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Vergil, Probus, and Pietole, Again
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
MY ‘Further Considerations on the Site of Vergil's Farm’ have drawn from Professor Rand two more long but lively articles in which he seeks again to defend Pietole and to controvert the evidence of the manuscripts of Probus. The effect of his articles on the mind of any reader who has not both time and inclination to test Professor Rand's statements by comparing them with the passages in his own and in my writings, to say nothing of others to which he refers, is almost certain to be twofold. First an impression that the whole question depends on highly technical points, of manuscript criticism and of the interpretation of puzzling scholia, on which no one but an expert can hope to form a judgement. And, secondly, the feeling that if so devoted a student of Vergil as Professor Rand, declaring himself quite content with the mediaeval tradition, can accept with a perfectly light heart interpretations of what Vergil wrote about his own farm which leave the reader in the end quite in the dark as to where it was and what it was like, then the non-specialist scholar may safely leave the matter in that obscurity, only thanking Professor Rand cordially for the charming gaiety with which he has handled and appears to have dismissed a troublesome enigma.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1932
References
page 209 note 1 C.Q. XXV (1931), p. 65Google Scholar.
page 209 note 2 Historia, Gennaio-Marzo, , 1932Google Scholar.
page 210 note 1 It would be superfluous to reproduce the whole of Sabbadini's brief and cogent account, but I may generally refer to his famous book Le scoperte dei codici Latini e Greci, Florence, , 1905Google Scholar, which, with the full references he gives in his present article, enables the student to verify his argument step by step.
page 210 note 2 C.Q. XXVI (1932), p. 70Google Scholar.
page 211 note 1 Professor Rand thinks I have treated him hardly by saying that he confined himself to the part of the manuscripts which contained the Life when he had ‘pointed out “a number of other certain instances”’ from the parts containing the Commentary. Let me quote the note in his book [Quest of V.'s Birthplace, p. 168) to which he refers; the reader will see that it contains a bare assertion without quoting a scrap of evidence: ‘A slight examination of the text of the Commentary following the Life (in Thilo and Hagen's edition) reveals at once a number of other certain instances; these need a careful study.’ I have no doubt they do.
page 212 note 1 Professor Rand's ingenious guesses as to how III might have come to be read as XXX leave me quite cold. Let him produce an example.
page 212 note 2 I have never seen this curious view taken by anyone else. The man who abridged Probus wrote Augustus where the context shows that he meant Octauianus.
page 213 note 1 See e.g. Verg. E. VI. 16; Ovid, , Trist. 5.4. 13Google Scholar.
page 213 note 2 Among points where Professor Rand is still unconscious of the serious way in which he has misrepresented either the facts or my account of them, I note without discussing (1) his inadequate withdrawal of his mis-statement as to the distance of Carpenedolo from Mantua, which he repeats in his Magical Art of Vergil, p. 103 (published in 1931), though he had withdrawn it in the notes attached to his Quest, p. 169 (published in 1930); and (2) of his continued misconception (p. 69.) of what I said about the scene of the Eclogues with odd numbers; on (3) the perticamporrexerat. Passage he still totally refuses to notice the difficulties which I pointed out in the interpretation which he dogmatically assumes; and (4) though he generously acknowledges his mistake about Bianor (p. 71), he does not realize that his original mis-statement had changed into a strong argument for his view what is in fact strong argument against it. A multitude of smaller points sciens praetereo. Most of them as irrelevant now as the q of Crinitus, on which I am only too glad to be ‘put wise.’