Un verso callimacheo di Virgilio (Aen. 8.685). Nuovi argomenti a favore di una congettura negletta. Appendice: Un acrostico greco in Virgilio, Aen. 8.664-8?

Abstract

In Aen. 8.685 hinc ope barbarica variisque Antonius armis Vergil describes Marc Antony’s forces at Actium. Here variisque, found in all the extant manuscripts, has been suspected by some scholars and Niklaas Heinsius proposed the correction Phariisque (‘Egyptian’). His conjecture, however, although elegant and very close to the transmitted text, failed to persuade. The proposal has on the contrary strong evidence, not yet adduced, to support it. According to Octavian's official propaganda and in order to remove the idea of civil war, Vergil describes the battle as a war between Rome and a foreign enemy, Egypt (as can be gathered from vv. 696, where Cleopatra leads the fleet with the sistrum, 698-700, where Egyptian theriomorphic gods, and especially latrator Anubis, face Olympic gods, or 711-3, where the Nilus, pictured as a river-god, offers shelter to the losers). Furthermore, the depiction of Actium’s battle on the shield owes much to Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos and particularly to Apollo's second prophecy (vv. 171-90), which prefigures Ptolemy II’s defeat of the Gauls in 278 B.C.; in Aen. 8.685 Vergil imitates closely Del. 172 s. οἱ μὲν ἐφ’ Ἑλλήνεσσι μάχαιραν / βαρβαρικὴν καὶ Κελτὸν ἀναστήσαντες Ἄρηα. Especially noteworthy is the dicolon μάχαιραν / βαρβαρικὴν καὶ Κελτὸν ... Ἄρηα, paralleled by Vergil’s ope barbarica variisque ... armis, and the alliteration between the last two words (ἀναστήσαντες Ἄρηα ~ Antonius armis). In Callimachus the rare βαρβαρικός is variated by the ethnic Κελτός, which strongly supports Pharius in Vergil. Finally, Flavian poets (Martial, Valerius Flaccus and Statius), indipendently of each other, imitate Vergil’s verse, showing that they read Phariisque there.