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Birds, grandfathers, and neoteric sorcery in Aeneid 4.254 and 7.4121

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Julia T. Dyson
Julia T. Dyson
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Arlington
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Extract

On his way to convey Jupiter's rebuke to Aeneas, Mercury passes by his maternal grandfather Atlas, a mountain vividly personified as an old man with snowy beard/frozen rivers running down his chin (4.249–51). Here he pauses, then flings himself into the waves (4.253–4):

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , May 1997 , pp. 314 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

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References

2 See Clausen, W., Virgil's Aeneid and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 23–24 for an example of such temporary ambiguity at Aen. 4.124Google Scholar; Perkell, C., The Poet's Truth (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 5–7Google Scholar; O'Hara, J., Colby Quarterly 30 (1994), 221Google Scholar; Weber, C., Vergilius 41(1995), 28–30Google Scholar; and Horsfall, N., A Companion to the Study of Virgil (Leiden, 1995), p. 229Google Scholar

3 See O'Hara, J., True Names (Ann Arbor, 1996), p. 190Google Scholar, and Ahl, F., Metaformations (Ithaca, 1985), p. 265Google Scholar: ‘Hence we have: “a place, once called ARDea by our ancestors”, with undertones of “a place, ARDea, once called a bird”.‘ Ovid seems to have noticed this wordplay. Taking the cue from Virgil's manet Ardea nomen, he shows a heron rising from the ashes of the fallen city: ’nomen quoque mansit in illa‘urbis, et ipsa suis deplangitur Ardea pennis’ (Met. 14.579–80).

4 Thomas, R., PLLS 5 (1986), 66.Google Scholar