Vergil's Aeneid

Latin Learning Latin
1

I’m almost through Pro Archia (no doubt Cicero’s most enjoyable speech so far) and then, at long last, I can start reading the Aeneid. Its first six books constitute the final part of Henle. Afterwards, I’ll just read on I guess. We’ll see.

The first question, as always, is about what materials/ commentaries to use. I have Page’s Victorian commentary and Henle of course, so I think I have enough help with difficult grammar and unusual vocabulary etcetera. I’m actually looking for a more literary approach, something like Griffin’s Homer on Life and Death, maybe even a discussion of Latin poetry in general (to have some background), or something covering the reception of the Aeneid through the centuries. Any suggestions?

Looking forward to this.

2

Take a look at Clyde Pharr’s Aeneid. I don’t think it’s quite what you’re looking for, but it’s definitely worth a look for anyone approaching V. for the first time.

3

BTW, how did you like Henle? Why did you choose this method in particular? How long did it take to get through and at what pace?

4

I am sure that people will have their favourite’s but Austen’s single volume commentaries are standard works. The Focus Vergil Aeneid Commentaries (Randall Ganiban et al) are less advanced and aimed at intermediate readers. The Cambridge Companion to Virgil is well worth reading for an overview of relatively recent scholarship although it was published in 1997. A Companion to Virgil’s Aeneid and Its Tradition in the Blackwell companion series is more recent and although I have it I havent read it. The Epic Successors of Virgil: A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition is a very important book by Hardie which although ostensibly concentrating on later epic has a great deal to say about Virgil. There are many excellent monographs in the Cambridge “Roman literature and its contexts” series.

The literature is immense as you can imagine.

5

Textkit Aeneid read through orgy? I’ve already doffed my pants. Commentary wise you have, basically:

Bulk:

Conington, J. & H. Nettleship (1884), Virgil: the works, with a commentary, Vol. 2, 4th ed.// (1883), Virgil: the works…, Vol. 3, 3th ed. (London)
Williams, R. D. (1972), Aeneid 1-6 // (1973), Aeneid 7-12 (London)
(Pharr’s 6 booker is extremely basic)

Single:

Austin, R. G. (1984), Aeneidos Liber Primus (Oxford)
Austin, R. G. (1964), Aeneidos Liber Secundus (Oxford)
Horsfall, N. (2006), Virgil. Aeneid 3, a commentary (Leiden)
Williams, R. D. (1962), P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Tertius (Oxford)
Austin, R. G. (1982), Aeneidos Liber Quartus (Oxford)
Williams, R. D. (1960), P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Quintus (Oxford)
Austin, R. G. (1986), Aeneidos Liber Sextus (Oxford)
Horsfall, N. (1999), Virgil. Aeneid 7, a commentary (Leiden)
Grandsen, K. W. (1976), Virgil Aeneid Book VIII (Cambridge)
Hardie, P. (1994), Virgil Aeneid Book IX (Cambridge)
Harrison, S. J. (1991), Virgil Aeneid 10 (Oxford)
Horsfall, N. (2003), Virgil, Aeneid 11, a commentary (Leiden)
Grandsen, K. W. (1991), Virgil Aeneid Book XI (Cambridge)
Tarrant, R. J. (2012), Virgil: Aeneid Book XII (Cambridge)

Tarrant on XII is rather good, that’s not exhaustive (e.g Horsfall in two vols on VI I’ve left of) but a pretty good spread.

Now, literary studies as you requested. I would argue that articles have been more important than books, but in terms of books I’m going to go on to say that Hardie’s “COMOS AND IMPERIUM” (it must be spoken aloud in caps) is the best singular book you’ll read. After that? something like Lyne’s “Further Voices in Virgil’s Aeneid” or Heinze on epic technique.

Getting at the articles can be difficult, there’s a very expensive 4 vol collection edited by Hardie (“Virgil: Critical Assessment”), the Cambridge Companion, the Blackwell companion and the Oxford Readings.

Without inundating you with suggestions, that’s the bare bones of it and you’ll soon be able to find anything you’re interested in by yourself once you get the hang of things.

6

I’m old enough to have cut my teeth on Page, so I still have a particular fondness for him. He was a very sympathetic reader of Vergil, but of course he’s somewhat outdated today.

The 2-voume commentary by Williams (the replacement for Page in the now-defunct Macmillan series), which was is probably the optimal choice in terms of price and comprehensive coverage, though perhaps already slightly dated today.

Austin’s commentaries on individual books in the first half of the Aeneid are excellent, though again somewhat dated, perhaps more so than Williams. The Cambridge commentaries in the Green and Yellow series on most of the last six books are generally up-to-date and really excellent. Horsfall’s commentaries are very thorough and very, very expensive.

If you are really serious about Vergil and want to make him a big part of the rest of your life, acquiring various one-book commentaries makes sense, but it would be a very expensive proposition. Try looking for used volumes in good condition on ABEBooks.

Eduard Norden’s commentary on Book 6 in German is one of the great works of classical scholarship.

Also Richard Heinze’s book, Vergil’s Epic Technique, is an important and seminal work, dating from the 1920s (I think), but still very much worthwhile. It breathed new life into the study of Vergil, as well as other Latin poetry in general. It’s available in English translation as well as in German.

Victor Pöschl’s Art of Vergil: Image and Symbol in the Aeneid is also available in English used.

Conington/Nettleship are available in reprints from Cambridge. They are very technical and exhaustive, but probably not what you would want for a first-time reading of the Aeneid.

7

If you’re looking for a critical edition with an apparatus giving textual variants but no explanatory notes, the standard edition is Mynor’s Oxford Classical Text.

Geymonat’s edition published in Italy has a more comprehensive selection of readings, but isn’t necessarily more useful.

Gian Biagio Conte’s Teubner(iana) edition reflects his perhaps somewhat idiosyncratic view that the received text of Vergil has been smoothed out, obliterating in many instances Vergil’s unique use of enallage/hypallage and other departures from normal modes of expression.

But the fact is that Vergil is probably–no, I would say, undoubtedly–the best preserved text from antiquity, especially since at least three more or less complete manuscripts and parts of three others have survived from late antiquity, and virtually all the variant readings were circulating in antiquity, many of which are preserved independently of the mss. in Servius’s commentary, Macrobius and other ancient sources. The one-volume commentaries of Austin and the Cambridge series are equipped with apparatuses, and textual issues should be discussed in all of the commentaries except those at the most elementary level.

But textual questions–what did Vergil actually write?–frequently do make a difference in understanding many passages in Vergil and appreciating his art, so even if you don’t use a critical edition, it’s important to be aware of them.

8

Great! Thanks for all the advice. I’ll look up the various titles and see if I can find some of them second hand. Vergil must have been as much discussed, emulated, plagiarised and commentarised as Homer, or nearly so.

I’ll use this thread to pose further questions. If someone wants to join reading, please do.

9

I started Latin two years ago with three friends, each with a different background. I for example have had Latin at school (though I didn’t do anything with it for many years), but one of my friends hadn’t. So we looked for a course with a relatively slow pace, lots of exercises and graded readings and of course, an answer key. After some looking around and reading reviews Henle seemed to fit the bill. We couldn’t find a course in Dutch with an answer key, and Wheelock and D’Ooge -two other contenders- seemed to have far less exercises and reading material.

Our progress in the first year was slow, and in fact, all of my friends dropped out off the project for various reasons. It took me a year to go through the first book of Henle; pretty slow for someone who already studied the basics once. But left on my own, I could dictate my own pace and I finished book 2, 3 and the first quarter or so of book 4 in my second year of Latin.

I do like Henle a lot. It’s very old fashioned of course, using the ‘grammar translation’ method as some here call it, to teach accidence and syntax. The basics are covered in the first book (1st Year Latin). From then on it is basically a reader, with long excerpts from Caesar (2nd Year Latin), three orations by Cicero (3rd Year Latin) and again Cicero (Pro Archia) and Vergil in the 4th book. There are still a lot of exercises though in the later books, to reinforce idiom and syntax met in the reading sections.

As said, it is very old school and bears a marked Catholic stamp. Henle was a priest, I think. In the 1st book there are a lot of sentences for translation about sailors praising Mary and so on. And in all the books some Christian readings are included at the back, mainly from the Vulgate, medieval hymns, life of the saints etcetera. This may turn some people off, I didn’t mind at all.

My main objection is that there’s too much Cicero. I know that some find Caesar boring, but I actually like reading him. But after four Ciceronian orations I’ve really had enough. Some variation would have been nice. What’s wrong with Livy or Seneca after all?
Then there’s a strong emphasis on English to Latin translation. I don’t mind that, especially in the beginning. It’s a great way to really get to know the various declinations and conjugations and basic syntax. I did all of these exercises in the first two books. But in the last two books Henle appears to prepare his pupils (or so I think) to actually write in Latin. That was never my goal however, so I stopped doing these exercises, which saved me quite some time.

So, yes, overall I’m pretty positive, except for Cicero (sorry, Marcus Tullius).

10

What’s your take (and everyone’s in general) on Conte’s Teubner? I used it when I decided to read through the Aeneid last year, but that was my first full reading of it, so I don’t really have a point of comparison.

11

I have Conte’s Aeneid in the less expensive paperback edition, but I haven’t used it to read through the poem–I’ve always used Mynors as a reading text (well, Hirtzel long ago). Here’s a review, in part laudatory and in part critical, you might be interested in reading:

http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-10-03.html

Conte’s apparatus actually has Latin notes explaining some of his editorial choices–not just the variant readings. As I mentioned, though, while there are many variant readings–most of which were circulating in antiquity–Vergil’s text is very well preserved, and any of the modern texts will be adequate.

12

Actually yes, that’s the one I own as well. It’s a De Gruyter edition, but reading Teubneriana since the Leipzig house went bankrupt. This is actually reason for a sad story on my part: I was in Leipzig and decided I’d like to visit the place. I looked everywhere, until eventually I happened to come across the Department for Classical Studies (housed in some random street) where they told me that it no longer existed. It was good I hadn’t gone there just for that.

Anyway, I went for that edition because I had read some of Conte’s textual criticism essays and enjoyed them. Afterwards I read Mynor’s Georgics (at least as far as he did it before passing away) instead of Conte’s edition of the same (for pratical reasons, my library had it whereas I would have needed to buy the De Gruyter myself), and was dumbstruck by the level of erudition there. Also thanks for the review, I enjoyed it.

13

It’s still called the Bibliotheca Teubneriana. My understanding is that Teubner had some difficulties reintegrating its East and West German businesses after reunificiation. For a while the Bibliotheca was owned by Saur of Munich, but then it was sold to De Gruyter.

Hopefully you visited some of the Bach sites in Leipzig–the Thomaskirche, for example. I’ve never been there myself.

14

It is, but they only make, as far as I know, the new paperback editions. Personally I’m fine with it. The clothbound or curated hardcover editions were fine and familiar, but even apart from the decrease in price the size on these new ones is much more handy. A similar change to the one the Italian BUR Classics went through, going from those inconvenient fist-sized bricks to books that can actually be read like books.

Concerning Leipzig, yes! I did have the chance. A memory that could merit a place in this forum was that when I visited the Nikolaikirche, and this must have been around 2010, the leaflets in different languages included Greek — katharevousa Greek.

15

You’ve only read his speeches, which constitute the minority of his work. They’re great for the style, but less great for the content. Try De Amicitia and De Senectute, you might enjoy them. Then there’s one of my favourite books of all time: Disputationes Tusculanae. Also, his letters are beautiful, they let us see the real man, not the self-imbued orator.

As for Livy and Seneca, I couldn’t agree more. Read them too. All of it.

Those who find Caesar boring are women and effiminate men. Caesar reads like a war documentary. It’s great, great (to paraphrase D. T.).

16

Those who find Caesar boring are women and effiminate men.

At first I was shocked to read this, then I wondered whether this might be a joke, a parody of the kind of misogyny one regularly encounters in classical texts. Either way I think its crass.

17

Definitely a joke. I suggest we leave it at that. Let’s not start one of those internet rows that lead nowhere.

18

I got a real kick out of Livy the other day, after the second Punic war, when they were discussing letting the women wear jewellery and be carried around town. Old Cato, now he was mysogynous. He makes crass brutes like myself look like metrosexual yuppies. What I like about the classics is that I see them as a source of inspiration. Inspiring like ol’ D.T. I wish I were an Amer’can just so I could vote for him. I don’t like him much, I just like how he makes the thought police freak out.

19

I found this page which seems a good starting point for Virgilian bibliography:
http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661-0068.xml

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@Seneca2008,

i really like your style!