aspera dumis
rura tenent, somno positae sub nocte silenti.
I find Vergil especially good in descriptions of nature. I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘nature at rest’ was some kind of set-piece in classical literature (as it is in Romantic poetry, see for example Goethe’s ‘über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’), but still, the lines quoted above are so rich in sound and rythm, so -excusez le mot- sensuous that I read them to myself again and again. I think I must read his Georgica.
This passage has a long intertextual history.
The principal intertext is Apollonius’ Argonautica: 3.746ff. νυξ μεν επειτ’ επι γαιαν αγεν κνεφας …. In both epics of course it’s foil to Medea’s/Dido’s sleeplessness: αλλα μαλ’ ου Μηδειαν επι γλυκερος λαβεν υπνος ~ at non infelix animi Phoenissa ….
Hylander mentioned Medea above, but it’s Apollonius’ Medea more than Euripides’ that’s important for Vergil.
—as also for Ariadne in Cat.64, but Cat.64 feeds directly into Aen.4 too, both situationally and lexically: e.g. Ariadne “This isn’t what you promised me, sed conubia laeta, sed optatos hymenaeos” (141) > Dido’s “per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos” (316). Cf. the notorious “invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi” (Aen.6.460) transposed almost word for word from Cat’s translation of Callimachus’ Lock of Berenice, “invita, o regina, tuo de vertice cessi” (the catasterized lock of hair to Berenice)!
Cat.64 next, Bart? or Argon.bk.3? I know you’re not much into intertextualities, but to read Vergil without them does rather emaciate the experience.
I wouldn’t say I’m not into intertextualities, I’m just not very good at them when it comes to Latin & Greek writers because I haven’t read widely enough in classical literature. So I am grateful for all the sources and connections you and others point out to me. They all go to the still to be read pile of classical authors that someday, somehow I would like to read. But Catullus 64 seems easy and shortish, so why wait? Any suggestions for a good edition of Catullus’ poems?