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

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MINOR FIGURES<br />

at, simul infesti uentum est ad litora ponti,<br />

mollia per duras p<strong>and</strong>untur bracchia cautes;<br />

adstrinxere pedes scopulis, iniectaque uincla,<br />

et cruce uirginea moritura puella pependit.<br />

seruatur tamen in poena uultusque pudorque;<br />

supplicia ipsa decent, niuea ceruice reclinis<br />

molliter ipsa suae custos est uisa figurae,<br />

defluxere sinus umeris fugitque lacertos<br />

uestis et effusi scapulis haesere capilli.<br />

te circum alcyones pinnis planxere uolantes<br />

fleueruntque tuos miser<strong>and</strong>o carmine casus<br />

et tibi contextas umbram fecere per alas,<br />

ad tua sustinuit fluctus spectacula pontus<br />

adsuetasque sibi desit perfundere rupes,<br />

extulit et liquido Nereis ab aequore uultus<br />

et, casus miserata tuos, rorauit et undas.<br />

ipsa leui flatu refouens pendentia membra<br />

aura per extremas resonauit flebile rupes.<br />

But when they came to the edge of the hostile sea, they stretched her soft arms across<br />

the harsh crag, bound her feet to the rock, <strong>and</strong> enchained her: the doomed maiden<br />

hung from her virgin cross. Despite the torture she kept her modest looks. The punishment<br />

became her: gently inclining her white neck she guarded her body. Her garments<br />

slipped from her shoulders, her robe slid down her arms <strong>and</strong> her hair, shaken out,<br />

spread close to her shoulders. Around her the sea birds flew <strong>and</strong> -wailed, lamenting<br />

her fate in a song of misery, giving her shade from their intertwined wings. The sea<br />

stopped its waves to watch her, forsaking its usual rocky haunts; the Nereids raised<br />

their faces from the limpid waters, <strong>and</strong> pitying her plight, dropped tears on the waves.<br />

The breeze fondled her hanging limbs, <strong>and</strong> whistled sadly around the edges of the<br />

rocks.<br />

This erotic sentimentalism, heavily reliant on the pathetic fallacy, with its coy<br />

rococo touches <strong>and</strong> rhetorical conceits, apart from occasional congestion,<br />

approaches the very essence of Ovid's Metamorphoses : never before had didactic<br />

so blatantly departed from its seriousness of intent.<br />

But elsewhere, Manilius behaves with more dignity, his Stoicism precluding<br />

frivolity. Like Lucretius <strong>and</strong> Virgil before him, he goes to the diatribe in<br />

search of moral lessons, as in the proem to Book 4. 1 And like other didactic<br />

poets, he is concerned to set forth the ratio of this world, 2 <strong>and</strong> the place of his<br />

subject within it. There is an order within the universe, like the political order<br />

on earth — <strong>and</strong> both must be preserved if the machine is to function properly,<br />

5.734ff.:<br />

1<br />

Cf. 2.596(7., reminiscent also of Lucan's proem, especially 601 ff., et fas atque nejas mixrum,<br />

legesque per ipsas | saeuit nequities.<br />

z<br />

Note especially the expressions of his pantheistic beliefs at 1.147-54 <strong>and</strong> 2.6off.: cf. Grattius on<br />

ratio in his proem.<br />

482<br />

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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