Der pseudovergilische Culex: Text-Übersetzung-Kommentar by Sabine Seelentag (review)

The Culex is a text that Vergil never wrote, although at some point in antiquity it came to be attributed to him. Roughly all readers (and writers) from probably Lucan’s time onwards until the seventeenth century (with a few adiudicantes still nowadays in activity), believed this to be Vergil’s first work, and to represent the greatest Roman poet’s very initiation to poetry. As soon as it was realized that it could not be Vergil who described a gnat’s stressful afterlife, almost no drop of scholarly sweat was spent on this forgery, with only Leo’s 1891 commentary representing one pivotal milestone that left room for much improvement. We must therefore be thankful to Sabine Seelentag, whose commentary comes as a long-awaited desideratum. At this point, I should confess that I myself am working on a new critical edition and commentary of this poem; I should hope, however, for my remarks here to come sine ira et studio.

The book consists of a short introduction; the Latin text with facing German prose translation; and the commentary itself. The translation and the semi-critical nature of the text (more on which below) demonstrate what seems to be the foremost goal of this book, which is to make the Culex more accessible than it has so far been both to scholars and, one hopes, to a wider array of readers of Latin. The question of authenticity is tackled in an effective introduction that reviews extant literature on the subject; Seelentag, like most scholars today, concludes that the Culex was written at the time of Tiberius, on the basis of both literary and extra-literary evidence that she has duly collected.

The second section of the introduction is devoted to the argument that the Culex was intentionally written so that readers would recognize the author’s effort to have it look Vergilian, while clearly parodying Vergil’s content and style. On this reading, Vergil is seen as having generated a stylistically Neoteric epyl-lion as his starting point as a poet. I am still not sure what the unsteady concepts of parody, caricature, or impersonatio may imply in the case of the Culex, where the attempt to prove things sequentially may end up as a petitio principii. But Seelentag provides a clear, if not necessarily conclusive, argument. A subsequent chapter deals with the structure of the poem, with its frequent reliance on such epic devices as catalogues interpreted as one more Neoteric trait. What could have been given more room in the introduction is a more coherent discussion of the poem’s sources, possible relationships with previous (Greek?) literature, and intertextual engagement with even just Vergil. While Seelentag evidently chose not to stress general topics in favor of more detailed lemma notes, one could have expected clearer and broader conclusions about the literary qualities of the poem.

Concluding the introduction is a traditional, and very helpful, section on language and meter, followed by a short presentation of the text’s transmission. Someone reading “Text” in the subheading might expect to find a critical edition with an apparatus criticus. Seelentag does not claim to have collated mss., relying instead on previous editors’ apparatus. Commentators ever more rely on other scholars’ texts due to publishing exigencies, so Seelentag’s akribeia in reporting and justifying all chosen readings diverging from either Clausen’s or Salvatore’s texts or both is appreciated; unfortunately, no consistent notice is given of each manuscript and manuscript family’s reading, leaving it unclear whether a given reading is in a manuscript or a conjecture, unless further information is provided in the commentary. Seelentag basically aligns with either Clausen or Salvatore, only rarely drifting away from both. She also draws on Lisa St. Louis’ extremely helpful dissertation (Ottawa 2001), which presents a thorough apparatus of all mss. and ancient books. It is possible that one major way to improve our knowledge about...