classical new~ ai '/) views

I (HOS DI MO III (LASSIQI F

volurn.xII,no 3

oelob",1968octobre

CLASSICAL NEW~ AI '/) VIEWS

11 ~s

A II, 'io 3 1968

trect :..r Ed1!£!:

ColIn M. WI.LLS, 0 P rtm nt of Classica Studie, Universit:r of Ottawa.

! lOard F EY, Oup rCa ada College, To onto ", Ontano, Canada.

page

73

Internr tat (n soclOl) lQUe de faits ie '1 ux grec - B. R"UX 80

lh le ance 0 Antle.t II tory to the each in of Lat'

r. CA 84

, Lr- Ra"'leau d'Or> Chez V r i e - SftPHA E KRESIC 92

I tter~ to the Editor, Lett S olJver es - (LO. GORJ.)O~) 103

B 0 Review Comptl'"-ren u

1 4

MISOPOGON, DiE BEARD HATER

G. BAGNANI

Risumi : En l'etl"aqant ~ 'histoil'e de z.a barbe au cours des silc~es, ~ 'auteu1' nous met en garde cont1'e z.a m~fiance il l '€gCU'd des barbes. telle qu 'elle S8

manifesta chez ~es habitants d'Antioche dans le cas de Julien l'Apostat).

If at a party or convention you should see staid, mature and res­pectable citizens suddenly get red in the face, foam at the mouth, shake their fists, stamp their feet, do not be alarmed; they are not haVing a seizure or epileptic fit, they are merely denouncing the beards and locks of the younger generation. This is no modern disease. Sixteen hundred years ago, the Emperor Julian spent the winter of the year 361 in the city of Antioch, which at that time seems to have combined some of the more unattractive aspects of Las Vegas and Coney Island. The young Emperor (he was only thirty) was a pagan and a puritan; the Antiochenes were Christian and dissolute. He was shocked on both counts and decided to clean the place up. This justified, but undoubtedly im­practical, attempt enraged the Antiochenes without noticeably improving their morals, and they retaliated with a number of lampoons vilifying their ruler, and particularly the beard which he had grown as a philosopher.

Julian is one of the few exceptions to the general impression one gets that the ancients, though at times undoubtedly witty, were almost totally deficient in a sense of humour. Though endowed with more than his fair share of the priggishness so characteristic of virtuous Romans, he occasionally dis­concerts us by exhibiting a keen appreciation of the ludicrous, a fact unnoticed by his admirers, Libanius and Ammianus, who did not. The effect of French beer on a person brought up presumably on Moselle and Malmsey, is described in a most entertaining epigram, and his account of the central heating in La Pa1.ais of Lutetia can be fully appreciated by all those who have spent a chilly winter in the Salle des Manuscriu of the Biblioth~que Nationale.

He most philosophically answered his detractors with the pen, not with the sword, with an excellent lampoon, the Misopogon, in which he very skilfully uses the old trick of turning the satire against its authors.

"Though I should like to do so, I have no reasons to praise myself, but I have thousands for criticism, and I shall start with my face. For although nature did not endow it with beauty, or good features, or the tender bloom of youth, I have myself, out of sheer perversity and cussedness, added to it this long beard, as a kind of punishment for its not being naturally handsome. And for this reason too I put up with the lice that scamper about in it as though in a game covert. Of course I cannot gobble my food or swill down my drink, for I have to be very careful or else before I know it I shall be swallowing some of my own hairs with my bread. As for kissing and being kissed, I do not suffer in the least. Yet for this and still other purposes a beard is evidently a nuisance, since it does not allow one to press "shaven lips to other lips more sweetly" as Theocritus puts it. But you say I should have it twisted into ropes! Well, I should be happy to provide you with ropes if you had only the

74 G. BAGNANI

strength to pull on them, and if their roughness did not do such dreadful damage to your, as Homer says, "unworn and tender hands". And do not think I am offended by your satires. I myself have given you ample reason for them by sporting a chin like a goat's, while I might, presumably, have made it as smooth and bare as those of pretty boys. and of all women who are naturally lovely. But even in your old age you vie with your sons and daughters in your luxurious and effeminate way of living, and carefully make your chins smooth, faintly suggesting and revealing your sex by your general appearance, not by your jaws. as I do."

Even Jonathan Swift could hardly have produced a finer series of deli­cately indelicate innuendoes. Unfortunately Julian had not studied the Christian scriptures with the close attention he had given the Greek philosophers. Had he done so he might have pointed out to his Christian detractors that their pro­genitors, when roaming through the groves of the terrestrial Paradise in happiness, innocence and nakedness, must have been as hairy as apes. Razors obviously came in with sin, sex and toil. Had he been a Hebrew scholar he might have antici­pated my own discovery that there is a serious and undoubted lacuna in our texts of Genesis. The verse "in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy bread" lacks the corresponding parallel member so characteristic of all Semitic poetry. This parallel verse can only have been "and with an obsidian razor shalt thou scrape thy cheeks."

This eaendation of mine, which I confidently assert to be equal to Bentley's best efforts, is confirmed by archaeology. The closest and immediate descendants of Adam and Eve, the Sumerians, who continued to inhabit the banks of two of the rivers of Eden, and spoke a language, which, since it resembles no other, must be Adalllitic, shaved with what we can only call bloody perseverance. You have only to substitute a perriwig for the turban to turn Gudea, Patesi of Lagash, with his smooth round face, poppy eyes and intolerably smug expression, into one of those myriads of moon-faced males whose ovoid contenances have been so unnecessarily immortalized by Sir Godfrey Kneller and his school. Such masochistic torture must have had a ritual significance. The deities that these shaven mortals worshipped had beards of more than tropical luxuriance. Therefore I confidently anticipate that we shall soon find in some Sumerian wisdom book the line "to shave is human, to grow beards divine."

The almost co-eval Egyptians, from the Pharaohs and nomarchs to the fellahin, kept on shaving for over three thousand years. As in Mesopotamia, the Gods were bearded and therefore the Kings, who were themselves living Gods, had also to have beards. But it would seem that physical difficulties stood in the way; the Gods sent commodities of hair to most people, but not to the Egyptians. I feel they shaved not from perversity but from necessity. At least, when in the Roman period, beards became fashionable for the first time in the Nile Valley, the results are lamentable. Most of the Fayum portraits seem to be of men who are not really bearded, but who simply have not shaved. The Kings had therefore to supplement the deficiencies of nature by art, and the artificial beard, with or without a beard case, becomes as much part of the royal regalia as the crowns and sceptres. It was thus more a symbol of kingship than of sex, and when Hatshepsowet seized the throne, she wore the beard of a God, not the kilt of a male. It is perhaps unfortunate that the Ptolemies, who adopted so many other strange customs of Egyptian royalty, did not observe this one. Had Cleopatra encountered Antony with a false beard on her chin, the course of history might have been changed.

MISOPQGON, 11iE BEARD HATER 7S

In contrast to the Egyptians, the Hallites of Nubia, the Berbers of the Western desert, and the Semites of Syria and Palestine are all shown as bearded, while the well-curled and pomaded locks and beards of the Assyrians remain to this day unsurpassed lIodels of hirsute magnificence. The Northern Syrians un­aged to cOllbine a sOllewhat bedraggled Assyrian hairiness with the strange Hittite costume, with the result that the reliefs of Sindjirli and of Ivriz always remind me slightly of those pictures of Italian banditti painted by indifferent French romantic artists.

The Minoans, on the other hand, are represented both on their own and on the Egyptian monu.ents as perfectly clean-shaven. There is however a marked difference between thell and the Egyptians and Sumerians. As far as we know they did not worship any bearded or even male divinity, and they are therefore the first purely beardless society, both in heaven and on earth. This strange atti­tude may have contributed to their downfall. The Mycaenaeans entered the Pelo­ponnese bearded and respectable. They must have been profoundly shocked when they came in contact with a people who did not worship proper male divinities, were clean shaven, and had topless waitresses. Their liking for bull-fighting naturally gave rise to unpleasant and salacious stories such as those about Pasiphae and the Minotaur. The Mycenaeans, like Simon de Montfort's crusaders in Languedoc, destroyed a civilisation and filled their pockets in the name of outraged morality.

For the Greeks, beards do not seem to have had any ritual significance; it was rather a question of age. Their young lien saw shaven visions, their old men dreamt bearded dreams. The young, the athletic, the gay, the adventurous, the romantic all shaved, and having sown their wild oats and got I18.rried, they settled down to bearded respectability; just the opposite of to-day. The torture of the bronze razor was over, but problems still remained. The ancients appear to have been ignorant of such delicate instruments as the glittering forfex with which the Baron so neatly and readily snipped off Belinda's lock. I confess that I would give a great deal to have watched Pericles having his hair and beard trimmed by a garrulous barber armed with what must have looked like sheep-shears. The absolute necessity of barbers and one's sense of complete helplessness when in their hands is possibly the reason why no one has ever really loved thell. We have at all periods tried to regain our superiority by ridiculing them. In all literatures, both Western and Semitic, a barber is invariably represented either as a talkative clown or an unpleasant pimp, and sometillles, like Figaro, as both. The old joke "How do you wish to be shaved, Sir 1" "In silence" is attributed by Plutarch to King Archelaus of Macedon, which probably makes it the hoariest che*ut in the world. In contrast to the Greeks, the Macedonians seem to have shaved at all ages, even though Alexander sported sOlie rather regrettable sideburns. But then Alexander was incurably romantic.

All the Italic peoples from early tilles. later RONn historians not withstanding, seem to have had a marked preference for shaving, as is .hown by the sixth century warrior or chief froll Capestrano. but the Etruscans are as perplexing as usual. The vast II\8jority of undoubted portrait sculpture repre­sents thell shaven, but in the early reliefs and paintings bearded figures are CODon. The question is, however , whether this art is deliberately copying Greek llOdels and Greek CUStOIRS without IIIJch reference to the Etruscans themselves. Fashions in decoration tend to the exotic; we know that the eighteenth-century English gentleman who decorated their rooll.s with delightful Chinoiserie did not go about in pigtails. The Romans were predominantly clean-shaven to the point

7. G. BAGNANI

that a bearded man was so great an oddity that Barbatus became a cognomen, like Scaevola or Strabo. One branch of the Cornelii Scipiones seems to have favoured beards, but it also kept up the rite of inhulU.tion. Would this indicate strong Greek influence and that the philhellenic tendencies of the Scipiones were deeply rooted? Or is there sOlIe connexion between beards and inhumation? I simply note that when in the second century of our era beards come again into fashion. so does inhumation .

Certainly from the beginning of the second century before Christ, right up to the accession of Hadrian. Roasans of all ages and classes are represented as clean-shaven. Nero alone is show with side-burns that sOlletimes invade his cheeks and dewlap. Is this departure froll convention deliberate. an attempt to identify hillself with Alexander, or is it due to an abnormally sensitive skin? In any case it cannot have endeared him to the Roman nobility. Even the soldiers shaved; sOllie. not all, of the soldiers on Trajan's colullll'l. are bearded. but I assume that this was a local and temporary condition. In these circumstances it is curious to note that references to shaving and barbers are comparatively few. Petronius rates a tonBtreinum as one of the lowest of trades, but above a prueco, an auctioneer's barker, and well above a cauaidicua, a pleader or "mouthpiece". We also note that a man's personal servant, such as EUl'lolpus's mel'c6111'1ariu8, is expected to shave his master and have always his barber's kit with him. It is unfortunate that the section on barber's prices is missing from the edict of Diocletian . We know how much one should pay for having the ears of a mule trimmed, but not for human hair arrangements. Was there a price scale depending on the style and quantity of hair and beard? Trimming and curling a beard like that of Lucius Verus must have taken far longer than a short close one like that of Gallienus.

As in many other civilizations a lad's first shave was a ritual act and the scraps were carefully preserved . Petronius has also pointed out, with his extraordinarily keen insight, one of the oddest of human irrationalities. TTimalchio tells how, as a SJlaU boy. he used to anoint his upper lip with the sooty oil of the lamps. It is really extraordinary how we all spend fifteen years or so longing for face hair and the rest of our lives cursing it . Yet barbers continued to be despised and ridiculed. One barber, however, succeeded in gaining enduring, if anonymous, immortality. The greatest of Roman jurists have lavished their learning and ingenuity on the Barber's Case, the test case for investigating the principles underlying the Lex Aquilia de damno iniuria dato. The facts are as follo",s; they must have taken place. no jurist can have so rococo an imagination: a barber was shaving a slave, some people were playing at ball near by, a player hurled a ball with great force, another player lIissed it, it hit the barber's elbow , causing hilll to cut the slave's throat. Submitted for counsel's opinion: does the owner of the slave have an action for Aquilian damages, and, if 50, against whom? The permutations and combinations have all the infinite charm of a kaleidescope. And, like all first class cases, it suggests even lIIore entertaining possibilities to explore. Had he been injured by Nausicaa's well­hurled ball, could Odysseus have sued Alcinous? Would Alcinous have retaliated by charging hill with vagrancy. or with trespass, or with indecent exposure? Or would he have tried to deport hi. for illegal entry, or as an undesirable alien, or extradited hi. on the application of Circe? What ia the legal status of a shipwrecked sailor anyhow?

MISOPOGON, THE BEARD HATER 77

Hadrian brings beards back and they stay in for over a hundred years. One cannot however say that the physiognomies of the Antonines and the Severi compare favourably with those of the Julio-Claudians and the Flavians. The well-trimmed beards seem to indicate weakness rather than strength; compare a bust of Lucius Verus with one of Vespasian. But the invasion of beards is halted by the invasion of the barbarians. The principate collapses under the bearded Valerian and Gallienus, it is resuscitated by the clean-shaven Constan­tine. The famous porphyry statues of the Tetrarchs in Venice are not bearded, they have been far too busy to shave : and, if they had to embrace each other, it was probably just as well to keep at, so to speak, stubble distance. Under bearded emperors the Empire had undoubtedly declined; it was high time that the frontiers should be defended by the razor as well as by , the sword.

The period from Constantine to Justinian is one of confusion, a confu­sion mirrored on the cheeks of the people. And it was further increased by the inability of artists or of theologians to decide whether Christ was bearded or beardless. In the fourth century mosaic in Santa Pudenziana of Christ among the Apostles, He is bearded; in an exactly contemporary representation of the same scene in the Cemetery of Commodilla, He is beardless. The awful visage of the bearded Pantocrator still dominates the nave of St. Paul's in Rome; in most of the contemporary Ravenna mosaics He is beardless. The Emperors themselves, with the solitary exception of Julian, are clean-shaven. So are most of the portrait statues and consular diptychs, and you will be pleased to note that the last of the Romans, Anicius Manlius Severinus Torquatus Boethius, is as hairless as Cicero.

By the sixth century a compromise seems to have been reached and in the S. Vitale mosaics the Emperor Justinian is depicted with a small but unde­niable moustache, of the kind that when I was a school-boy we irreverently called a snot mat. Apart from ancient Egypt, where they appear sporadically and discon­certingly, it is only now that moustaches without beards come in to stay, possibly influenced by the representations of the Buddha in the art of Gandhara. It offered a middle of the road solution to all those who wished to keep a foot in both camps, and I suggest that the moustaches of Justinian, that master of fence-straddling, are a symbol of his policy, avoiding the hairiness of the Monophysites without yielding to the complete smoothness of the orthodox. Charles the Great, the restorer of the Empire in the West, sports a pair of magnificent drooping mous­taches which would have been the envy of a OUida guardsman and which give his equestrian statuette a disconcertingly Victorian look. The most Roman of his successors, Qtto I I I, is represented beardless, accompanied by two prelates, one bearded and one clean-shaven, and by the eleventh century all priests and many of the nobles are shaven.

On the Bayeux tapestry, the most accurate record we have of the eleventh century, the Normans are all represented with short hair and completely shaven faces, a fact remarked on by a contemporary Saxon chronicler who said that they all looked "like priests". Harold and his Saxons are not bearded, but they wear longer hair and big drooping moustaches. Apart froll a couple of Norman shipwrights, the only bearded person is King Edward the Confessor, and the long, carefully cur­led locks of his beard are alternatingly blue and orange. This startling pheno­menon would seem to confirm the view of many historians that the saintly king was, to put it mildly, peculiar. By the thirteenth century even the moustache disap­pears and the ideal of the soldier and ruler is perfectly expressed by the famous equestrian statue in Bamberg Cathedral, with its shaven face and page boy bob.

78 G. BAGNA.NI

In the East, however, both priests and laYllen clung to their beards, and the Normans, who presulIIIlbly invaded Italy with SlIIooth cheeks, soon assumed the long hair and beards of the Byzantine Ellperors. Indeed by the Renascence beards are aillost a sign of the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. as in Benono Gozzoli IS delightful frescoes the beards of the Emperor John Palaeologus and of his Patriarch contrast with the perfectly clean shaven faces of the Flo­rentines of all ages and conditions.

We have noticed the curious connexion between beards and religion, and it is a strange coincidence. if it is a coincidence. that beards return with the Reformation. St. Thomas More, when he was painted by Holbein at the height of his power, was as clean shaven as any Italian humanist. but we know that by the time of his martyrdom he had grown a beard. Both Francis I and Henry VIn grew beards and froll Clement VII on even the Popes are bearded . One might have expected fashions in hairiness to have followed fashions in religion, that there would have been Catholic beards, Lutheran moustaches, Calvinist whiskers, Socinian side-burns , Anabaptist Dundrearies and so on. Not at all; beard fashions were innumerable, but followed occupation and age rather than theology. Generally speaking, the square short beard was worn by older men of position, the "beard of formal cut" mentioned by Shakespeare.

By the second half of the seventeenth century beards suddenly disap­pear. For a time a thin black line lingered on upper lips but after the death of Louis XIV all faces were hairless. Peter the Great's first action in civili­zing his subjects after the revolt of the Strieltzy was to get them to shave. On August 27. 1698, the day after his return to Moscow, Peter emerged from his hut at Preobrazhenskoe with an enormous pair of shears and personally removed the beards and moustaches of all his leading boyars. This has always struck me as one of the oddest scenes in all history. That the Autocrat of all the Russias should turn barber seems to IDe far stranger than his turning shipwright; I only wish I knew what he did with the clip! He followed up this tonsorial adventure by the ukase of Septellber I that imposed a graduated tax on beard wearers .

The disappearance of hair from the face was not accompanied by that from the head. As in ancient Egypt four thousand years earlier. the shaven polls of the eighteenth century were covered by extravagant wigs of all shapes and sizes. Scipione Maffei, the famous antiquary and epigraphist. then an officer in the Bavarian army, describes how. just before the battle of Blenheill, Marshal Tallard lIet the Elector of Bovaria at the siege of Villigen and bowed so low that the curls of his perriwig swept the ground. Wigs indeed became a status symbol indicating the wearer's position and profession, as depicted in Hogarth's famous print . The two legal wigs have survived in England to the present day, while the episcopal wig was worn as late as the middle of the last century by George Murray. Bishop of Rochester.

Wigs were both expensive and uncomfortable. By the lIiddle of the century men began wearing their own hair long, but this meant a hairdresser. Young Boswell had his done every day and has illllllortalized his attendant. whose name was Chetwynd. The wearing of one's own hair rather than a wig became the sign of advanced political ideas and soon became universal. Aesthetically one can hardly call it an improvement; the singularly greasy locks of the young

MISOPOGON. TIfE BEARD HATER 79

Napoleon do not herald the Man of Destiny. while Macaulay's picture of old Talleyrand is unforgettable : "His hair. thickly powdered and pOlutullled. hangs down his shoulders on each side as straight as a pound of tallow candles." As Emperor, Napoleon adopted the short hair of Julius Caesar and Augustus. but all the great pictures of Napoleonic battles raise doubts in my mind. I simply cannot believe that the sun of Austerlitz rose on the freshly shaven cheeks of Le Tondu and his staff.

Beards and unkempt locks return with the Romantic movement, while moderate men compromised with side whiskers. It is interesting to trace the slow but inexorable advance of hair down the cheeks of "Cupid" Pallllerston, whose motto in this and other matters seems to have been "One must lIove with the times. but as slowly as possible." It has been frequently said that it was the Crimean War that made beards fashionable. The 1II0St cursory survey of the literature and painting of the first half of the century will show the falsity of this assertion. It did however allow beards to spread to the army, in England as elsewhere the last bulwark of conservatism. As late as 1886 one of the main causes of General Boulanger's popularity was that as Minister of War he allowed French soldiers to wear beards, though he drew the line at side whiskers. At the turn of the century the sovereigns of Europe seemed an epitome of masculine face adornments : the side whiskers of the Emperor Franz Josef, the moustacchioes. mustache cum whisker, of ICing Humbert of Italy, the beards of King Edward and the Tsar. and the upturned moustaches of the Kaiser . These latter. then much in favour with the younger generation, needed the greatest care and in bed had to be protected by a moustache press, a Schnurbinder.

We are now back in a romantic era and it is only natural that the young should revert to the long hair, beards, whiskers and strange attire of the eoirie de l 'Hernani. Let us therefore be charitable and not imitate the Antiochenes. nor expose ourselves to the insinuations of the Emperor Julian. Our hippies are merely trying to turn Yorkville into a new terrestrial Paradise of idleness and hairiness. And no amount of forbidden pot can possibly have the disastrous effects of that experiment in forbidden fruit that brought death into the world and all our woe.

Trent Univereity~

Peterborough~ Ontario.

(Thie paper i«lS read by ProfeeeOl' Bagnani at the Eaeter Meeting of

the Ontario Classical Association, held at Upper Canada College, Toronto,

in March 1968).

INTERPRETATIONS SOCIOLOGlQUES DE FAITS RELIGIEUX GRECS

B. !«JREUX

(Swmury : The attempt to explain certain featW'es of Greek cult in terms only of fertility rites is misconceived, and ignores the progress made by folklorists and others working outside the purely classical field. The traditional viet.) unduly neglects the sociological aspect of the cults in question).

L'interpretation des cultes grecs a iStiS fortement influencee par Ies etudes de Mannhardt sur Ie folklore europeen, prolongees par l'inforraation en­cyclopedique de Frazer; les f@tes paysannes traditionnelles seraient essentiel­Iement agraires et viseraient avant tout a. favoriser la fikondite de la nature, a. laquelle est liee Ia fecondite humaine. Le scenario de chacune d'elles tour­nerait autour de Ia mtlme idee : la mort et Ia resurrection de la vegetation; de Iii les innombrables "esprits de la vegetation" qui r8dent dans les oeuvres de ces auteurs et de leurs successeurs. A cette conception univoque s I oppose l'interpretation proprement sociologique de certains folkloristes et historiens des religions; on voudrait ici rappeler les critiques qu'ils font des concep­tions traditionnelles. car eUes sont en general mal connues des etudiants et des professeurs de grec : l'erudit qui depuis bient8t trente ans fait autorite dans Ie dOJllaine de la religion grecque. M.P. Nilsson, a ete trh influence par Mannhardt et refuse les interpretations sociologiques de Harrison et de Jeanmaire par exemple, de sorte que la plupart des ouvrages gencraux sur Ie sujet (1) ignorent celles-ci.

En privilegiant Ie cat{; agraire des Utes paysannes. on neglige leur aspect proprement social. La societe paysanne ne doit pas seulement se nourrir. eUe doit aussi assurer sa propre cohesion et ctest Ii, peut-on dire, Ie but premier des rites. C'est &insi qu'A. Varagnac reetudie les f@tes paysannes europeennes en montrant quel rOle capital y tiennent les "categories d 'Ige", chacune ayant "des souds et des soins fort diff!rents"; ceux-ci sont souvent en rapport avec la fecondite. mais pas toujours : toute ftlte est "pluri­fonctionnelle" et de toutes fa~ons Ie groupe ne peut exercer une action sur la nature que s'il fonctionne bien lui-~lDe. c'est-a-dire si chacune des categories d'lge qui Ie constituent a une fonction rituelle precise et la remplit bien: "Dans les societh archa!ques Paction du groupe sur Ie milieu naturel et sur­naturel suppose des mecanismes sociaux complexes. Cette action ne consiste pas 1 traduire telle au telle idee generale en gestes ou en actes exemplaires. ce qui sera it Ie cas si nous pouvions nous contenter des analyses du Rameau d 'or. Cette action ne s' organise qu'l travers toute une machinerie sociale compliquee.

::::n~e:u~e~:~r~~r~:~e~! t~a~:~~r!~~ (~) vis-a.-vis des autres et non pas direc-

II est certainellent difficile de connattre Ies "mecanisJlles sociaux complexes" qui pouvaient jouer dans une f@te de la Gri!ce antique et en particulier il peut parattre dUicat d'y transposer la notion de "categorie dllge" (meme si

INTERPRETATIONS SOCIOLOGIQUES DE FAITS RELIGIEUX GRECS 81

~~!!:-;!u;~:~~s~e u~:, :r~:~!S~~i~:~:!:!e (stu:t s~~~~e p:~: ~~r~C!~:s:a d ~:::~!~ra-tion est tout 1 fait convaincante en ce qui concerne Ies Doriens de Sparte et de Crete. L'un des documents Ies plus intlSressants dans ce dernier cas va nous per­lIettre de saisir sur Ie vif I'opposition entre Ies deux types d' interprEtation. 11 s'agit du famux hymne trouvlS par Ies archlSoiogues anglais dans Ie sanctuaire de Zeus Diktaios 1 Palaikastro (1 I'Est de Ia Crl!te) (4); cette inscription n'a pas IStlS gravee avant Ie dEbut du troisUae sUcie aprh J.-C., _is I'hyane a dQ I!tre coeposlS a I' ISpoque hellEnistique et tout Ie w.onde s 'accorde it reconnattre Ie caracdre nettement plus ancien du rite qu' il accOlipagne (Ie sanctuaire se.ble avoir connu sa plus belle plSriode du septUme au cinquihe si~cIe). Le texte. tel que nous 1 'avons (avec une Iacune), cOllJlrend quatre parties:

1) 'L'invocation (qui sert de refrain) au "Megistos Kouros ... Kronios", prilS de venir 1. Dikd it Ia tl!te de ses dai.mOnes (Ies Coudtes): il s 'agit d 'une Epiphanie annuelle du dieu etc; t.VLav"tov).

2) 1. '{vocation du rite : les chanteurs, plach autour de 11 auteI, sont accolI­pagnEs de I'au'Los (c1arinette) et de Ia pedis (lyre ou harpe); maigrE Ies doutes de Latte et de Nilsson, il est trh vraisemblable qulils s'assillilent aux Couretes dont il est question dans Ie my the : cOllUDe eux i1s seraient armlSs (des boucliers votifs ont HE trouves dans Ie sanctuaire) et danseraient ( e6pe; • v. 29 sq.).

3) 1.e my the rappelle Ia danse des Couretes 10rs de 1a naissance de Zeus. II se termine par la description des effets bEnEfiques pour les hODes et les aniuux de cette danse et de cette naissance; ces effets sont annueis (Ka't~,.oc;), ce qui rappelle Ie rite effectivement exlScute et nous amene 1 Ia quatrii!!lIe partie, qui est une

4) incitation it 'La. danse (suite de l'evocation du rite). accompagnlSe de llenu­mEration des bienfaits attendus de 1 'epiphanie du dieu.

Guthrie (5) donne une interpretation rEsolument agraire de ce rite: il s'adresserait 1. un "esprit de la vEgetation". paredre mile de la Grande Dhsse i l'Epoque minoenne, assimile ensuite 1 Zeus (ou 1 Dionysos). Cet esprit nattrait et 1I0urrait chaque annlSe cOllIDe la vEgEtation. de 18: l'effet de son epiphanie sur Ies troupeaux et Ies moissons et son titre de TjaYKp<n&c; yavouc; (6). Cette interpretation ne donne pas une importance suffisante 1. un aspect essentiel du texte, l'assimilation du dieu aux Cour~tes mythiques et aux danseurs du rite: il est Ie "tres grand Kouros", c'est-il-dire, cOllUDe I'avait dejl fortement souligne Harrison, la projection du groupe reel. Jeanmaire a 1I0ntre que ces Kouroi f01"ll8ient une veritable "categorie d'ige" dans Ies lociEth grecques tres archa!ques et par­ticulierement 1 Sparte et en Crete et que Ie passage dans cette cat6gorie d'§ge Etait l'occasion de rites rappelant les rites d'initiation decrits par les ethno­logues. II retrouve cette classe d'ige dans I'Hymne de Palaikastro : nous avons ici une confrerie d'initiateurs se p1a~ant sous la protection d'un dieu spEcialisE

~~~s~~~~~~~:o~;~~c~~!O;a!a t!~r:i~~l;!;~i~:1 ~:;n)r t7~: est~!;di~: i ~ t~!~~ ~o~~o~~ir" ne S'adressent pas au dieu, mais au groupe 1ui-lleme : Ies bEnedictions EnuliErees ne sont pas dues a l'Epiphanie du dieu mais 1 l'accollplisselllent _eme du rite d'ini­tiation. Du reste cette prosplSritE ne se manifeste pas seulement par l'abondance des produits du sol, elle est aussi purelllent sociale : "bond is pour nos cites, pour nos navires qui traversent 1a l\er, bondis pour 'Lee nouveaux citcyens, bondis pour la belle ThE.is" (un peu avant apparaissaient Dik~ et Eir~n~. ces trois divinith representent 1es fondellents soclaux du bonheur de Ia cite). Le passage annuel d'une cIasse d'.ge dans Ia catEgorie des Kouroi assure Ie bon fonctionnement de

82 B. MOREUX

la cit6 et lui penlet par cORs6quent la aattrise de la nature. Le tha.e du jeune dieu au du jeune hEros arrachE 1 SCIS parents et Heve au sein des forces naturelles, qui est rappeHi dans notre passage avec l'Evocation de l'enfanee de Zeus. sera it la transcription aythique du s6jour "en brousse" que doivent faire Ies futurs initib; l'initiation apparatt ca..e une deuxie:me naissance. L'etude que P. Faure a faite rEcellMnt des cavernes crEtoises (et en particulier

::.~~!~~ :~n!~!::! ~!t!:S i~~:~~:!:~:O~U (~J: e~e t!~~t:U~e l~. ~!:U:t:~:t~!:~a~;~S i l'initiation de classes d'lge; "ee sont des COlORS P61oponniSsiens" qui, au MR 3, "ont installE 1 Ida, avec 1& Ugende de Zeus, leurs pratiques d'initiation collective de l' adolescence"; il n 'y a pas de culte sp~cifiquell.ent cdtois du "divin enfant en tant qu'enfant" ni de "dieu pureaent minoen, qui serait un sbple g6nie de la nature renaissant et .ourant chaque ann6e c~e la v6g6tation".

On peut aussi saisir l'insuffisance des interpretations purelDent agraires 1. propos du "rameau de mai" grec, l'sil'ssiOnl, qui se retrouve sous diverses fOrJles dans de nombreuses fetes. II s'agit d'un rameau vert, auquel peuvent !tre accroch6s des glteaux, des fruits, etc. Mannhardt et Frazer vohnt dans ces

~:·~~~:p~:t ":! f!r!~~:~!:i~~~s d!e l!oi~;~~~i:~~oP~~~!s!: StwjOl:e e!o!' !~~:~~!!~~e sur la valeur agraire des faits grecs. Personne ne conteste celle-ci: COllIDe dans Ie folklore europ6en, Ie rameau de mai est plac6 devant la lI&ison des nou­velles mari6es (1 Sparte); il est utilise dans des fetes cOllplexes certes mais dont l'aspect agraire ressort bien, cOllUle Ies ThargUies et les Pyanopsies 1 Ath~nes; a Samos les jeunes gar~ons Ie transportent de maison en maison pour y faire entrer la richesse. 11 faut souligner cependant que cette valeur agraire n'est pas la seule, qu'elle n'est peut-!tre .!lIe pas celle qui explique Ie mieux l'ensemble des faits. C 'est ce qu I a montr6 Varagnac pour Ie folklore europ6en (10) : un bon nOilbre des utilisations du rameau de mai n'ont Jlanifestement rien i voir avec la fEcondite : on Ie place devant la demeure du chef; lorsqu'il est attribu6 a une jeune Hlle, cela peut signifier qu'elle est prociamEe libre de la potsstas du mile pendant un certain temps. Le mai ne serait donc pas d'abord un symbole de fertiliU. mais Ie slgne d'une certaine puissance soda Ie (il est aussi souvent li6 aux morts) et cette conception permet de rendre compte de tous ses aspects, m!lIe de ceux qui ont d,es incidences 6videllment agraires.

5i nous retoumons aux faits grecs, il faut rappeler que Jeanmaire estime qu'ils sont lih aux rites d'initiation : Ies Tharg6lies et les Pyanopsies fe­raient partie d'un cycle de fetes toumant autour de l'initiation des jeunes gar­/ions. M!me si 1'on n'admet pas cette reconstitution, on constate que l'eil'BsiOnB' spartiate (la HOPlJ6aXT) • mot souvent rapproch6 de HOUpOe; ) est placee devant la maison non seule.ent des jeunes Hlles qui viennent de se marier, mais des enfants devenus eph!bes : la rameau n'est donc pas 11 un symbole de f~condite u15 Ie sipe du statut social complet que donnent l'initiation ou Ie mariage. Dans les processions Ie ralleau est souvent porU par un enfant aIlQH,6a.).f!c;, clest-~dire un enfant dont les parents sont encore vivants; on ne voit pas pourquol. ce fait Ie doterait de pouvoirs particuliers sur la fEcondiU de la nature, au contraire il est evident qu'il Ie dote d'un certain statut social; si Ie 1II0t all<P .. 6a.Xf}c; a manifestement des illPlications agraires (cf. 6aXXw),

INTERPRETATIONS SOCIOLOGlQUES DE FAITS RELIGIEUX GRECS 83

c'est parce que l'enfant bEnEficiant de ce statut assure l'accol!plissellent d'un rite oil Ie groupe trouve sa cohEsion et par lil ses possibilith d 'action sur la nature. On peut i_giner que Ie ra.eau de lIIIli est devenu Ie signe de l'initiation parce qu'U rappelait la nature, dans laquelle les futurs initib devaient vivre un certain temps. Les cort~ges oil apparatt l'eiresiani peuvent avoir Et6 1 l'origine des cordges accollpagnant les inities ou les futurs initih; les petits cadeaux que les bandes de gar~ons recevaient a: Sallos et dans quelques fetes analogues pouvaient

:;~~e~::!i?if5 ,c~~:s l:o~~~~r:r~!:s d~~~r~e~:~!~:e~)~ e! ~:~~i:t,~: !:tte )(:a~~:: originelle Ie rameau de mai devient Ie symbole de toute puissance sociale: on cons­tate la presence de ralleaux dans presque toutes les processions; on peut aussi citer iei, avec Nilsson, Ie thyrse des Bacchantes, Ie ralleau lies suppliants et en fin les usages multiples des couronnes eUeS-II.@mes: on voit mal pourquoi un sywabole pureHnt agraire se serait ainsi repandu dans tous les cultes grecs (c'est l'hypothhe de Nilsson), on comprend bien au contraire que tout participant 1 un rite soit consi­dere, pendant la duree de ce rite, comme dEtenteur d'un certain pouvoir social. lequel peut avoir des consequences agraires.

L'etude de l'AntiquitE a tout il gagner en ne s'isolant pas des autres sciences humaines m@me si elle ne do it pas en attendre des airacles et si elle doit en adapter les mEthodes a l'objet qui lui est propre. On aiaerait inverse.ent que ces sciences humaines ne se laissent pas griser par leur succ~s et obnubUer par les nouveaux hori­zons qu'elles ouvrent parfois. qu'elles n'oublient pas tout il fait l'Antiquite et ceux qui travaillent a lIieux la co-.prendre.

Vnivel'siti de Montrial. NOTES

(1) Par exemple W. K.C.Guthrie. The {]rIes'ka and their Goda2 ,London 1954(tr.fs. Paris 1956 (2) A. Varagnac, Civilisation traditicnnelle et geru>es de vie. Paris 1948. (3) H. Jeanmaire, ccruroi et cOU1'A'tes~ Essai sur l'iducation SpartiatB et sur les rites

d'adolescence dans l'antiquiti helUnique~ Lille 1939. (4) On en trouvera Ie texte (avec une traduction anglaise) dans J.E. Harrison, Themis,

A Study of the Social Origins of {]rIeBk RBligion2, Ca.bridge 1927 (Meridian Books 1952) et (avec une traduction fran~aise) dans Jean_ire o.c. 433-434 (Guthrie donne la traduction).

(5) Guthrie o.c. 63 sq. et 76 sq. (tr.fse). C'est aussi dans l'ense.bIe l'interpr6-

;~~~~ ~:i i;;~:47-:!=~; a:::h~!~~~:l' e~::h~~:~:s R!~;i:~~~~~9~;:i-322 sq.).

(6) Mais Cook et Wilamowitz lisent yO;voC; ,qui serait attribut et aurait tout simplement Ie sens de LXPlla dans les HYJIIles 6pidauriens il AsclEpios.

(7) H. JeanJl8.ire o.c . 427 sq. (il la suite de Harrison); d. aussi R.F. Willetts, Cretan Cl/:Us and FeBtivals~ London 1962. 209 sq.

(8) P. Faure. Fonctions des cavernes croitoises# Paris 1964, 94~l31. Notons bien cependant qu'll 6tablit que Dikt~ est une .ont.gne. non une grotte; il nous paratt toutefois normal de rapprocher les rites de Palaikastro et ceux de l' Ida. qui sont rattachb au meae dieu et ont la 1II@lIe valeur initiatrice.

(9) Nilsson, eeschichte .•• 12. 122-127; id. La 1'6ligion populai1'6 dans la GriCB antique (tr.fs.) Paris 1954. 60-66.

(10) Varagnac o.c. 128 sq. et 226 sq. (11) Jean_ire o.c. 347 sq.

nu: RELEVANCE OF ANCIENT HISTORY TO THE TEACHING OF LATIN

T. F. CARNEY

(R4.wmI: La: jeunesse d'au,jourd'hui s'intlresse davantage It t'histot.re anaienn6 qu'i! t.a langue et a la z.ittlrature grecques et latines. On peut cependant, par la voie de l 'histoire, persuader certains Atudiants de passer a l 'Atude des langues. Pour susciter leur intlrit au mende antique, on doit mettre l 'empMse sur leB thilmeB et leB pAriodss qui of trent quel.que rapport avec leurs prAoccu­pations intimeB. L 'auteur discute de certainB z.ivreB qui B 'av4reront utiles It oBtte fin et fOW"nit une bibliographie sAleative Bur le Bujet.)

I do not suppose there is anything more tedious than a speaker who IIOIIentarily descends froll the rarefied atllOsphere of a university to tell tea­chers how to teach (his and) their subject 'better' to the teachers' pupils. So let lie start by opting out of any cOllpetitions involving teaching others how to suck eggs, so to speak. I will just talk about SOllie of the problellls which we all, as Latinists. face. and about some of the ways in which I have seen these tackled in the nine other countries in which I have to date lived or worked as a classical scholar. Hopefully. you will find some of this expe­rience relevant. though only discussion of this paper will show exactly what bits of it will so appear.

I will start by making a distinction, so far as this is possible, between the strategical and the acadellic relevance of Ancient History for the teaching of Latin. You have only to look at any book-stand of paperbacks for sale and you will find a scatter of 'classics in translation' and, quite pro­bably, if any number of books are on sale, an historical novel or two dealing with the ancient classical world. Clearly, there is an interest in classical antiquity when it is presented like this. There is, in fact, ample evidence of such interest allong the general public. The current Classical NeL1B and Views tells of a beginner's Greek class staged at 9:30 a.lI. on Saturday mornings for 'anyone interested' by Brock University: result -- 200 applicants. The Turtle is a North American journal of nUlllis-.atics, dealing with the coins of the an­cient world. Its editor has auzing tales to tell of the enthusiasm of his auteur clientele, and of the expert, detailed knowledge of antiquity that its lIe.bers are only too ready to show. Certainly Ancient History is always a crowd-drawer as an undergraduate course. Is it that they have seen the film(s), now they want to read the book? I do not know. But I do know that the subject has currently a favourable illlage : interest is there, readily available for tapping. So, if you want soae coating to go around the pill of Latin gra_r. here it is. However, trends in nuabers of pupils taking Latin in your school may indicate that no coating is necessary.

The current teenage generation in North Allerica seeas to have possibly .ore than its share of disenchant.ent with our aaxi.hation of profits ecanoay and technologically dOllinated way of life. Perhaps there has never been another generation so ready to evince a lively interest in other cultures than its own.

nEE RELEVANCE OF ANCIENT HISTORY TO THE TEACHING OF LATI N 8S

But this openness to alien experience, while it makes the teenager ready to try to enter the thought-world of ancient man, goes along with a mistrust of the relevance of the experience of the older generation, very often. The p lace of Latin in the curriculum is not guaranteed by hoary custom. The reverse. So it is not enough to have an enticement, in the form of Ancient History; you have to have some well-thought-out reasons as to why the teenager should study Latin and a clear idea of what he is going to take away with him from the work he does with you. Do we in fact send our pupils out into the world able, in the spare­time that we are supposed to be going to have so IllUch of, to steer their own way through the paperbacked translations and so on towards a rich, full under­standing of the origins of our culture? In a world of rootlessness, of lost moorings, such an ability will vastly enrich life. Art: we giving our pupils a chance to acquire it?

This is why it is so difficult to separate strategic from academic approaches to this problem. Consider: no-one would nowadays maintain, I take it, that Latin is learned so that one can enjoy the syntactical peculiarities of a particular author. We learn to read the language either so as to savour the literature written in that language or to have access to the history of its users or to get inside their minds. As I am dealing with Ancient History. the latter two purposes are what concern me here. A number of issues illtlllediately arise. Firstly, given the very small bulk of Latin actually read, can our pupils gain from this any overall picture of what Rome was all about? Even if they do gain an in-depth vicw of one period, unless this can be set in con­text within a larger time-span distortion is virtually inevitable. Moreover the period with which our pupils are familiarized is generally that of the late Republic, possibly extending into Augustus' principate. This is hardly a re­presentative sample of Roman history; Rome's achievement was her empire and the civilization which it nurtured. an empire out of which medieval Europe was to grow. There is widespread current interest in political assimilation and cultural decline, an interest to which is owed much of the popularity of work on the ancient world among the adult lay (i.e. non-specialist Classicist) public. Are we ministering to this interest; are we giving our pupils a fair picture of Rome's contribution?

Let me put this another way . A teenage adolescent nowadays is capable of quite extraordinary feats of imaginative work, doggedly pursued, once his over-populated consciousness does seize upon a specific issue that presents him with a meaningful challenge. He is likely to be much more sophisticated in some areas than in others. however. We cannot really hope for the solidly-grounded Latin reading knowledge of pre-World-War-Two days. But we can expect a sophis­tication about the ways in which personalities and societies operate, that the ripe. mature classical scholarship of that period seldom reached. Thus to keep such a pupil busied over the production of translations in most cases means that you keep him working where his strengths and interests are least. If however he is encouraged to fill out his over-all picture by reading in translation and from challenging modern historical works on ancient history, and then directed to give his critical talents full range upon some of the walnuts-and-wine Clas­sicists' interpretations of Rome and her achievement, both his special strengths and his (currently critical) interests are likely to be powerfully engaged. Hy assumption is that a difficult task, such as learning to read our highly mannered Roman authors, can be either an insurmountable obstacle, if entered into with only the will-power of the teacher and the syllabus to spur on gifted but little

86 T.F. CARNEY

comprehending pupils, or it can be a challenge somehow, anyhow. overcome if seen as providing the key to a world of ideas that such pupils are bent on reaching.

Now, as I see it. this sequence of events. interest first. competence later, is the one which is the norm in North America, as in most of the Common­wealth. And it has produced men and work of tirst-rate ability. When I was in Sydney we had huge classes in Ancient History: a first year of 387 in 1965, if J remerber correctly. Anyone could enter but no-one without a reading know­ledge of one classical language could get into the Honours course, and it took reading knowledge in both to advance within the Honours school. It was really amazing the lengths to which students would go to equip themselves with such linguistic skills.

You may feel that this is all very well, but that we teachers are bound by our curricula and so on. We may feel like this, but, observably, our teenage generation does not. And why should it? After all, the objective is so to focus the educational process that the content and significance of course-work is maximised. For this, peri'O<iic change is probably inevitable, especially in the throes of our current information explosion. There were 5,000 pupils taking Ancient History in the schools of New South Wales when I was at Sydney, with vet>y active teachers' groups constantly revising syllabi, both in Latin and in Ancient History. In most of the universities I have been in, it has been the student strength in Ancient History or the like that has kept Departments of Classics with the kind of numbers in their student bodies that justified, and, by feeding into them, largely helped provide, their language streams. But these are matters for your specialist group to deal with, initially at least, whether within the framework of the MTS or that of your local Classical Association, and you will know your own minds best on such things. Perhaps it might be in order, however, to note in passing that, in this age when every discipline seems to be represented by some special group or other, we in Classics owe a tremendous debt to the local Classical Associations which can do so much to create an atmos­phere within which the study of the ancient world can flourish.

It is not just a re-shaping of the syllabus that is involved, of course. Some of the re-orientation has to occur inside the teacher. You cannot teach chassics in translation if your attitude to Roman Literature is that of an A,E. Housman. It is more than a study in textual emendation, that is. But I have the feeling that our post-war world is simply much more sophisticated about these things than was the pre-1939 world, though we are probably, by and large, not as strong in sheer volume of reading and construing in the ancient language. What is quite certain is that we are incomparably better serviced with journals and (relatively) low cost books. The point is anyway that we can nowadays mount the kind of programme on Rome and her society that is in tune with the sensitivities of this, our McLuhanesque, telecommunications world. Take heart: I am not going to talk about 'new approaches to the Classics', dear though this subject is to the hearts of many a contributor to classical conferences. We have all sat through this kind of thing and found that novelty is, often, in the eyes of the expounder. Various members of my audience will no doubt be aware of some of the work 1 am now going to mention, but I generally find that much of it has not yet reached wide circulation, so that people are glad of a bibliography for further consideration. This has been provided (at the end of the present article), and it is to this that I would like you now to turn. It is, obviously, sketchy. but

WE RELEVANCE OF ANCIENT HISTORY TO TIlE TEACHING OF LATIN 87

it does contain items which my experience has shown easily arouse student interest. Also, an attempt has been made to include as many paperbacks as possible.

Let us start from the basic premise that you can come at Roman history in two ways : by looking at the words the Romans used, especially their key poli­tical concepts, to see what this tells us about their thought world; or by re­viewing trends, critical events and major personalities in their history. Let us look first at the study of words; after all, it is closer to straight forward language study in Latin. A good starting point here is Wirzsubski's study of Roman ideas on 'freedom'. The study is semantically sophisticated and well­informed. You could hardly have a more topical issue. It brings the Pompey­Caesar confrontation starkly into prominence, almost Time-style. It lets you look at Cicero, as though he were a politician fumbling ·with all the ramifications of a civil rights issue. You would not have to entice your pupils to 'tune-in'. It is beamed on their wave-length. You might follow this up by directing your pupils to look at the opening chapters of Syme's book on The Roman Revolution, which again is challenging and couched in a modern idiom as it investigates the Roman political vocabulary.

From here you can branch out in several directions; perhaps a diagram may help us keep track of these branching interconnections (see Diagram). You may find that your pupils want to see this whole issue of freedom in a larger context, in which case Muller's book will prove helpful. Or perhaps they would like to review it from the viewpoint of unrest and alienation, in which case MacMullen's Enemies of the Roman Order will meet some of their needs. This might conceivably lead them into a problem-oriented approach to Roman history, adopting, as it were, the crisis-study method currently beloved of our friends in Political Science. Here Kagan's Problems in Ancient History will serve as an excellent introduction to this approach.

Or, of course, if strongly language-oriented. your pupils might find helpful the Hawthorn and MacDonald book, Roman Politics, which is simply a col­lection of Latin extracts embodying the contemporary discussion of burning poli­tical issues. Another study centring on the words the Romans themselves used to describe their situation occurs in Earl's The Moral. and PoLitical 'floadition of Rome.

Your pupils may however lean rather towards the study of political groups and leading politicians. Lily Ross Taylor's Party PoLitics at Rome in the Age of Caesar should prove easily assimilable if so; Mario Attilio Levi's political Power in the Ancient WOl"'ld will provide them with a general background and enable them to locate their period within the overall picture. Homo's Roman Political Insti­tutions, though now in many ways dated, is still the most useful and readable over­view of this whole area. But, in this age of the 'put-down', the in-depth close-up of the 'real' man behind the image, you might find that Harrison's book, which is really 'three pictures of Caesar' may well prove more meaningful to them. Certainly these radically differing 'Caesars' cannot but prove challenging. The appendix to the second edition of ray biography of Marius systematically shows how Marius ap­peared to a contemporary, then to a writer of the next century, then of the next, finally to one several centuries after that. It has been discovered, for instance, that one of the best ways of getting students to a real appreciation of the problems of history is to let them read around a little on a specific historical personage, then to ask them to construct his biography, and then to go in detail into the matter of just how, in fact, they did this (AHA Ne1IJsLettel"').

88 T.F. CARNEY

What I am suggesting is that you run your Ancient History as a kind of historian'S workshop, letting pupils themselves work upon the raw materials. This means you have got to let them have free access to the tools they will need. Just as they will not appreciate what Rome was all about if all they experience of Rome is its last century B.C .• so they will not appreciate what Ancient His­tory is all about (or be able. subsequently. to build upon the reading they do under your guidance). if all they experience is, in effect, commentaries on the literary texts. Now my diagram is far from representing a total, or even a full range of aspects of historical reality. but at least it does bring sharply into focus the variety of different approaches which are possible and which are needed to complement one another. Your pupils may have widely differing interests in regard to the world around them; the wider the range of choice among the approaches to history offered them, the more chance they will have of finding an approach in which they are interested and through which they can, in consequence, relate meaningfully to the ancient world.

Consider, if you will, one grave weakness under which Ancient History labours: its literature, even its inscriptions, all reflect the world of the small but all important cultured class of top people. Do our pupils fully reco­gnise this? Merely telling them that such is the case is not really enough; they have to be brought to discover for themselves what this means. There are many ways of doing this. With modern history, one can approach the life of the inarticulate masses through the eyes of novelists. But you cannot do this by means of the ancient novel at all well; let them read some ancient novels and find out why (Hadas' little book will serve quite well as introduction). However, as John Bates' article in Teaching Histol"Y so lucidly demonstrates, a survey of the work (not the reading of one book) of modern novelists trying to reconstruct the 'feel' of antiquity will give your pupils a very real 'gut-impression' of life in antiquity and the problems of reconstructing it. Or, of course, they may want to know how the educated accents which speak to us out of the Roman past were educated (Marrou's work is invaluable in this respect), what it was they read to inform them and shape their picture of the world (Kenyon will be found very helpful in this respect). But there is, to my mind, no doubt that the an­cient coins are probably the most meaningful approach to the past. They have something of the glamour of archaeology; they can be purchased cheaply; the world of coin collectors is a recognisable adult world of friendly enthusiasts who will welcome kindred spirits readily; this is the one mass medium of anti­quity, so your pupils can appraise it with a sophisticated eye (which they will need, because it is unusually well served with text-books and commentaries, Sutherland being a good example of the kind of work available).

Your pupils' reaction, however, is likely to be one of curiosity as to what the life of the Roman Nn in the street was like. This curiosity will lead to either a social or a technological approach to Roman history. If it is a social approach that is desired, one can start with Carcopino's Daily Life in Ancient Rome. Or one can focus directly on Rome herself, looking at what is known about the city and its occupants. The latest work, at a suitable level. in this area is Paoli's Rome. This may well effect an entry into Rome's problems in terms of urban congestion and the proJ:Jlems of life for the little man in the big city: Mumford's '!'he City in History has a lot to say about Rome, and its sales statistics show that it really turns the young set on. If you want to maximise your audience appeal, direct them to Zinsser's Rats~ Lice and History -- only do not expect to be able to borrow it from a library; someone has a'UJays got it out. If what is wanted is a feel of how the Roman empire functioned as a common-

ruE RELEVANCE OF ANCIENT IIlSTORY TO ruE TEACHING OF LATIN 89

wealth, i.e. if they want to know what it was like to be a member of the great imperial services, Mattingly's Roman Imperia~ CiviliBation will stamp an indelible impression on their minds.

Such works, of course, will have already brought you into the 'technology in history' area. A good bibliographical entry-point here is L. Sprague de Camp's book The Ancient Engineers; but you may very well have others in mind. This one has the advantage. for me in giving this talk, that it leads us to our next historical field, the Roman army. With this move, we return to the study of institutions, al­ready touched on. And Rome's army is possibly her most important institution: it built roads and bridges, it turned non-legionaries into citizens; it founded, popu­lated and ran townships. It was, in short, a major civilizing influence. If your pu­pils never get to recognise this, they have had a most distorted view of Rome's in­fluence. Rome's army is well served by books, so let me ' make my points briefly. Ad­cock's book will give a survey of the Republican army, about which your pupils will already have some knowledge; Parker's book will outline the army life of the Principate for them, and MacMullen's Soldier and Civil.ian will do the same for the late empire. from a contemporary angle. If your pupils want a work that will trace how military affairs interpenetrate civilian life, Andrzejewski will do that in a work making frequent references to the ancient world. But maybe our 'power-elite' conscious students do not stand in need of guidance in this respect!

Let me finish by making two last points. The fall of Rome is an issue of perennial interest. effected the shaping of what was to be our Europe and is pecu­liarly close to the attention of our generation, with its ominous forebodings con­cerning our future (if any). In adult life your pupils will revert to this problem and will be grateful for guidance which you can give now, even if you only do it in briefest outline. This is a topic currently receiving much attention, so you can easily come by books at low cost -- Chambers, Kagan and Katz spring to mind; Jones' book, more expensive, represents a non-committee viewpoint (it is not an edited col­lection of studies). If your pupils should want to see this topic against a wider background, Bozeman's book will be found stimulating and thought-provoking. This is not an area in which you will have to struggle to secure attention. These works will confront your pupils with a wide range of views on the passing of a civilisation. Many of these views are those of a previous generation, when the problem was less real than it is for us today. Your pupils will find themselves able to engage in a meaningful debate over these works.

Last, but by no means least, our period saw the birth and growth to world significance of Christianity, one of the greatest forces in human experience. Pupils are interested in these early, crucial stages. Purists may plead speciously, but we all of us know that no historian worth his salt can afford not to reckon this potent belief-system into the accounting of Roman civilisation and life. We will be asked questions on it, and we fail in our duty if we can not at least give directions as to bibliography, accompanied by a skeletal outline of the evolution of Christianity. I do not intend, at this stage of my talk, to digress into the history of ideas, but this aspect of history, too, is crucially involved here. Guterman's book on Religiou8 To~el"O.tion and Harnack's The Mi8sion and &:pa.nsion of Christianity will serve as meaningful entry-points. But there is no lack of literature in this general area. Let us not let our pupils leave us without a guideline for the future. And let me not fail to observe my guidelines as to speaking time -- a thought to which you may by now be saying a heart-felt 'amen'.

UnivBPsity of Manitoba..

(Thi8 paper was read by Profe880r Caroney to the Sprin.g Meeting l.968 of the Cla8sical Teachers' Section of the Manitoba. Education.a~ A88ociation).

90 T.F. CARNEY

BIB L I OGRAPHY

(an asterisk signifies a paperback)

Classical. News and Views" published by the Classical Association of Canada (ed. C.M. Wells, Dept. of Classical Studies, University of Ottawa).

Teaching Histor>y, published by the History Teachers' Association of N.S.W.o Aus­tralia (ed. Mrs. M. Armstrong, Cremorne High School for Girls, Cremorne, Sydney. N.S. W.); see J. Bates, The 'Novel' Approach to Higher School Certificate Ancient History, Vol. 1 (new series) 1967. 22-26.

The Turtle, published by the Ancient Coin Club of America (ed. J.E. Hartmann, 5107. 39th Avenue South, Minneapolis. Minnesota 55417).

AHA NelJ8"l,etter. published by the American Historical Association; see vol. 6, no.3, Feb. 1968, pp. 10-13.

Adcock, F.E •• The Roman Art of War', Harvard University Press, 1940. Andrzejewski, S., Military Organization and Soc:iety. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954.

-Bozeman, A.B., Politics and Culture in Inte:rna.tional Historoy, Princeton University Press, 1960.

·Carcopino, J., Daily Life in Ancient Rome, Penguin, 1941. Carney, T.F., C. Maroiu8 : A Biography, Argonaut, 1968 (second edition).

·Chambers, M., The FaZZ of Rome, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963. Guterman, S.L., Religiou8 Tolerotion and Perosecution in Ancient Rome, Aig1on, 1951. Hadas, M., Throee (Jroeek Romances, Doubleday Anchor, 1953.

*Harnack, A., The Mission and Expansion of Chroistianity, Harper, 1962 (1908). *Harrison, G.B., Julius Caesar in Shakespeare, Shaw and the Ancients, Harcourt Brace

and World, 1960. Hawthorn, J.R. G C. MacDonald, Roman Politics 80-44 B.C., MacMillan, 1960. Homo, L., Roman Political Institutions, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962. Jones, A.H.M., The Decline of the Ancient Worold. Longmans, 1966.

·Kagan, D., Decline and FaZZ of the Roman Empiroe, Heath, 1962. 0 ___ ' P'l'oblems in Ancient Historoy, Vol. II : The Roman Worold, Collier Mac-

Millan, 1966. *Katz, S., The Decline of Rome, Cornell University Press, 1961 (1955).

Kenyon, F.G., Books and Readeros in Ancient Greece and Rome, Clarendon Press, 1951. Levi, M.A., Political Powero in the Ancient WO'l'ld, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965. MacMullen, R., Enemies of the Ranan Ordero, Harvard University Press, 1966. -n:prCCcsOCs'--,'ln9'63.soldiero and Civilian in the Latero Roman Drrpiroe, Harvard University

~Iarrou, H.J., A Historoy of Education in Antiquity, Sheed and Ward, 1956. Mattingly. H., Roman I-mperoial Civilisation, Arnold, 1957.

-Muller, H.J., Froeedom in the Ancient Wo,.ld. Bantam, 1964. Mumford, L., The City in Historoy. Seeker and Warburg, 1961. Paoli, U.E .• Rome: Its People, Life and Customs, Longman's, 1963. Parker, H.M.D., The Roman Legions, Heffer, 1958 (1928). Sprague de Camp, L., The Ancient Engineero8, Rigby. 1963. Sutherland, C.H.V., Coinage in Roman Imperoial Policy. Methuen, 1951.

*Symc, R., The Roman Revolu.tion, Oxford Paperbacks, 1960 (1939). *Taylor, L.R., Paroty Politics in the Age of Caesaro, University of California Press,

1961 (1949).

Wirslubski, Ch., Liberotas as a Political Idea at Rome. Cambridge University Press, 1950.

*Zinsser, H., Rats, Lice and HistOl'Y, Bantam, 1967 (1935).

DIAGRAM

Kinds of. Viewpoints } in, and source: material for, Roman history

"(W.N POLITICAL 1 I I ;~T~~~~~S (I I)

<I ' 1 I

CHRISTIANITY AND THE BELIEF-SYSTEMS

OF R().tA.N ANTIQUITY

mE ARMY AS A CHANGE-AGENT

THE FALL OF RDtotE

KEY POLITICAL FIGURES AS nlEY APPEAR TO rnEIR CQNTEMPORARIES­CHANGING IMAGES

LE RAMEAU D'OR CIIEZ VIRGILE

(Etat actuel de la question)

STEPHANE KRESIC

"Vous ne connaissez pas la maniere de ces vieilles portes."

Claudel

(Swrmary: In this paper the author gives the status ~ of the "Gol.den Bough in Vi1'giZ," and elucidates criticaLLy th;=;r;:fferent solutions of the problem; liter'al"Y and philosophioal tradition, influences of folklore and comparutive histol'Y of religions, and symbolic interpretations. This last solution appears most Likely to reveal the intrinsic tl"Uth because of its scrutiny of Virgil's genuine poeticaZ intentions).

Enee et ses compagnons. apres des annees de dures epreuves, touchent enfin a. la terre italienne promise et abordent sur la plage de Cumes. Laissant ses compagnons pourvoir au campement, Enee monte au temple d'Apollon pour con­sulter la Sibylle, pr!tresse d'Apollon et d'Hecate. Elle I'introduit dans Ie temple, Ie fait descendre avec eUe jusqu'a. I'entree de la grotte prophetique. Le heros supplie la prophetesse de Ie conduire aux Enfers aupres de son pere qui lui devoilera l'avenir et lui donnera la force morale et I 'energie spiri­tuelle que reclame I 'accomplissement de sa mission.

La Sibylle accueille sa requl!te avec une bienveillance un peu ironique: it est difficile de descendre aux Enfers, plus difficile encore d'en sortir. Cependant, si Enee veut traverser deux fois Ie Styx, it doit au prealable sa­tisfaire .ii. une triple condition: cueillir Ie rameau d'or qui lui ouvrira la porte du royaume de Pluton, rendre les honneurs funebres a son trompette Misene qui git, sans sepulture, sur Ie rivage, offrir un sacrifice aux divinites in­fernales.

Dans les vers 133-148, Virgile fait pour la premiere fois allusion aux mysterieux rameau d'or. II dit '

quod si tantus arnor menti, si tanta cupido est bis Stygios innare lacus, bis nigra uidere Tartara, et insano iuuat indulgere labori, accipe, quae peragenda prius. latet arbore opaca aureus et foliis et lento uimine ramus, Iunoni infernae dictus sacer; hunc tegit omnis lucus, et obscuris claudunt conuallibus umbrae. sed non ante datur telluris operta subire, aur icomos quam qui decerpserit arbore fetus. hoc sibi pulchra sugrn ferri Proserpina IDUnus instituit: primo auolso non deficit alter aureus, et sirnili frondescit uirga metallo. ergo aIte uestiga oculis et rite repertum carpe manu; namque ipse ulens facilisque sequetur, si te fata uocant : aliter non uiribus ullis uincere nec duro poteris conuellere ferro.

LE RAMEAU D 'OR CHEZ VIRGI LE 93

Les Troyens se r€pandent dans la for!t pour y abattre Ie bois du bOcher fun~bre de Mis~ne (vv. 183-211) :

nec non Aeneas opera inter talia primus hortatur socios paribusque accingitur armis. atque haec ipse suo tristi cum corde uolutat, 3spectans siluam iUlensam, et sic forte precatur: 'si nunc se nobis ille aureus arbore ramus ostendat nemore in tanto: quando omnia I.lere heu nimium de te uates, Misene, locuta est.' vix ea fatl.ls erat, geminae cum forte columbae ipsa sub ora uiri caelo I.lenere uolantes et uiridi sedere solo. Tum maximus heros maternas adgnoscit aues. laetusque precatur: 'este duces, 0, si qua uia est, cursumque per auras

~:~!:i~~m!:.l~~~~~ ~b~uCi~~u~: ~!~~~e o~:~!, diua parens.' sic effatus uestigia pressit obseruans. quae signa ferant. quo tendere pergant. pascentes ilIae tantwn prodire uolando, quantum acie possent oculi !';eTl18re sequentum. inde ubi venel"e ad fauces graue olentis Auerni. to11unt se celeres liquidumque 'Per aera lapsae sedibus ootatis gemina super arbore sidunt, discolor unde aurl per ralllos aura refulsit. quale solet sHuis brumali frigore aiscu", fronde uirere nom, quod no" sua seminat arbos, et croceo fetu teretes circumdare truncos : talis erat species auri frondentis opaca ilice, sic leni crepitabat bractea uento. corripit Aeneas extemplo auidusque refringit cunctantem, et uatis portat sub tecta Sibyllae.

La c€r€lIIonie lugubre s' accompli t, prHude du voyage infernal. Oes sacrifices sont faits pendant la nuit ii. l'entree d'une caverne; et, des Ie point du jOl.lr, un tremblement de terre les avertit, la Sybille et lui, ql.le Ie gouffre leur est ol.lvert. Ils descendent tous deux, dans l'obscurite, i travers des de­meures vides et des royaumes de simulacres. Ils atteignent Ie Cocyle oil les ombres des morts assi~gent Ie fl.ln~bre passeur.

Et Ie po~te nous dit (vv. 403-416) :

Tro!lus Aeneas, pietate insignis et armis, ad genitorem imas Erebi descendit ad umbras. si te nulla mouet tantae pietatis imago, at ramum hunc' - aperit raDIUm, qui ueste latebat -'adgnoscas·. tumida ex ira tum corda residunt. nec plura his. ille admirans uenerabile donull fatalis oirgae, longo post tempore I1isum, caeruleam adoerUt puppim ripaeque propinquat. inde alias animas, quae per iuga longa sedebant, deturbat, laxatque foros : simul accipit al~o ingentem Aenean. geDlUit sub pondere cumba sutilis, et multam accepit rimosa paludcm. tandem trans fluuium incolumes I.Otemque oirumque informi limo glaucaque exponit in ulua~

94 STEPHANE KRESIC

Aprcs que la Sibylle eat apaise Cerbere d 'un gateau de graines et de miel, les deux voyageurs traver sent Ie fleuve qulon ne passe point deux fois. Au dela de l'eau s'etendent ces regions que Dante nommera des "cercles", II y a celle des enfants morts a la naissance et qui pleurentj celIe des innocents injustement condamnes; celle des suicides qui envient maintenant_ la lumiere oil l'on sQuffre, oil l'on peine, oil l'on endure la pauvrete. Plus loin, SQllS les myrtes du Champ des Pleurs, pas sent les victimes de 1 'Amour, Enee reconnait Didon; mais clle ne rcpond aux larmes et aux supplications de son ancien amant que par un farouche silence ,et des regards indiJ;:nes. Plus loin, c'est Ie sc­jour des hornmes d'armes qui tomberent sur Ie champ de bataillc. Les soldats d'ARamemnon s'enfuient a la vue du heros et des armes etincelantes. Leur bouche cpouvantee ne laisse echapper qU'un cri silencieux. Parmi ces ombres, Enee arr~te DCiphobe, troisieme mari d'Hclene, que sa femme a livre aux Grecs, la nuit du sac de Troie, et qu'Ulysse et MenClas ont affreusement mutile. Mais la Sibylle entraine Ie heros. Ils laissent a gauche la vaste enceinte du Tar­tare ou les grands criminels cxpient leurs crimes dans un fracas de li!.cmissements. de coups de fouet et de chaines remuees. Virgile poursuit (vv. 628-636)

haec ubi dicta dedit Phoebi 10nRacua sacerdos : 'sed iam agc, carpe oiam, et susceptum perf ice munus. adceleremus, I ait; 'Cyclopum e-ducta caminis moenia conspicio. atque a(\uerso fornice portas, haec ubi nos praecepta iubent deponere dona. I

dixerat, et pariter gressi per opaca uiarum corripiunt spatium medium, foribusque propinquant. occupat Aeneas aditum, cOTousque Tecenti spargit aqua, ramumque aclUCrso in limine figit.

Le rameau d'or a accompli sa mission, Enee Ie dedie a Proserpine, au seui I de son palais.

Nous ne suivons pas Ence aux Champs-Elysees ou il recevra de la bouche prophctique de son pere la revelation de son destin et de celui des generations romaines d'ou il sortira, par la porte d'ivoire, pour rejoindre ses compagnons et conduire sa £lotte a Gaete.

Voi za poW' 8i tu.el' Ze Rameau. d' 01'.

te mystere du Rameau d I or a fortement intrigue les commentateurs de Virgile, anciens et modernes. Les recherches ont ete poursuivies dans plusieurs directions. Tout d'abord, on a essaye d'en retrouver Ies elCments dans la tra­dition philosophique et litteraire. Chez !lomere, on n'a trouve rien d'analogue. MIle Agnes Kirsopp Michels, dans son article The GoZden Bough of pLato (1) com-pare deux vel'S sur Platon qui se trouvent dans la CoW'onne de Meleagre de Gadara (oil l' on dit que Ie Rameau d'or du divin Platon briUe partout par sa vertu) avec Ie vcrs 204 de Virgile ("I'arbre ou Ie reflet de 1'01' eclate et tranche sur Ie feuillage"). En se fondant sur la ressemblance entre la descente d 'Enee aux Enfers et Ie My the d 'Er, eUe conclut que ces associations avec l' image des fidetes qui s 'approchent de Proserpine, munis de rameaux, travaillaient dans I' imagination de Virgile alors qu I il composai t son 6e livre. Ces hypotheses ne peuvent @tre acceptces, manque de preuves.

LE RAMEAU D'OR CHEZ VIRGILE 95

Eduard Norden, dans son commentaire classique Aeneis Bu.eh VI (2), pose la question: Ie motif du Rameau d'or a-t-il ete utilise dans la tradition litte­raire, avant Virgile? 11 conclut que, tenant compte des t CDloignages de l'anti­quite et de toutes les considerations possibles, une reponse negative s'impose. Virgile aura it donc introduit, Ie premier, dans la littCrature mondiale, Ie motif du Rameau d'or. L'Antiquite d'ailleurs n'a pu percer ce mystere, comme en tcmoigne :~~:;u~~HY~us cite par Macrobe : adsueuit poetico mOl'e alir,J.a fingel'e ut de

Ensuite, on a essaye d'expliquer Ie Rameau d'or par Ie folklore et par 1 'histoire comparee des religions. On sait que Sir James Fraser a donne Ie titre symbolique The Golden Bough a son ouvrage monumental sur les "superstitions" hu­main,\s. 11 est vrai qu'il a mal interprete la notice 4u scoliaste virgilien Ser­vius (Jans son COllUDentaire au vel'S VI, 136. ou. il est dit :"Certains donnent au Rameau d'or une signification mystique en liaison avec Ie culte de Proserpine, et Virgile en a trouve la suggestion dans les traditions rituelles du bois sacrc de Nemi" (pr~s d'Arieia, a quelque quarante kilom~tres de Rome). TireI' de Iii, cOllUDe Ie fait Fraser, que Ie Rameau d'or cueilli par Enee est la branche cueillie au bois de Nemi, n'est-ce pas, comme R.S. Conway l'a deja remarque(4), en forcer Ie sens ?

Puisque nous possedons main tenant une matiere abondante dans Ie domaine du folklore compare, les philologues ont cherche des eclaircissements de ce c8t€.

Us se sont pose d'abord la question de savoir ce qU'etait materiellement Ie Rameau d'or. Il y en a qui affirment que c'est uiscum (en franlfais, Ie gui; en anglais, mistletoe, en allemand, Mistel, en croate, imela), Entre autres, Fraser et Norden sont de cet avis. On sait que la position de cette plante para­site entre Ie ciel et la terre (eUe n'a pas ses racines dans Ie sol, mais sur Ie tronc d 'un arbre ou sur ses branches), sa vel'dul'e avec des feuilles fraiches et des baies jaunes au beau milieu du solstice d'hiver, enfin sa couleUl' d 'ol' , ont suseite des croyances chez des peuples differents: qu'elle contient les semences ou les germes du feu solaire, qu'elle cache la vie et qu'elle possede de ooltiples pouvoirs magiques (contre les demons, contre la maladie, contre la sterilitc.. • qU'eUe ouvre les enfers, etc.)

Dans l'Antiquite, on comptait Ie gui parmi les prodiges (ilfc>'... i ""-)­Pline l'Aneien ROUS dit que Ie uiecum resiste a l'eau et au feu (5). Commentateur de Virgile, Donat l'appelle plante miraculeuse (miraculum) (6).

Dans les croyances populaires, et dans la legende, Ie gui est en meme temps un symhole de la mort (parce que, cOlllme eUe, it detruit I 'arbre sur lequel it vi!) et un symbole de la vie (parce que ses feuilles persistantes donnent a l'homme un espoir d'immortalite). Norden ecrit : "Pour la pensee mythique, mort et vie ne sont pas toujours en opposition. Elles peuvent former une unite, car la Nature meurt pour ressuciter." (7)

Mais attention! Virgile se contente de comparer Ie Rameau d'or au gui, it ile les identifie pas. Fraser et Norden sont conscients de ce fait, mais ils persistent cependant dans leur affirmation. Fraser suggere que la comparaison du Rameau d'or avec Ie gui "n'est peut-@tre qU'un stratageme poihique pour jeter une sorte de charme magique sur cette modeste plante" (8). Norden s'appuie, par ana­logie, sur plusieurs exemples tires de Virgite, ou la comparaison est en fait

.6 STEPHANE KRESIC

1 'identification. Virgilc. par exemple. compare 18 neche cnflammee d'Alceste a une meteorite (9) . Et c'etait en effet une meteorite. Virgile compare Ies limes des morts aux oiseaux (10). Et ce sont vraiment des oiseaux.

Karl Kerenyi. un des meilleurs specialistes contemporains de mythologie c1assique, dans 5es Notes marginat.es au Cc;mnentail"B de Norden (11). penche aussi pour une sorte de gui. quoique cette espece (uiscwn album) ne 5 'agrippe pas ii: l'yeuse (iZez) virgilienne. Mais Kerenyi ajoute avec beaucoup de bon sens : "Goldene ZlJeige wchaen nil'gends. Abel' deY' Dichter hat seinen Z1Ueck ohne Auto­:roitllten und tl'otz del' Bo tanik 81'1'eicht". (Lcs rameaux d'or ne poussent nulle part. Mals Ie poiHe atteint son but sans autorite a l'appui et en depit de la botanique) .

Leo Hermann, interprete infatigable des enigmes qui hantent les cerveaux des philologues classiques, s'est attele i deux reprises a la tache difficile de

~!::~:~e d!e c~~o~;:~:u~: i;a=a~u~,~:m::u~ ,:~p::' d~w:::::u (13r~ ~~m:. s~~~:n~e que "Ie rameau d'or cueilli par Enee n'Hait en r6alitE qu'une b1'Qnehe de l.aw-iep en 01' et cela en raison du r61e joue par Ie laurier dans la vie d'Auguste ..... Si Enee est gUide par les colombes de sa mere Venus vers I'arbre fatidique qui porte un rameau d'or, c'est pasce que l'arbre et Ie rameau interessent tout par­ticulierement la dynastie des Ccsars."

Dans son deuxii5me article, L'aPwe aux rameau:t d'Ol' (14). Hermann affirme que Virgile, dans les vers 143, 204 , 208, et 209, indique qu'il s'agit d'un pameau de m€tal, et non d'un rameau ayant seulement une couleur or. l:t il dit: "D'ailleurs ce rameau, lorsqu'il est cueilli par un predestine, repousse instantanement (v. 143-144) et se dHache ii la main (v. 146-147), tandis qu'il resiste mame au fer dans Ie cas contraire rv. 147-148). Comme chacun sait que Ie gui ne resistait pas a la faucille d'or des druides, ne repoussait pas instantanement apres sa cueillctte, Ie rameau d'l:nee n'avait de commun avec Ie gui que Ie fait de pousser sur un arbre different de lui-mt!me". Et liermann de conclure : "Le my the du rameau d'or d'Enee - semblable dans une certaine mesure ii celui du phenix qui rendt de ses cendres - est pour Virgile un moyen de symboliser, non la mort et la resurrection, mais la succession eternelle des membres d'une famille Clue, la famille des Cesars."

Un autre Beige, Jean-G. Preaux, dans son article Vipgile et le l"QIIfeau d'Ol' (15), avance l'hypothese que l'arbre de Diane, l'yeuse, porte un rameau d'or, la plante de Jupiter, la joubarbe apbopeaeente, de couleur tres jaune et qui rap­pelle I' or, Ie talisman qui est pour Enee une garantie d' immortal ite et de resur­rection fournie par la protection d'Artemis-Diane et d'Apollon. Et M. Prcaux conciut : "La quihe du rameau d'or roar EniSe parait avoir ete decrite en termes reli gieux et politiques par Virgile pressenti par AURUste en l'an 23 d'acceterer la preparation des jeux seculaires en projetant dans Ie my the et dans l'eternite la geste de Rome: Enee prefigure Auguste, il se trouve comme Ie Prince sous la protection de Venus, d'Apollon et de Diane, dont it porte Ie talisman gr1ice au­quel il traversera sans peine Ie Tartare, accomplira Ie geste rituel exige par Proserpine , Symbole d'amour et de paix, Ie rameau d'or confere ii: son dHenteur Ie droit ii: l'apotheose et au commerce avec les dieux et les heros,"

LE RANEAU D 'OR CHEZ VIRGILE 97

Ceci nous a.ane 1 la 3e interpr6tation du Raeau d 'or : ~ 'interoproltation symbotique.

intitu16 ~,,!~:1~:sR:f~!~:r!n A~:r~~~ a;:g~'l~f~v:!lc::r~~:n::u~a;:~:i ;;:;e~:n o;t~~:t:;;n(Hr.re o:~;e= d~~~ :~:~;a (~:t !:ar~:t B;d: ::s ~~e etymologie latine : e:cagium • pede) nous trouvons applique Ie principe pose par J.A.K. Thompson dans son Hude The Present and Future of Classica~ soholarehip (18): "Scholarship has a dual nature. It is both an art and a science: an art based upon science. To divorce one frOll the other is fatal".

Brooks se plaint, non sans raison, de's cODllllentateurs de ce passage, et il licrit: "What they have found relates to the more or less distant environment of the Aenied, to tradition, belief, and ritual, which must be considered in the interpretation of the poem, but which oannot oonetitute that interpretation or even begin it." (l9) Donc, avant tout, Ie sens du Rameau d'or doit etre cherche dans l'Eniid£ elle-meme, il faut considerer Ie Rameau d'or cOllUle partie intligrante, essentielle de la structure de l'Enii4e. 11 s'agit de dligager sa signification du contexte m@me du po~me, et non pas de ce que Virgile a pris chez ses predikes­seurs litteraires oll au folklore national (ou international).

L.A. Mackay, dans un article magistral Three LeJ)e~s of Meaning in the Aeneid (20), affirme que c'est au sixUme livre de l'Eniide que se refUte de la fa~on la plus con~ens6e et la plus frappante Ie triple objet de l'Eniide. Trois th~mes y sont entre laces : la purification d'Enee en vue de sa Ilission historique; Ie developpement moral de toute vie hero'!que; l'effort victorieux de l'esprit hu­main pour comprendre la nature et la destinee de l'homme.

Selon R.A. Brooks, Ie siw:i~me livre est Ie centre du pO~lIIe, symbolique­ment et litteralement. Le penible voyage vers l'ltalie est teraine et la guerre pour fonder une nouvelle Troie n'a pas encore cOllllllence. L'experience individuelle est finie pour Enee. 11 lui fal,lt encore subir 1 'experience collective du fonda­teur d'un nouveau peuple. Entre 18 malediction de la ville morte et la naissance du nouveau pays, Enee doit faire un voyage de purification. Entre Ie passe hero!que, troyen. et I' avenir historique, romain, il a hesoin de l' illumination, de la rEve­lation de sa destinee que peut lui donner son p~re, de l'au-del1. I.a mort symbo­lique de l'individuel sera consollllllee au coors de son voyage infernal et il en sor­tira la vie du nouvel Enee. Donc, dans la volonte d'Enee, IIOrt et vie sont unies, cODIIDe dans Ie Rameau d'or co-existent les contrastes et l'union entre ce qui est vivant et ce qui est mort. Somme toute, En"e en a trouve l'ill'8ge dans Ie Rameau d'or.

A la fin de son etude, Brooks annonce une -oensef' lIIerveilleuse : tout au long du poa:me, fnee est toujours entralne a travers d~ nouvelles epreuves vers plus de connaissances. Mais il n'atteint jalll8is qu'un etat de gdce limite. Nous citons : "1be amor which illpeis him to pass living into death receives no answer. This deepsr ·antithesis of success in actionlj'rustMtion in knot,,7.edge is the centra7. and fonilJJmenta7. signifioanoe of the go7.den bough ••• Disoo7.0r aura: not the light of revelation, but the dubious and shift.ing colors of the magic forest .. . In the Fourth Canto of the Inferno. Dante has his master say of the sphere which he inhabits for eternity :

98 STEPHANE KRESIC

Per tai difetti, non pep aZtzoo rio, Semo pe~ti, e Bol di tanto ofle81-, Che 8en.a:a Bpeme vivemo in desio.

Enfer, chant IV. vv. 40-42).

(Pour tel dHaut. non point pour autre bUlle Sommes perdus; de ce seul trait, bless{;s, que sans espoir vivons en d6sirance).

At the center of the Virgil's poem, the golden bough, in all its density of suggestion, is the primary symbol of this splendid despair." (21).

Une des perspectives principales qui se dessinent dans les etudes virgi­liennes d' auj ourd 'hui. est precisement la tentative d 'expliquer Ie pessimisme de Virgile. el sentimiento tragico de La vida, comme Ie dirait Miguel de UnamuTlO (22).

Faut-il dans ce sens mentionner quelques-uns des nombreux vers qui, places dans leur contexte, montrent la preoccupation de Virgile de cette tragique destinee humaine, terrestre et supra-terrestre ?

Quand Enee et Achate, enveloppes d'un nuage. parviennent au centre de Carthage, ils admirent la ei te monulQentale, les portes d 'airain du vaste temple de Junon, ils voient clairement les souffrances des Troyens a Ilion, Hernis6s dans la magie de la peintare, ils s ',u."r@tent, et Enee versant des larmes dit i Achate :

"Quid iam locus". inquit, "Achate, quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? En Priamus. Sunt hic etiam sua praemia laudi. Bunt Zacrimae rerum et mentem mOl'talia tangunt." (23)

(Que 1 pays, Achate, quel canton de l'univers ne sont pas remplis de nos malheurs? Voiei Priam" lei toeme, les beUes actions ont leur recompense, il y a des larmes pour l' infortune et les choses humaines

touchent les coeurs)"

Enee abandonne Didon, sourd i ses reproches et i ses larmes. A l'aurore, l'amoureuse fatale aper~oit la fIotte impitoyable gagnant la haute mer et, pUe. les joues urbrees, les yeux sanglants, eUe se plonge dans la poi trine l'epee de son amant. Mourante, eUe cherche la lumH!re du ciel et eUe gemit de I'avoir retrouvee (est-ce son regret de quitter la vie au la souffrance de vivre encore?):

"Ter sese attolens cuhitoque adnixa leuauit, ter reuoluta tore est oculisque errantibus alto quaeeiuit caeLo lucem ingemuitque l'epel'ta,," (24)

(Trois fois dIe se souleve et s'appuie sur son coude, trois fois eUe s'affaisse sur la couche. De ses yeux errants eUe a cherche la lumiere dans Ie haut du eiel: et elle a

gemi de l' avoir retrouvee).

LE RAHEAU D 'OR CHEZ VIRGILE

Quand Anchise, aux Enfers, explique 8: son fils Ie secret des limes i qui les destins doivent une seconde incarnation, En~e, parcouru d'un frisson sacr~, fait 1a rEflexion suivante:

"0 pater, anne aliquas ad caelu. hinc ire putandum est sublimis animas iterumque ad tarda reuerti corpora 1 Quid lucie miesrie tam dira cupido 7,,(25)

( 0 p~re, en est-il donc qui reviendront sur notre terre et qui voudront, Imes, plonger une autre fois dans l'Epaisseur d'un corps? Malheureuxl D'ou vient ce

desir insense de vivre 1")

Dans ces vers se trouvent posEes les questions du sens de la vie, ceUes de la place de l'homme dans l'univers, des souffrances humaines, les

::~e~n q~::t!~~: ~~:r:e q~~s:!~:~t P~~::~~e: :u~:m~~~c~~ ~~:I~e,,"~!6f~t d 'Enee

Enfin, l'EnAi.ck se termine par la mort de Turnus. L'epee d'Enee est plongEe dans sa poi trine et

Ast iUi soluontur frigore membra uitaque cum gemitu fugit indif17lG.ta sub umbras. (27)

(Le froid de la mort glace les membres de Turnus et son Ime indignce s'enfuit en gemissant chez Ies ombres).

99

Charles Paul Segal a poursuivi la meditation de Brooks sur Ie symbolisme du Rameau d' or et de la destinEe humaine. 11 a ouvert un vaste panorama de sug­gestions, expliquant non seulement Ie livre VI de l'EnAide, mais toute la concep­tion virgilienne de la vie. Pour Segal, la grandeur de I 'cpopee tient dans une tension entre la cElEbration de la gloire, de la reussite romaine d'une part et des souffrances que cette rEussite provoque d'autre part. 11 voH dans Ie Rameau d' or, non seulement ce talisman mgique qui permet I 'entree d 'Ence aux Enfers, mais aussi Ie symbole de sa mission contradictoire. II s'accorde avec Servius pour qui Ie rameau est la cause de la mort de Misene : la descente d' Enee aux Enfers doit @tre precEdee d 'un sacrifice humain. 11 faut enterrer Ie passe pour que naisse l'avenir.

Segal insiste sur une conception "dichotomique" du Rameau d'or: vie/mort; lumiere/obscuritEi passMavenir; pere/filsi succh/echec. Le Rameau d'or se situe entre Ie monde organique, vivant, de la plante verte, et Ie monde inorganique, mort, du metal, entre Ie monde des morts et celui des vivants. Dans l'Hadls, it separe Ie monde des cond3lmh et celui des bienheureux.

Segal indique Ie "contrepoint'~ entre ~egenEration perpetuelle du Rameau d'or et nOli Hernel (aetsl"nUll'l nomen) que re~oivent Ies morteIs (Palinure, Misene, DEdale, Marcellus, Caiete). L'hol\lllle, surtout l'homme hErotque qui vise a l'immor­talitE historique de sa gloire voit toute sa tragedie s'it se mesure au Rameau d'or,

100 STEPHANE KRESIC

qui lui montre l'antithese : la mort/Ia permanence; l'implication dans Ie cycle de la vie/Ia transcendance du cycle hiologique; 18 certitude de la fin de l'individu/l'esp~rance tragique de survie. Entre I'azur du ciel et Ie sein de la terre. l'homme entrevoit la triste verite des limites de la condition humaine. QuisqtUJ 8uoe patimur manes.

Comme nous avons pu Ie canstater, il ne manque pas de recherches et d 'hypothi!ses pour resoudre l' enigme du Rameau d 'or. D 'eminents philologues ont montre plus de ferveur encore, s'H est possible, qu'Enee lui-m@me pour trouver la solution.

Chercher une aeule solution serait utopique. D'abord, parce que nOllS sommes conscients que les symboles litteraires sont "polyvalents", parce que symboles conventionnels et "symbolesvikus" de 1 'auteur s'y entrem@lent, nous croyons que Virgile a probablement fondu ensemble plusieurs allusions qui s'entrelacent. Faut-il citer Goethe: "Die Symbolik verwandelt die Erscheinung in Idee. die Idee in ein Bild, und so, dass die Idee im Bild illlDler unendlich wirksam und unerreichbar bleibt und selbst in allen Sprachen ausgesprochen, doch unaussprechlich bliebe" (28). (Le symbolisme trans forme l'apparition en Idee, l'Idee en Image, afin que l'Idee reste i jamais sous l'Image, agissante, inaccessible, que dans quelque langage que ce soit, elle s'exprime tout en restant ineffable). Ou Hebbel : "Jedes echte Kunstwerk ist ein geheimnisvolles, vieldeutiges, in gewissem Sinne unergrUndliches Symbol,,(29). (route oeuvre d'art est symbole mysterieux, nombreux en significations, inson-dab Ie dans un certain sens).

Cela veut-il dire que nous puissions, dans notre cas preCiS, donner au Rameau d'or la signification qui nous plaise? Sunt certi denique fines. D'abord, il nous faut connattre suffisamment Virgile pour rester dans ses conceptions. "If the proper reading of poetry begins with the reconstruction of the poet's meaning. then it is important to be able to experience poetry as the poet experiences it" (30).

11 nous semble que la methode la meilleure consisterait i rechercher une solution plut8t dans Ie contexte de Virgile-poi!te, son oeuvre et son temps. que dans Ie domaine extravirgilien. Le symbole ne depend-il pas de l'hollllle qUi Ie cree? Ne jaillit-il du contexte et ne depend-il pas de celui-ci ?

Du reste, la poesle connait ses exigences et Ie poete qui s'explique ouvertement supprime notre plaisir. Le vrai po~te nous apporte ses intentions d'artiste dans ses 811usions, dans ses suggestions, et notre comprehension, jugement. interpretation, depend de la lumiere que nous proj etons sur l'oeuvre d'art. VaUry dit : "MeB Vel'S ont le sens qu'on "eut bien leur preter". Puisque toute grande poesie depasse ou transcende l'auteur, elle perlllet i chaque epoque d'y decouvrir 8a verite a eUe. La science seule ne peut nous donner cette ivresse intellectuelle des oeuvres poetiques. Tenant cOllpte de cette realite, neus pouvons mieux comprendre Nietzsche (lui aussi il eta it un philologue classique !) Quand il disait que nous avions la Poesie pour ne pas @tre ecrases par la Verite, ou I(eats qui estimait que la science, sans Ie sens de la poesie, detruirait l'arc-en-ciel.

LE RAMEAU D 'OR au:z VIRGILE 101

1. AJPh 66 (1945), pp. 59-63.

2. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 19574 , pp. 169-171.

3. Macrobe, Satu:r. 5, 19, 2.

4. The HaJOvard Lectures on the Virgilian Age, New York, Biblo and Tannen, 1967, p. 43.

5. Hist. Natur. 13. 39, 119.

6. Ad 6, 208 ss.

7. Opus laudatum, p. 166 : "Aber Tod und Leben sind fUr mythisches Denken nicht immer Gegens~tze, sonder kljnnen eine Einheit bilden. Denn die Natur stirbt nur, um wieder aufzu1eben ... "

8. The Golden Bough, a Study in Magic and Religion, one-volume abridged edition, New York, MacMillan, 1951, p. 815 : "This may be only a poetical device to cast a mystic glamour over the humble plant".

9. Verg., En., 5, 522 55.

10. VerA:. , En., 6, 311 55.

11. Zum Verst8ndnis von Verg1'l;Us Aeneis B. VI, Randbemerkungen zu Nordens Korrmental', He1'Tlles 66 (1931), pp. 413-429.

12. Art. laud., p. 428-429.

13. Dans M~langes J. Bidez, Bruxelles, 1934, pp. 487-494.

14. Dans M~langes Georges Smets, Bruxelles, Les Editions de la Librairie encyclopc­dique, 1952, pp. 401-406.

15. Dans Honmages a Georges Dwnf.zil, l.atomus, vol. 45 (1960), pp. 151-167.

16. AJPh 74 (1953), pp. 260-280 (reimpression dans Virgil, a Collection of Critical Essays, dans la redaction de Steele Commager, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1966, pp. 143-163).

17. Arion 4 (1965), pp. 617-657 et ib.5 (1966), pp. 34-72.

18. Dans Essays in Honour of Gilbert Murray, London, Allen and Unwin, 1936, pr. 279-291. La citation se trouve page 29l.

19. Nous avons souligne. Page 260 (dans AJPh).

20. TAPh 86 (1955), pp. 180-189.

21. Art. laud. pp. 278-280.

22. Voir dans ce sens, entre autres : Wendell Clausen, An interpl"etation of the

Aeneid dans HSPh 68 (1964). pp. 139-144; A. Perry. Twoo Voices of Virgil's

Aeneid,- Arion 2 (1963), pp. 66-81; M.C.J. Putman, dans son ouvrage deja

mentionn~ The Poetry of the Aeneid, surtout les pages 151-201 intitulees

Tragic Victory; Joe Park Poe, Success and Failure in the Mission of Aeneas.

TAPA. 1965, pp. 321-336; W.R. Johnson, Aeneas and the I'l"onies of Pietas,

102 STEPHANE KRESIC

C.J. 60 (1965). pp. 359-364; J.-P. Brisson, Vil'giLe. Bon temps et Ze nOtre,

Paris, 1966. notamment P1). 265-284. Dans Ie domaine de la litt~rature (non

strictelllent scientifique, mais base sur les sources anciennes et medi6vales

et les recherches modernes). DOUS ne connaissons pas de meilleur ouvrage sur

Ie pessimisme de Virgile que Ie roman de Hermann Broch. Del' Tad des VerogiL

(La MO'l't de Vi'1'giZeJ. rHmprime plusieurs fois dans l'original allemand

(nous avons employe la deuxieme edition speciale, la cinquieme edition regu­

here publiee chez Rhein-Verlag, ZUrich. 1958). Virgile examine au moment

de mourir Ie sens qu'il doH donner a son passage sur terre. Au bout de la

route, il se retourne et, lucide. me sure 1 'ecart entre ce qu'il a fait et

ce qu'il voulait accomplir. Ce n'est pas uniquement a cause du soud de

perfection, qui Ie poussait, mourant, a brOler I'E'n$ide (cette somme ina­

chevee qu'il eat voulu differente. car Virgile connaissait cette inlassable

recherche de la perfection, comme Horace, et comme tous les grands ecrivains

de la litterature mondiale et cOlllllle Nieuche qui disait : Was aHein kann

uns ",iedel'hel'steHen? Der AnbZick des Vo~kOl'7l'llenen : Quoi donc pourrait

nous sauver 1 Viser au parfait).

Quand ce travail etait deja sous presse, nous avons pris connaissance de 1 I article du Professeur Jacques Perret, Optimisme et t1'O.g€die dans ~ 'En€ide, REL 4S (1967), pp. 342-363. En connaisseur de I'art, de I'ime et des in­tentions de Virgile, ce critique eminent nous rappelle qu'il ne faut pas tomber. dans l'interpretation de Virgile, d'un exces a I'autre. I.'optimisme et Ie pessimisme de Virgile ne s 'exercent pas aux memes niveaux de la realiU;. "Optimisme convient a qui considere dans toute sa genera lite la marche de l ' univers, l'ordre du cosmos, auquel Virgile identifie la des­tinee de 1 'empire universel, rassembleur de toute la terre... En revanche, Ie moral inextricable et scandaleux s'impose au niveau des individus, des civilisations, des communautes historiques autres que la romaine." (p. 355). Et on cherchera I 'optimisme cosmo1ogique du cOte des ecoles philosophiques anterieures a: Virgile, et son pessimisme des destini!:es individuelles du c8te de la tragedie, surtout celle de Sophoc1e.

23. En., I, vv. 459-462.

24. En., 4, vv. 690-692. Cet episode admirable, sur Iequel saint Augustin avouait, dans ses Confessions, qu'il avait pleure, fut repris par Ovide dans sa 7e Hlroofde.

25. En., 6, vv. 719-721.

26. A. Bellessort, dans la note a: ces vers (Edition des Belles Lettres, p. 191).

27. En., 12, vv. 951-952.

28. Ma:timen un RefLexionsn, JubiHtumsausgabe, 35, Band, p. 326. 29. Tagebilchero, pub1. de Bamberger I, 236. 30. Austin Warren, Lite1'a1'Y Criticism, dans Lite1'a1'Y SchoLarship. Its Aims and

Methods, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1941, p. 142.

D€pal'tement d 'Etwies anciennes Univerositi d'Ottatua. '

LEITERS TO TIlE EDITOR/LETI'RES OUVERTES 103

The Editor, Classical. News aM Views.

Dear Sir, RE: PROPOSED CHANGES IN TIlE LATIN CURRICULUM IN QUEBEC.

The diatribe by my former student and present friend, Miss lJeborah H. Eaton (now Mrs. Whitehead), in the April issue of CN&V is a most welcome breath - or blast - of fresh air. I agree with almost everything she has said and I hope she agrees with me, but since she has mentioned an informal committee, of which I was co-chairman, which Jll3.de proposals for changes in the Quebec high school Latin program, I think it may interest readers to know in detail what these proposals are. The report which Miss Eaton mentions was the first of two and dealt only in generalities. Omitting the supporting arguments its proposals were as follows:

CA) The matriculation papers in Latin should consist wholly of unseen passages to be translated at sight and of questions on the background and the period of the authors read (see (C) below).

(B) The use of dictionaries should be taught by constant practice and texts of authors without vocabularies should be used in the last year of high school. The use of dictionaries on the matriculation paper should be allowed.

(C) The Department should announce in advance of each year from what authors or body of work unseen passages will be drawn for final examinations. Cicero's speeches. Caesar's commentaries and Ovid' s Metamorphoses are of about the degree of difficulty we should expect students to handle.

(D) For each student matriculating his teacher should submit a report on his ability, which report should be taken into serious consideration before as­signment of a final grade.

(E) Teachers should be allowed to choose from among a large selection of specific works which ones they will use in their matriculation classes.

(F) (Concerns elementary text books for earlier years). (G) Experiment in new methods of teaching Latin should be encoura£ed by

qualified teachers. (tI) (Concerns methods of implementing these changes gradually). (I) (Concerns a single examination for all EngliSh-language schools).

This general report was followed, at the request of the Department of Education, with a more detailed one which spelled out more exactly the curriculum for each year but did not change the basic philosophy of our first proposals. We emphasize that English to Latin translation is only a means to an end and only useful in the elementary stages, that formal grammar is not to be made an object in itself nor to form any part of any test, that vocabulary building is an indi­vidual effort and to be encouraged by emphasis on English derivatives but not to be formalized by word lists, etc. and, finally and repeatedly. that any kind of memorized translation is to be discouraged by giving no rewards for it. From the very beginning, in other words, the emphasis is to be laid on ability to translate and appreciate Latin as a vehicle for communicating ideas and not as a sort of cross-word puzzle of grammar.

I will leave it to others to decide whether these "proposals are a step forward out· of the quagmire of High School Latin" and whether "they still leave us hip deep in the mor.as." In any case I cannot see wherein they differ so lIluch from the proposals put forward by Miss Eaton.

McGi L L Universi ty, Montreal..

Yours sincerely,

C.D. Gordon

104 BOOK REVIEW / COMPTE RENDU

The Apt of Vergil : Irrrlge and Symbol in the Aeneid (Die Di~hthU1at Vir-gils : BUd und Symbol in del' ..(l1ei8, Vienna, Z950)

by Viktor PtJschl, translated by Gerda Seligson, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arhor, 1962.

The appearance of Professor Pl:'schl' 5 weU-known book on the imagery and symbolism of the Aeneid in an English translation affords another oppor­tunity to consider the value of his work. It no longer seems possible to offer the warm praise that greeted the original publication. l

PtJschl begins with an introduction which in opaque style seems to argue for a totally subjective approach to literature and a dismissal of any rational procedure :

Unfortunately. rationalism is still with us and indeed may stay forever. (5) 2

It is quite clear that Classical scholarship must learn to take advan­tage of the techniques of modern literary criticism developed in other disciplines. It is, however, a sad fact of modern scholarship that it seems unable to develop, adapt and add to traditional methods without feeling impelled to throwaway va­luable parts of its inheritance. Ptlschl's attack on rationalism is not just a passionate plea for the application of warmth and feeling to our study of lite­rature; it is a dogmatic assertion that reason is a misleading tool in aesthetic criticism, a position that seems far more extreme than any to be found in the ranks of those he despises, In place of rationalism Ptlschl offers subjective impression unfettered by the restraints of reason and accuracy:

Love is the motivating force in all that Aeneas does, (16)

Book II also lacks such scenes , .. The only death described in detail is Priam's... (199)

Chanter one, entitled "Basic Themes", is designed to show that vv. 8-291: of the first book of the Aeneid serve as a "symbolic anticipation of the whole poem" and that the storm scene there and the Allecto scene in book seven fulfil a similar function for the "Odyssey and Iliad halves of the Aeneid". These are interesting ideas well worth developing; unfortunately the chapter degenerates into an almost mystical view of literature as an organic entity with a life of its own, independent of any of its particular manifestations. Other reviewers have complimented the author on perceiving and analysing Vergil's superb artis­try in the development of the symbol as a means of poetic expression,3 Unfor­tunately, that is not quite what Ptlschl says. He is at pains to suggest that symbolism is an essential quality of all poetry and that the Aeneid represents not so much the artistic triumph of Vergil as the inevitable development of epic poetry as such

... the epic "fulfils its nature" only in the AelWid. Vergil was the first to give the epic that closed form for which, contrary to Schlegel's opinion, it had been destined from the beginning. (32)

BOOK REVIEW / COMPTE RENDU 105

This view need not in itself have vitiated P~schl's analysis of symhol in action; unfortunately, it has led him to fill his work with quotations from Goethe, Schiller and others, quotations which are almost never explicitly con­cerned with Vergil, but rather reveal those authors' views on symbol, allep,ory, epic or some other general concept. and which may well he useful for a study of their styles, but tell almost nothing about Vergil, unless PtJschl is justified in assuming that symbol, for instance, has an absolute Platonic identity which can be analysed in isolation from its use by some particular author so that what is true for Goethe must be true for Vergil. 4

Chapter two is divided into three sections on the characters of Aeneas. Dido and Turnus and it is here that PtJschl is at his best. The Aeneas section also contains a number of very instructive passages on Verp:ilian technique espe­ciallyas it compares with Homer's. What Otis 5 has called Ver.l!il's "sympathe­tic" style is clearly discussed (40-41) while the entirely novel use that Vergil makes of detail is most convincingly treated (42-43). Ptjschl. however, is not convincing on the character of Aeneas himself; he does not, for instance, see a struggle between love and duty in Aeneas durinR his renunciation of Dido, but rather one between his human feeling of pity for an unhappy woman and his divine feeling of duty to which she is a threat (43-44). 6 The treatment of the oak­tree simile (4. 441-9) is also unconvincing especially if PtJschl is right, as he surely is, to insist that in Vergil every detail is of the greatest impor­tance, especially in the similes (43). P~schl insists that the oak-tree repre­sents Aeneas in inner struggle and that the 1.acrimae or v. 449 must be his and not Dido's. Such a view, however, cannot be sustained after a close examination of the text; the correspondence of vV. 441-3

with vV. 447-B

ac uelut annoso ualidam cum robore quercum Alpini Boreae nunc hinc nunc flatibus illinc eruere inter se certant ...

haud secus adsiduis hinc atque hinc uocibus heros tunditur, et magno persentit pectore curas ...

is surely as clear as such things can be. Just as the winds' efforts to uproot an ancient oak are unflagging but obviously vain, so the pleas of Dido and Anna (v. 438) are eager and insistent, but directed against a man whose resolve is unshaken, however much his surface, like the leaves of the tree, may be ruffled, As for the 1.acrimae, we can do no better than follow Austin,

These tears could not be denied to Aeneas : but in the changing moods that repeated

~~~~~~fd o~h~!r~!! :!::y~r~~i~t~~. f~w could

or apply a comment of PtJschl himself on another problem:

It is an example of amphibology, a very frequent device in Greek tragedy. The commentators choose one of Servius' interpretations '" But, for the very reason that the double meaning is intentional, there is no need to make a decision between the explanations. This fact is, of course, incomprehensible to the rationalism of Servius and his modern successors. (83-4)

106 BOOK REVIEW I COOPTE RENDU

The most important difficulty, however, in R:S~chl's treatment of Aeneas is his refusal to recognize development of character (58) and his con­sequent failure to discuss book six. This is perhaps the greatest single res­pect in which Otis surpasses PHschl.

The section on Dido is the best part of the book. The discussion of the hunting images in books one and four (66-68) and the analysis of Dido's character with its stress on her grandeur (86-91) are both most instructive. although more should be made of fur01". There is also buried in this section the very ililportant observation that Vergil thought in symbols and that it is therefore wrong to think of him translating abstract thought into symbol (80).

The section on Turnus is not so good, but it has been extensively discussed by Otis; its chief fault is that Turnus is portrayed far too sym­pathetically, an effect which is achieved chiefly by attributing all his faults to divine interference. The one great strength of this section is that it never loses sight of the structural connexion between Dido and Turnus; unfor­tunately, the attempt to white-wash Turnus conceals the most fundamental con­nexion between them, the furo1' they share which renders them both attractive and dangerous. Books four and twelve are the two ~reat cliD'laxes in the strug­gle between furo1' and pietaa which, as PrJschl himself points out, is announced as a great theme of the work (1. 294-296). In support of his thesis PrJschl exaggerates the similarity between Turnus and Achilles and strives desperately, but without much conviction, to suggest that the similarities between Turnus and Hector are no more than superficial.

The last chapter, "Artistic Principles", discusses a number of Vergilian techniques. He does not claim t() do more than offer examples of what he believes to be important recurring features of Vergil's style. This chapter would be of more use for an editor of Vergil than for the ordinary reader; much of it is perceptive, but it forces the reader to jump all over the Aeneid and this does not seem the clearest way to produce an exegesis of the work. Indeed much the same criticism could be levelled against the central chapter on Aeneas, Dido and Turnus. Since the Aeneid is concerned so much with the development of Aeneas himself, especially as revealed through his relationships with Dido and Turnus, PtJschl's divisions do not correspond with any real divisions of the Aeneid; it is impossible to consider Dido or Turnus apart from Aeneas; as a result there is much repetition and a failure to show any clear lines of deve­lopment.

The translation is in general good, but it does have some major slips and there is no reason to refuse to translate Atlego1'ie (21-22) by "allegory", and even if there were, the explanation should have been given on the first and not the second appearance of the word. No care has been taken to correct some of the gross printing errors of the first German edition and many new errors have been gratuitously added. The following list does not pretend to be com­plete : page 14, I 13 not I 23; p. 19, I 294 not IV 294; p. 25 has a most curious error - several words have been omitted so that the penultimate sen­tence of the first paragraph should read, "his Dido adventure (IV). and the visit to Hades (VI) annexed to which come also the Iliupersis (II) and the games (V)"; page 74, 408-411 not 4081; p. 78, IV 63 not II 63; p. 104, "But it cannot very well be argued that ... " is quite the opposite of "Doch ist wohl nicht 2.U verkennen, dass ... "; page 146, VII I 23 not v 23; p. lSI, in­tl'oduoitur not introdutiitur; furta not fW"tia; p. 167, table oracle (Tischo­rakel) not dish oracle; p. 170, VIII 520 ff. not VIl 520 ff.; p. 190 note 5.

BOOK RI::VIEW I COMPTE RENDU 107

"interpretations" not interpretationese"; p. 196 note 2, "scene" not "scenes"; p. 196 note 8, this is a quotation from Ehlers not a comment of PUschl's. It should therefore be inside inverted commas; cf. p. 192 note 20.

There is no translator's introduction and accordingly the reader is entitled to assume that the translation is complete. It is not. PUschl has many very lengthy foot-notes and most of these have been reduced to a sentence or two; there may be some justification for the omissions but there can be none for the failure to warn about them. PUsch 1 is, indeed, a most avid user of foot-notes. In the German edition they appear at the foot of the page and cause little inconvenience to the reader; the translation, however, has them collected at the end and, as a result, is much more inconvenient to handle.

This would be a most unsuitable book for high school use; its dogma­tism and its highly subjective approach would inevitably mislead the inexpe­rienced. Its subject is most important but there is little of value in PUschl's treatment that does not appear in Otis's book. PUsch! hopes that the breaches of modern Europe can to some extent be healed if Germans can learn to share a love and understanding for Vergil, supposedly enjoyed by the rest of the Western world (11-12); the publisher of this translation has thought fit to reproduce this passage on the dust jacket. It is this sort of sentimentality that so often misleads PUschl throughout the book.

D.E. HILL. University of Westel'"n Ontario.

NOT E 5

1. Cf. especially Bru~re, CPh 47 (1952) 106-110; Clarke, CR N.S. 1 (1951) 178-180; Klingner, Gnomon 24 (1952) 133-138. At that time any attempt to break away from what PUschl calls the "schooldust of the a~es" seemed fresh and exciting; since then so much has been done along thc lines that PUsch} adumbrated that it is now the traditional disciplines that are on the defensive while Pt:Jschl's work seems prematurely out of date.

2. The reference here and throup,hout is to the par.e nllmber of the translation.

3. F.(7. Hardie, JRS 42 (1952) 134 "Ilis general thesis is the oriEinality of Ver-&i 1 in adding a new dimension to European poetry "

4, Cf. especially p. 15 althourh this problem does in fact pervade the whole first half of the book.

5. Brooks Otis, A Study in Civilized Poetl'"Y, Oxford, 1964, reviewed by Professor Swallow in CN&V 11 (l967) 47-48. This is a far more comprehensive work that PHschl's and proceeds on much more rational lines while remaining true to the newer spirit of classical literary criticism.

6. The translator is clearly embarrassed at this point since she writes, "However, it is not so much the passion of his love that moves Aeneas ... "; but Pt:Jschl himself is quite uncompromising, "Was den Xneas bewegt, ist aber nicht seine L.iebesleidenschaft ... "

7. P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Libel'" Quartus edited with a commentary by R.G. Austin, Oxford, 1955, p. 135. This book and Austin's edition of the second book of the Aeneid published in the same series should be on the shelf of every school library and of anyone who professes to teach Vergil. Cf. J.W. Alston, CN&V 11 (1967) 23-24.

108 .'iEWS/NOUVELLES

TIlE CLASSICAL ,\SSOCIATION Of CANADA LA SOCIETE CANADIENNE DES ETUDES CLASSIQUES ~\TIONAl GRElcK 5IGII1' CONTEST CONCOURS NATIONAL Ur. VERSION GRECQUE

Fourteenth Year - nuatoTzieme Annee 1968

'1carly 2,000 entries were received, of which only 65 in En~li~h. The names of the prizewinners are <1S

follows (1st prize $lSO, 2nd $75, 3rd ~35 each)

Presque 2, 000 copies furerit soumises. dont 65 sculcment en an~lais, et la plupart des autrcs rrovenant du Oucbec. Les gagnants sont les suivants (ler prix $150, 2eme .$75, 3eme $35 chacun) :

1. George HURLEY Stratford Centra 1 Secondary School, Stratford. Ontario

2. Cler mont ASSELIN

3, ex aequo

Extcrnat Classique Louis Frechette, Levis, Due.

Chri stopher CRAWFORD University of Toronto Schools, Toronto, Ontario

Carole RATTE Ecole SeconJa ire Sacre-Coeur, Donnacona. Que,

Andre ST, -PIERRE Scminaire St-Alphonse. Sainte-Anne de Beaupre, Que,

~'ENTI ON honol'i8 caU8a

1. ex aequo: Matthew LJWYER, University of Toronto Schools, Toronto, Ontario, R,D, LACE, Upper Canada College, Toronto, Ontario,

2. ex aeauo : Peter ATHANASOPOULOS. Harbord C. I., Toronto, Ontario. Stephen WES'J'ERHOLM. Winston Churchi 11 C. I ., Scarborough. Ont.

The contest was a~ain organised by ~hss ~'argaret H. Thomson, Riverdale C. I., Toronto, with the assistance of Professors W. Bor{!eaud (Ottawa), C.P. Jones (Toronto), G. ~'aloney (Laval). II. Parry (York) , and ~1. Roussel (Ottawa).

Le concours fut de nouveau organise par Hlle Margaret H, Thomson, Riverdale C.I., Toronto, avec la cooperation de MM . W. Borgeaud (Ottawa). C.P. Jones (Toronto) G. Maloney (Laval), 11. Parry (York), et ~I. Rousse l (Ottawa).

The passage set for translation follows/ Le passage a traduire ctait Ie suivant

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frXffO foil P01lTpo11, ;~r d7l'l8(JJ1fll tI 0111/1"

s d l'Associat~on de Professeurs

4. L Assoc~ation des Professeurs de hn An 1 phones de 1a Pr e de Qu bec.

Mater a1 for 1Dserhon in the January 1SSU should reach the Ed tor

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