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SELECTIONS FROM THE Aeneid OF VERGIL crranslated by Rolfe Humphries INTRODUCTION EVERYBODY HAS had the experience of going to hear a dis· tinguished speaker, who is introduced by a local chair· man. The local chairman goes on and on, with jokes, anecdotes, eulogy, bibliography (after a quick glance at his sheaf of notes), biography, autobiography, and what not, until the audience begins to wonder not only when, but even whether, it is going to hear the distinguished speaker. Meanwhile that unhappy wretch, contorting his features into a grimace that he hopes will pass for a modest and affable expression, is hastily reworking his lecture, making cuts right and left, and trying to reorgan· ize for forty minutes what he had carefully planned to take fifty.five. 1 tllke a dim view of introductions. Moreover, what can be said, in an introduction to the Aeneid of Vergil, that has not been said a thousand times before? The only excuse for this one is that you, who read it, (if you do) have not read the others. Within such compass as a decent brevity permits, tbree or four things might be said. First of all, the Aeneid is a major poem. A great poem, and, in the opinion of its author, an unfinished one. Being a great poem, its scope permits, it more than permits, it requires, a certain unevenness in the writing. To use a metaphor from geography, there must be valleys as well as peaks, dry ravines as well as upland meadows; you must expect pedestrian stretches if you are going to climb mountains. Otherwise, no matter bow high above sea level you were, you would find yourself on a plateau, than which nothing is less scenically entertaining. It is evidence of design, not of carelessness, that in a work of this scope, the writing varies. Vergil, we have been told, wanted to burn the Aeneid; he was not satisfied with it. This attitude, it seems to me, reflects a fatigue and exhaustion of spirit rather than a considered literary judgment. The last revisions are al· ways the most enervating, and Vergil, one can well believe , had reached the point where he felt he would rather do anything on earth, including die, than go over the poem one more time. If we had never heard the poem was believed incomplete, we would, I think, have a difficult time in deciding which were the unsatisfactory portions. Some cutting, I suppose, could have taken place in the last six books; some of the catalogue·duels cut down, or omitted. It looks like a blunder to have Camilla's exit line read exactly the same as Turnus'. The hero might have been given a little more part in the action of Books II and III, though this might have imposed difficult problems, since the hero is himself telling the narrative. Something might have been done to brighten up Books III and VIII. Then there are the half lines-these, at least the scholars would want to see rounded off. Person. ally, I am just as well satisfied that they were left as is; there is a peculiar effectiveness about them, however in. correct they may be technically. 'The ear is a very good judge in such matters. For the reader who wants the de· tailed judgment of a discerning and thoughtful Latinis!, the Mackail edition affords instances. With all of Profesaor Mackail's judgments I do not entirely agree, but they are worth your respectful attention. The Aeneid labors under the charge of being propa· ganda. I do not know when this criticism first carne to be brought; I suspect it is only our own time, with its per· sistent devotion to all the aspects of advertising and sloganeering, that feels sufficiently guilty about these activities to project the charge across twenty centuries. Vergil with whatever cheeriness his nature was capable of would readily have agreed that the poem was propa· ganda; but then he did not know the invidious pejorative semantic connotations of the word; he would have thought it meant only "things that ought to be propa. gated." An institute of propaganda analysis would, I think, be completely baffled by the Aeneid; the conclusion might be that the poem was either the best or the worst propa· ganda that had ever been written. What kind of propa. 220 CLASSICS IN TRANSLATION ganda is it, to begin a nationalist epic with the sorrowful sigh: "It was such a great burden-a millstone...

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