From: "Ramon Sevilla" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 19:31:17 -0600
Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit . Aeneid I, 203. I marvel how Virgil in Aeneid I, 195 ss. recalls the hardships he and his comrades have formerly endured. He doesn’t mention anything successful or prosperous. However sharing wine with his company Aeneas speaks hopefully looking forward to a future prosperity which will be the effect of a painful parturition. Furthermore Aeneas refers to a deity "sine nomine", an unknown god: Dabit deus his quoque finem. Is it appropriate to find out here something akin to a biblical Anamnesis? David R. Slavitt writes about the fourth book of the Georgics, that it is a book "already nudging at the limits of nature... he (Virgil) is deliberately venturing beyond the borders of ordinary experience and into the realm of the supernatural. Or, putting it another way, he is exploring the confines of reason and stepping, or leaping, beyond and into the territory of faith". D.R. Slavitt, Virgil, Yale University Press,1991. I wonder what does Virgil mean when he mentions an unnamed god as in Georgics I, 221: deum namque ire per omnia. Or in Aeneid I, 199: dabit deus his quoque finem. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
