On 16 Apr 2001, at 14:42, tom bishop wrote:
> At what point were the "proëmic" lines fronting the Aeneid detached
> from the poem, and what name, if any, did they go by afterwards? My
> history of Virgil scholarship is pretty sketchy. I know Ovid and
> Martial took "arma virumque" etc. to be the opening of the poem. But
> Servius knew the introductory lines too, and they're not entirely
> unVirgilian.
See _Virgilio Eneide_, ed. Ettore Paratore, vol. 1 app. crit to l. 1 and
its commentary pp. 123-27 for a full discussion of all the issues.
Aelius Donatus (vita Vergilii) and Servius (praef. IV) testify that the
four lines beginning "Ille ego..." prefaced the opening "Arma
virumque... ." Varius removed or cancelled them. (1) The complete
silence of the major manuscript tradition about the proem, (2) the
fact that the principle writers following Vergil always cite the proem
separately from "Arma virumque" and (3) the inappropriately
intimate or familiar tone of the lines have convinced most scholars
that they are apocryphal. The absence of the proem in the
manuscript tradition suggests it never prefaced the Aeneid or was
was removed very early in the transmission.
======================================
Steven J. Willett
Shizuoka University of Art and Culture
Dept. of International Culture, Faculty of Cultural Policy
1794-1 Noguchi
Hamamatsu City, Japan 430-8533
Tel/Autofax: (53) 457-6142
Japan email: [log in to unmask]
US email: [log in to unmask]
|