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A HIDDEN ANAGRAM IN VALERIUS FLACCUS?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2017

L.B.T. Houghton
L.B.T. Houghton*
Affiliation:
University of Reading
*
[email protected]
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In Virgil's third eclogue, the goatherd Menalcas responds to his challenger Damoetas by offering as his wager in their contest of song a pair of embossed cups, caelatum diuini opus Alcimedontis (Ecl. 3.37), decorated with a pattern of vine and ivy. In the middle of this design, he says, are two figures. One is the astronomer Conon, and the other—at this point Menalcas, afflicted with a sudden loss of memory, professes to have forgotten the name of the second figure, and breaks off into a question (Ecl. 3.40-2): quis fuit alter, | descripsit radio totum qui gentibus orbem, | tempora quae messor, quae curuus arator haberet? Various candidates for the identity of this second astronomer have been suggested, one of the most favoured being Eudoxus of Cnidus, whose Phaenomena had been versified by the Hellenistic poet Aratus. In 1930 it was proposed by Léon Herrmann that Menalcas in fact answers his own question in his reference to curuUS ARATor at Ecl. 3.42: the solution to Virgil's riddle is already written into the question, in the form of the anagram of Aratus concealed within these two words. Strictly speaking, Hermann notes only that ‘Arator au v. 42 évoque le nom d’Aratos’; he and later exponents of the theory tend to ignore the preceding ‘-us’—but there seems no reason to exclude it if an allusion to the Greek poet is to be seen in the two following syllables.

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Shorter Notes
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , May 2017 , pp. 329 - 332
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

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References

1 See e.g. Clausen, W., Virgil: Eclogues (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar, 102 on Ecl. 3.40; Fisher, R.S., ‘Conon and the poet: a solution to Eclogue III, 40–2’, Latomus 41 (1982), 803–14, at 803Google Scholar.

2 Herrmann, L., Les masques et les visages dans les Bucoliques de Virgile (Brussels, 1930), 149 with n. 3Google Scholar. Herrmann later retracted his interpretation in favour of identifying the unnamed astronomer with the Roman Nigidius Figulus: Herrmann, L., ‘Notules sur les Bucoliques virgiliennes’, Les études classiques 16 (1948), 371–3Google Scholar.

3 For discussion, see Ross, D.O. Jr., Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy and Rome (Cambridge, 1975), 23–4Google Scholar (‘The answer, Aratus, needed no gloss for Virgil's readers’, 24); Fisher (n. 1); Springer, C., ‘Aratus and the cups of Menalcas: a note on Eclogue 3.42’, CJ 79 (1983–4), 131–4Google Scholar; de Callataÿ, G., ‘Quis fuit alter?: Aratos, le Palinure de l'Enéide’, BIBR 62 (1992), 175–92Google Scholar; O'Hara, J.J., True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, 1996), 81 n. 335, 247Google Scholar; Prioux, E., ‘Deux jeux de mots sur le nom d'Aratos: note sur Virgile, B. III, 42 et Aratos, Phaen. 2’, RPh 79 (2005), 309–17Google Scholar; Saunders, T., Bucolic Ecology: Virgil's Eclogues and the Environmental Literary Tradition (London, 2008), 18–19 Google Scholar.

4 There is no mention of it, for instance, in Coleman, R. (ed.), Vergil: Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), 114–15Google Scholar, or Clausen (n. 1), 102–3, although the latter lists items by Fisher and Springer cited in the notes above.  The more recent commentary of Cucchiarelli, A., Publio Virgilio Marone: Le Bucoliche (Rome, 2012), 217 Google Scholar observes ‘il nome stesso di Aratus potrebbe esser suggerito dal sost. arator’.

5 On the prophecy of Mopsus, see especially Strand, J., Notes on Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica (Gothenburg, 1972), 57–65 Google Scholar; Kleywegt, A.J., ‘Praecursoria Valeriana (II)’, Mnemosyne 40 (1987), 107–23, at 110–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hershkowitz, D., Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica: Abbreviated Voyages in Silver Latin Epic (Oxford, 1998), 26–7Google Scholar; Fucecchi, M., ‘ Quem circum vellera Martem / aspicio? (Val. Fl. 1, 223 s.), ovvero: l'ira e i dubbi di una divinità “disorientata”’, in Spaltenstein, F. (ed.), Untersuchungen zu den Argonautica des Valerius Flaccus. Ratis omnia vincet III (Munich, 2004), 107–31, at 107–8Google Scholar; Zissos, A., ‘Terminal middle: the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus’, in Kyriakidis, S. and De Martino, F. (edd.), Middles in Latin Poetry (Bari, 2004), 311–44, at 319–23Google Scholar; Zissos, A. (ed.), Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica Book 1: A Commentary (Oxford, 2008), 186–97Google Scholar; Davis, P.J., ‘Medea: from epic to tragedy’, in Heerink, M. and Manuwald, G. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Valerius Flaccus (Leiden, 2014), 192–210, at 195 with n. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Zissos (n. 5 [2008]), 197; Kleywegt, A.J. (ed.), Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica, Book I (Leiden, 2005), 140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Zissos (n. 5 [2008]), 197; Kleywegt (n. 6), 140, who also compares Ovid, Met. 13.389 and 14.199; for these and further parallels, see Poortvliet, H.M. (ed.), C. Valerius Flaccus: Argonautica Book II (Amsterdam, 1991), 164 Google Scholar on Argonautica 2.274.

8 See e.g. Feeney, D.C., The Gods in Epic. Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1991), 319, 330–1Google Scholar; Zissos (n. 5 [2008]), xxii, and 302 on Argonautica 1.498-502; Bernstein, N.W., ‘ Romanas veluti saevissima cum legiones Tisiphone regesque movet: Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica and the Flavian era’, in Heerink, M. and Manuwald, G. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Valerius Flaccus (Leiden, 2014), 154–69, at 157Google Scholar.

9 On Valerius’ ecphrasis, see generally Manuwald, G., ‘Die Bilder am Tempel in Kolchis’, in Eigler, U. and Lefèvre, E. (edd.), Ratis omnia vincet. Neue Untersuchungen zu den Argonautica des Valerius Flaccus (Munich, 1998), 307–18Google Scholar; Hershkowitz (n. 5), 20–4; Heerink, M., ‘Valerius Flaccus, Virgil and the poetics of ekphrasis’, in Heerink, M. and Manuwald, G. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Valerius Flaccus (Leiden, 2014), 72–95 (on this passage, see 92–4)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrison, S.J., ‘Proleptic ekphrasis in Flavian epic: Valerius Flaccus and Statius’, in Manuwald, G. and Voigt, A. (edd.), Flavian Epic Interactions (Berlin, 2013), 215–27Google Scholar.

10 On the repetition of 1.224-5, see Kleywegt (n. 6), 140; Zissos (n. 5 [2004]), 341–2; id. (n. 5 [2008]), 196; Buckley, E., ‘Valerius Flaccus and Seneca's tragedies’, in Heerink, M. and Manuwald, G. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Valerius Flaccus (Leiden, 2014), 307–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 313: ‘Mopsus’ final question … is an enquiry that will find its answer in the later ekphrasis of Book 5 …’ (cf. Buckley, E., ‘Visualising Venus: epiphany and anagnorisis in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica ’, in Lovatt, H. and Vout, C. [edd.], Epic Visions: Visuality in Greek and Latin Epic and its Reception [Cambridge, 2013], 78–98, at 79–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

11 See especially Parker, H.N., ‘Books and reading Latin poetry’, in Johnson, W.A. and Parker, H.N. (edd.), Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 2009), 186–229 Google Scholar.

12 Castelletti, C., ‘A “Greek” acrostic in Valerius Flaccus (3.430-4)’, Mnemosyne 65 (2012), 319–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar observes of his proposed acrostic AIDOS at Argonautica 3.430-4 that ‘this acrostic shows at the same time a doctrina sacerdotalis … and a doctrina poetica’ (322; see also 321: ‘The acrostic can be perceived as a commentary on the scene, made by the poet in margine, or as a ritual word expressed in such a way by the priest himself.’).

13 Cf. Hershkowitz (n. 5), 26 n. 82: ‘the repetition of the prophet's words in the description of the reaction to the temple door stresses the lack of comprehension both on the part of Mopsus and the Colchians about the future, in questions which the comprehending reader can easily answer’.

14 Fowler, D.P., ‘An acrostic in Vergil (Aeneid 7.601-4)?’, CQ 33 (1983), 298 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further examples of Valerian wordplay, see Castelletti, C., ‘Riflessioni sugli acrostici di Valerio Flacco’, GIF 60 (2008), 219–34Google Scholar (with bibliography on recently identified acrostics in other Latin authors); id. (n. 12). Katz, J.T., ‘The Muse at play: an introduction’, in Kwapisz, J., Petrain, D. and Szymański, M. (edd.), The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry (Berlin and Boston, 2013), 1–30 Google Scholar, at 6 comments that ‘[i]t is striking that a number of articles about Greco-Roman acrostics have a question mark in the title’; although on a different kind of wordplay, the present note now takes its place alongside them.