Mac Góráin, F

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The Classical Reviewhttp://journals.cambridge.org/CARAdditional services for The Classical Review:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereTHE ECLOGUES. A. Cucchiarelli (ed.), A. Traina(trans.) Publio Virgilio Marone: Le Bucoliche . Pp.533. Rome: Carocci Editore, 2012. Paper, €48.ISBN: 978-88-430-5530-2.Fiachra Mac GóráinThe Classical Review / Volume 65 / Issue 01 / April 2015, pp 129 - 130DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X14001619, Published online: 07 August 2014Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X14001619How to cite this article:Fiachra Mac Góráin (2015). The Classical Review, 65, pp 129-130 doi:10.1017/S0009840X14001619Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 83.71.193.244 on 13 Mar 2015THE ECLOGUE SCU C C H I A R E L L I ( A . ) (ed.), T R A I N A ( A . ) (trans.) Publio VirgilioMarone: Le Bucoliche. Pp. 533. Rome: Carocci Editore, 2012. Paper,E48. ISBN: 978-88-430-5530-2.doi:10.1017/S0009840X14001619C.’s elegant commentary on the Eclogues has become my first port of call on these difficultpoems. Almost two decades in preparation, it is profoundly erudite and yet very readable,and its intimate familiarity with the poems elucidates them from an admirably broad rangeof angles. Introduction and notes teem with relevant knowledge and original observationson such matters as history and politics, religion and philosophy, genre and form, sourcesand literary history, language and register, versecraft and metre, sonic effects and etymol-ogy, tone and characterisation, textual readings and grammar, and ancient reception bothscholarly and artistic. While most of these categories may be traditional in the criticismof Classical poetry, it is their synthesis, combined with C.’s literary sensibility, that is illu-minating. Most importantly, C. interprets, and the poems come to life under his knowingcaresses. He unpacks especially well the dynamics of exchange between respondents inEclogues 3, 5, 7, 8 and 9. The collection yields up many stories about pastoral originsand Roman identity, political manoeuvres and tensions of the triumviral era, and whatVirgil learned from and what he made of other poets and their interpreters.C.’s Eclogues are a tightly-woven collection, and the commentary builds on recentadvances in the study of Hellenistic and Roman book poetics. The introduction flags ‘syn-tagmatic’ links between adjacent poems as well as the book’s better known symmetricalarchitecture (pp. 30–1), but the collection and commentary are in fact animated by an accu-mulation of echoes between poems, triggered by names, recurring motifs and verbal repe-tition, such that Arcadia and Epicureanism become as relevant to Roman politics as theyare to the poetics of amor and otium. By the time we reach Eclogue 9, links may be drawnwith 8 (the city), 1 (land confiscations and book frame, the mention of Tityrus), 5 (poeticexchange, the sidus Julium and the figure of Menalcas, also in 3), 6 (Varus), 2 (Theocritus’Cyclops) and with other poems via allusion to Theocritus’ Thalysia.This web of connections is a good example of the integration of historical and formal oraesthetic criticism in C.’s interpretation, itself partly fertilised by the political turn of muchrecent work on Hellenistic poetry. C. focuses on the political circumstances of compos-ition, positing a revision for publication in 38/7 after early compositions in the late 40s.But while full attention is given to historical events and the possibilities of biographicalinterpretation, ultimately the poems’ literary stylisation, indebted to the ‘sacro-idyllic’landscapes of Roman visual art as well as to Theocritean bucolic, entails that they standback from allegory, hovering above the specificity of historical events. This said, thepoems still allude to historical possibilities and political ideas, and for C. they are centralto the invention of the Augustan age: the gap between the composition of the fourthEclogue with a view to Pollio’s consulship and the polishing of the collection severalyears later saw the lapse of hope after the treaty of Brundisium; but within the economyof the collection this change in circumstance puts the spotlight on the charismaticOctavian as a salvific figure (p. 241). The seventh Eclogue alludes to the thrust andcounter-thrust of triumviral propaganda, and it is Corydon’s more adept handling of divinemodels that gives him the edge over Thyrsis (‘egli [Corydon] sa contemperare modellidivini potenzialmente contrastanti’, p. 375); but this strategy also finds precedent in theuse of the laurel and the olive as divine symbols for aesthetic styles in Callimachus’Iambi (p. 401).THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 129The Classical Review 65.1 129–130 © The Classical Association (2015)For C. as for many other readers of Latin poetry today, literary allusion is something tobe interpreted as well as noted. Tityrus’ invitation to Meliboeus to rest the night with him at1.79 evokes Theocr. Id. 11.44–5. ‘La memoria del Ciclope, che (inutilmente) aveva invi-tato la ninfa marina Galatea, ben si adatta alla situazione: anche i due pastori, ormai, appa-rtengono a due mondi diversi’ (p. 169). C. works fruitfully with the discoveries of allusionto Hellenistic poetry and literary polemics made by Clausen and others. C.’s coverage ofTheocritean modelling is ample, including also the Theocritean scholia. Allusions are oftenquoted in Italian translation, with the most important words, or sometimes the whole pas-sage, given in Greek. Characteristic of the Pisa school, particular attention is given toimmanent theorising of the relationship between the two poets, from the idea of pastoralas originating with lovers’ plaints or shepherds’ wranglings to the reworkings of other ‘ori-ginary’ passages in Theocritus from the goatherd’s cup in Id. 1 through the bucolicexchange of the Thalysia to the more explicitly political Id. 16 and 17. Eclogue 3 givesus cups with cosmological designs and Orpheus that look forward to Virgil’s Georgicseven as they look back to Theocritus, while Palaemon’s refusal or inability to adjudicatebetween Damoetas and Menalcas may imply something about the literary confrontationof Virgil and Theocritus.Dryden remarked in his essay on satire that ‘Virgil could have written sharper satiresthan either Horace or Juvenal if he would have employed his talent that way’, on thebasis of Ecl. 3.26–7, directed ‘against a bad poet, whose ill verses he describes’. Virgil‘has given almost as many lashes as he has written syllables’. C. ad loc. takes pains to iden-tify the ‘fonosimbolismo’ which piqued Dryden, and cites the Theocritean scholia to theeffect that rustic improvisation was considered the origin of bucolic song. ElsewhereC. generously cites parallels from satire and comedy for Virgil’s colloquial style. Indeedwhile C. casts his net very widely in search of comparative material, the relevance ofwhat he cites is always clear. A case in point is the delicate ‘transversa tuentibus hircis’at 3.8 on which C. cites Priap. 73.1, Quint. Inst. 11.3.76 and AP 9.317.3–4 for the side-ways glance; Hor. Epod. 10.23 for caprine lasciviousness; and several Greek and Latin epicparallels for the internal accusative, before remarking ‘la sua connotazione epica lo rendequi umoristicamente straniato’.If bibliography weighs heavily on the Virgilian scholar, C. has reduced bibliographicalreferences in his notes to a minimum (a minimum which still makes room for many cita-tions of the Enciclopedia Virgiliana). Instead he gives us in the introduction to each poeman analytic bibliographical digest in two parts, general treatments followed by particularquestions, each arranged chronologically rather than by theme. Familiarity with theserich digests is presupposed before approaching the commentary proper (p. 9). Theymake for relatively uncluttered notes and a diplomatic avoidance of scholarly polemic(sometimes anonymous interpretations are rejected or discussed), but the division alsomakes it harder to trace the archaeology of ideas without further work. Pages 133–515are devoted to the commentary (including poem introductions), which means that eachpage covers an average of just over two lines of Virgil.T.’s translation is clear and helpful, and C.’s occasional interpretative divergences fromit are flagged and discussed in the notes. Three indexes (of proper names, Latin words andnoteworthy things) make this book a user-friendly research tool, as well as pointing to thebreadth of reference in the notes (cf., e.g., the use made of Latin prose authors).This book should be translated into other languages for the convenience of readers whodo not read Italian. As it is, it furnishes an excellent reason to learn Italian.F IACHRA MAC GÓRÁ INUniversity College Londonf.macgorain@ucl.ac.ukTHE CLASSICAL REVIEW130

THE ECLOGUES. A. Cucchiarelli (ed.), A. Traina (trans.) Publio Virgilio Marone: Le Bucoliche. Pp. 533. Rome: Carocci Editore, 2012

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THE ECLOGUES. A. Cucchiarelli (ed.), A. Traina (trans.) Publio Virgilio Marone: Le Bucoliche. Pp. 533. Rome: Carocci Editore, 2012

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