burblings of a burgeoning classics major
Mar. 28th, 2008 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricardienneSo, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angevin2's post about Middleton inspired me to start reading The Phoenix. I wish I had known that there was a whole genre of 'disguised-ruler' plays when I was in middle school and making do with Arabian Nights and Measure for Measure…
And then I started to think, wouldn't a disguised-ruler story about Augustus be awesome? I sort of think that there must be one somewhere, and it seems like something sort of familiar, but googling didn't turn up any references.
I started reading the Eclogues today, finally. I find immediately that Virgil writing pastoral Augustan poetry is much more palatable that Horace writing same. It's so interesting that the First Eclogue is a dialogue and that it's a dialogue about benefiting vs. not from Augustus in power. On the one hand, how obvious is that? On the other hand, there are really two things (at least) going on. There's the main problem of Meliboeus losing his land, while Tityrus has managed to hang on to his by the favor of the God, and there's the issue of Meliboeus having bad luck anyway: ewes yeaning (I just learned this word) their lambs onto rocks and generally not doing well. And the "god" who controls that kind of luck, and maybe the other kind, too, to a certain extent, is Rome (vs. Mantua). M. asks who this amazing new god is,* and T. starts rambling about Rome, and talking about how whenever he used to sacrifice lambs and cheese to Mantua, he never had any luck and wasn't even free. Only later it turns out that the real god is the youth who heard his petition. It's paradoxical: abandoning your native territory and your allegiances to it, and being subsumed into the dominant city is what makes you free and successful -- and still in possession of your native territory.
The opposition is also not smoothed away at all between the fortunes of T. and M. I hesitate to say, "Virgil is pointing out a serious/fundamental injustice/problem with the Augustan regime/project" but I am sort of inclined that way. T. has a nifty adynata about how the Parthians will trade places (geography again!) with the Germans before his faith in his new god will waver, but then M. points out that those Italians like him bereft of their patrimony will be wandering to Africa and Scythia and Crete and Britain: suddenly the adynata seems rather more dynata.
Thirdly, since I am getting lonely and slightly depressive and maudlin, this is such a freaking sad poem. I think that Meliboeus' last speech is one of my favorite bits of speech from anywhere. The so-careful and perfect description of his his fairly meager farm, matching the work he has put into his land, the despair that he has lost it all, even though it wasn't doing very well anyway, and that for him the pastoral life is going to end. I don't read the end as any kind of permanent good: T. offers a night of rest and meal, but probably only to set him on his way. And then the sun is setting, and everything is ending. (Okay, so it's probably time for me to go to bed, then, if this is how I'm going to be.)
*Incidentally, there's a 3rd century Christian conversion poem more or less based on this, except that the god who will help you out of all of your agricultural problems is the Christian god.)
angevin2's post about Middleton inspired me to start reading The Phoenix. I wish I had known that there was a whole genre of 'disguised-ruler' plays when I was in middle school and making do with Arabian Nights and Measure for Measure…And then I started to think, wouldn't a disguised-ruler story about Augustus be awesome? I sort of think that there must be one somewhere, and it seems like something sort of familiar, but googling didn't turn up any references.
I started reading the Eclogues today, finally. I find immediately that Virgil writing pastoral Augustan poetry is much more palatable that Horace writing same. It's so interesting that the First Eclogue is a dialogue and that it's a dialogue about benefiting vs. not from Augustus in power. On the one hand, how obvious is that? On the other hand, there are really two things (at least) going on. There's the main problem of Meliboeus losing his land, while Tityrus has managed to hang on to his by the favor of the God, and there's the issue of Meliboeus having bad luck anyway: ewes yeaning (I just learned this word) their lambs onto rocks and generally not doing well. And the "god" who controls that kind of luck, and maybe the other kind, too, to a certain extent, is Rome (vs. Mantua). M. asks who this amazing new god is,* and T. starts rambling about Rome, and talking about how whenever he used to sacrifice lambs and cheese to Mantua, he never had any luck and wasn't even free. Only later it turns out that the real god is the youth who heard his petition. It's paradoxical: abandoning your native territory and your allegiances to it, and being subsumed into the dominant city is what makes you free and successful -- and still in possession of your native territory.
The opposition is also not smoothed away at all between the fortunes of T. and M. I hesitate to say, "Virgil is pointing out a serious/fundamental injustice/problem with the Augustan regime/project" but I am sort of inclined that way. T. has a nifty adynata about how the Parthians will trade places (geography again!) with the Germans before his faith in his new god will waver, but then M. points out that those Italians like him bereft of their patrimony will be wandering to Africa and Scythia and Crete and Britain: suddenly the adynata seems rather more dynata.
Thirdly, since I am getting lonely and slightly depressive and maudlin, this is such a freaking sad poem. I think that Meliboeus' last speech is one of my favorite bits of speech from anywhere. The so-careful and perfect description of his his fairly meager farm, matching the work he has put into his land, the despair that he has lost it all, even though it wasn't doing very well anyway, and that for him the pastoral life is going to end. I don't read the end as any kind of permanent good: T. offers a night of rest and meal, but probably only to set him on his way. And then the sun is setting, and everything is ending. (Okay, so it's probably time for me to go to bed, then, if this is how I'm going to be.)
*Incidentally, there's a 3rd century Christian conversion poem more or less based on this, except that the god who will help you out of all of your agricultural problems is the Christian god.)
