No bites yet on nature in the Aeneid. But I did just receive notice of a
new Georgics website:
"Vergil's Garden" by Holt Parker
http://classics.uc.edu/~parker/hortus/vergilsgarden.html
"Vergil's Garden is an illustrated guide to the plants in Vergil's
Georgics. I plan to expand the site later to include the Eclogues and
Aeneid."
Rationale:
"My students and I are triply removed from Vergil's world. First, we
are almost all city kids. We barely know a oak from an elm. Second,
we're Americans. Even if we have some vague mental picture of a pine
tree, we're probably thinking of an American Christmas tree, a scotch
pine (Pinus sylvestris) or the like, and not what Vergil saw: pinus the
huge, spreading Italian Umbrella Pine (Pinus pinea). Third, we're
separated by time. We read rosa, but we think huge hybridized tea roses
or long-stemmed Valentine roses the color of coagulated blood, rather
than the simpler flower of Vergil's day.
"This means that when we're reading Vergil, we look up ilex and we find
"holmoak." All we've done is translate one word we don't know into
another we don't know. The purpose of Vergil's Garden is to give us at
least some idea for what Vergil saw and smelled and tasted and heard.
"Ideally, of course, the only thing to do is for me and students to pack
our copies of Vergil and go to Italy. We'd spend the mornings going to
farms, parks, forests, and especially wineries, and the afternoons (post
nap) reading Latin together. Donations are gladly accepted."
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Dr. David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org david@virgil.org
English Department Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
East Carolina University Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude Fauchet
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