In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, David Wilson-Okamura <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >At 11:03 AM 10/18/01 +0100, Patrick Roper wrote: >>I thought that that might be the case, after all most creative people >>feel they could have done better - the stuff on the page, isn't quite >>what seemed to be in the mind. But do we know this is what Virgil >>thought? Did he say so somewhere? Or did one of his contemporaries >>say that of him? > >As Patrick Roper and Jim O'Hara point out, we need to be skeptical. In >addition to Thomas, see, for instance, Nicholas Horsfall, "Virgil: His Life >and Times," in _A Companion to the Study of Virgil_, ed. Nicholas Horsfall, >Mnemosyne Supplement 151 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 1-25.
Exactly. The all but explicit conclusion of Horsfall's analysis is that we do not even know *whether* Vergil wanted the _Aeneid_ burnt, never mind why. But the story is attractive on so many grounds: perfectionist poet, enlightened monarch, the rights of posterity against an author's wishes; after all, even those of us who are neither poets nor princes will be posterity to more and more authors as we grow older. (And if you rebel against the enlightened Augustus, then you can apply a different _color_, or in modern parlance spin, as Broch did.) It has also, from Hyginus onwards, licensed adverse criticism of particular passages within the supreme masterpiece: since Vergil recognized that his poem had faults, he must have agreed with the critic that this or that expression or assertion was one of them, and would have corrected it had he lived. The psychological utility of this safety-valve is rather more evident than its scientific value, since there is always someone else to say it isn't a fault at all (even in the case of the half-lines); readers just need the story to be true. Leofranc Holford-Strevens *_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* Leofranc Holford-Strevens 67 St Bernard's Road usque adeone Oxford scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter? OX2 6EJ tel. +44 (0)1865 552808(home)/267865(work) fax +44 (0)1865 512237 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) *_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
