REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF PUBLICATIONS 209

Hyacinthus: cf. 11. 368 n. IV. 149-50. The implicit association of the Curetes and the Magna
Mater points to Lucr. 11. 629 ff. IV.162-3. The young are led out when they are full-grown.
IV.201. Aen. VII. 710 is certainly saying something about Quirites = Romani. IV.208—9. If Aen.
11. 56 is quoted, so too should Aen. 11. 363 multos dominata per annos (cf. 11. 209 n.). IV.212.
OLD, observare 8 does not suggest that the word is used 'generally with opprobrium'. IV.279.
For 'odorate' read 'odorato'. IV.339-40. altera ... altera is not strictly a case of epanalepsis in
the sense of repetition of a signifier having the same signified. IV.341. The Beroe at Ovid, Met.
in. 278 has a lot to do with the one at Aen. v. 620. IV.380. If Maeonii hints at Homer, then
should we think of Callimachus, Hymn 11 when we read on to Oceano libemus in 381? IV.417.
compositis ... crinibus is not directly 'the effects of the oil'. IV.479. At Aen. vi.438 read either
tristi and unda or tristis and undae. IV.500—2. umbras is nicely ambiguous: Orpheus can no
longer distinguish between the shadows and Creusa's shade (ceu fumus in auras/commixtus)
IV.563-6. A sphragis consisting of two groups of four lines: given the likelihood of extensive
Gallan material in the Song of Proteus the form and content of the new Gallus fragment is
suggestive.

Magdalene College, Cambridge PHILIP HARDIE

F. CAIRNS, VIRGIL'S AUGUSTAN EPIC. Cambridge: University Press, 1989. Pp. xi + 280. ISBN 0-521-
3S3S8-O.
By his title Cairns signals an intention to reclaim Virgil and his epic for the centre of the
political and literary concerns of the Augustan establishment; still a subtle and original poet,
but one whose complexities are cheerfully trimmed to the prevailing winds, not a repressed
subversive at odds with his times. This view of a well-tempered epic is reflected in the
harmonized dichotomies of the book: 'Augustan' refers both to the political and nationalistic
aims of the early principate (the subject of chs 1 to 5) and to the literary interests and
directions of the age (the subject of chs 6 to 9). Life and literature interact (the general issue,
raised on p. 2, receives more detailed defense on 229-30); more provocatively, the public and
private voices of the epic are seen as mutually attracting rather than repelling poles (129;
whatever one's final assessment of C.'s specific case, the more general point that in Rome
political and personal lives were not lived in separate compartments is well worth making).
Concord is indeed a major topic of the book; the principle of concordance (so opposed to
modern literary theory's love affair with the mismatch) extends beyond the overall interpreta-
tive stance as indicated above to the detailed method of many of the chapters. From ancient
political theory and literary practice C. selects a variety of conceptual structures against which
he then plots homologies in the text of the Aeneid. The method, and the somewhat indigestible
tables of 'stereotypes' with which it operates, bear more than a passing resemblance to C.'s
earlier 'generic criticism'. Thus chs 1 to 3 explore Virgil's use of the 'good king stereotype', as
reconstructed from the ancient treatises on kingship; ch. 4 looks at the buovoia-concordia
stereotype; chs 6, 7, and 9 examine the incorporation within the epic of themes and patterns
from other genres (in the wider sense of that word), respectively Augustan elegy, early Greek
lyric, and epinician. Chs 8 and 9 advance the discussion of Virgil's adaptation of the Iliad and
the Odyssey; ch. 5, 'Geography and Nationalism', working more narrowly from within the text
itself, discusses the use of the names of places and peoples as a way of investing Aeneas with
the values of a Roman and Italian nationalism.
However much the modern critic may protest the uniqueness of Virgil in his time, C.'s
insistence on starting from patterns of thought attested as genuinely ancient is to be welcomed.
In the case of the political theory applied in the first four chapters one is left in grateful wonder
that the material had not previously been systematically mined for the purpose; the result is a
genuinely fresh and important treatment of the central issue of the behaviour of the main
characters, Aeneas, Dido, and Turnus, in their capacity as leaders or 'kings'. It is here also that
the weaknesses of C.'s approach are most apparent: interpretation that uses conceptual 'grids'
of this kind is likely to include either too much or too little. Too much when the model is cast
in too general a form: the good king naturally has all the virtues, but is this sufficient for the
claim that Aeneas' piety towards his father, son, and wife at the end of Aeneid 11 is to be
understood as 'proper kingly pietas' (39)? It is instructive to compare Aeneas' departure from
Carthage with the Cynic (and earlier) allegory of the Choice of Heracles, but to see Aeneas'
experiences in Carthage simply in terms of educative 'failures in virtue and corrections' (51) is
to ignore the panic-stricken way in which he finally takes his leave at Aen. iv 553 ff. Judgement

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 210 REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF PUBLICATIONS

of his predicament as a straightforward struggle between pleasure and duty is Iarbas', not
necessarily ours. C. admits (54) that his reading of the affair between Dido (the bad 'king') and
Aeneas (the good king) may seem 'austere, exaggerated and unsympathetic'; more serious is
the danger that it may be over-simple, and the same is true for the chapter on Aeneas and
Turnus. The parallelism between the successions of Saturn-Jupiter and Latinus-Aeneas is
ingenious (63), but ignores the unsettling implication of transition from a Golden to an Iron
Age. Drances' praise of Aeneas' royal virtues is taken straight (73); but the source is a rather
dubious character speaking in a rhetorical persona on a specific occasion, not a philosophical
handbook. C. makes a valiant attempt to remove all moral ambiguity from Aeneas' passionate
killing of Turnus, but his distinction (82ff.)between furor (always bad) and furiae (si neutral
term which takes its colour from its context) seems more appropriate for a logic-chopping
Chrysippus than for the epic vates.
The Aeneid is often seen in terms of a rather vaguely formulated concern with the
problem of civil war; in ch. 5 ('Concord and Discord') C. arrives at some much more precise
results from a consideration of ancient theoretical discussions of concordia and also from a
comparison of the moralizing interpretation of the Homeric epics as exemplified in Horace,
Epistles 1. 2. More could have been done here with the Ennian Discordia as model for Allecto,
and behind that with Empedoclean ideas on harmony in the natural world, mediated to Virgil
through both Ennius and Lucretius.
Ch. 6 on 'Dido and the Elegiac Tradition' is a cautious and convincing survey of the
features that align Queen Dido with the socially irresponsible lover of Latin love elegy,
particularly as represented in Propertius. Here C. develops a familiar thesis; not so in the next
chapter ('Lavinia and the Lyric Tradition'), an intelligent discussion of the reasons why
Lavinia, the virgin bride-to-be of the 'Augustan' hero, is condemned to a state of near-purdah,
leading to an ingenious but ultimately unconvincing argument that Virgil makes the best of a
bad job by tying his non-person to the similarly discreet presentation of unwed virgins in the
archaic partheneion. The trouble with absence as a generic marker is that it is likely to be
invisible to the reader.
Ch. 8, 'The Aeneid as Odyssey', is one of the best in the book. C.'s ambitious goal, largely
successful, is to demonstrate that the Odyssey, the epic which drives towards reintegration and
concord, is a more important presence than the Iliad in the Aeneid. Following the lead of
Schlunk and other scholars, C. makes excellent use of the ancient scholia and other testimonia
in order to recreate the 'period eye' with which Virgil's contemporaries may have read the
Homeric epics, thus establishing a horizon of expectation for readers of an imitative Latin
epic. A second filter for Virgil's perception of Homer is then formed through an application of
what C. calls 'looking through' a source to its source (a practice recently discussed by Richard
Thomas as 'window reference' and by Jim McKeown as 'double imitation'). C. first argues for
the thesis that the Odyssey can be read as imitative and corrective of the Iliad, in order then to
show that Virgil's imitation of the Odyssey is alert to the Iliadic passages already imitated in
the Odyssey. The result is a series of fascinating interpretations requiring unflagging attention
from" the learned reader, even if on occasion one suspects that what is at stake is simultaneous
imitation of two separate Homeric models rather than of two models perceived as being in a
prior relationship of dependence. This may seem a higher form of scholasticism, but there is
increasing critical evidence to suggest that this is in truth the way that Augustan poetry
operates. In all of this Knauer is an indispensable and handsomely acknowledged guide.
The final chapter, 'The Games in Homer and Virgil', continues the approach of the
previous chapter, 'looking through' the Phaeacian Games of Odyssey vm to their model in the
Funeral Games of Iliad xxm, in order to say things about the games in Aeneid v; C. also
reverts to the generic approach of earlier chapters to argue that the episode is significantly
indebted to the archaic and hellenistic tradition of lyric epinician. But many of these parallels
are too general or incidental to stick; nor is the discussion of the Homeric models the best
application of C.'s 'looking-through'.
This book will hardly appeal to those who seek in Virgil the timeless poet of humanity; for
all readers interested in the genesis of a canonical text under particular historical and cultural
conditions it will be indispensable.
Magdalene College, Cambridge PHILIP HARDIE

https://doi.org/10.2307/300302 Published online by Cambridge University Press