Etymological Wordplay Research Articles

RIVER, GIANT AND HUBRIS: A NOTE ON VIRGIL, AENEID 8.330–2

Abstract Virgil has Evander trace the origins of the name of the river Tiber back to the death of a giant, called ‘Thybris’ (Aen. 8.330–2). This article argues that the reference to the violent (asper) giant can be understood as etymological wordplay on the Greek word hubris and as a potential allusion to the grammatical debate on the nature of aspiration. Varro's De gente populi Romani is identified as an important source for the characterization of the Tiber as a giant in primeval times. The political implications of the word hubris are also briefly explored with reference to various identities to which Evander alludes. The final part of the article argues that Theocritus’ Idyll 1 and the scholiast to Theocritus may have also inspired Virgil's description of the Tiber in this passage.

The Double Entendre of Paul’s Trade as σκηνοποιός (Acts 18:3)

Abstract The word σκηνοποιός (Acts 18:3), a hapax legomenon, has been the subject of intense scrutiny because it may disclose the socio-economic nature of Paul’s trade. However, attempts to reconstruct historically his trade have not confidently identified its accurate historical reference. Since this difficulty derives from Luke’s choice of vocabulary—he uses a word that is very rare in the canon of Greco-Roman literature—this study attends to the word’s rhetorical setting that may explain Luke’s lexical choice. This choice would enhance the word’s symbolic value although weakening its referential value. Σκηνοποιός is plausibly an instance of Lukan etymological wordplay that draws on the continued symbolism of σκηνή in Luke-Acts—a term that captures Luke’s restoration eschatology.

Locus suspectus: The Uncanny Landscape of Invidia's Lair (Ovid,Metamorphoses2.760–764)

AbstractIn translating unheimlich, “uncanny,” into Latin, Freud offers a term inseparable from landscape: locus suspectus, “suspicious place.” As this term indicates, certain literary landscapes have the power to unnerve and disorient a reader. Ovid, recognized as a virtuoso of the locus amoenus, is also master of the locus suspectus, constructing uncanny landscapes in the Metamorphoses that provoke the reader's dread and expose our latent existential fears. Taking as a prime example the lair of Invidia at Met. 2.760–764, I demonstrate how Ovid uses intertextual reference and etymological wordplay to endow his setting with dreadful detail that transports the reader to the haunted underworld and to primordial chaos where boundaries collapse. The resulting landscape encapsulates the Freudian concept of the uncanny and so offers a vital counterpart to the locus amoenus in the study of Ovidian landscape.

Cuatro casos de etimología poética en Heródoto: Los nomina loquentia de Bato, Crío, Demarato y Cípselo

The present study will show how, in Herodotus’ account of the Persian wars, proper names have a key narrative function and are also part of his method of historical exposition. Herodotus uses nomina loquentiato insert micro-narratives that affect the processes of meaning-making in the main story and, sometimes, even in the general historical account. After some considerations regarding the origins of philology in the Histories and the ways in which etymological wordplay is a prolongation and an addition to the historian’s philological activities, four cases of nomina loquentia will be presented in which names function as capsules of meaning that allow the historian to articulate and offer an interpretation of different contrasting narratives of a historical event.

Classics and Complexity in Walden's “Spring”

Classics and Complexity in Walden’s “Spring” M. D. USHER In 1843, two years before Henry Thoreau built his cabin at Walden Pond, the Fitchburg Railroad laid down tracks through the woods near the Pond for its line connecting Boston to Fitchburg. The original Fitchburg Line, at 54 miles long, was, until 2010, the longest run in the present -day MBTA Commuter Rail system. And it is one of the oldest railways in New England. By 1900, fortunes swelled and the Fitchburg’s Hoosac Tunnel Line took passengers and goods westward toward Chicago. The Lake Champlain Route connected Boston to points north like Burlington, Vermont . (See Figure 1.) arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 Figure 1 (left): Advertisement for the Hoosac Tunnel Route in The New England Magazine (Vol. 21, Issue 6, February , 1900). Figure 2 (right): Herbert Wendell Gleason. The Fitchburg Railroad and Walden Pond in winter, Concord, Mass., March 24, 1920. Courtesy Concord Free Public Library. The Railroad was literally a fixture in Thoreau’s landscape . Its tracks pass remarkably close to Walden Pond (Figure 2), and the Fitchburg Line—both its reality and the specter of it—is practically a character in his writing: “I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link,” Thoreau writes in “Sounds,” a chapter of Walden that contains what must be one of the most picturesque odes (or laments) to rail travel and commerce in all of American literature: The engine’s whistle, Thoreau complains, pierces the still silence of his idyllic retreat like a screaming hawk circling a farmer’s field, its billows of steam an ominous harbinger of “this travelling demi-god, this cloud-compeller.”1 Thoreau’s frequent, customary walks into Concord along the railroad tracks took him through a heavily excavated stretch of the line known as the Deep Cut, to which he returned again and again each year in early spring, even after leaving the cabin, to observe and to record his observations. The leaf-shaped sand flows and trickling surface erosion caused by melting frost in the banks of the Deep Cut are elaborately described in Thoreau’s chapter in Walden entitled “Spring,” what Laurence Buell calls the “high point of Thoreau’s epic.”2 And yet, in spite of the universal acclaim of this passage as a literary tour de force, it has not received the full attention it deserves. What warrants fresh consideration first and foremost is “Spring”’s deep-rootedness in classical sources. Many classical influences, allusions, and a good deal of etymological word play have gone so far unnoticed . The chapter is also important because it describes, by intimation, what contemporary scientists now call emergence . Emergent phenomena are properties or behaviors that arise in systems as a result of complex, dynamic interactions amongst constituent parts, including changes to a system brought about by human interventions3—not only, e.g., climate change and wildfires, but also traffic patterns and terrorist networks; kidney function in the body; the rings of Saturn. As he tries to capture the essence of the 114 classics and complexity in WALDEN’s “spring” Deep Cut and interpret its significance, Thoreau adumbrates this concept, but also grapples ingeniously with broader issues of perennial concern—the relationship of Nature to Culture, for example, of Wilderness to Civilization , of Science to the Humanities—making “Spring” not only a probing work of eco-criticism and environmental philosophy, but of scientific reflection and poetic experiment as well. In short, Thoreau’s “Spring” is that rare work of classical reception that transmits both literary and scientific insight. Perhaps at this point, in lieu of accolades, it is best to let Thoreau start speaking for himself. What I offer in the following pages is a commentary on the Deep Cut passage from “Spring.” Classical references and aspects of systems theory will be explained and contextualized as they emerge, as it were, from Thoreau’s text. The whole chapter corresponds to pages 289–308 in Cramer’s edition of Walden—26 paragraphs all told, of which only the relevant ones are printed and annotated here. (Transitions and extraneous material are briefly summarized, as needed, in paraphrase...

Estacio, <em>Tebaida</em> I 214-218: una oculta alusión al cíclope <em>Pyracmon</em>

Ponemos de relieve la tecnica poetica del juego de palabras etimologico con los nombres propios en Estacio y defendemos que en Theb. I 218 el poeta alude al ciclope Pyracmon mediante la expresion incudibus ignes.

Sulpicia: An/other Female Voice in Ovid’s Heroides : A New Reading of Heroides 4 and 15

Ovid's Heroides represent a distinctive Latin literary phenomenon: words of women, directly spoken, independent of a male narrator. These women are portrayed as writing letters to men who have abandoned them. To be sure, the actual author of these letters is a male poet, Ovid. Nevertheless, as familiarity with the workings of intertextuality has taught us to look for other presences behind that of the author, apparent or real, it is legitimate to ask whether other voices may be behind these letters, female voices, which Ovid may have chosen to evoke so as to accord his heroines a more authentic sounding manner of speaking. In the last of the individual letters, Heroides 15, the female speaker and supposed author is the great Greek poet Sappho. As recent scholars (e.g., Gordon 1997, 281; Hallett 2005) have established, allusions to the poetry of the historical Sappho figure prominently in this letter. Some are direct allusions, others indirect as they echo the poems of Catullus who imitated her words. Among other Roman writers who emulate Sappho is a female author of erotic epigrams: Sulpicia. In one of her poems (Tibullus 3.13), she refers successively to two earlier models, Cornelius Gallus and Sappho. The opening line of this text, tandem venit amor, perhaps recalls the renowned phrase attributed by Vergil to Gallus at Eclogue 10.69, omnia vincit amor. To judge from the many other appearances of this phrase in Latin literature, omnia vincit amor is either a direct quote or a slight variation of a verse in Callus's lost Amores. The word tandem may seek to evoke Callus's poetry as well, specifically his verses discovered in the Qas'r Ibrim papyrus: tandem fecerunt c[ar]mina Musae / quae possem domina deicere digna mea (Finally the Muses have created poems, worthy of my mistress, of the sort that I was able to utter). (2) The context of Sulpicia's tandem venit amor also supports a reference, either direct or oblique, to Gallus, for two lines later, at 3.13.3-5, she too proclaims that the Muses have decisively intervened in her efforts to win her love: exorata meis illum Cytherea Camenis / attulit in nostrum deposuitque sinum. / exsoluit promissa Venus (Moved by my Camenae, Cytherea has brought and placed him in my arms. Venus has kept her promises). By noting that the Muses have enlisted the aid of the goddess Venus, and referring to her by the epithet Cytherea, Sulpicia also calls to mind the actual name, Cytheris, of the woman Gallus celebrated by the pseudonym Lycoris. (3) In her reference to the mediation of the goddess Cytherea, Sulpicia simultaneously embraces another literary model, Sappho. The verses exorata meis illum Cytherea Camenis / attulit in nostrum deposuitque sinum. / exsoluit promissa Venus have affinities with Sappho, fragment 1, in which she successfully implores Venus's Greek counterpart, Aphrodite: (4) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] And you, blissful, your immortal face all laughter, asking what troubles me this time, why again I call you down, what ardent desire was in my wild heart: Who is she that persuasion fetch her, enlist her and put her into bounden love? Sappho, who does you wrong? If she balks, I promise, soon she'll pursue you. If she's turned from gifts, now she'll give them. And if she does not love you, she will love, helplessly she will love. Furthermore, as Stephen Hinds (2006, 185) has suggested, the verb venit in the Sulpician phrase tandem venit amor involves etymological wordplay: the first three letters of venit evoke the name Venus, which finally appears in line 5, and, according to Balbus in Cicero, De natura deorum 2.69, (5) the name of Venus itself derives from venire. But Sulpicia may have another reason for choosing this form of this verb, since it may equally allude to Sappho, fragment 2.46: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] You came: you did well. …

Statius, "Silvae" 5 (Oxford Classical Monographs) by Bruce Gibson

414 PHOENIX on 4.251. Rosati evinces a greater interest than Barchiesi in possible etymological wordplay in the Metamorphoses (but cf. Barchiesi's note on 3.10-13, with its somewhat improbable noteon theetymology ofBoeotia), with numerousnotes that might elicitsome skepticism from readers less persuaded about the centrality of this trope to Ovid's purposes. He is also more prone to interrupt the commentary with paraphrasing headnotes, a feature that introduces a slight formal discrepancy with Barchiesi's commentary. Again, largely, one assumes, because of the intended scope of the commentary, there is less attention to verbal detail and there remains considerable scope for probing deeper. So, for instance, when the Sunwraps up his high-falutin'introduction ofhimselftoLeucothoe at 4.226 onemight ask iftheresonanceofmihi (crede) places isreally onlyelegiac,asRosati notes,because the phrase is attested in Propertius, rather than colloquial. Part of Ovid's art is his deftness at mixing lexical registers to impart characterization: here the all-seeing sun-god can do no betterafter his opening addressthantoblurtout "I likeyou,believeyoume!" There ismuch to applaud and littletoquibble about in this welcome contributionto the interpretation of the Metamorphoses. Exhortation too is limited to the hope that future volumeswill speedily findtheir way intoprint. University of Colorado Peter Knox Statius, Silvae 5. Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. By Bruce Gibson. Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress (Oxford ClassicalMonographs). 2006. Pp. Hii,492. The fifth book of the Silvae was almost certainly published after the author's death sometime in a.d. 96. There are five poems: a consolation toAbascantus, Domitian's ab epistulis, on thedeath ofhiswife Priscilla; praise forCrispinus on thebeginningofwhat promises to be a glorious career like his father's; Statius' lament for his own father; a short prayer to Somnus; and an unfinished lament for a child in Statius' household. Bruce Gibson's valuable commentary documents and illuminates many problems in the Silvae. He begins with a brief, standard review of Statius' vita (xvii-xviii). His general discussion starts from Statius' contradictory protestations of hasty writing and high literary ambitions (xviii-xxviii). There are many interesting comments on other Silvae, for example on Silvae 2.7, where he argues against the common interpretation that Statius writes hendecasyllables inLucan's honour because his hexameters are not worthy of Lucan and suggests rather that Statius is afraid his hexameters will be better than Lucan's (xxi). Gibson groups the discussion of Statius' six laments and consolations in the introduction (xxxi-1), presumably warned by F. Ahl's criticism ofH.-J. van Dam's commentary on Silvae 2 (Phoenix 40 [1986] 361), and focusesonwhether consolationscan or shouldbe effective. Gibson provideshis own text ofSilvae 5. It is well-judged, neithertimidly conservative likeA. Marastoni's Teubner (1961) norwilfullyradical likeD. R. ShackletonBailey's Loeb (2003). The discursive passages on textual issues are the core of the commentary and provide excitingproofof thevalue of textualcriticism.They could be used in any Latin literature class to show students how much texts can vary and why it is necessary to read the apparatus. He usefully summarizes translations of different readings and weighs the sense and style of the possibilities, treating other editors with much more courtesy than,for example,J.A. Willis, "The Silvae of Statius and theirEditors," Phoenix 20 (1966) 305-324. His commentson the applicabilityof parallelpassages are particularly BOOKREVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 415 helpful. Gibson is very sensitive to the rhetorical requirements of a poem and to Latin usage in Statius and ultimately bases his own text on what makes most sense. Although he occasionally mentions technical arguments such as what kind of scribal mistake ismost likely,theyare not as relevantfor theSilvae as they may be for textsattestedby older and better manuscripts. Gibson proposes a number of emendations of his own (5.1.66, 5.1.83,5.1.191,5.2.54,5.3.42,5.3.105,5.3.217,5.3.240,5.5.1,5.5.11,5.5.70,5.5.80, and 5.5.85). Very occasionallyhis discussion is inconclusive(5.1.92-93 and 5.3.99), but he is readierthanE. Courtney (OCT 1990) toprintsomething plausible ratherthanobelize. One reason Gibson's text ismore complete than Courtney's is that the format of the Oxford series requires...

Ovidio: Metamorfosi, Volume I (Libri I-II) by Ovidio, Alessandro Barchiesi

182 BOOK REVIEWS Ovidio: Metamorfosi, Volume I (Libri I-II). Edited by ALESSANDRO BARCHIESI. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla/Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 2005. Pp. cxc + 310. Cloth, 27.00. ISBN 88-04-54481-3. Barchiesi's (B.) book is the first volume to appear of the long anticipated multi-authored (and multi-national) commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses. B., the general editor of the series, masterfully introduces the poem in this commentary on Books 1 and 2. This book?and the commentary as awhole?is a welcome and important addition to the study ofOvid. B.'s volume provides a richly reward ing interpretive commentary full of new and important insights. He is especially generous with discussion of Ovid's literarymodels and sources, but he also reveals throughout a sensitivity to thematic con nections, etymological wordplay, narrative structure, focalization, stylistic register and language. Also notable is B.'s alertness to the poem's Augustan context and potential political resonances, along with his numerous references toAugustan monuments. The wealth of bibliographic information makes this an indispensable scholarly resource. The audience for the beautifully produced Valla series is envisioned as broad; in the United States anyone interested inOvid (and fluent in Italian) will benefit from reading the book, but inevi tably most readers will be Classical scholars. The text is based on Tarrant's OCT, with some variations, all thoroughly discussed in the notes (most notably, B. defends the authenticity of six lines Tarrant bracketed: 1.344, 638; 2.226, 400, 520, 611). There is little in theway of grammatical assistance for the Latin student; a facing-page Italian translation isprovided by Ludovica Koch. The volume opens with a long introductory essay by the late Charles Segal entitled "II corpo e T'io nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio" (pp. xv-ci). Segal suggests that Ovid's metamorphic bodies reflect the instability and vulnerability of the human condition, the relation ship between corporeality and emotion, and the intersection of the natural and the artificial. He offersmany sensitive close readings of episodes that illustrate the differences between the treatment ofmale and female bodies in the poem. Segal stresses the arbitrary nature of violence inOvid's metamorphic world and suggests thatmetamor phosis serves as a trope for the poet's anxieties about identity, power and autonomy under the increasingly autocratic Augustan regime. Barchiesi himself provides an immensely instructive and illumi nating introduction to the poem (cv-clxi), followed by a bibliograph ical essay and an extensive bibliography (supplemented throughout the commentary). The range of B.'s introduction?from discussion of Ovid's ancient models, literary, political, and social, to parallels with modern culture and literature?offers new insights to any reader (although the "general" reader will surely become rather breathless BOOK REVIEWS 183 in the face of somuch scholarship). B. surveys Ovid's literarymodels and discusses his simultaneously inclusive ("l'imperialismo ovidi ano") and ambiguous relationship to them, along with the implica tions of themetamorphosis theme on the poem's narrative dynamics, tone, language and meaning. B. argues for a complex and even "moral" reading of the poem (especially concerning the issue of "jus tice"), stressing its innovations and ambiguities. Among other things, he also illustrates Ovid's Hellenistic doctrina, explains the implica tions of his disruptions of chronology and stresses the difficulty, but importance, of interpreting his depiction of power relations (read "Augustan politics/ideology") between humans and gods, and vic tims and oppressors. The commentary itself is full of insights, displays of erudition, and new perspectives. B. provides an introductory essay for each major episode and follows itwith line-by-line, in-depth commentary on selected passages and words. The introductory essays are gems of interpretation and mines of information about Ovid's literarymodels and the bibliography on the passage under consideration. To give some idea of the flavor of the commentary, its erudition, range and critical sensibility, Imention a few of the notes. The opening cosmo gonic sections ofMet. 1 invite an especially erudite explanation of Ovid's dense and complex intertextuality, outlining his multiple po etic and philosophical sources. On Met. 1.1 innova and fert animus, B. cites parallels from Alceus, Homer, Callimachus, Parmenides, Lu cretius, Vergil, Manilius, Sallust, Livy, Horace, Lucan and...

Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Song of Songs

Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Song of Songs Aakanksha J. Virkar (bio) Although Hopkins' biblical and devotional themes in "The Wreck of the Deutschland" (1876) have been extensively examined, there has been little discussion of the central importance to the poem of the Song of Songs and its tradition of related commentary. The Song famously portrays what has been read as an allegory of Christ's relationship with the Church, the Virgin Mary, and the individual soul, and a single article by James Finn Cotter focuses on this last interpretation to chart a series of thematic and imagistic parallels within Hopkins' "Wreck."1 Arguing that the exegetical tradition associated with the Song formed an integral part of nineteenth-century seminary training, Cotter draws on the work of patristic and later commentators to suggest a reading of "The Wreck" as an allegory of the soul as the Sponsa Christi. While acknowledging the specific textual parallels drawn by Cotter's argument, this article seeks to demonstrate that Hopkins' allusions to the Song in "The Wreck of the Deutschland" are of a more rigorously ecclesiological character; from the early Fathers on may be seen the relationship between the Song of Songs and the waters of baptism, and it is this relation that critically defines Hopkins' application of the Song. For Hopkins as for the Fathers, the Song is a nuptial hymn to be read in the terms of that baptismal union set out by St. Paul in Ephesians: Christ and Church are united in the washing of water by the word (Ephesians 5.26-32); in baptism is continued the nuptial union achieved first in the Incarnation. These are the grounds by which commentaries on the Song would come to be linked with the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Christ; as the sacramental streams that flowed from Christ's wounded body directed attention to their interior source, a parallel was seen between the Church formed from the side of Christ and the dove that famously nestles in the clefts of the rock (Song 2.14), in the wounded heart of Christ.2 In "The Wreck of the Deutschland" the heart is the poetic lens through which is invoked the sacramental symbolism of the Song. Significantly, Hopkins' own sermon on the Sacred Heart (1881) describes the worship of Christ's heart as "one of the dearest devotions of the Church"3 and observes that the devotion, though little noted at the time, is found in the sermons of St. Bernard (p. 100). The sermons to which Hopkins refers are Bernard's [End Page 195] eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs, which remain the classic medieval commentary on this book of scripture. The commentary of Bernard may in fact be shown to be a key text in a re-reading of Hopkins' "Wreck." Such a reading will demonstrate the poem to be a rigorously constructed soteriological text, embodying through the vocabulary of the Song the doctrine of the Spirit. For its method the poem may further be seen to employ an innovative procedure; like Origen's commentary on the Song, Hopkins' "Wreck" is marked by a method of hidden ellipses, puns, and etymological word play. At the center of this word web is the heart, iconic inscape, and key to a doctrinal imagination. Hopkins' representation of the heart takes its place within the landscape of Victorian typology. George Landow has shown that one of the most commonplace types of the Victorian age was Moses striking the rock, widely seen as a prefiguration of the Crucifixion and the saving waters yielded by Christ's wounded body. In a less orthodox interpretation the stricken rock was also seen to convey the action of grace upon the heart, and nineteenth-century poets used the image to depict Christ wringing tears of repentance from the hardened heart. Hopkins' iconography draws from these Victorian contexts yet centrally incorporates an interpretation no longer common at the time, the more traditional interpretation by which the stricken rock was taken as a type of baptism:4 Ah, touched in your bower of bone, Are you! turned for an exquisite smart, Have you! make words break from me here all alone...

Etymology and Plot in Senecan Tragedy

1 I owe this observation, the inspiration for the paper, to my friend Diskin Clay. Gradus often signaled an entrance or exit in Roman tragedy. In Aegisthus’ line Celebri gradu gressum adcelerasse decet (Accius fr. 15), celebri gradu and adcelerasse may play upon the Aig- stem of his name, ajivxasqai (> ajivssw, “dart, move quickly”). Cf. Sen. Ag. 300, facesse propere. 2 Traiana; Segal; Petrone. 3 Capitalization Ahl’s. Fairclough’s translation, cited on Ahl 36: “That was a winejar, when the moulding began: why, as the wheel runs round, does it turn out to be a pitcher?” Etymology and Plot in Senecan Tragedy John A. Stevens East Carolina University The entrance of the herald Eurybates is announced in Seneca’s Agamemnon with the wordssed ecce vasto concitus miles gradu (388). The phrase vasto … gradu is an etymology of the herald’s Greek name: eujruv~ (“wide”) + ba- (>baivnw, “go, walk, step, cross”) + -th~ (agent suffix).1 The few previous studies of Senecan wordplay have shown that Seneca uses alliterative paronomasia (e.g.,Med. 362) in the manner of Ennius and Accius, and that he was aware of the important role of etymology in myth (nomen/omen).2 But there has been no consideration of Seneca’s etymological wordplay. Seneca employs etymology pervasively at stage entrances (some of his otherwise less memorable lines). From this we should conclude first of all that Seneca was working in a bilingual environment in which translation between Latin and Greek was commonplace (e.g., Plin. Ep. 7.9.2), the correlation of stems and meanings familiar, and jeux de mots a mark of one’s urbanitas. Recent studies have reminded us that such wordplay was openly embraced by the Augustan poets as a mark of the Alexandrian “learned” style (tevcnh, Callim. Aet. 17). Ahl demonstrates the level to which Horatian playfulness rises in the line amphora coepit / institui: CURrente rota CUR URCeus exit (Ars P. 21–22):3 STEVENS: ETYMOLOGY AND PLOT 127 “Amphora, what the urn was supposed to be, is a Greek word, derived from a verb meaning to turn around: amphipheromai. URCeus is a Latin word. The Greek amphora, when put on the Roman potter’s wheel ‘turns into’ a Latin urn.”4 O’Hara’s catalogue of Vergilian etymologies shows that Servius too was well aware of Vergil’s deliberate plays on phrases from Apollonius and Homer. On the description of Aeolus, ruler of winds (celsa sedet Aeolus arce / sceptra tenens mollitque animos et temperat iras, Aen. 1.56–57), Servius notes, MOLLITQUE ANIMOS id est, ventos, ajpo; tw'n ajnevmwn, ut ipse alibi (8.403) “quantum ignes animaeque valent” et Horatius (C. 4.12.2) “inpellunt animae lintea Thraciae.” 5 Since Seneca’s most direct influences were the Augustan poets,6 we should not be surprised to find that he also admired and imitated their Alexandrian wordplay.7 There are other important issues raised by the kind of wordplay we shall be examining.The first is the question of the “models ” of Seneca’s tragedies. It has long been observed that the plots of his plays have little in common with those of the Greek tragedians. This motivated Tarrant to suggest that Seneca was probably influenced by Hellenistic and Roman tragedies and 4 Ahl 37; cf. Sen. Pha. 959-77, esp. the play on cursus (962), and Traiana 275 n. 22. 5 “Aeolus sits in his lofty citadel, wielding the scepter, and soothes their souls and tempers their wrath,” Servius’ note on which is, “He soothes their souls (animos), that is, the winds, from the Greek word for wind, anemos, as elsewhere in Vergil (8.403), whatever power is in fire and blasts of air, and Horace (C. 4.12.2), Thracian winds drive the sails.” O’Hara (1996a) 116. See also Doig; Hanssen. For many ancient citations, I have also been aided throughout by the work of Woodhead. 6 Tarrant (1978) 261–63; Jakobi; Fantham. 7 Mayer (1982) does not remark upon wordplay and generally suggests a reevaluation of the importance of the Alexandrians in the Neronian court (contra cf. 1990), but he shows that Greek authors were read and studied and that the Augustan poets were the poets to...

Etymological Wordplay and Poetic Succession in Lucretius

Etymological Wordplay and Poetic Succession in Lucretius

Altars Altered: The Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay in Aeneid 1.108-12

Altars Altered: The Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay in Aeneid 1.108–12 Pamela R. Bleisch* In his recent monograph True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (1996) James J. O’Hara discusses what he terms “naming constructions as etymological signposts”; these are points in the text where Vergil calls attention to etymological wordplay by his use of words such as nomen, cognomen, verum nomen, voco, dico, appello, or perhibeo (75–79). O’Hara remarks on a few passages which feature naming constructions even though no etymologizing seems to be involved, and notes Aeneid 1.108–10 as one such example: tris Notus abreptas in saxa latentia torquet (saxa vocant Itali mediis quae in fluctibus Aras, dorsum immane mari summo). . . . The South wind snatched up and hurled three ships onto the rocks hiding in midocean, the rocks which the Italians call Altars, a huge spine on the surface of the sea. . . . The naming construction here—vocant Itali, “the Italians call”—is pronounced, but the etymologizing wordplay has escaped the attention of Vergil’s readers. O’Hara comments: “This is not quite etymologizing, but Vergil uses the naming signpost to call attention to the name of these rocks: Arae, Altars” (78). I would in fact argue that this passage of the Aeneid prominently features etymologizing, of the type which O’Hara elsewhere in his monograph calls “translation with paronomasia” (63). Vergil’s Arae, “Altars,” plays on the Greek arai, “curses, bane, ruin.” 1 According to Servius, the Greeks called these rocks Bomoi, “Altars” (Serv. Auct. on Aen. 1.108). Vergil, by glossing the Italian name [End Page 599] from a Greek vantage point, alters Bomoi into Arai, “Altars” into “Curses.” The word latentia, “hiding,” in line 108 alerts Vergil’s audience to be on the lookout for hidden meanings, while the repetition of saxa, “rocks,” in lines 108 and 109 highlights the double entendre of the proper name. The phrase vocant Itali serves as a signpost for the punning etymology, for it raises the issue of foreign language and translation. In Vergil’s punning etymology at Aeneid 1.108–10 the naming construction serves as the gloss itself; Itali calls the reader’s attention to the etymological translation with paronomasia. O’Hara cites another example of this in the Georgics: navita tum stellis numeros et nomina fecit / Pleiadas, Hyadas, claramque Lycaonis Arcton, “Sailors then gave numbers and names to the stars: Pleiades, Hyades, and the illustrious Bear, Lycaon’s daughter” (1.137–38). “By saying it was sailors who named the Pleiades and Hyades, Vergil takes a stand, as it were, and suggests the etymology from sailing for both words” (p. 78). The Itali in Aeneid 1.109 play an analogous role to the navita in Georgics 1.137; the subject of the naming construction simultaneously points to an etymological riddle and provides the clue to its solution. In Aeneid 1.109 Vergil plays on the name Arae/Arai; he also plays on an alternate name for the Arae, found in Sinnius Capito: hippou nota, the Horse’s Back (Serv. Auct. on Aen. 1.110). O’Hara notes: “In Vergil’s line 110, dorsum is an allusion to this other name, Back; Vergil says, in effect, ‘I am deliberately calling these rocks not “Back,” as some do, but “Altars”’” (78). By playing with the Greek name Horse’s Back, O’Hara argues, Vergil takes a stand on the etymology of these rocks. He is right to characterize Vergil’s allusion to hippou nota as a correction, but he misconstrues its rhetorical force. Vergil does not assert the authority of the Italian name; rather, he signals the Italian name as a variant, and privileges the Greek as the natural, dependable, true name: “the rocks which the Italians call Altars, that is: the Horse’s Back.” This is a bit like saying: “the dish which the Italians call polenta, that is: grits.” One culture is marginalized, while the other is assumed as the norm. The absence of a naming signpost with the word dorsum reasserts the authority of the Greek name Horse’s Back, while the phrase vocant Itali defines the Italian name as foreign. Both of Vergil’s wordplays...

True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (review)

True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (review)

What's in a Name? - J. J. O'Hara: True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay. Pp. xvii + 320. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. £35/$44.50. ISBN: 0-472-10660-0.

What's in a Name? - J. J. O'Hara: True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay. Pp. xvii + 320. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. £35/$44.50. ISBN: 0-472-10660-0. - Volume 48 Issue 1

True names: Vergil and the Alexandrian tradition of etymological wordplay

True names: Vergil and the Alexandrian tradition of etymological wordplay

“Robbing No Old To Dress His Beauty New”: Etymological Wordplay in Shakespeare's Sonnet 68

“Robbing No Old To Dress His Beauty New”: Etymological Wordplay in Shakespeare's Sonnet 68

Lost Voices: Vergil,Aeneid12.718–19

Here, in the middle of the well-known simile that depicts Aeneas and Turnus as bulls fighting for territory and a herd (12.715–22), Vergil registers the reactions of the onlookers. Commentators and lexicographers disagree about what the heifers are doing, interpreting ‘mussant’ in different ways. Servius (followed by Conington–Nettleship) glosses the verb as ‘dubitant’. By contrast, Heyne offers the paraphrase ‘anxii expectant’, responding to the theme of fear in the two preceding cola: cf. ‘pavidi’ and ‘metu’. Forbiger's explanatory ‘tacite expectant’ stresses rather the note of silence introduced by ‘stat pecus omne metu mutum’. Lewis and Short (s.v., II) and Georges (s.v., 112) concur with Forbiger when they translate ‘mussant’ ‘expect in silence’ and ‘stumm harren’. Other authorities, however, underscore the verb's onomatopoeic sense. Julius Caesar Scaliger, for example, observes of Vergil's usage: ‘sane verbum factitium, neque absonum a bourn voce’. Accordingly, some older commentators interpret ‘mussant’ as a restrained form of ‘mugiunt’. More recently, theOLD(s.v., 3a) andTLL(s.v., II2b [8.2.1709.26–32]) citeAen.12.718 under the definitions ‘mutter in indecision’ and ‘mussantem (i.e. murmurantem) dubitare’. Although there is general agreement that ‘mussant’ (followed by indirect deliberative questions) connotes uncertainty, there still remains the problem of whether it indicates silence, faint lowing, or muttering. The purpose of this note is to call attention to an unrecognized etymological wordplay in line 718 (‘stat pecus omne metumutum, mussantqueiuvencae’) which helps explain what the heifers are doing and why there are varying interpretations of ‘mussant’.

:Spenser's Amoretti: Analogies of Love

This work analyzes Spenser's setting of the entire Amoretti courtship against a backdrop of sacred time and his efforts to demonstrate the interpenetration of the divine and the human. The eighty-nine sonnets are shown to be sequential in their complex pattern of balanced themes, structural frameworks, developing images, and clusters of etymological wordplay.

Etymological Wordplay in Apollonius of Rhodes, "Aeneid" 3, and "Georgics" 1

IT IS WELL KNOWN THAT Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica exercised a profound influence upon Vergil, and that Apollonius' poem makes frequent use of etymological aetiologies.1 But the influence of Apollonius on Vergilian etymological wordplay is overlooked or underappreciated by most commentators. This paper will present four examples of Vergilian etymological wordplay modelled on etymological aetiologies in the Argonautica, all but the last from one section of Aeneid 3.