>In Book VI, Aeneaus descends to the underworld. At the end of Book VI, we >are told that there are two gates through which dreams and ghosts ascend to >the world above: true ones pass through the gates of horn, false ones >through the gates of ivory. After his visit to the realm of the dead, we >are told, Aeneas and the Sibyl return to the world above through the gates >of ivory. I am stumped by the implications for what Aeneas has just >witnessed and the future of his epic.
I haven't been able to find (let alone search) mantovano's archives, but I remember someone writing to tell us of an article, published (I think) in a Scandinavian journal, in which it is argued that the text at the end of Book VI is corrupt. The passage about the gate of horn and the gate of ivory does not truly belong with the preceding narrative, but was placed there (presumably) by Varius and Tucca, Virgil's first editors who prepared his unfinished text for publication. Has anyone read this article? I for one would be grateful for a digest of its argument. (I remember the journal wasn't held in the local university library.) At all events, I long ago came to the conclusion that attempts to interpret this passage are futile, and I would very much like to know what evidence the authors of this article (I think there were two of them) put forward in support of their conclusion about the state of the text. Until I read about this new article in mantovano, I used to think that D. A. West's "The Bough and the Gate", reprinted in S. J. Harrison (ed.), Oxford Readings on Vergil's Aeneid (1990), offered the last word on the subject. Simon Cauchi, 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
