Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-8zxtt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T16:24:39.188Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gnawing at the End of the Rope: Poets on the Field in Two Vergilian Catalogues1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Martha Malamud
Martha Malamud*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
Get access

Extract

(Iliad 2.603-14)

They who held Arkadia under the sheer peak, Kyllene,

beside the tomb of Aipytos, where men fight at close quarters,

they who dwelt in Orchomenos of the flocks, and Pheneos,

about Rhipe and Stratia and windy Enispe;

they who held Tegea and Mantineia the lovely,

they who held Stymphalos, and dwelt about Parrhasia,

their leader was Angkaios' son, powerful Agapenor.

Sixty was the number of their ships, and in each ship

went many men of Arkadia, well skilled in battle.

Agamemnon the lord of men himself had given

these for the crossing of the wine-blue sea their strong-benched vessels,

Atreus' son, since the work of the sea was nothing to these men.

The Iliadic catalogue of ships stands as a monument to the victory of memory over time. Through the medium of hexameter verse, the names and deeds of the dead have been recalled and passed on to the living. The device of the catalogue, in fact, has the potential to stand as a pure model of epic recollection: the listing of names, places, and numbers of men, along with particular details, such as the Arkadians' ignorance of seafaring, provides the illusion that what is recalled is fact, that the poem is a screen on which the reality of the past is projected to the audience of the present for the purpose of commemoration, the safeguarding of communal memory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , 1998 , pp. 95 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1998

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.)

Footnotes

1.

I would like to thank Dave Fredrick, Alan Heinrich, Holt Parker, and Don McGuire for comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and note that I borrowed my title from William Levitan's ‘Dancing at the End of the Rope: Optatian, Porfyry and the Field of Roman Verse’, TAPA 115 (1985), 245-70. Translations of the Iliad are from The Iliad of Homer, translated and with an introduction by Richmond Lattimore (Chicago 1951). Other translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

References

2. Kirk, G.S., The Iliad: A Commentary (Cambridge 1985), 166–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar provides a good introduction to the problems, along with a selective but useful bibliography of works on the catalogue.

3. Ford, A.L., Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca 1992), 73Google Scholar.

4. Ford (n.3 above), 77.

5. Kirk (n.2 above), 167.

6. Theocritus Id. 16.29.

7. Nor are they transparently clear in the Homeric poems. See Ford (n.3 above), Chapter 4 (‘Signs of Writing in Homer’), for a good discussion of the problems of interpretation of in the Iliad.

8. On writing vs. monumental art as forms of commemoration, see Steiner, Deborah Tarn, The Tyrant’s Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece (Princeton 1994)Google Scholar.

9. There are many discussions of Vergil’s catalogues, their organisation and their meaning. A representative sampling: Cook, A.M., ‘Vergil, Aen. VII.641ff.’, CR 32 (1919), 103fGoogle Scholar.; Fraenkel, E., ‘Some Aspects of Aeneid VII’, JRS 35 (1945), 1–14Google Scholar; Williams, R.D., ‘The Function and Structure of Virgil’s Catalogue in Aen. 7’, CQ n.s. 11 (1961), 146–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lesky, A.Festschrift Buechner (Wiesbaden 1970), 189ffGoogle Scholar; Saylor, Charles, ‘The Magnificent Fifteen: Vergil’s Catalogues of the Latin and Etruscan Forces’, CP 69 (1974), 249-57Google Scholar; Harrison, E.L., ‘Virgil’s Introduction of Mezentius: Aeneid 7.647–8’, PVS 19 (1988), 70–77Google Scholar; O’Hara, James, ‘Messapus, Cycnus, and the Alphabetical Order of Vergil’s Catalogue of Italian Heroes’, Phoenix 43 (1989), 35–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richard F. Moorton, , ‘The Innocence of Italy in Vergil’s Aeneid’, AJP 110 (1989) 105–30Google Scholar; and see also the commentaries of Fordyce, Harrison, Nettleship-Conington and Williams ad loc., and Fowler, Warde, Virgil’s Gathering of the Clans (Oxford 1918)Google Scholar.

10. See Horsfall, N. and Bremmer, J. eds., Roman Myth and Mythography (London 1987 = BICS Suppl. 52), 8Google Scholar, and N. Horsfall, Enciclopedia Virgiliana s.v. Messapus. This displacement is typical of Vergil’s practice in the second half of the Aeneid: ‘with curious implausibility he attaches his geographically named heroes to parts of the country remote from those to which the names belong,’ as Fordyce puts it (P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Libri VII-VIII, with commentary by C.J. Fordyce [Oxford 1977], ad Aen. 7.532); he goes on to cite the examples of Umbro, Massicus and Ufens.

11. O’Hara (n.9 above), 35–38. For ancient sources, see Adler, , ‘Kyknos’, RE 11 (1922), 2438–41Google Scholar, and Boemer, F., P.Ovidius Naso: Metamorphosen. Kommentar. Buch XII-XIII (Heidelberg 1982) ad Met. 12.64–145Google Scholar.

12. Servius ad Aen. 7.691.

13. An excellent place to begin tracking down swan lore in antiquity is Ahl’s, F.M. ‘Amber, Avallon, and Apollo’s Singing Swan’, AJP 103 (1982), 373–411Google Scholar. Among the ancient sources who link swans with poetry, Ahl cites Plato Rep. 620A, Phaedo 84D–85B; Callimachus Hymn 4.249–55; Aelian On the Characteristics of Animals 11.1; Pausanias 10.30.3; Oppian Cynogetica 2.540–50. For extensive citation of ancient sources on swans, see Thompson, D’Arcy, A Glossary of Greek Birds (London and Oxford 1936), 179–86Google Scholar. Also available, though not as useful as Thompson: Capponi, Filippo, Ornithohgia Latina (Genova 1979)Google Scholars.v. olor, and Pollard, John, Birds in Greek Life and Myth (Plymouth 1977)Google Scholar, esp. 144–46.

14. On Ennius and Homer, see Dominik, W., ‘From Greece to Rome: Ennius’ Annales’, in Boyle, A.J. (ed.), Roman Epic (London 1993), 37–58Google Scholar.

15. Ennius’ reasons for choosing the peacock are unclear—he may, as has been conjectured, have felt that it had a special link to Pythagoras because of its association with Samos, or he may have been familiar with the notion that the peacock symbolised immortality because its flesh did not decay, first attested in Augustine (Civ. Dei 21.4.1). See Skutsch, O., The Annals of Q. Ennius (Oxford 1985), 164fGoogle Scholar.

16. Skutsch (n.15 above), 147–53, who cites the other ancient testimonia, including Tertullian de an. 33.8: pauum se meminit Homerus Ennio somniante; sed poetis nec uigilantibus credam. et si pulcherrimus pauus el quo uelit colore cultissimus, sed tacent pennae, sed displicel uox, et poetae nihil aliud quam cantare malunt. damnatus est igitur Homerus in pauum, non honoratus (‘In Ennius’ dream, Homer recalled he was a peacock, but I wouldn’t trust poets even when they are awake. And even if the peacock is most beautiful and best decorated with any colour you choose, nevertheless his wings are silent, his voice is unpleasant, and poets prefer singing to everything else. So Homer was condemned, not honoured, by being a peacock’).

17. Persius prologus 1–9.

18. Skutsch (n.15 above), 164 n.19: ‘Had Ennius remembered that passage, he might indeed have felt that these two birds were no longer available to him as recipients for the soul of Homer, but it would also have driven home to him the incongruity of the peacock.’

19. A similar story linking master to disciple through swan imagery is told about Socrates, who is said to have dreamed that a swan flew into his breast the night before Plato came to be his student (Pausanias 1.30.3), cited by Ahl (n.13 above), 376. Lucretius links the swan to what seems to be specifically Alexandrian poetics at 4.180–82 (= 4.909–11), comparing the short song of the swan to the clamor of cranes, and alluding to a similar use of the swan topos in Antipater of Sidon (AP 7.713.7f.). See Kenney, E.J., ‘Doctus Lucretius’, Mnemosyne 23 (1970), 366–92, at 371fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. See A.J. Boyle, ‘The Canonic Text: Virgil’s Aeneid’, in Boyle (n.14 above), 80f.

21. Duckworth, G.E., ‘The significance of Nisus and Euryalus for Aeneid IX-XII’, AJP 88 (1967), 129–50Google Scholar; Pavlock, B., ‘Epic and Tragedy in Vergil’s Nisus and Euryalus Episode’, TAPA 115 (1985), 207–24Google Scholar. See especially Nugent, S.G., ‘Vergil’s “Voice of the Women” in Aeneid V’, Arethusa 25 (1992), 255ffGoogle Scholar.

22. See Arnott, W.G., ‘Swan Songs’, G&R 34 (1977), 149–53Google Scholar, and Ahl (n.13 above), 373–77, for discussion; see Thompson (n.13 above), 181f., for a compendium of ancient sources on the song of the dying swan.

23. Much has been written on this subject. See Giangrande, G., ‘Arte “Allusiva” and Alexandrian Poetry’, CQ 17 (1967), 85–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ross, D.O., Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy and Rome (Cambridge 1975)Google Scholar; Clausen, W., Virgil’s Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry (Berkeley 1986)Google Scholar; Thomas, R.F., ‘Vergil’s Georgics and the Art of Reference’, HSCP 90 (1986), 171–98Google Scholar. See the introduction to Farrell, J., Vergil’s ‘Georgics’ and the Traditions of Ancient Epic: The Art of Allusion in Literary History (New York and Oxford 1991)Google Scholar, and most recently and thoroughly in English, Hinds, Stephen, Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge and New York 1998)Google Scholar for a history of the scholarship on this subject.

24. See Ross (n.23 above), chapter 2, who refutes the notion that subjective love elegy should be seen as opposed to Callimachean aetiological poetry.

25. See Ross (n.23 above), 25f.

26. I agree with Ahl’s argument in favour of Cinyrus as the correct reading (see the apparatus in Mynors, [ed.], P. Vergili Maronis Opera [Oxford 1969]Google Scholar and Harrison [n.9 above] ad Aen. 10.186 for the variants of this name), which he bases on an etymological wordplay on the Greek κινυρóς: ‘A Ligurian prince whose name suggests lament in both his nation and his name (ligus and kinuros) might have appealed to Vergil’ (Ahl [n.13 above], 389n.53). I would further suggest that CuPAVO, which is elsewhere unattested, might well pun on the Latin for peacock, pauo, given the Ennian overtones of the swans in the Messapus passage.

27. Harrison (n.9 above), 70–77.

28. Man and river are also confused in the Aen. 7 catalogue, where Ufens appears first as a warrior leading a contingent (Aen. 7.745) and then as a river (7.802).

29. Ocnus, in fact, works both ways—if we exclude Mezentius and Mincius, he completes the list of alphabetical allies and maintains alphabetical order, but if we include them, he is the exception to otherwise carefully maintained alphabetical order.

30. See O’Hara (n.9 above) passim for the Alexandrianism of Vergil’s treatment of Messapus.

31. Cicero makes the connection between Dis and Pluto in De Natura Deorum 2.66. See Maltby, R., A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds 1991)Google Scholar s.v. Dis for further references to this wordplay.

32. Schulze, , Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen (Berlin 1904), 129fGoogle Scholar., conjectures that the names Ocnus, Aucnus (Silius Pun. 5.7 and 6.109) and Aunus (Aen. 11.700) are all related; Ocnus/Aucnus is not, however, actually attested as an Etruscan name. Thanks to Holt Parker for making this reference available to me.

33. D’Arcy Thompson (n.13 above), 211; Aristotle H.A. 9.617a5; Antoninus Liberalis vii.6 (myth of the metamorphosis of Autonous into an oknos).

34. Pausanias 10.29.2, tr. Jones.

35. bene adlusit nam Ardea quasi ardua dicta est, id est magna et nobilis, licet Hyginus in Italicis urbibus ab augurio auis ardeae dictam uelit (‘He made a good pun because Ardea is named as if from ardua, lofty, that is, great and noble, although Hyginus thinks in the Italian cities it was named from the augury of the heron bird’).

36. Fordyce (n.10 above), 187.

37. Oddly, he changes the adjective from cana to marina; as Wilkinson notes, there is no such bird. See Wilkinson, J.P., The Georgics of Virgil: A Critical Survey (Cambridge 1969), 275Google Scholar; Thomas, R.Virgil Georgics I-II (Cambridge 1988)Google Scholar, ad Geo. 1.361–64.

38. If this argument is correct, one can observe a nice symmetry in Vergil’s construction of the two passages. In the simile in Aen. 7 the singing swans precede the raucous herons, just as in Aen. 10 the mournful Cycnus precedes and introduces the ominous Ocnus.

39. The possibility of such an anagrammatic play on words quite compelling, but the identification of Ocnus with Vergil does not depend upon it.

40. The concealed acrostic has been much discussed. See Jacques, J.-M., ‘Sur un acrostiche d’Aratos (Phén. 783–87)’, REA 62 (1960), 48–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ross (n.24 above), 28f.; Bing, Peter, ‘A Pun on Aratus’ Name in Verse 2 of the Phaenomena’, HSCP 93 (1990), 281–85Google Scholar; Thomas (n.38 above) ad Geo. 427–37. For further references, see Farrell (n.24 above), 81–83.

41. Haslam, Michael, ‘Hidden Signs: Aratus Diosemeiai 46ff., Vergil Georgics 1.424ff.’, HSCP 94(1992), 199–204Google Scholar.

42. Farrell (n.23 above), 82.

43. By my count, based on Warwick’s concordance, some form of mora or morari occurs 63 times in the Aeneid.

44. Aen. 4.76–79: incipit effari mediaque in uoce resistet;/nunc eadem labente die conuiuia quaerit,lliacosque iterum demens audire labores/exposcit pendetque iterum narrantis ab ore (‘she begins to speak and stops in mid-speech: now as the day slips away she asks again for the same banquet. Out of her mind, she begs again to hear the struggles of the Trojans and again she looks in suspense at his lips as he speaks’).

45. Masters, Jamie, Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Be Hum Civile (Cambridge 1992)Google Scholar, Chapter 1.

46. In addition to Masters (n.45 above), for discussion of relations between gestures of resistance within the text and narrative form see Quint, David, ‘Voices of Resistance: The Epic Curse and Camoes’s Adamastor,’ Representations 27 (1989), 111–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton 1993)Google Scholar; also Brooks, Peter, Reading for the Plot (New York 1984)Google Scholar.

47. A reluctance that characterises Aeneas’ own narrative of the fall of Troy and his subsequent wanderings, which he describes as an unspeakable sorrow narrated only under duress: infandum, regina, iubes renouare dolorem, Aen. 2.3. For the reluctance of the poet to speak, see in addition to Masters (n.45 above) Henderson, J.G.W., ‘Lucan/The Word at War’, in Boyle, A.J. (ed.), The Imperial Muse: To Juvenal through Ovid (Bendigo 1988), 122–64Google Scholar; O’Higgins, D. ‘Lucan as vates’, CA 7 (1988), 208–26Google Scholar.

48. Some key discussions of art and its failures in Vergil’s works include Johnson, W.R.Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil’s Aeneid (Berkeley 1976), 88–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fitzgerald, William, ‘Aeneas, Daedalus and the Labyrinth’, Arethusa 17 (1984), 51–65Google Scholar; Boyle, A.J., The Chaonian Dove: Studies in the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid of Virgil (Leiden 1986)Google Scholar.

49. Noted by Saylor (n.9 above).

50. For a discussion of this phenomenon elsewhere in Roman verse, see Hardie, Philip, The Epic Successors of Virgil: A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition (Cambridge 1993)Google Scholar, and for a stimulating discussion of similar tendencies in both Shakespeare and later critical discourse, see Garber, Marjorie, Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality (New York 1987)Google Scholar.

51. Aulus Gellius 17.17.1, discussed by Dominik (n.14 above), 37.

52. This paper was first presented to the 1998 meeting of the Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar in Christchurch, New Zealand; I thank the participants for their helpful comments. Much of the research was done during a semester’s leave generously supported by the American Council of Learned Societies.