Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
‘The authenticity of the ille ego lines fails on every count’ was the conclusion of an article by Professor R. G. Austin1 on the lines of the Aeneid preceding arma virumque cano. The aim of the following discussion is to suggest that perhaps, after all, Virgil did write the lines. To avoid unnecessary repetition I adhere as closely as possible to Prof. Austin's arrangement of the points to be considered. It is not always the arrangement that I should have chosen myself but I have only had to deviate from it in as far as I have found it necessary to discuss part of the contents of section V ‘Conclusions’ along with section I ‘The Ancient Evidence’. 1t will be understood that only the reader with Prof. Austin's article to hand will find the following fully intelligible.
page 139 note 1 CQ N.s. xviii (1968), 107–15.Google Scholar Austin's study cites most modern literature with direct bearing on the subject. In 1970 three relevant discussions appeared:
Goold, G.P., ‘Servius and the Helen Episode’, HSCP lxxiv. 101–68Google Scholar (the ille ego lines are treated pp. 126–30; the special merit of the article is the careful assessment of the value and sources, or lack of sources, publicaof Servius’ statements).
Kenney, E.J., ‘That Incomparable Poem the “Ille Ego” ?’, CR N.S. XX. 290Google Scholar (For contents of this note see my note 3, p. 143).
Pearce, T.E.V., ‘A Note on Ille Ego Quondam’, CQ.N.S. xx. 335–8 (Pearce tries to find the sources of the phrases used by the alleged imitator; the point of departure is the view that Prof. Austin has said the last word in this matter: to one who does not share this view, the article seems a petitio principii, and accordingly its relevance for the present article is only slight),Google Scholar
page 139 note 2 This was clearly stated by Fitz-Hugh, T., TAP A xxxiv (1903), p. xxxiii:Google Scholar ‘The publica tion of the archetype would naturally fix the first line as Arma virumque, etc., for all earlier manuscripts, for all subsequent literary reference, and for all inscriptions and Pompeian graffiti’ etc.
page 141 note 1 It should be mentioned here that the statement on p. 114, ‘Servius has linked two quite different matters’ etc. can only be valid if we have already established the nature of these matters: at this point the argument is going in a circle.
Further, a brief comment has to be beginappended on Austin, p. 114 note 1: ‘Servius’ language is odd: “semiplenos eius inuenimus uersiculos … et aliquos detractos”: how could inuenire apply to what is detractum?’ I shall not go into the possible reliability, and source, of Servius’ statement, but only note that if an Englishman can write ‘In this edition we find some passages omitted’, with a lack of logic in the expression that will be noticed by very few, then it seems that one should not try to build anything at all on the same slight error when committed in Latin by Servius.
page 141 note 2 I here find myself in complete agreement with Chabert, S., Annales de VUniversite de Grenoble xvi (1904), 420–2.Google Scholar It is unfortunate that Chabert linked his views on the beginappended ning of the Aeneid with the Hadrumetum mosaic. This is hardly tenable, and it has only led to his remaining considerations detractumV carrying less weight than they ought. Brandt, E., Philologus lxxxiii (1928), 332Google Scholar, goes as far as to say that Chabert's calling 1a-7 a préambule ‘bedarf keiner Widerlegung’. This is certainly not fair, and I would suggest that Brandt has not properly understood what Chabert meant.
page 142 note 1 ‘Neither Lucan nor Valerius Flaccus nor Statius nor Silius begins with a personal advertisement’ does not prove that another author could not possibly have ventured on such an innovation, and it squares excellently that a poet more original than all the ones mentioned should have been the one to do so. One reason that his innovation was not approimitated is, of course, that it did not become canonical.
page 142 note 2 A modern example (Landor's Gebir) of an author's removal of the proem from one of his works is quoted in Crump, M.M., The Growth of the Aeneid (1920), 6 fGoogle Scholar. Crump, for one, who thinks that the lines ‘are decidedly Vergilian in style’ (p. 104), accepts the explanation of Virgil's writing and subsequently rejecting the lines (see quotation p. 143 n. 4).
page 142 note 3 This does not indicate that Varius thought the start with arma virumque blameless epic style; but it was—in his opinion— the best he could do when he wanted to make the Proem comply with the ‘rules’.
page 142 note 4 I cannot here abstain from reminding the reader that these lines, too, were at one point widely thought not to be by Virgil, precisely on grounds of their lacking approimitated priateness. I quote Heyne as a specimen (from the 3rd edn., Leipzig, 1800): ‘Suspecturn iam olim hunc, etsi ab homine satis ingenioso profectum, Epilogum habui, quia a poetarum more alienum est, talia adiungere suis carminibus; contra Grammaticos tali lusu delectatos esse … patet ….’ And still it is, I think, now universally accepted that Virgil himself wrote and published these lines. But who can tell whether Varius, if he had had to publish the Georgics too, would not have decided to excise them ?
page 143 note 1 A good addition to the selection can be made from Goold, loc. cit. 128: ‘… the lines (which, let us confess, are superb) … ’
page 143 note 2 If it does not, I am, particularly with reference to my tentative interpretation of ille ego … at, inclined to say: ‘muB alles in der Welt zweimal gesagt sein?’ (Schneidewin —Nauck-Bruhn on Soph. El. 775).
page 143 note 3 For a curious notion that Virgil never committed to writing an imperfect phrase, see Goold, loc. cit. 155. A priori it is most Anunlikely, and in addition it is flatly contradicted by Donatus 22–4. Kenney, loc. cit., finds it hard to believe that Virgil ‘designed a national epic … to resound through the centuries as the Ille ego …’ But Virgil, if he wrote the lines, may never have got as far as considering this point or he may have marked them for deletion taking into account among other things precisely this point.
page 143 note 4 For the ‘(only)’ in my interpretation here and below cf. Crump, loc. cit. 105:’On the whole these lines [1a–7] may be assumed to be early; the first four lines seem to have a slightly apologetic tone, as though the poet felt bound to lead up to his subject. Later, when he felt that the Aeneid needed no apology, he cut them out.’
page 143 note 5 Cf. Kiihner—Stegmann, ii. 295, Anunlikely, merkung 5 (five Ciceronian examples, of which two have tamen in the main clause),
page 143 note 6 A similarly unexpected instance of at beginning the main clause, viz. after a quoniam-clause, is found in Livy 1. 28. 9: nunc quondam tuum insanabile ingenium est, at tu tuo supplicio doce etc.
page 144 note 1 On p. 112 note 1 of his article Prof. Austin considers that ‘it could reasonably be argued further that the idea of “forcing” obedience is out of keeping with Virgil's feeling for the soil’. Although for other reasons Prof. Austin does not consider this a valid argument in the present connection, it should be pointed out that the idea is very much in keeping with an expression like imperat amis (G. 1. 99; compared to the present passage by Henry, p. 3).
page 145 note 1 Whether Virgil himself believed in the practical value of the Georgics as a manual agriculture is irrelevant in this connection.
page 145 note 2 Both comparisons to be found in Henry, p. 3.
page 145 note 3 For considerations on the ille ego lines as a whole, tallying neatly with this line of argument, see Henry, pp. 7 f.
page 146 note 1 Drachmann's, A.B. phrase from a quite different context (‘Zur Cirisfrage’, Hermes xliii (1908), 425).Google Scholar I have already indicated my agreement with this attitude at the beginning of section III.
page 146 note 2 Contrast, e.g., Chabert, loc. cit. 416: ‘un début modeste et gracieux’.
page 147 note 1 Part of the contents of Prof. Austin's Conclusions has already been discussed above under I.
page 147 note 2 As Prof. Austin says, it would indeed be odd for an inscription beneath a portrait to have been elaborately joined on to the beginning of the poem.
page 147 note 3 In this connection the suggestion that Virgil may have meant to leave these verses unfinished is not relevant, but the reader may be referred to Crump, loc. cit. 8–15, and to Goold, loc. cit. 150–2.
page 147 note 4 This consideration would not apply if arma virumque were understood as a hendiadys; but even so the phrase is slightly odd; Fitz-Hugh, loc. cit., for one, speaks of ‘the abrupt hendiadys’ (‘abrupt’ must be a borrowing from Henry). However, it is clear that the interpretation vir armatus does not cover the contents of the Aeneid nearly as well as the interpretation vir (cf. Aen. 1–6) et arma (cf. Aen. 7–12).
page 147 note 5 Henry, p. 5 (quoted by Prof. Austin, p. 115). It must be remembered that one only does justice to a quotation from Henry if one bears in mind that it was his consistent habit to express himself in a very forceful and somewhat loquacious way. The feeling that there is something odd about the beginning of the Aeneid with arma virumque did not cease with the nineteenth century; cf., e.g., Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (1968), 36.Google Scholar
page 147 note 6 Prof. Austin continues: ‘Fraenkel has shown this law at work in connexion with the Culex.’ In connection with the Culex the question is one of biographical interest resulting in a demand for early works, whereas here the supposed demand is for additions to the beginning of a well-known poem, to mend its imperfections. The cases are so different that there is no point in comparing them.
page 148 note 1 Cf. Fitz-Hugh, loc. cit. I mention this only as a small additional point. It can be objected to my including it that Virgil may have been imitating ảείδωStu of the Ilias Parva; this is possible, but I am inclined to think that Virgil's own usage would have carried more weight with him than his desire to imitate the Ilias Parva in a question of as little moment as the choice of a tense.
page 148 note 2 By Kenney, loc. cit.