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From: "Terrence Lockyer" <lockyert@mweb.co.za>
To: "Classics List" <classics@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Quintilian on wonder and reverence
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 16:23:28 +0200
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Quintilian seems to have seen that "wonder and reverence" were themselves
not aesthetic values, nor in themselves either sufficient or necessary
criteria for literary stature, and that they may well obstruct literary
judgement.  This is what he has to say about one of the venerable old trunks
of the Latin literary family tree (IO 10.1.88;  please forgive my clumsy
translation):

Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoremus, in quibus grandia et antiqua
robora iam non tantam habent speciem quantam religionem.

Ennius we venerate as we do groves sanctified by their age, whose great and
ancient trunks now possess not beauty so much as reverence/sanctity.


Terrence Lockyer
Johannesburg, South Africa

.