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The lark ascending: Corydon, Corydon (Vergil, Ecl. 7.70)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

S. J. Harrison
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Extract

At the end of the singing contest of Thyrsis and Corydon in the seventh Eclogue, the narrator Meliboeus summarizes its result in the poem's last lines (69–70):

Type
Shorter Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1998

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References

1 Page, T. E., P. Vergili Maronis Bucolica et Georgica (London, 1898), p. 155; this view is that adopted by W. Clausen, Virgil: Eclogues (Oxford, 1994), p. 232. Callimachus Ep. 51.8 PC, without whom not even the Graces are Graces, adduced by Jeffrey Wills, Repetition in Latin Poetry. Figures of Allusion (Oxford, 1997), p. 53, would be syntactically similar, but of course the Graces are unlike Corydon in being already quasi–proverbially supreme in their own field. My interpretation clearly matches this one in regarding the second Corydon as predicative.Google Scholar

2 Williams, R. D., Virgil. The Eclogues and Georgics (London, 1979), p. 121; this view is also that adopted by Robert Coleman, Vergil: Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), p. 225.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Wills, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 58–60.

4 Heyworth, S. J., PCPS n.s. 30 (1984), 73.Google Scholar

5 Cf. O'hara, J. J., True Names. Vergil and The Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, 1996), pp. 243–52, recording Greek etymological plays on the names Alexis at Eel. 2.6, Scyllam at 6.74, Daphnide at 8.83, and Hylax at 8.107.Google Scholar

6 For ornithological discussion see DArcy W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Birds1 (Oxford, 1936), pp. 164–8, and Capponi, F., Ornithologia Latina (Genoa, 1979), pp. 4750.Google Scholar

7 For adverse verdicts cf. A.P. 9.380, 11.195; for a positive verdict cf. Marcellus, De Medicamentis 29.30 corydallus avis... quae animos hominum dulcedine vocis oblectat.