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An Anonymous Neo-Latin Eclogue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
An untitled and anonymous piscatory eclogue of 104 hexameters, published in Gilbert Cousin's Basel anthology, Bucolicorum autores (printed by Johannes Oporinus in 1546), is worth a page or two. Here the fisherman Cephylas asks Morson to repeat a famous and ancient prophecy of Venetian power. Morson agrees readily, and explains that the seer in question had lived centuries ago—during the reign of Saturn, in fact; he himself had learned of this while traveling with a friend from Padua to Venice: on coming in sight of Venice, the friend had narrated at length the prophecy, which Morson now proceeds to retail (16-96) to Cephylas. After the Trojan War, begins Morson, two Trojan princes (i.e., Aeneas and Antenor) had fled to Italy: one of them was to found the Roman race and a warlike, imperial city that would extend its power over Italians, Carthaginians, Britons, and others until a disastrous war between one man and his son-in-law (Caesar and Pompey) should bring on an empire that would eventually become no more than a shadow and a name (this phrase is not the only reminiscence of Lucan in the poem).
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1960