Yvan Nadeau wrote: >many years ago I wrote a brief note for Latomus: > >"Caesaries Berenices (or, the Hair of the God)", Latomus, 41 (1982) >101-3. > >I discovered after it had appeared in print that a number of my >observations had already caught the eye of the lynx-like Agatha >Thornton. But obviously both she and I wasted our sweat if this is >still thought to be a joke, nearly twenty years later!!
It's nearly 40 years since Agathe H. F. Thornton wrote her article, "A Catullan Quotation in Virgil's Aeneid Book VI", AUMLA 17 (1962), 77-9. She argues that there is no incongruity because the Catullan line, if properly read, is not at all humorous, and Fletcher's reference to Pope is ill-considered: "This Lock has been carried off by Zephyros, and laid in the lap of Venus, who has changed it into a brilliant constellation, assigning it its place between the Virgin, the Lion, Callisto and Bootes. It is this divine Lock that from the vault of heaven addresses her former Lady, the Queen of Egypt. The main burden of her speech is sorrow at her severance from her mistress. She laments the inexorable harshness of the iron that cut her off (47). She recalls with longing her sweet companionship with the queen. <snip> What more apt quotation could Virgil have put in the mouth of Aeneas to express his sorrow at his forced departure from Dido?" And she concludes: "What seems to be in the way of a serious interpretation of the above line is the fact that either the Catullan line is taken as comic or else the equation of a lock of hair with Aeneas is felt to be incongruous. Questions such as these depend on the taste of the time. Whether Catullus found cause to smile at this line is hard to decide, but not important, because he was translating, not composing himself. The corresponding Greek line could not possibly have been humrous in the Alexandrine original, because such humour would have been most irreverent from a poet to his queen. It is only when this line is taken as part of an elaborate homage, wrought with the highest art and dedicated by the poet to a great queen, that it can be appreciated. This is surely how Virgil took it, and together with all the association of its context placed it in the mouth of Aeneas, expressing in the most succinct way by this quotation all that is involved in the relationship between Dido and Aeneas." (I haven't yet seen Yvan Nadeau's Latomus article.) Simon Cauchi, Freelance Editor and Indexer Hamilton, New Zealand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
