For whatever it is worth I am sending the list a part of the handbook I am working on - apologies to Leofranc since it does not necessarily reflect, yet his valuabke suggestions and corrections.
Hagendahl (1958 and 1967) are still the standard studies of patristic engagement with the classics, although Courcelle (1984), while unfortunately limited to the A, is a magnificent tool for tracing the use of that poem through late anitquity into the early Middle Ages. Despite the implications of arguments in Irvine (1994), none of the commentary collections can be identified as specifically Christian in origin, although Philargyrius 1 and 2 and the Scholia Bernensia have been clearly worked over by Christian scholars (see use of Orosius and Eusebius in the Scholia Bernensia) and include comments accepting the possibility of Christain prophetic allegory for Eclogue 4, the 'Messianic', a poem with an extensive critical literature which can only be touched upon here. It is possible that these 'Christian elements' are to be referred to Philargerius, Gaudentius and/ or Gallus - and that these commentators may represent a circle of grammatici working in Milan. It is also possible that the Christian elements represent later Insular extrapolations from Patristic sources. Courcelle (1957) is still the fullest and most balanced study of the patristic reaction to this text. Christian engagement with Vergil had two sources: first, his pre-eminent position in the literary culture and educational system of the Latin speaking areas of the empire; second, the apparent prophecy of Christ in the fourth Eclogue. It is possible that the second source proceeds as much from the first source as from any apparent shared imagery of Isaiah and Vergil. The attention lavished on Eclogue 4 is connected to Vergil's pre-eminence as not merely 'the poet', but 'the poet of the empire' for men like Constantine, who delivered a Christian imperial reading of Eclogue 4 in the Oratio Constantini, and his eldest son's tutor, Lactantius, who compared Isaiah and the Sibylline oracles using Eclogue 4 as a framework in his Divinae Institutiones (VII. 24, 7, CSEL 19). Constantine the Great's nearly line by line analysis of the fourth Eclogue, which insists on its prophetic nature, was composed originally in Latin and delivered by the Emperor at an Easter between 325 and 337, but survives only in a Greek translation and re-working by Eusebius as an appendix to his life of the Emperor. Monteleone (EV 1 913-5) drew attention to its similarity to Lactantius: Divinae Institutiones. Courcelle (1957 311) described Augustine as assimilating Constantine's reading of Vergil. Constantine suggested that the Erythraean Sibyl was filled with the true prophetic inspiration, while (Oratio Constantini XVIII) Vergil himself was not a prophet, but aware and committed to the hidden meaning of his words, which, out of consideration for personal safety and his audience's sensibilities, he had embodied in more traditional terms. For some scholars Jerome is the great biblical translator, for others, the most venomous tongued man of his generation. For students of Vergilian commentaries, however, his claim to fame is two-fold. First he was the student of Aelius Donatus; second, although speaking of Vergil with the greatest respect, calling him poeta eloquentissimus, insignis poeta, poeta sublimis, (Holtz 1985, 9), he would have no truck with the Vergilian fantasies of the 'muliercules' (Epistle 53. 6-7 CSEL 55). This is unlike Augustine, who accepted in De civitate Dei 10.27 (CCSL 47, 302-3) that Vergil, at least, was reporting the prophetic word of the Cumaean Sibyl. Nevertheless, Jerome had only limited effect. Quodvultdeus in De promissionibus et praedictionibus Dei (PL. 51) developed the essential idea behind the Vergilian prophecy. Isidore ensured that it could be read across Europe in a particular light: quarum omnium carmina efferuntur in quibus de Deo et de Christo et gentibus multa scripsisse manifestissime conprobantur(Etym. 8.8.7). Leopardi (EV 4, 422-3) has noted that in the earlier middle ages interpretation oscillated between the Christian and Servian interpretation according to the circumstances of the moment. One quotation given by Leopardi (423) from the ninth century Ms Valenciennes 394 is of particular interest since it reflects the opinion and experience of an early medieval teacher-commentator in the early middle ages: Volunt quidam ad Christianos referri et nouum saeculum sub nouo testamento per Christum dominum ex Maria uirgine natum renouatum. Unde beatus Augustinus in quadam homelia hunc uersum 'iam noua progenies caelo dimititur alto' de Christo predictum asseuerat. Licet sanctus Hieronimus hoc penitus neget, quia iuxta Pauli uocem misterium ab initio saeculi absconditum nemo principium huius mundi cognovit quod in fine saeculi per filium suum Deus pater ostendit. Allegory in the Vergilian commentaries has assumed a position for many modern medievalists which is out of all proportion to its actual place in the late imperial and early medieval commentaries. The reasons for this are complex, but the importance of the fourfold exegesis of scripture ( and the unspoken assumption the assumption that there was a monolithic approach to texts based on it from the fourth/fifth century onwards (see especially Robertson, () and Irvine (1994)), the very real importance of allegory to the reading of Homer (Lamberton,1989), the popularity of moral allegory and its place in the literature later Middle Ages and Renaissance are all contributing factors. Jones found 183 instances of allegorical interpretation in Servius, based on a definition of allegory as (130 note 2) 'any interpretations which are clearly "other than" or "different from" the ones which might be suggested by a literal rendering of Vergil's text.' This is a broad definition and a tiny percentage of the whole commentary. Perhaps as important, the Servian allegories are neither particularly consistant nor do they add up to an underlying fully articulated sub-text. In 'Vergilii vita de commentario Donati sublato' the commentator wrote (Hagen 1, 73-4): 'Illud tenedum esse praedicimus, in Bucolicis Vergilii neque nusquam neque ubique figurate aliquid dici, hoc est per allegoriam. Vix enim propter laudem Caesaris et amissos agros haec Vergilio conceduntur cum Theocritus simpliciter conscripserit, quem hic noster conatur imitari.' The material which lies behind BE, SB, P1, and P2 belongs to a tradition which is characterised by greater allegorization, at least in the E, a tradition from which Servius was at some pains at least at times to divert his students (as at E.1.1: et hoc loco Tityri sub persona Vergilium debemus accipere; non tamen ubique, sed tantum ubi exigit ratio, or his comment on E 3.71 AUREA MALA DECEM MISI ... et volunt quidam hoc loco allegoriam esse ad Augustum de decem eclogis: quod superfluum est: quae enim necessitas hoc loco allegoriae, a passage of particular interest since Boniface clearly expects his sister to know the allegorization of the apples as poetry in line 11 of the preface to his Enigmata (1968, 279): aurea nam decem transmissi poma sorori. Compare SB 3.70-71: PUERO SILVESTRI EX ARBORE LECTA \ AUREA MALA DECEM MISI. Allegorice ex agresti carmine decem eclogas misi Octaviano scriptas. ... ALTERA, Georgica vel Aeneidos). Allegorical readings of Vergil were accepted by learned pagans, but not of the sort which we find in Fulgentius (for Fulgentius see EV II. 603-4) or applied to biblical narrative. Starr (1995) who argued for the importance of allegory within the ancient readings of E using E. 7 as a leading case. He began (1995,130) by identifying the types of allegory which commentators and their audience thought that the poets of the early empire used: the simple expedient of substituting metrically equivalent names as, following DS at E. 10. 2, 'Lycoris' for 'Cytheris': Lycoris pro Cytheris; licet enim poetis alia nomina pro aliis ponere, an advance from this which then assumed that there was 'a straight forward one-to-one correspondence' of characters in a poem' to real contemporary (to later readers, historical) people, and finally the sort of readings which we find on E. 1.38 and 39 where not only characters, but individual parts of the landscape represent the poet's contemporaries: 38. TITYRUS Vergilius. PINUS Roma. 39: FONTES senatores. Arbusta fructeta, id est scolastici. The uncharacteristic extravagance of this last interpretive position must be seen within both the lacuna from E 1: 37 -2: 10 in a from which all our manuscripts descend (see Thilo and Hagen 3.1.10, apparatus: Servianus ad 1.38-2.10 commentarius interiit. nam scholia in [P] [H] [R] [M] libris ad eos uersus adscriptae Iunii Filarggirii grammatici explanatione petita sunt.). Lambert's suggestion (1986, 92),that the text has been highly contaminated or even replaced between E 1.38 and 2. 10 with Philargyrius because of the homosexual love explicit in the E 2 was treated with more circumspection in Philargyrius is interesting, but is not without problems. On a very simple level it would not be necessary to drop all these lines or to pull out a full quire to avoid scandal. Further one could have hardly expected Servius to have become a respected teacher, co-opted into Macrobius's Saturnalia as the ideal grammarian if he had treated E 2 with anything but the greatest discretion. Starr (1995, 131) called attention to the particular bigraphical nature of this allegory: The biographical allegory which we find in our commentaries is pervasive, in that virtually everything can be taken for something else, but it is historical and biographical, not philosophical or moral. Since there was little or no tradition of using biographical allegory to interpret pastoral poetry, the use of this interpretive strategy represents a choice exercised by the readers of the Eclogues as members of an interpretative community.. Later readers were, however, as Starr observed, lead into this strategy almost by default: although Servius, and one assumes Donatus were aware of the Theocritian tradition (interesting on this point is the Servian comment noted by Starr (132,n19): intentio poetae haec est, ut imitetur Theocritum Syracusanum, meliorem Moscho et ceteris qui bucolica scripserunt, - unde est <VI 1> PRIMA SYRACOSIO DIGNATA EST LUDERE VERSU NOSTRA - et aliquibus locis per allegoriam agat gratias Augusto vel aliis nobilibus, quorum favore amissum agrum recepit. in qua re tantum dissentit a Theocriti versibus facit, quos ab illo dictos constat esse simpliciter.), There is is probably little which survives in the tradition that arose from a first hand knowledge of the Idylls or their influence. As Starr(19995, 131)wrote: instead of recognizing literary commonplaces, the scholiasts discover history and biography ... yet literary ignorance in itself does not sufficiently explain why readers chose biographical allegory as their interpretative strategy, since allegory started to surface at a time near Vergil's own, when the literary background was still relatively accesible. In defense of such a course, readers in late antiquity, and earlier even Quintilian (8.6.46-7: Hoc enim loco praeter nomen cetera propriis decisa sunt verbis: verum non pastor Menalcas, sed Vergilius est intelligendus. Habet usum talis allegoriae frequentur oratio, sed raro totius: plerumque apertis permixta est.), could have pointed (Starr, 1995, 131-2) to the apparent encouragement by Vergil of biographical readings at E 5: 86-7 and of the opening lines of E 2 and 3, but as Starr wrote (1995,133) concuring with Horsfall's estimation of the ancient lives of Vergil: once the Eclogues had been used to help create the few meager 'facts' about Vergil's life, those 'facts' were then used in a perfect circle to illuminate the very work which, in turn created the detailed biographical allegory of the Eclogues. To this biographical impulse which must have seemed built into the text to these readers, were added (Starr, 1995, 133) the assumption that a book of poems must have a single theme or subject, the stated belief of both Servius and Tiberius Claudius Donatus, and the assumption that the poems were understandable only in the historical context of the rivalry between Octavian and Anthony and the literary rivalries of Vergil's own early career. It is difficult, in fact, even accepting Starr's dictum(1995, 134): Their interest in history, however, is a code-breaker's interest in a code: they are interested not in placing the Eclogues in Vergil's historical context but rather in breaking the code, in removing the characters's masks and revealing their true identities. not to have a certain general sympathy with their assumption of historical allegory even while wondering at the excesses of the method, although a modern reader would probably agree with Starr's assessment of the limitations of this approach particularly when pursued to the exclusions of all others. Irvine (1994, 131-41, esp. 133-5) in the course of his attempt to define the essential nature of the textual culture which developed in late antiquity and dominated the earlier middle ages, argued for the importance of allegorical methods and assumptions in Servius which were he believed were directed, at least at times, towards the establishment of Vergil as 'pagan scripture'. He also insisted on the importance of the 'allegorization' of E 4 to the medieval reception of Vergil. He is, perhaps to be censured for not putting the allegorical readings, (for example the anger of Juno and the Pythagorean implications of Y) in the context of the commentary as a whole. There is also a tendency to ignore classical and late classical definitions of allegory and to blur the distinction between metaphor and, simile and symbol. He described at some length the use of historical/biographical allegory in the Vergilian canon, but overlooked, the implications for its use in medieval writers and its connection with early medieval notions of the purpose of history and epic poetry. Historical/biographical allegory, which has a good or better pedigree as moral allegory, has been unfairly neglected by students of medieval literature, possibly because it does not offer the opportunities for reading works whose historical milieu are imperfectly understood or unknown, although a political allegory has been suggested for the Irish Táin Bó Cuailnge (Kelleher, 1971). Irvine does not refer to Wlosok(1985) whose brief study of the theory of gemina doctrina as found in passages of both Vergil and Ovid. Both EB1 and EB2 (Thilo and Hagen 3.2.77-8) offered Mary as an alternate identification (the other being Justice) for the VIRGO of line 6, SB (Hagen 1.107) agreed, reading 'vel secundum nos Maria' an identification shared with Quodvultdeus. Unlike Constantine, but perhaps following Augustine, P2 apparently worked on the assumption Vergil was ignorant of the deeper meaning of his poem(Thilo and Hagen 3.2.77): id est Augustum dicit aestimauit enim Virgilius quod de Augusto praedixit Sibylla, cum de Christo omnia profetavit. P1, however, reads 'idest quidam dicunt inspiratum eum de Salvatoris adventu ... quidam de adventu Salonini Pollionis, quidam de adventu Octaviani dixisse.' SB (H1, 107) only inserts: 'vel Christus'. EB1 and EB2 (Thilo and Hagen 3.2.79) and SB (Hagen 1.108) all offer alternative scholia which refer E.4. 13-4 to man's justification by Christ. None, however, jettison the historical allegory; the Christian comments on E 4. 13-4 cannot be considered strictly identical. Compared to Irving, Robertson (1967) is a much slighter work; nevertheless, it is a balanced introduction to the classical understanding and use of allegory and to the development of allegory, first as a critical method and then as a genre, and Vergil's use of personification and the possibility of political allegory in his works. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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