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Simultaneous Hunting and Herding at Ciris 297–300

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Catherine Connors
Catherine Connors
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Seattle
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Extract

Poetic incompetence is often blamed for infelicities or incongruities which appear in the poems collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, and in many cases such censure is justified. However, in the passage which is the subject of this note, Ciris 297–300, it is possible to reinterpret the incongruity which critics have remarked: when the pertinent evidence from antiquity is adduced, the lines are revealed as a display of scientific and etymological doctrina.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , December 1991 , pp. 556 - 559
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 I cite the text as printed by Lyne, R. O. A. M., Ciris: A Poem Attributed to Vergil (Cambridge, 1978).Google Scholar

2 At 153 n., in a discussion of an imperfect subjunctive in an unfulfilled wish referring to the past, Lyne cites Woodcock, E. C., A New Latin Syntax (London, 1959), pp. 88–9, section 116Google Scholar. Clear examples of imperfect subjunctive for pluperfect subjunctive cited by Woodcock include Plautus, Capt. 537, Ovid, Her. 10.133; add Plautus, Rud. 495.

3 Fairclough, H. R., Virgil with an English Translation, ii, Loeb Classical Library (London and New York, 1930).Google Scholar

4 Sudhaus, S., ‘Die Ciris und das romische Epyllion’, Hermes 42 (1907), 469–504, at 484.Google Scholar

5 Knecht, D., Ciris. Authenticité, histoire du lexte, édition et commentaire critiques (Brugge, 1970).Google Scholar

6 Heyne, C. G., P. Virgilius Maro, iv4, revised by G. Wagner (Leipzig, 1832)Google Scholar; Ribbeck, O., P. Vergilii Maronis Opera, iv: Appendix Vergiliana 2 (Leipzig, 1895).Google Scholar

7 Vollmer, F., Poetae Latini Minores, i: Appendix Vergiliana (Leipzig, 1910).Google Scholar

8 Helm, R., Die pseudovirgilische Ciris (Heidelberg, 1937)Google Scholar; Knecht, op. cit. (n. 5), with his comments at pp. 97–9.

9 Haury, A., La Ciris: poeme attribué à Virgile (Bordeaux, 1957)Google Scholar; Lyne, op. cit. (n. 1), ad 297–300.

10 Full discussion with ample references is offered by Pease, A. S., P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos liber quartus (Cambridge, MA, 1935)Google Scholar, on Aen. 4.72; and M. Tulli Ciceronis de Natura Deorum, ii (Cambridge, MA, 1958)Google Scholar, on N.D. 2.126. Elsewhere, Pease speculates that the story may have been propagated as an advertisement of sorts for the Cretan drug trade; see his ‘Dictamnus’, in Mélanges de philologie, de littérature et d'histoire anciennes offerts à J. Marouzeau par ses collègues et élèves étrangers (Paris, 1948), pp. 469–74.Google Scholar

11 This passage was read as a reference to dictamnus by Servius on Aen. 4.73; see also Isidore, Orig. 17.9.29, and Kitchell, K., ‘Dido as Cretan Doe: An Explanation’, APA One Hundredand Twentieth Annual Meeting: Abstracts (Atlanta, GA, 1989), 76Google Scholar. The association of a deer, rather than goats, with dictamnus in this passage of the Aeneid raises some interesting questions which I shall discuss elsewhere.

12 That Valerius Cato's poem, called Diana by Suetonius (de Gramm. 11) and Dictynna by Cinna (ibid. = fr. 14 Morel), was a source for Carme's narrative of Britomartis and her transformation is argued persuasively by Lyne, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 223–5; he follows Sudhaus, op. cit. (n. 4), 485 n. 3; Hermann, L., ‘Trois poèmes de P. Valérius Cato’, Latomus 8 (1949), 111–44, at 138–40Google Scholar; Bardon, H., La litterature latine inconnue, i (Paris, 1952), p. 340.Google Scholar

13 In the manuscripts of Ptolemy Geographicus, the name for a sanctuary dedicated to Dictynna in Cydonia on the northwest coast of Crete (cf. Herodotus 3.59) is given as Diktamnon, or a corruption thereof: see Müller, C. (ed.), Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia, i (Paris, 1883), 3.15.5Google Scholar. Müller emends to Diktunnaion, but if the manuscripts were to record a real alternative name for this place, a connection between Britomartis' ill-fated hunt and the famous healing plant might. possibly be part of a tradition extending beyond the work of the Ciris poet.

14 For the etymological connection of the name Dictynna with δίκτυα, see also Antoninus Liberalis 40.3, Scholia on Euripides, Hipp. 146 and 1130, and Pausanias 2.30.3; cf. Aristophanes, Wasps 368. A moralizing alternative etymology is offered by Diodorus Siculus at 5.76.3–4. In addition, Strabo (10.4.12) engages in a (possibly misguided) geographical argument with Callimachus over the site of Britomartis' leap; at issue is the possibility of connecting Dictynna with Mt Dicte.