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Virgil's Marble Temple: Georgics III. 10–39
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Editors who profess to interpret these lines, while reaching agreement on some few points of detail, concur chiefly in a somewhat irritable half-confession of puzzlement and not unnatural tendency to avenge their smart on the poet's broader back. Hence the suggestions of historical misrepresentation and dramatic confusion, the hypothesis of a late recension, and other well-worn devices of commentatorial window-dressing. A task more likely to be of value to the study of the Georgics is to explore this short, compact poem for that unifying principle among the multiplicity of details, in accordance with which the triumphator and the temple-builder, the Greek festival and the Italian venue, the lightness of allegory and the ponderous literalism of the Via Sacra, Virgil and Octavian each perform their different functions and move in harmony with the whole poetic plan.
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References
page 195 note 1 Punctuation here doubtful.
page 196 note 1 Servius ad Aeneid VIII. 720.
apge 196 note 2 Horace, admiring the temple at least from a moral distance, possibly had the outside of the doors in mind, as he wrote ‘aurum aut ebur Indicum’ (Odes I. xxxi. 6).
page 197 note 1 Dio Cassius LI. I: ‘In honour of the day he dedicated to Actian Apollo out of the captured ships a trireme, a quadrireme, and one of each other class, up to ten banks of oars; and he built a larger temple. ‥ On the place where his tent had stood he laid a foundation of square stones and adorned it with the captured beaks, thereon founding a shrine of Apollo open to the sky.’
It is to this trophy, rather than to the Palatine temple, that Virgil refers. Its crection was an incident of the campaign which he is describing; and, further, if the theory here advanced be true, he would not be likely to obscure the parallelism between his own temple and the Palatine temple by introducing the latter, the prototype, as a subordinate incidental in the scheme of the former. Lastly, it will be suggested, the decorations are intended to mark a difference in time.
page 197 note 2 It is possible that this statue of Apollo stood outside the templum. The argument is not affected, even so.
page 197 note 3 In all the poems of Propertius which mention the name of Actium there is observable a consistent connection with Georgics III. 10–39 and Aeneid VIII. 675–728.
In II. 1 Propertius gives a list of subjects which, he pretends, his modest Muse must pass over (vv. 19 sqq.; cf. Georgics III. 3–9).
At vv. 31–32 he writes:
aut canerem Aegyptum et Nilum, cum attractus in urbem
septem captiuis debilis ibat aquis.
(cf. Aeneid VIII. 726: Euphrates ibat iam mollior undis).
At v. 34 he refers to the triumphal procession of August 29 B.C.; and at vv. 41–42 he declines ‘Caesaris in Phrygios condere nomen auos’ (cf. Georgics III. 35–36).
Immediately, thereupon, as if he wished to make a graceful reference to Virgil, he writes:
nauita de uentis, de tauris narrat arator,
enumerat miles uulnera, pastor oues;
and he follows this couplet with what appears to be a parody of Virgil's warlike bees—
Virgil, , Georgics IV. 83Google Scholar:
ingentes animos angusto in pectore uersant.
Propertius II. 1. 45:
nos contra angusto uersantes proelia lecto.
Finally, he addresses Maecenas as ‘nostrae spes inuidiosa iuuentae et uitae et morti gloria iustameae’ (vv. 73–74, cf. Georgics II. 40–46).
In Propertius II. xvi. a certain resemblance appears between vv. 37–42 and Aeneid VIII, 706–714
In Propertius II. xxxiv. we nave what seems to be a reference to Georgics III. rather than to Aeneid VIII.
Propertius II. xxxiv. 61:
[lubet] Actia Vergihum custodis litora Phoebi.
Ibid., 62:
Caesaris et fortis licere posse rates.
Virgil, , Georgics III. 46Google Scholar:
mox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnas.
Ibid. 47:
Caesaris et nomen fama tot ferre per annos.
In Propertius IV. vi. 55–68 connection with Aeneid VIII. 704–710 is undeniable, unless (what is improbable in this case) both poets are writing under a common literary influence.
page 198 note l Propertius is almost certainly the borrower, His lines were probably written for an occasion subsequent to the dedication ceremony of October 28 B.C.—namely, for the opening of the porticos.
His general debt to Virgil is considerable and, on this occasion, he was evidently, as he says, in a hurry, and seized inspiration where most readily available.
page 198 note 2 One half-exception there may be. In ‘Idumaeas palmas’ (Georgics III. 12) the adjective may be more than the sometimes disappointing convention which is to be met with in such phrases as ‘bees of Hybla’ and ‘lions of Carthage.’ It may be intended to recall Octavian's post-Actium Syrian exploits, and may mean ‘triumphant’; and it may actually have been suggested to Virgil by the appearance of real Idumaean palms brought back from the East and exhibited during the Triple Triumph at Rome. Caligula's soldiers returned with sea-shells from the Gallic shores.
page 199 note 1 The games recorded by Dio Cassius (LI. 22) for the consecration of Julius Caesar's temple local Roman in appeal and in character; whilst to hold that Virgil merely transplants to Italian soil the Greek Olympian festival is to leave out of account the factor of the dedication of a temple.
page 199 note 2 Dio Cassius, LIII. 1.
page 199 note 3 Boxing was a favourite sport of Octavian's, especially when represented by the Greek professors (cf. Suetonius, , Diu. Aug. 45Google Scholar).
page 199 note 4 Octavian found the opportunity afforded by the possession of barbarian prisoners of war too tempting and too providential to neglect an easy means of gratifying the popular wish.
page 199 note 5 He does so, in spite of the Homeric precedent, in Aeneid V.
page 199 note 6 Suetonius, , Diu. Aug., 43Google Scholar: ‘Fecitque non numquam etiam uicatim ac pluribus scaenis per omnium linguarum histriones, non in foro modo nec in amphitheatre sed in circo et in saeptis.’
In taking ‘iam nunc’ as a bridge joining September and October, I have assumed Virgil to be referring to dramatic entertainments in October, having no positive information of the fact that dramatic contests formed a part of the Actian games at Rome in September 28 B.C. But such contests formed a part of the parent Greek Actian games, and Dio Cassius' account of the Roman Actian games is short enough to arouse suspicion of incompleteness and omission.
page 200 note 1 E.g. Dio Cassius, LI. 21.
page 200 note 3 It would still remain true that the poem is built round the events of 29 and 28 B.C. SO that even the benefits of a needless hypothesis would be nugatory.
page 200 note 4 Dio Cassius, LI. 20.
page 200 note 5 Appian, , Illyr. 28Google Scholar.
page 201 note 1 I.e. 48 B.c. Gabinius' defeat was a disaster of some magnitude (Appian, , Illyr. 12Google Scholar).
page 201 note 2 Dio Cassius, LI. 25: Crassus' operations.
page 201 note 3 Ibid., XXXVIII. 10: Antonius' defeat.
page 201 note 4 Dio Cassius (LI. 21 and 26) is emphatic on this point of double triumph.
page 201 note 5 Granting, however, that victories in Gaul and in the Balkans are referred to, some doubt may still be felt as to the actual operations of war which Virgil has in mind. It is possible that his bis refers, on the one hand, southward, to Octavian's Illyrian successes in 33 B.C, and, on the other hand, northward, to Agrippa's operations on the Rhine in 37 B.C, and Carrinas' exploits against the Morini and Rhenish invaders in 29 B.C. Octavian triumphed for 33 B.C. in 29 B.C.; Agrippa was granted a triumph for 37 B.C., but did not then celebrate it, ‘considering it disgraceful for him to make a display when Caesar had fared so poorly’ (Dio Cassius, XLVIII. 49). If so, then Virgil would mean that Octavian on one day, the European day of August 29 B.C, celebrated four triumphs, two over either country, the victories having been won under his auspices–assuming, that is, that Agrippa's belated triumph took place then. So to interpret the bis of Virgil would be to give a stronger and easier value to the word than that suggested above, with the implication of corresponding weakness to the contention here put forward that Virgil could not have written the line before 28 B.C. Whether and when Agrippa triumphed, or Octavian as his commander-inexploits chief, I do not know.
page 201 note 6 He would, of course, in the poem ‘antedate ‘Crassus’ and Carrinas’ triumphs so as to include them in his mention of the Triple Triumph.
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