One could easily lose many pleasant and profitable hours immersed in the work found in this capacious and captivating edited volume. Its release is timely, coming as it does contemporaneously with contributor Sarah McCallum’s new Oxford volume on the elegiac veins that run through Virgil’s Augustan epic.[1] Thematically it follows in the wake of important recent work on the poet’s engagement with both the natural world and the topos of the premature death of the young, subjects not peculiar to elegy, but which elicit a Virgilian response that owes much to both the elegiac and the lyric traditions.[2] Works like the collection under review and McCallum’s monograph are the fruit of a welcome period in Virgilian studies, one that is witness to the happy results of serious consideration of a topic that for too long languished as an occasional subject of commentary notes, or as an outgrowth of the study of certain aspects of Virgilian pastoral in particular.[3] The modern study of “elegiac Virgil” can be traced to Ulrich Hübner’s slender, nutrient-dense Gießen dissertation of 1968;[4] half a century and more later, this Toronto tome traces a timely trail through what has in some regards been a lamentably desultory avocation of Virgilians. Tools like this edited volume and McCallum’s book allow for promising new avenues of inquiry to be explored, not only Virgil’s relationship with a significant body of Augustan verse, but also his response to poetry as diverse as that of Theognis and Archilochus. Beyond this, there is the immense field of Virgil’s afterlife, to which this book makes a substantial contribution.
The introduction by Alison Keith is a welcome, learned survey of what deserves to be an important subfield of Virgilian studies. This is a dense, learned chapter in the best of senses; Keith is adept at revisiting familiar Virgilian intertexts (as well as less commonly considered passages) and demonstrating novel and insightful approaches for a richer appreciation of the poet. Keith’s introduction also serves to provide something of a roadmap to the chapters that follow. In all collaborative projects, there is a tension between the whole and the parts; in the best of experiences, this tension can elicit real creative energy. The introduction in this case is especially useful given that on account of the serious lacuna that this book seeks to begin to fill, the topics are wide-ranging and diverse both in content and methodology, such that we need a map of the forest.
The papers included here are divided into four parts of roughly equal length. The first section is in some regards the most successful in a highly competitive collection. Here there are gems of exposition, including Hunter Gardner’s treatment of the Saturn myth in Virgil and Tibullus, Sarah McCallum on the elegiac program of the proem to the second, so-called Iliadic half of the Aeneid, and Bill Gladhill on Roman lament and dirges (with an especially fine reappraisal of the challenging Nisus and Euryalus sequence from Aeneid 9). Gardner’s paper is a good example of how the study of “elegiac Virgil” can enrich our understanding of a topic that has been extensively examined; McCallum’s is marked by a learned synthesis of the considerable work that has been done in the last forty years on Aeneid 7–12. Gladhill’s subtle exposition of how epic narrative can be transformed into something markedly elegiac is a template for how to read many passages of the later books of the epic in particular.
The second section is devoted to the reception of Virgil in Ovidian elegy. Here Sophia Papaioannou offers a carefully argued, compelling and cogent study of the development and characterization of the mysterious figure of Anna (Perenna) in both Aeneid 4 and Fasti 3, a companion of sorts to Mariapia Pietropaolo’s look at Pasiphaë in the Bucolics and the Ars Amatoria. Like the other sections of the collection, this Ovidian panel could easily be its own book.
Next there is similar consideration of elegiac themes in the Virgilian afterlife in imperial Latin: Calpurnius Siculus, Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, and Statius each receive a chapter. Jessica Blum-Sorenson’s contribution on “epic exempla” and “elegiac mirrors” in Virgil and Valerius is of particular note here, with wide-ranging treatment of both the hunting imagery that serves as backdrop to the love affair of Dido and Aeneas, and the depiction of Hercules in the Hylas episode from Argonautica 3; this is an important paper that serves as a good model for how to do rewarding intertextual analysis. This third section palpably reflects the untapped riches of the volume’s themes and potential topics; one could easily multiply the chapters, applying the same thematic and methodological approaches to other works and authors (Manilius and Silius Italicus are missed here; both poets offer ample avenues for similar investigation).
The last section, “Vergil’s Elegiac Mode in Reception,” is mostly devoted to later (e.g., late antique and renaissance) works; Kenneth Draper’s engrossing essay on Ausonius’ Cupido Cruciatus (a standout in this part of the collection) traces elegiac themes back to Ovid and Virgil. Two other papers may be singled out here for special note: Giancarlo Abbamonte’s compelling study of the relative absence of citation of the elegiac poets from the Servian commentaries, and Nandini Pandey’s examination of Virgil as elegist. Pandey’s paper serves as a good companion to Keith’s introduction; both chapters could profitably be assigned to graduate students with interests in Augustan epic and elegy. Abbamonte’s chapter fits in well with the recent, happy trend to subject the commentator to commentary treatment.[5]
As is the case with all edited volumes, one could quibble about the choice of specific topics and the order of presentation of the material. Perhaps the fourth and final section could have been rearranged; Pandey’s paper might have offered a resounding close in balance with Keith’s engaging introduction. Arguably there could have been more on, for example, Virgil’s debts to the Greek elegiac and lyric poets; on this important and relatively understudied topic, in the opening section Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides contributes a valuable study devoted in large part to the presence of these poetic traditions in Virgil and Propertius, but overall the collection is markedly slanted toward the Virgilian (Latin and vernacular) Nachleben, with less on the Greek side. This is understandable given the state of our extant sources, but it also points to one of the key reasons why this collection was so needed: this has been a scandalously understudied venue of Vergiliana, and any volume (even one of this size) is bound only to begin to scratch the surface of its subject. The scope here is ambitious, and no doubt reflects in part the particular interests of participants in the symposia/conferences that gave the project its genesis; one develops the acute sense working through the collection that there could easily have been two hefty volumes here, one focused on the poet’s predecessors and near contemporaries, the other on reception in later authors. The Greek imperial poets (especially Quintus Smyrnaeus and Nonnus) beckon here, too; from the drumbeat of heroic deaths in the Posthomerica to the huntress Nicaea in the Dionysiaca, there is much to ponder elegiacally. The appreciable success of the Keith-Myers volume can be measured in part by how much food for thought it provides for further work.
There is an index locorum alongside a general index; one omnibus bibliography is provided for the entire collection (this makes the book convenient for research on elegiac topics in general, though within the obvious parameters of what individual chapters cited). Given the nature of the volume and the fact that this is not meant to be a comprehensive introduction to its subject, omissions are to be expected. Still, from the commentary tradition it was surprising to see no mention of Andrea Cucchiarelli’s Bucolics, which is particularly sensitive to the shadows of elegy and elegiac subject matter.[6] There is also considerable relevant material for the subject of Virgil and elegy in the wide-ranging, nugget-laden Newman and Newman Troy’s Children monograph on the Aeneid.[7] But throughout, the extent to which one could offer what amount to exceedingly minor criticisms about this or that aspect of the project is testimony in itself to how admirably this volume has grappled with the challenge of exploring an important area for a more textured and nuanced reading of Virgil.
In short, the editors have done a welcome and much appreciated job of providing a solid contribution to our better understanding of Virgil and of the Aeneid in particular; this elegiac endeavor invites frequent and happy consultation. Future work in this area will profit greatly from immersion in what is available here. Diverse audiences are served; both seasoned scholars of Virgil and elegy and those with less background (including those without the original languages) will find much of profit in these pages. The press is to be commended for a well-produced, indeed beautiful book. Subsequent monographs and edited volumes that explore this vast and intriguing field (may they multiply) will owe a great debt to this labor of love.
Notes
[1] Elegiac Love and Death in Vergil’s Aeneid, Oxford, 2024.
[2] One may note here J.C. Villalba Saló, La naturaleza en la Eneida: descripción, simbología y metapoética, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 2021, and A. Sisul, La mors immatura en la Eneida, Córdoba: Editorial Brujas, 2018.
[3] Cf. especially here W. Wimmel, ‘Hirtenkrieg’ und arkadisches Rom: Reduktionsmedien in Vergils Aeneis, München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1973.
[4] Elegisches in der Aeneis.
[5] Cf. the ongoing Budé editions of individual books, with extensive annotation, and the similar work of A. Baudou and S. Clément-Tarantino, eds., Servius: À l’école de Virgile, Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2015 (t.2, 2023).
[6] Publio Virgilio Marone: Le Bucoliche, Roma: Carocci Editore, 2012 (now in an updated English translation from Oxford). In the Virgilian commentary tradition, the generally (and unfairly) neglected edition of Aeneid 1 by Guillaume Stégen (Le livre I de l’Énéide, Namur: Wesmael-Charlier, 1975) is noteworthy for scrupulous acknowledgment of elegiac parallels.
[7] J.K. Newman, and F.S. Newman, Troy’s Children: Lost Generations in Virgil’s Aeneid, Hildesheim-Zürich-New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2005.