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Vergil's Fama: a new Interpretation of Aeneid 4.173ff

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Robert Rutherfurd Dyer
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Extract

Vergil has an accurate eye for visual detail, and describes much as an artist might each cameo of his narrative. It is for this reason that we are shocked by images that cannot be easily translated visually. Perhaps the most arresting of such passages is the description of the monstrum Fama at A. 4. 173ff., which defies any reasonable attempt to convert it into a visual or narrative image.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , April 1989 , pp. 28 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1989

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References

NOTES

1. ‘MONSTRUM bene vituperavit Famam ex accidentibus personae, per parentes malos et fratres: et quod earn describit, non est narratio, sed argumentatio. quidni monstrum, quae huius naturae sit, ut quot plumas, tot oculos, tot linquas, tot aures exerceat?’ Here I accept exerceat from F (the so-called codex Floriacensis), with Schoell, rather than et cetera, accepted by Thilo-Hagen. With this reading, it is possible that a verb such as habeat is lost after plumas, and that exerceat has its proper meaning: ‘keeps busy the eyes …’ (sc. of those telling gossip).

2. For a list of these parallels see Pease's note ad loc. in his edition of Book 4 (P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Quartus, ed. Pease, A. S., Cambridge, 1935), pp. 211ffGoogle Scholar.

3. Servius continues ad loc: ‘QUOT SUNT CORPORE PLUMAE non ipsius, sed in omnium corporibus: nam exaggeratio est, ac si diceret “quot sunt arenae”.’ This note makes little sense as the feathers must be on the body of Fama herself or on any body (singular).

4. Servius continues ad loc: ‘OCULI SUBTER adverbium est, ac si diceret: non sub plumis, sed sub ipsa. et mire “subter”, quasi quae non videatur, et omnia videat.’

5. See the attempt by Eitrem, S., SO 5 (1927), 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. London and New York, 1897.

7. I am especially grateful to my colleague Leif Thorne-Thomsen, whose observations and profound understanding of the Aeneid have done much to clarify this interpretation. Those who have disagreed have had trouble with my grammatical explanation of cui within its relative clause and with the logical inversion of the correlative clauses after quot and tot. I have tried to expand my description of this construction as I have taught and used it for many years in Latin prose composition classes.

8. R. D. Williams quotes these lines on pp. 347 of his edition of the Aeneid, but without drawing this conclusion. I am grateful to Professor G. P. Goold for drawing their relevance to my attention.

9. Servius understands the use of subterto mean sub ipsa (cf. n. 4 above). For subter in the different sense traditionally accepted for this passage, ‘on (or attached to) the underside’, see Lucr. 5.536, 6.537, 914.

10. ‘Die relative Verschränkung besteht darin … daβ das die Verbindung herstellende Relativ nicht zu dem übergeordneten Satze des angereihten Satzgefüges, sondern zu dem vorangestellten untergeordneten Satze gehört … Dabei kann die Sache so liegen, daβ das den Anschluβ des vorangestellten Nebensatzes vermittelnde Relativ: a) auch in dem nachfolgenden übergeordneten Satze in irgend einer Form zu ergänzen ist (zuweilen auch durch ein Demonstrativ wieder aufgenommen wird); b) ausschlieβllich dem vorangestellten Nebensatze zweiten Grades angehört und mit dem übergeordneten Satze überhaupt nichts zu tun hat. Die vorangestellten Nebensätze können sein Relativsätze, Fragesätze und Konjunktionalsätze … Diese Art des Satzbaues ist besonders in klassischer Sprache häufig’ (Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache: 2 Teil: Satzlehre; 2 Band. Darmstadt, 1966 reprint; pp. 315–9). Among relevant examples we might cite Cic. de Rep. 1.7 is enim fueram, cui cum liceret maiores ex otio fructus capere quam ceteris … non dubitaverim me gravissimis tempestatibus obvium ferre; de Fin. 3.9 puer infici debet iis artibus, quas si, dum est tener, combiberet, ad maiora veniet paratior; 5.83 id solum bonum est, quo qui potitur, necesse est beatus sit.

11. If cui is to be taken in the main relative clause, it would have to be described as a dative of reference going with subter, as if the latter were divided by tmesis from an imaginary verb subter-sunt.

12. So Homer in his similes often turns us from the natural scene to the senses of the observer, hearing or seeing, e.g. Il. 4.452ff.

13. The argument in these paragraphs on movement between the human and mythological as a mirabile dictu depends heavily on discussions with Nathalie Mauriac Dyer.

14. This alternative translation, sometimes advanced, appears to contradict the law by which ira, as an unmodified abstract noun in the ablative, should answer the question Why?, i.e., is an ablative of cause. However, myth suggests her anger was most likely caused by the destruction of her children, the Giants.