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VIRGIL, ECLOGUE 4.53–4: A QUANTUM OF SPIRITUS IS NOT ENOUGH*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Silvia Ottaviano
Silvia Ottaviano*
Affiliation:
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (IT)
*
[email protected]
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Extract

In a recent contribution to this journal, D. Kovacs addresses the following passage from the fourth Eclogue (cited here from the OCT of Mynors):

      o mihi tum longae maneat pars ultima uitae,
      spiritus et quantum sat erit tua dicere facta!
Kovacs takes it for granted that the meaning of l. 54 should correspond to the Loeb translation, ‘and inspiration enough to hymn your deeds!’. Starting from this assumption, he rejects the reading spiritus, arguing that a genitive is required (with a postponed et); the possible solution he suggests is pectoris, used metaphorically in the sense of ‘poetical ability’. That seems a clever conjecture, restoring excellent style. Nevertheless, we have to assume that spiritus replaced pectoris as a gloss, but I cannot see any reason why somebody would have wanted to explain obscurum per obscurius: other words (such as ingenium) would have been far more appropriate. On the other hand, Virgil most likely chose the word spiritus, whose basic meaning is not ‘inspiration’ but ‘breath’, in order to amplify line 53 (uita).

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 897 - 899
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to J. Diggle, B.Gibson, M.D. Reeve and the two anonymous referees of CQ for their comments, but it should not be assumed that they agree with what I say.

References

1 Kovacs, D., ‘Virgil, Eclogue 4.53–4: enough of what?’, CQ 61.1 (2011), 314–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Coleman, R. (ed.), Virgil. Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), 147Google Scholar.

3 See Forbiger on Ecl. 4.54 (Leipzig 1852), 78, Conington on G. 1.213 (London 1858), 166, and Norden on Aen. 6.133 (Leipzig, 19263), 163.

4 Kovacs (n. 1), 315 n. 1.

5 See Burman (Amsterdam, 1746), 71–2 on this passage.

6 For the difference between quantum + gen. and quantus as adjective see Kühner-Stegmann 2,1. 431 n. 9.

7 D.R. Shackleton Bailey, Homoeoteleuton in Latin Dactylic Verse. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, 31 (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1994), 1 n. 2.

8 Ottaviano, S. and Conte, G.B. (edd.), P. Vergilius Maro, Bucolica et Georgica (Berlin, 2013)Google Scholar.

9 ‘How textual conjectures are made’, MD 26 (1991), 91Google Scholar.