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I have been enjoying this thread.
<BR>I have not seen it noticed that Mynors in his lectures on the Georgics
at Oxford in the 50s, though not in his edition (I wonder why?), explained
<I>laetas segetes</I> in the first line as a pun directed at two audiences.
>From its cognates the adjective <I>laetus</I> may originally (or for the
purposes of a pun) have come from a verb for manuring fields or an activity
even more basic. Thus to a good Italian or Cisalpine farmer the phrase
seems to refer to "properly fertilized crops", rather than to the "happy
crops" imagined by those with no experience of the real thing.
<BR>This has always seemed to me <I>facetus</I> in its proper sense: witty,
well-phrased, an unobtrusive score off those who don't know all the poet
expects them to know.
<BR>I see similar unobtrusive <I>facetiae</I> in Vergil's descriptions
<BR>(1) of how Aeneas recognizes his mother Venus in Aeneid I: pedes vestis
defluxit ad imos;/ et vera incessu patuit dea (404-5). ("Her garment flowed
down to the bottom of her feet; and in her movement the true goddess was
revealed.") Aeneas finally recognizes his mother in the way she now appears
to him as she hastens away. Well, which meaning does <I>defluxit</I> have
here? Does the hunter's dress in which Venus has been disguised slip down
and revert to the flowing robe associated with statues of Venus clad (with
de- in the sense of "down along" her legs until its edge touches her ankles)?
Or does the robe fall right off (de-) beneath her feet (pedes ad imos)
and does the goddess step away stark naked (vera ... patuit dea)? The verb
is used in just this sense by Ovid when Arachne's hair fell off in her
transition to a spider. The mere suggestion of a second meaning hidden
in an ambiguous verb (and this is how I take Vergil's humor at this point)
highlights the paradox of just how the goddess of sex did get to be recognized
by her son.
<BR>(2) of Aeneas's sudden appearance bright and shiny out of the cloud
in which Venus has hidden him:
<BR>repente/ scindit se nubes et in aethera purgat apertum (1.586-7). Contrary
to the translations, there is no direct object for purgat other than the
se that it shares with scindit. The two verbs associated with the subject,
the cloud, appear therefore to describe a biological function by which
the cloud disposes of Aeneas and Anchises on the ground. Does this justify
the description of Aeneas by some of my students as "the little shit, who
was too much of a coward to approach Dido himself"?
<BR>(3) of Aeneas's fixed attention to the relief sculpture on the temple
in Book I, just at the moment when he first catches sight of Dido (sc.
out of the cloud): dum stupet obtutuque haeret defixus in uno (495, "while
he is struck dumb and stands glued to the spot in a single stare").
Well, just what is he staring at? Why, the nipple of the Amazon Penthesilea
(492), as she puts on her golden belt beneath it and dares to do battle
with men.
<BR>In an article in Vergilius a few years ago I suggested that Vergil,
like other students of Parthenius, is fascinated by the "Erotic Dispositions"
of women, a subject on which Parthenius offered Cornelius Gallus a handbook.
The speeches of Venus offer fertile research for those interested in Vergil's
particular sense of double entendre, especially when she compares Antenor's
successful actions to Aeneas's failure.
<P>Rob Dyer (happily retired)
<BR>63 rue du Chemin Vert
<BR>75011 Paris, France</HTML>
</x-html>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue Mar 09 09:19:56 1999
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Please don't reply to the Classics Pages probe. I believe it was sent to
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