Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE
technique. None of his predecessors had used the technique, and — more
significant — none of his imitators used it; there is a story in Donatus that Virgil
completed certain half-lines ex tempore when giving a recitatio; it is also the case
that quite a few of the half-lines (like turn sic effatur, 9.295) are clearly incomplete
stop-gaps.
Servius has preserved for us what seems to be another instance of incomplete
revision in the passage about Helen (2.567—88) — though there are still dissenting
views about whether the passage is Virgilian or not. l This passage is not in any
of the major MSS, but is quoted in Servius' introduction as an indication of lack
of final revision. It reads like Virgil, but it contains certain awkwardnesses, and
it is not completely dovetailed into the structure of the section. Evidently the
last part of Aeneid 2 was undergoing revision, as the presence of six incomplete
lines in the last two hundred suggests; and it is interesting to notice that here we
have one of the finest parts of all the Aeneid, but still Virgil was not yet satisfied.
Other indications of the lack of final revision may be found in certain inconsistencies
within the plot of the poem. 2 Too much should not be made of these -
they are all minor, and a detailed scrutiny of any long work is likely to uncover
a number of small inconsistencies or contradictions. Some of these are easily
explicable: for example in 3.255 the Harpy Celaeno prophesies that Aeneas will
not found his city until hunger has forced him to eat his tables, and when in
7.112f. the Trojans do in fact eat their tables, Aeneas joyfully recalls that this
was the prophecy given to him by Anchises. He is wrong, but his error (or
Virgil's) serves to remind us of the enormously important part played by
Anchises in helping and advising his son during the voyage. Again, the chronology
of the seven-years' voyage is difficult to fit into the events of Book 3, and
the term 'septima aestas' is used by Dido at the end of Book 1 and by Beroe, a
year later, in 5.626. Certain shifts of emphasis centre on Book 3: Apollo is the
guide there, not Venus as in the rest of the poem; there are difficulties about the
progressive revelation of the Trojan goal; Helenus says that the Sibyl will tell of
the wars to come, whereas in fact Anchises does. Book 3 is at a lower level of
poetic intensity than the rest of the Aeneid, and there is only one simile. There
was a tradition that originally Book 3 was written in third-person narrative (not
in direct speech), and began the poem. This may suggest that when Virgil set
out for Greece in 19 B.C. his intention was to gain local colour for the revision of
Book 3, which is set in Greek waters; but it does not suggest any need for
radical alteration.
The structure 3 of the poem is carefully and elaborately composed. This is to
be expected from literary epic: the poet who undertakes this most ambitious and
1 See for example Austin (1961) iSjff. and (1964) 2i7ff., and Goold (1970) ioiff.
1 See Crump (1920).
' See Mackail (1930) Intro, xxxviiff., Otis (1963) 2i7flf., Duckworth (1954) iff. and (1957) iff.,
Camps (1954) 2i4ff. and (1959) 53ff-
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