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V. Style, Language, Metre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
Extract
The excitement of the new critical and theoretical approaches applied to Virgil in the last thirty years should not make the reader forget the importance of a close attention to the linguistic and metrical detail of the text for a full appreciation of what Virgil is about. Virgilian ambition manifests itself not just in the extensiveness of the poems’ conceptual and allusive scope, but also in a microscopic attention to detail and to the relation of the detail to the wider context. The classic status that his poems immediately achieved was due, as much as to anything, to his perfection of the stylistic and metrical experiments of the previous two centuries of Latin poetry in order to forge a flexible and varied poetic manner, the master and not the slave of both Greek and Latin poetic traditions, responsive to context, and integral to the wider meanings and functions of the poems. For example, in a recent discussion of Virgil’s style, O’Hara draws attention to the fact that the ambiguity that has become so central to modern critics’ treatments of the meaning and ideology of the poem is generated partly by small-scale indeterminacies of syntax; and I have suggested that stylistic figures such as oxymoron and hypallage contribute to larger structures of paradox in the areas of poetics and ideology. Virgil’s liking for stylistic ambiguity and paradox also reminds us that his style is not ‘classic’ in the sense of a uniformly limpid and serenely balanced manner; his use of language can be difficult and unexpected, often straining at the limits of Latinity. While no later Latin poet can escape the influence of Virgil, it was left to Ovid to perfect ‘a poetic koine, a stylistic instrument which was freely manageable by writers of lesser genius. The Ovidian manner, as generations of clever English schoolboys have discovered, is imitable; Virgil’s is not.’
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References
1 J. J. O’Hara, in Martindale (1997), 249–51.
2 Hardie, P. R., ‘Virgil: a paradoxical poet?’, PLLS 9 (1996), 103-21Google Scholar.
3 Kenney, E. J., ‘The style of the Metamorphoses ,’ in Binns, J. W. (ed.), Ovid (London and Boston, 1973), 116-53, at 119Google Scholar.
4 General treatments: Palmer, L. R., The Latin Language (London, 1961), 111-18Google Scholar; Wilkinson, L. P., Golden Latin Artistry (Cambridge, 1963)Google Scholar; id., ‘The language of Virgil and Horace’, CQ 9 (1959), 181–92; Williams (1968), 722–43; Camps (1969), 61–74. Longer studies: Jackson Knight (1966), 180–281 (highly recommended); Quinn (1968), 350–440; Cordier, A., Etudes sur le vocabulaire épique dans l’Enéide (Paris, 1939)Google Scholar. There is a wealth of material (in German) in the stylistic and metrical appendices in Norden (1957). More specialized studies include: Nisbet, R. G. M., ‘The style of Virgil’s Eclogues ’, PVS 20 (1991), 1–14 Google Scholar; Austin, R. G., ‘Virgilian assonance’, CQ 23 (1929), 46–55 Google Scholar; Clarke, W. M., ‘Intentional rhyme in Vergil and Ovid’, TAPA 103 (1972), 49–77 Google Scholar; id., ‘Intentional alliteration in Vergil and Ovid’, Latomus 35 (1976), 276–300. Metre: Duckworth, G. E., Vergil and Classical Hexameter Poetry: A Study in Metrical Variety (Ann Arbor, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nussbaum, G. B., Vergil’s Metre (Bristol, 1986)Google Scholar; Winbolt, S. E., Latin Hexameter Verse (London, 1903) Google Scholar was written as an aid for versifiers, but is an excellent handbook for readers of Virgil as well.
5 Horsfall (1995), ch.5.
6 J. J. O’Hara in Martindale (1997), 241–58.
7 SeeHeinze (1993), 357.
8 Barchiesi, A., ‘Palinuro e Caieta. Due “epigrammi” virgiliani (Aen. V 870 sg.; VII 1–4)’, Maia 31 (1979), 3–11 Google Scholar. Barchiesi also shows that the ‘epigram’ at the end of book 5 is balanced by the ‘epigram’ on another Trojan lost on the journey, Caieta, at 7.1-4; fittingly these two funerary epigrams frame book 6, the ‘book of the dead’; Barchiesi also points to the contrast between the ‘unknown sand’ on which Aeneas imagines Palinurus’ body, and the name given by Caieta to ‘our shores’ at 7.1-2; after the revelations of book 6 the Trojans’ bewildered wandering over strange seas and lands has been replaced by a fuller knowledge of their destined home in Italy. Palinurus will himself give his name to an Italian landmark (6.381).
9 For the details see Williams (1960), pp. xxv-xxviii; the usual solution has been to argue that we have two versions which Virgil would have reconciled in the final revision of the poem. For alternative approaches see Brenk, F. E., ‘ Unum pro multis caput: myth, history, and symbolic imagery in Vergil’s Palinurus incident’, Latomus 43 (1984), 776–801 Google Scholar at 776 n. 3.
10 See Williams on 5.84-5; on Virgil’s use of iamque adeo ‘at this very moment’ (here contrasted with 835 iamque fere ‘at approximately this time’) see Austin on 2.567.
11 On the models see Steiner, H. R., Der Traum in der Aeneis (Bern, 1952), 78–85 Google Scholar; Virgil also draws on the death of Menelaus’ helmsman Phrontis, killed by Apollo’s darts, at Od. 3.278-83, and the death of Elpenor, who falls asleep on a roof and on waking plunges to his death, at Od. 10.552- 60. Within the Aeneid Somnus’ two-stage assault on Palinurus, attempting first persuasion in the disguise of a mortal, and then resorting to violence, is closely paralleled in the manner of Allecto’s assault on Turnus at 7.415-59. The precipitation of Palinurus from his post at 858–60 has a closer parallel within book 5 in the ejection of the helmsman Menoetes by the impatient Gyas in the ship-race at 172–82, a comic episode replayed as tragedy in the death of Palinurus, the first of a number of occasions in the Aeneid on which the thrills and spills of the games are echoed in the life and death struggles of the real business of the poem: see Putnam (1988), 75–6 (ibid., 93–104 for a lengthy discussion of the death of Palinurus).
12 Henry (1873-92), index s.w. ‘Theme and Variation’. Henry goes so far as to describe this as ‘the most pleasing peculiarity of the style of Virgil’.
13 See Pease on 4.522-7 (the most famous example in the Aeneid).
14 See Austin on 4.29.
15 See Winbolt (n. 4), 21–5 on ‘Pause after 1½ feet’.
16 Henry suggests three possibilities: ‘(1) “the hour is given (you) for rest”; (2) “the hour is sacred to rest”; (3) “the hour is being given (by others) to rest”, i.e., everyone is asleep.’
17 On homoeoteleuton see Williams on 5.845; Norden on 6.638ff.
18 The ambiguity is noted by Putnam (1988), 97. See OLD s.w. caput 4 ‘The life of a person’; pono 10b ‘to yield up (life)’.
19 For further discussion of the line see Offermann, H., ‘Vergil, Aeneis 5.847 und die Pali-nurusepisode’, Hermes 99 (1971), 164-73Google Scholar, arguing that uix attollens . . . lumina is to be taken of Palinurus’ struggle against sleep, pointing among other things to Aen. 4.688-9 ilia grauis oculos conata attollere rursus | deficit (Dido’s struggle against death).
20 This is not Ovid’s only imitation of our passage: the weighty superincumbens (a Virgilian coinage, unless it is to be taken as two words super incumbens) is humorously used at Met. 15.21-2 hunc superincumbens pressum grauitate soporis | clauiger adloquitur, where Myscelos, already weighed down by sleep, is further oppressed by the incubus of the heavyweight Hercules. There may be a further joke in clauiger ‘club-bearing’ (claua); the adjective could also mean ‘tiller-bearing’ (clauus), and Palinurus goes down still clinging to the tiller of his ship (852 clauum = 859 gubernach).
21 See Hardie on 9.184-5, 187, 190.
22 De rer. nat. 1.6 te fugiunt uenti, te nubila caeli may be echoed in the description of Neptune’s calming of the weather at Aen. 5.821 fugiunt uasto aethere nimbi.