The Pervigilium Veneris: A New Critical Text, Translation and Commentary by William M. Barton

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS The Pervigilium Veneris: A New Critical Text, Translation andCommentary. By WILLIAM M. BARTON (trans., comm.). Bloomsbury Latin Texts. London, UK and New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2018. Pp. 168. Paperback, $114.00. ISBN 9781350040533. fter several recent book-length editions of the Pervigilium Veneris, a poem of fewer than a hundredlines,was there a goodreason for another? The answer appears to be yes: fascination with this strange short poem remains unabated, and anglophone readers have long deserved an update to Catlow’s 1980 edition. Barton’s Pervigilium compares favorably to the more recent Italian editions by Cucchiarelli (2003) and Formicola (1998). The introduction and commentary feature straightforward good sense where romanticfantasyandenthusiasticspeculation have more often setthe pattern. The history of scholarship on the Pervigilium well demonstrates how the editorial pendulum can swing between conservatism and radical textual surgery. Some editors (Fort, Mackail) tried to force the poem into quatrains, as if it were an English ballad. Others, following Sanadon (1728), tried to classicize the poem’s diction by removing some of the occurrences of the preposition de, which is characteristic of later Latin. Earlier interpreters (Boyancé, Cazzaniga) attempted to understand the circumstances of the poem’s production as a reflection of an actual ritual context, whether a visit to Sicily by Hadrian or a local Sicilian festival. Barton accepts Cameron’s reasonable arguments for assigning the poem to a 4th -century context and a probable attribution to Tiberianus. In an appendix, he prints Tiberianus’ poems 1 (Amnis Ibat) and 4 (Omnipotens). He also includes discussion of the possible relationship between the Pervigilium and the PonticaattributedtoSolinus. Scholarly attention to the poem’s early modern reception has tended to focus on the poem’s better-known adaptations in Chateaubriand,Pater,Eliot andother authors since the turn of the 19th century. Barton’s study offers new avenues for researchbylooking at adaptations andresponses from the 17th and18th centuries. Works as diverse as Lady Mary Wroth’s Song 1, Balde’s Philomela and the great A 508 BOOKREVIEWS Orientalist scholar William Jones’ commentary on a “Turkish Ode of Mesihi” demonstrate the poem’ssolidplace in this earlier period’s consciousness. The Pervigilium’s brevity and the space afforded to the commentator in a book-length edition permit full discussion of the numerous conjectures that have been proposed since the Renaissance. Barton shows good sense in establishing his text. In line 12, for example, he sustains the manuscripts’ maritis against Rivinus’s marinis, preferred by some recent editors. In line 35, he accepts Courtney’s armatus, an elegant solution to the mess created by the manuscripts and compounded by some previous editors. The apparatus is fuller than Catlow’s, which was too brief, and more user-friendly than Formicola’s, who included lengthy critical arguments in the apparatus itself. Barton could have chosen, however, to omit some of the trivial spelling mistakes found in the manuscripts. Barton presents some earlier conjectures, which were omitted in previous commentaries, and has dug out several studies from obscure periodicals. The commentary, however, could have included a fuller selection of comparative and explanatory material; scholars will still want to consult Cucchiarelli’s exhaustive notes. The bibliography’s list of online resources might have mentioned that usable images of the three manuscripts are available on Wikipedia. It is surprising not to see mention of Goold’s revision of Mackail’s Loeb, and there are perhaps a fewtoomanytypographical errors for acritical edition. NEILW.BERNSTEIN OhioUniversity,bernsten@ohio.edu * * * * * Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths. By EMILY KATZ ANHALT. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. Pp. 280. Hardback, $30.00.ISBN 978-0-300-21737-7. At atime when violence anddemocracy are frequently in the headlines,this book uses Greek mythology (as seen in Homer, Sophocles and Euripides) as a way to explore contemporaryissues and anxieties about civil society. I am not sold on all of Anhalt’s arguments, but in the main I found this book a lively and enjoyable read and I suspect that students and a more general audience would feel the same. ...