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Virgil and The Sibyl

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Roland. G. Austin
Roland. G. Austin
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
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Extract

If the Bucolics as a whole ‘ look on us with dark enigmatical eyes,’ for long no more impenetrable darkness and no more compelling enigma could be found than that of the fourth poem in the collection. But Skutsch, the authors of Virgil's Messianic Eclogue, and more recently Mr. Royds in his Virgil and Isaiah, have done much to solve its many mysteries. Their efforts, however, were mainly directed towards the problems of fact contained in the Eclogue, and so far little attention seems to have been given to an equally interesting point, that of its metrical arrangement. It is plain that we must consult the Sibyll for help: if it is not plain, that is not Virgil's fault. I hope to be able to show here that Virgil himself has left in this poem certain unmistakeable signs for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, besides his own rather casual reference to the Cumaeum carmen, and incidentally to dispose anew of the theory which reads in that expression an allusion not to the Sibyl but to Hesiod.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 1927 , pp. 100 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1927

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References

page 100 note 1 Throughout this paper I have used the term ‘Sibyl,’ ‘Sibylline Books,’ ‘Sibylline Oracles’ in the sense of the collection of Greek oracles usually so called, which were chiefly of Jewish or Christian origin.

page 100 note 2 Landor absolutely condemned it without realizing that the peculiarities are deliberate.

page 103 note 1 For this άλλά imptrantis regular in λóуια, see Aristophanes, , Equites 197Google Scholar, and Neil's note ad loc., in which are quoted instances from oracles and oracular parodies.

page 104 note 1 MrRoyds, himself hints at a similar conclusion: see Appendix B of Virgil and Isaiah, p. 115Google Scholar. SirRamsay, W. M. thought too that Virgil was the experimenting in Hebrew metre, but he did nothing more than remark on the stichic nature of the poem and the paratactic arrangement of lines (Expositor, 1907)Google Scholar.

page 104 note 2 Virgil's Messianic Eclogue, pp. 87 sqq.

page 105 note 1 For other speculations as to the metrical ‘Umrahmung’ of the poem, see Brakman, C. in Mnemosyne 1926 (Part i)Google Scholar.