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Turning the Tables: Various, Virgil and Lucan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Michael Dewar
Michael Dewar
Affiliation:
Christ Church, Oxford
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Extract

Of the four surviving fragments of Varius' De Morte1 perhaps the most widely discussed has been the first:

Vendidit hie Latium populis agrosque Quiritum

eripuit, fixit leges pretio atque refixit

This is imitated by Virgil, whose Sibyl says of a soul in Tartarus:

Vendidit hie auro patriam dominumque potentem

imposuit; fixit leges pretio atque refixit

Most commentators, quoting Cic. Phil. 12.5.12, connect both passages exclusively with Antony, and rightly point to Servius' words on v. 622, ‘possumus Antonium accipere’. What should be stressed, however, is that Servius also thinks the words ‘vendidit hie auro patriam’ have a general reference, but are at the same time designed to recall historical individuals, of whom he names two:

etiam haec licet generaliter dicantur, habent tamen specialitatem: nam Lasthenes Olynthum Philippo vendidit, Curio Caesari XXVII. S. Romam: de quo Lucanus <4.820> Gallorum captus spoliis et Caesaris auro.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , December 1988 , pp. 561 - 562
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

1 All quoted by Macrobius as models imitated by Virgil: for references see Morel's edition. Macrobius, however, apparently did not notice that fr. 4, the simile of the hunting dog chasing a stag which lies behind Eel. 8.88, is also imitated in the Aeneid: to fr. 4.3 ‘saevit in absentem’ cf. Aen. 9.63 (Turnus as a wolf) ‘saevit in absentis’, and see Clausen, W., Virgil's Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry (California, 1987), p. 162 n. 18Google Scholar.

2 Rostagni, A., ‘II De Morte di L. Vario Rufo’, RFIC 37 (1959), 380–1Google Scholar; Hollis, A. S., ‘L. Varius Rufus De Morte (Frr. 1–1 Morel)’, CQ 27 (1977), 188–9Google Scholar.

3 Art. cit. 188.

4 Lasthenes, a minor figure, is possibly Servius' own conjecture. He was the man who betrayed Olynthus to Philip II of Macedon: see RE 12.1.890 s.v. (1). According to Demosthenes 8.40) he was later killed by Philip.

5 A Hellenistic technique: see Clausen, op. cit., p. 20.

6 And hence possibly also recitation.

7 Art. cit. 391.

8 Fr. 1 Morel, above, and fr. 2 ‘incubat ut Tyriis atque ex solido bibat auro.’

9 Aen. 8.675ff. The luxurious life led by Antony and to which Varius alludes (fr. 2, above) is also perhaps detectable in ‘nine ope barbarica’ (8.685).

10 Varius' Augustanism can be seen elsewhere in his having composed a panegyric on Augustus fr. 7 Morel).