Vergil

The discovery of allusions is one of the enduring vocations of the philologist. It is also the subject of continuous critical debate. Julia Kristeva coined the term ‘intertextuality’ to describe connections that are drawn in the mind of the reader, regardless of the author’s intent (1969). Gian Biagio Conte asserted that allusion is a message from the author to the reader that a trained philologist can correctly identify most of the time (1986).

I argue that the phrase purior electro…amnis at Georgics 3.522 alludes to the myth of the Heliades’ grief for Phaethon as the source of amber. The allusion fits the context: the ox that cannot be consoled by “a river purer than amber” is grieving for his brother’s death. The implied comparison between the ox’s mourning and the Heliades’ insists on the pathos of the animal’s undeserved suffering: it not only resembles but surpasses human grief.

This paper untangles the significance of a central – yet unappreciated – anecdote in Tacitus’ Dialogus de oratoribus. In response to assertions that oratory leads to fame, comfort and autonomy, the character Maternus declares that he would rather take retreat in the ‘woods and glades’ of poetry (12.1). But this seclusion, he says, is not incompatible with either imperial approval or rave reviews:

The opening lines of Virgil’s first Eclogue set the tone for the entire work, containing clues for how we should read it. So significant are these lines that the fagus mentioned there came to be known as the Virgilian beech (Hubbard 1998:48) and “the tree of the Eclogues” (Ross 1975:72), representing one of the most important parts of the mise en scene in Ecl. 1 and several other times in the poem (Ecl.2.3, 3.37, 5.13, and 9.9).