Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-05T17:26:46.633Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Three notes on Virgil, Aeneid 2

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Helen Gasti
Helen Gasti
Affiliation:
University of Ioannina
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Aeneas begins his narrative with the story of the Trojan Horse. The Greeks, after constructing a huge wooden horse, within which they hide a great many armed soldiers, flee the land. The Trojans rejoice, thinking that they have driven off their opponents. Lines 27–8 express the joy of the Trojans as they visit the Greek camp:

iuuat ire et Dorica castra

desertosque uidere locos litusque relictum

It is disputed whether desertos and relictum are used with an attributive or predicative function. The repeated desertus (24 huc se prouecti deserto in litore condunt, i.e. the Greeks) directs the reader's attention to its earlier use in an attributive function (‘they hid on the vacant shore of Tenedos’). The image of the deserted shore of Tenedos is clearly meant to suggest the potential destructiveness of the Doric camp and shore deserted now. Such an interpretation seems to be further supported by the predicative use of desertos and relictum, since we see the Greek camp through the eyes both of Aeneas and of his countrymen.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 52 , 2006 , pp. 128 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Austin, R. G. (1955) P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos liber quartus, Oxford.Google Scholar
Austin, R. G. (1964) P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos liber secundus, Oxford.Google Scholar
De Rosalia, A. (1984) ‘allitterazione’, in Enciclopedia virgiliana, vol. 1, Rome, 113–16.Google Scholar
Harrison, S. J. (1997) Vergil Aeneid 10 with introduction, translation, and commentary, Oxford (1st edn., 1991).Google Scholar
Henry, J. (1878) Aeneidea or critical, exegetical, and aesthetical remarks on the Aeneis, vol. 2, Dublin.Google Scholar
Leone, L. R. (1987) ‘mitto’, in Enciclopedia virgiliana, vol. 3, Rome, 553–4.Google Scholar
Molyneux, J. H. (1986) ‘Sinon's narrative in Aen. II’, Latomus 45, 873–7.Google Scholar
Moskalew, W. (1982) Formular language and poetic design in the Aeneid, Mnemosyne suppl. 73, Leiden.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Most, G. W. (2001) ‘Memory and forgetting in the Aeneid’, Vergilius 47, 148–70.Google Scholar
Mynors, R. A. B. (1969) P. Vergili Maronis opera, Oxford.Google Scholar
Silk, M. S. (1974) Interaction in poetic imagery with special reference to early Greek poetry, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, S. C. (1999) ‘Remembering the enemy: narrative, focalization, and Vergil's portrait of Achilles’, TAPA 129, 225–62.Google Scholar
Tosi, C. F. (1985) ‘geminatio’, in Enciclopedia virgiliana, vol. 2, Rome, 646–9.Google Scholar
Williams, R. D. (1962) Aeneidos liber III, Oxford.Google Scholar
Williams, R. D. (1972) The Aeneid of Virgil, books 1–6, London.Google Scholar
Wills, J. (1996) Repetition in Latin poetry. Figures of allusion, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar