From emenes@orion.it.luc.edu Sun Sep 16 01:22:57 2001 Received: from mxu103.u.washington.edu (mxu103.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.14]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f8G8Ms0104194 for ; Sun, 16 Sep 2001 01:22:54 -0700 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by mxu103.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with SMTP id f8G8Mrv25479 for ; Sun, 16 Sep 2001 01:22:54 -0700 Received: FROM orion.it.luc.edu BY mxu3.u.washington.edu ; Sun Sep 16 01:22:36 2001 -0700 Received: from localhost (emenes@localhost) by orion.it.luc.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id DAA21074 for ; Sun, 16 Sep 2001 03:22:08 -0500 Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 03:22:02 -0500 (CDT) From: "Edwin P. Menes" To: Classics List Subject: Re: Subversive Vergil? In-Reply-To: <001001c13e18$c38b2d60$14b01fc4@al40> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII One sometimes wonders whether anyone besides the usual suspects (aka Butrica and Hendry) reads Propertius. The sometimes intractable textual problems cannot conceal his palpable "difficulties" with the Augustan dispensation. Likewise, a couple of Horace's Epodes (7 & 16) stayed in the published book. Add the fact that neither Asinius Pollio nor Messalla Corvinus met with death by misadventure, and an Augustus tolerant of dissent, even indulgent towards it (perhaps necessarily) begins to appear. The idea of a Vergil who is less than a True Believer is not out of the question. But this is hardly subversive. I doubt that Augustus thought so either; else why the rapid adoption of the *Aeneid* as a school text? I also doubt that Augustus was too thick to realize the import of the text in front of him. At worst, Maecenas could be his Cheney for poetry. As for Ovid as a counter-example, I've always thought that his relegation owed far more to his *error* than to his *carmen*. Besides, Augustus was 70 years old, his favorite poets were as dead as favorite successors, and he had lived too long for his own comfort. If one believes that Vergil's view of human existence is that it is essentially tragic, does the quarrel between "optimists" and "pessimists" make any sense?- .