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Violets and violence: two notes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Howard Jacobson
Howard Jacobson
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana
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Extract

Servius was surely not the first to show discomfort with Vergil's choice of the word violaverit. Observing that the simile in lines 67–8 derives from Homer (Il. 4.141), he seems to be apologizing for Vergil when he explains that the poet's violaverit translates Homer's νι⋯νη. And discomfort there should be. The notion of ‘tainting, spoiling, damaging, defiling’ that violare should carry seems out of place both for the ivory-image and for the picture of the beautiful girl. Modern commentators have been no less troubled than Servius. Unwilling, however, to see Vergil as blindly enslaved to Homer, they have offered another explanation: violare here is tied to the violentia of her lover Turnus. ‘Vergil connects the violentia of Turnus with the staining of the ivory in the simile used to describe Lavinia's blush.’ should like to add a third explanation for Vergil's choice of violare.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 314 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1998

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References

1 Indeed, I wonder whether Statius adaptation of the Vergilian scene at Silv. 1.2.244–5 reflects his discomfort with Vergils violaverit. He writes, non talis niveos tinxit Lavinia vultus I cum Turno spectante rubet, deliberately avoiding Vergils violare (and he could easily have written violat for tinxit).

2 So O'Hara, J., True Names (Ann Arbor, 1996), p. 233. In its essence already in T. E. Pages comment ad be, The Aeneidof Virgil: Books VU–XII(London, 1959; reprint of edition of 1900), p. 420. See the insightful remarks of W. R. Johnson, Darkness Visible (Berkeley, 1976), pp. 56. For a different and interesting view of violaverit, see R. O. A. M. Lyne, Words and the Poet (Oxford, 1989), pp. 129–31, and Further Voices in Vergils Aeneid (Oxford, 1987), pp. 119–22. The references to Lyne I owe to CQs reader.Google Scholar

3 Thus, a violarius is a dyer (PI. Aul. 510).

4 CIL 6.10239.9, where only part of the word now remains, but the entire word was legible at the time of the discovery of the inscription.

5 The application of violare to complexion (by analogy) may remind us of Horaces tinctus viola pallor amantium (Carm. 3.10.14).

6 See Cameron, A., Claudian (Oxford, 1970), pp. 7 and lOf.Google Scholar

7 Cameron, pp. 13f.

8 For another Latin text that contains an underlying wordplay in Greek, see Sansones, D. discussion of ‘Aeneid’ 5.835–6 in CQ 46 (1996), 429–33.Google Scholar

9 See recently Long, J., Claudians in Eutropium (Chapel Hill, 1996), pp. 29, 52f., 141–4.Google Scholar