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

POETRY
survival, written according to the principles of Catullus, probably before the
death of Messalla, another chapter in the history of Alexandrianism, and archaism,
at Rome.
We are left with the Culex, a humorous pseudo-narrative displaying some
features of epyllion technique — unlike the Ciris it does pretend to be by Virgil —
and the Catalepton, a collection of fifteen epigrams some of which may in fact
be authentic. The only substantial forgery of the Appendix, the Culex was
written to parallel the supposedly Homeric Battle of frogs and mice, apraelusio
to greater work. Obvious echoes of the Aeneid, an unlikely prophecy of more
important work to come, and a mock address to Octavian, the future Augustus,
combine to indict this second-rate poem as the work of a Vergilius personatus,
some schoolboy or grammarian who wished to align Virgil's early career
with that of Homer. Yet Lucan, Statius, Martial, and Suetonius were all deceived:
libraries must have been careless, critical examination scant. Not much happens
during the course of the poem. A gnat warns a sleeping shepherd of the onslaught
of a monstrous snake, is killed for its pains, appears, like the ghost of
Patroclus, from the nether world, tells of its experiences there, in a long,
inapposite V£KVIOC (the Roman heroes of the Aeneid have no bearing on the
theme) and is awarded a tumulus for its merits. Catalogues abound; the
narrative is static, the texture of the writing too smooth for the pretended date.
Phrases occur which are otherwise first attested in the Aeneid, for example
hinc atque hinc; 1 also, Ovid is imitated: Culex 133 perfide Demophoon, corresponds
to Rem. Am. 597.* We cannot say much more than that our poet wrote
before Lucan, and after Ovid — and, since time was needed for the acceptance
of the impersonation, that a late Augustan date is more likely than early Imperial.
Virgilian authorship is claimed by external sources for the whole Catalepton —
a title used, incidentally, by Aratus for a collection of short poems — and the
testimony for the second piece — Quintilian, Inst. 8.3.27—9 — is relatively early.
We can eliminate the final poem, which also makes that claim (illius haec
quoque sunt diuini elementa poetae, 15.5), on the grounds that Virgil would
hardly have produced such a poem so late in his career — after the unfinished
Aeneid- as his last word on a body of material, some of which is demonstrably
unauthentic, or else the kind of thing he would probably not have wished on
posterity. The fifteenth poem is clearly the work of an editor, the man who
brought the collection together, from whatever sources. Another forgery is
14, which purports to have been written while the Aeneid was still being composed,
a vow of dedication to Venus if ever the epic is finished, suspect for the
blandness of its style and unlikely psychology. Stylistic grounds also disqualify
1 Twice in the Culex, eight times in the Aeneid, but we have lost much Latin poetry.
2 Note also that letare, Cul. 325, is not used in Latin poetry until Ovid, and that Cul. 181 sangulneae
guttat probably depends on Met. 2.358?., although the phrase could be a formula.
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