1. I have read the Eranos article with great interest, though in the end
I remain attached to the traditional text. The proposal is to detach the
first four of the six 'Gates of Sleep' lines and associate them
with the mysterious elm tree of the Vestibule, where vana somnia -
'deceptive dreams', I suppose, nestle. The principal argument is that this
change of text would remove the awkwardness from 'His dictis' - 'with
these words' - which on the received text seems not to follow on any words
of Anchises - a matter which has been discussed in the Mantovano
correspondence before. The argument refers to the disquiet over the whole
passage expressed in the later nineteenth century by Nauck and Ribbeck.
2. The attempt by my colleague Gordon Cockburn to change the text,
so as to reverse the significance of the Gates is rejected because it does
too much violence to the text. I agree with this rejection, but I do think
that there is some force in GC's remark about the awkwardness of 'sed' in
l.896. 'The other gate is of shining ivory, but the spirits of the dead
send false dreams out to the heavens': a strange sentence. The first
complaint about it (that I know of) is from Joseph Trapp, ?1721.
3. It's good to see someone speaking up for the Nauck-Ribbeck
tradition, which seems to me a fairly logical development of the
position taken by Heyne. H, in his long excursus, contends that all
attempts to give the Gates dramatic purpose have failed and therefore
concludes that the passage 'does not contribute to the economy of the
poem'. It seems to me a short and logical step from saying that the
passage does not contribute to the Oeconomia Carminis to saying that the
passage does not contribute to the Carmen at all: therefore the text is
wrong, or at least written by V on a very bad day.
4. Still, one pays quite a heavy price, I think, for the transfer of the
four lines. 'Ibi' becomes hard to interpret: on the received text it
means 'at the location of the Gates' - what would it mean if the
traditional reference to the Gates had been excised? Moreover, does the
change in the text - a massive defiance of the ancient evidence - achieve
enough to be worthwhile? I'd expect any textual change to reduce the
shock which the received text delivers, as Cockburn's grand change does.
But if we move straight to the statement that 'Anchises, with these words,
sent his son out from the Ivory Gate' the shock remains. 'The Ivory Gate'
becomes a reference back to the earlier passage, where the deceptive
dreams cluster around the elm tree: we still find, with the old sense of
shock, that Anchises has chosen the Gate of False Dreams. In the Eranos
article there is some sympathy with the further change of 'eburna' to
'Averna', which I think was suggested by Nauck. The case for the first
change seems to get weaker if a second change, itself very major, is
required to support the first.
5. I find it difficult to see what the words 'porta Averna' would
refer to. One would expect some special Gate of Avernus to have been
identified earlier if it is to be the means of return. In any case,
Anchises does not live in the region of Avernus, but in a place with its
own sun and stars. He leads Aeneas back to the ordinary world through
fields of air, not through a subterranean passage.
6. 'His dictis' doesn't seem to me too hard to explain. The voices
of Anchises and of V himself have already began to merge in the Marcellus
passage. 'Purpureos spargam flores et fungar inani munere' surely refers
to V's own laying of flowers on poor M's grave and his own sense that
this was 'an empty service' which could not compensate for M's loss.
7. The proposed move for the four lines does not deal with the problem of
'sed', perhaps makes that problem a little worse. Slightly fractured
grammar may be understandable if V is contemplating, as Servius says that
he is, an element of falsehood in his own about his own work, not so
understandable if he is merely adding a topographical detail to his
account of the Vestibule of Hell.
8. Keeping the four lines where they are allows the connection with
Od.XIX - and thus with Homer's major reflection on poetry and the
constructive use of falsehoods - to be emphasised by a central location
in the whole body of the Aeneid, as it surely should be. Perhaps there is
also an allusion to Parmenides' journey to the Gates of Night and Day? -
Martin Hughes
On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Arne [iso-8859-1] Jönsson wrote:
>
> >
> >And while we're at it, does anyone have any views on the 64 million dollar
> >question i.e. the golden bough and the ivory gates? I remember being quite
> >taken with West's article where the golden bough reflected the "aureos
> >ramos" of Plato's poetry in Meleager's garland. In that context, it's
> >notable that "poluchromatos" (cp. "discolor" 6.204) is a Greek hapax
> >legomenon, according to a Hellenistic lexicographer, appearing in ... you
> >guessed it ... Plato.
> >
> As regards the problem of the ivory gates, I wish to draw attention to an
> article written by myself and a colleague ("A Note on Aeneid 6.893-8", in:
> Eranos 94, 1996, pp 21-28), where we demonstrate that there are good
> reasons to assume that that passage cannot have been written for that
> context originally. So the passage with the ivory gates does not primarily
> require interpretation, but raises a more fundamental question, namely the
> soundness of the received text.
>
> Docent Arne Jönsson
> Klassiska institutionen
> Sölvegatan 2
> S-223 62 LUND
> Sweden
> Tel: + 46 (0)46 222 34 23
> Fax: + 46 (0)46 222 42 27
>
>
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