I was reading Charles Rollin’s The Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres in which (in Chapter 3) he discusses how Latin should be taught. On page 173 he goes into an example (using Phaedrus’ fable of “The Wolf and the Crane”) of how a teacher should work through a passage in detail, pointing out many beauty and stylistic choices of the author. Such as pointing out why a word (or phrase) used is better than other words (or phrase) that could have been used. Or pointing out how much meaning was packed into a single word or small number of words.
For a brief example,
Gulaeque credens colli longitudinem. > Is it possible to imagine the action of the crane better? To shew the whole beauty of this verse, we need but throw it into a simple proposition, > & collum inserens gulae lupi. > > Collum > alone is flat, > collum longum > expresses more, but presents us with no image, whereas, by substituting the substantive in the place of the adjective, > colli longitudinem> , the verse seems long like the crane’s neck. But can the stupid rashness of the foolish animal, which ventured to thrust her neck down the wolf’s throat, be better expressed than by the word > credens> ?
And at the end he gives the whole fable rewritten “in a plain manner” (still in Latin), as a comparison to show the beauty of the original in contrast.
So I found myself wanting more of that kind of commentary on the Latin literature I read. As Rollin is talking about what teachers are expected to do, I imagine students getting this kind of explanation every day from their teachers. But because I’m learning on my own, I can only hope that some people have put such teachings down in writing.
Does anyone know of this kind of commentaries for classical texts? Say the Aeneid? or Cicero’s orations? or Phaedrus or any others that would be beneficial?
Austin’s commentaries on both the Aeneid and some of Cicero’s orations are not too bad on this sort of thing. There’s not enough of it, either in the classroom or in commentaries. Not many dare to risk incurring the charge of bellelettrism or impressionism, but this is stylistics after all.
I think the problem about this kind of approach is that it is subjective and quickly dates. I think its more likely to tell you about the aesthetics of the commentator than the original writer. Ovid Seneca and Lucan amongst others have been criticised on rather spurious “stylistic” grounds. See Rose a handbook of Latin Literature for egregious examples. But the example you give, especially “colli longitudinem, the verse seems long like the crane’s neck”, seems to be an early example of “close reading” which is surely widely found in modern commentaries?
But the example you give, especially “colli longitudinem, the verse seems long like the crane’s neck”, seems to be an early example of “close reading” which is surely widely found in modern commentaries?
I’m not familiar with any commentaries. Could you recommend some for me?
Some similar types of things I’m looking for would be comments like “notice the meter here is such and such, which gives the effect of such and such” or “notice how the alliteration (or whatever) here helps us see/feel such and such”. Or detailed explication of an oration of Cicero, explaining why it makes a good model of classical rhetorical principles. I suppose, like you said, it runs the risk of telling us what the commentator thinks and not what the original author intended. But I think I need some help learning to appreciate the poetry and style of these writings, otherwise I might as well have not learned Latin and just read translations.
These are precisely the sorts of thing that R.G. Austin pays attention to in his Aeneid commentaries (on bks. 1, 2, 4, and 6). He was an enviably sensitive reader of Latin. And as for Cicero, there’s the same scholar’s edition of the thoroughly despicable Pro Caelio.
Perhaps if you were to tell us what you want to read then it might be easier to help with commentaries.
As mwh says Austin is of an excellent resource, although there is an extensive secondary literature on virgil which needs to be consulted. The cambridge companion is a good introduction.
I suppose, like you said, it runs the risk of telling us what the commentator thinks and not what the original author intended.
This isnt exactly what I said and I certainly dont agree with it. But I think this is the subject for a different thread.