I was sitting in a Seattle U-District coffee shop and browsed through the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for this Tuesday -- Sept. 8, 1998. I turned to the editorial section. There of all things was an analysis of the Clinton scandal using a quotation of book six from Virgil's Aeneid. It was by Gary Wills who --if I recall rightly -- was a Latin scholar before turning political commentator. Now the last thing I want to do is get into a political discussion about Clinton on this list but I think the Wills article shows how relevant the classics can be -- how relevant Virgil is!
The quote he used as "commentary" was Book Six, Line 126ff.: "easy is the descent to Avernus; the door of dark Dis stands open day and night. But to retrace your steps and come out to the air above, that is work, that is labor!" (the Guinagh translation). Wills also used Virgil's journey to Hell to comment on the relationship between public and private. One goes "within" in order to come out and share, for the common good, what one has learned. The modern day division of public and private is, according to Wills, a modern day curse. For the life of me I can't recall the title of Wills' article. I had to leave it and run. I'll go to the local library and make a copy though. Any way, get it and read it; it should be in most of the national newspapers this week. James C. Wiersum _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
