At 10:46 AM 4/19/01 +0900, Steven J. Willett wrote:
>A more interesting question than Spenser's view of the proemium is
>the rationale for including it in early editions, such as the one above.
>Do the editors address the issue or give any explanation? If the
>main editions he would have read printed the quatrain, then he's
>likely to have accepted it despite the absence of any MS support.
For Pierius, the rationale seems to be twofold:
1. An ancient biographer (A. Donatus) and an ancient commentator (Servius)
both attribute the lines to Virgil. (This is implicit in his discussion of
the history of the proem, which he cribs from one or both of the
aforementioned scholiasts.)
2. Like the end of the Georgics (which quotes the opening of the Eclogues),
the "Ille ego" lines serve to (a) identify the author and (b) connect the
Aeneid with his previous efforts, "binding it to the previous pair, so that
it forms one body, knit together, as it were, by an indissoluble bond."
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David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
Macalester College Virgil Tradition: discussion, bibliography, &c.
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