Sure. One might doubt individual claims, but it's not hard to find places
where enclosing word order suggests enclosing content. Off the top of my
head: Horace 1.5 quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa ....where the boy
embraces Pyrrha and is surrounded by the roses, Ovid Met 1.555 (Apollo)
complexusque suis ramos ut membra lacertis; Gallus frag 1 (the original
line, not the papyrus): uno tellures dividit amne duas. On medio cf. R
Thomas, 1983. "Virgil's Ecphrastic Centerpieces." HSCP 87:175-84 Aen's
shield: in medio classis aeratas....
>I wonder if the Mantovani would care to consider whether a phenomenon
>which one might call in Latin poetry actually exists or not.
>
>In the line " Nocte volat caeli medio terraeque per umbram"(Æneid
>iv.184) we have a description of Fama flying through the night, halfway
>between heaven & earth. When I first read this as a undergraduate, it
>struck me that there was a pictorial component in the word order.
>"Nocte" & "umbram" enclose the line, or,one could almost say, envelope
>it in darkness. The word "medio" itself is literally in the middle of
>the line with three words on either side of it; and is also placed
>midway between the words"heaven"("caeli") & "earth"("terraeque")!
>
>I was heartened to find a similar observations made about other lines by
>Virgil and Horace in the website of a English Latin mistress (see
>WEBSITE Pyrrha's Roman Pages http://www.pyrrha.demon.co.uk).
>
>Is there any merit in this observation or is it a mare's nest like the
>numerical fantasies of G.E.Duckworth.
>
>PeterJVD Bryant
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Jim O'Hara James J. O'Hara
Professor of Classical Studies & Chair Classical Studies Dept.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Wesleyan University
860/685-2066 (fax: 2089) Middletown CT 06459-0146
Home Page: http://www.wesleyan.edu/classics/faculty/jim.html
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