Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sabine G. MacCormack is Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

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The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine

University of California Press

Nearly four hundred years and a long geographical and cultural distance separate the Roman poet Vergil, who was born in northern Italy; from Augustine, who began his professional life as a grammarian and rhetor of the Latin language in Roman North Africa. Later, like many other talented men of his time, Augustine converted to Christianity and then became a monk, priest, and bishop.1 Vergil lived in a very different world. In 70 B.C. , the year of his birth, the Romans had only recently gained control over his homeland, but in the African province of Numidia, where Augustine was born in 354 A.D. , the Roman presence went back nearly half a millennium. Vergil lived during the period when the procedures of Roman imperial governance that were to endure for centuries were being established, and Augustine, in his later years, witnessed the beginnings of their disintegration. But Vergil's lines and many of his ideas and feelings accompanied Augustine throughout his long life as though no time at all had elapsed since Vergil lived and worked. Vergil's poetry moved the young Augustine to

On Augustine's career as grammarian and rhetor, see Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language. The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity , pp. 246247; see now, further to this pioneering work about the cultural role of grammarians, Sandrine Agusta-Boularot, "Les rfrences pigraphiques aux grammatici et G PAMMATIKOI de l'empire romain, I s. av. J.-C.IV s. ap. J.-C.," Mlanges de l'cole franaise de Rome. Antiquit 106, no. 2 (1994): 653746. On the Vergilius Romanus, source for the frontispiece and other illustrations in this book, see David H. Wright, Codicological Notes on the Vergilius Romanus (Vat. lat. 3867), pp. 912, for the date.

tears, and as an old man, Augustine the bishop continued to remember the words of the "renowned poet," the "most noble poet," with whom he now profoundly disagreed, but who remained unforgettable nonetheless. This long relationship between the Roman poet and the Christian bishop is testimony, of course, to the ample and retentive memories of people who lived in what was still, despite much literacy, an oral culture in which texts were spoken and thus sounded, deeply and tenaciously, in the mind and the soul.2 The relationship is also an example of this culture's profound continuities that endured long beyond the demise of the Roman Empire in the western Mediterranean.3 But what is really at issue is a matter both more subtle and more profound. This is the nature of Vergil's poetry, which spoke to its countless readers so as to evoke, whether by way of imiation, of adaptation, or of contradiction, what those readers had all along wanted to say in their own right.4

Not much is known about Vergil's life beyond its outlines. In the midfourth century, around the time when Augustine was entering school in his small hometown of Thagaste, Aelius Donatus, "grammarian of the city of Rome,"5 wrote a brief biographical study of Vergil in which he resumed earlier information, most of which came from the now lost Life of Vergil by the erudite Suetonius.6 Some further short biographies, including those by

For poeta insignis illorum, see Augustine, De civitate dei V. 12; nobilissimus eorum poeta, ibid. XV.9; nobilis poeta ibid. XXI.6; similar expressions recur in this work and elsewhere in Augustine, e.g., De civitate dei IV. 11 and X.27 poeta nobilissimus; XIV-5 locutor nobills; Enchiridion 17, apud ilium summum poetam.

Charles Witke, Numen litterarum. The Old and the New in Latin Poetry from Constantine to Gregory the Great ; Jacques Fontaine, Naissance de la posie dans l'occident chrtien ; Michael Roberts, The Jeweled Style. Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity.

Domenico Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages , remains unsurpassed and, despite the title, traces Vergil's influence from the beginning; Pierre Courcelle, Lecteurs paens et lecteurs chrtiens de l'nide. I. Les tmoinages litraires , although lacking adequate indices, is a monumental achievement; for the early commentaries on Vergil and related materials, see Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture. "Grammatica" and Literary Theory 3501100; Theodore Ziolkowski, Virgil and the Moderns ; for the scholarly reception of Vergil, see Hans Oppermann, ed., Wege zu Vergil. Drei Jahrzehnte Begegnungen in Dichtung und Wissenschaft; cf. below, n. 24. Michael von Albrecht, A History of Roman Literature , a work of impressive scholarship, is valuable on Vergil (pp. 664710) and his influence. This work was published after my typescript went to press.

The precise dates are obscure; see J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome. His Life, Writings and Controversies , pp. 1014; Louis Holtz, Donat et la tradition de l'enseignement grammatical , pp. 1516. On Vergil's life, see now yon Albrecht, A History , pp. 667669.

On the career and writings of Aelius Donatus, see Holtz, Donat; Kaster, Guardians of Language , pp. 275278; for a review of arguments for the Suetonian character of Donatus' Vita of Vergil, see H. Naumann, "Noch einmal: Suetons Virgil-Vita," Philologus 118 (1974): 131144; cf. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981):185187; H. Naumann and G. Brugnoli, "Vitae Vergilianae," in Enciclopedia Virgiliana V.1, pp. 570588.

the grammarians Servius and Probus, add a few modifications but little new material. An additional detail comes from the Roman senator Macrobius, who in c. 431 A.D. composed a learned dialogue that centers on Vergil's poetry.7 Donatus and Servius wrote about Vergil's life by way of providing an introduction to their commentaries on his works, and these commentaries in turn were designed to assist teachers of literature, grammatici , who provided instruction in Roman schools. As Servius expressed it: "In explaining authors, the following topics must be covered: the life of the poet, the title of the work, the nature of the poem, the intention of the writer, the number of books, their order, and their exegesis."8

In this context, therefore, biography was an investigation of an author's character and experience insofar as these helped elucidate his work as studied by the young. This kind of biography accordingly was a narrowly focused genre not primarily designed to satisfy discursive human

Macrobius, Saturnalia (ed. J. Willis), 1.24.11, about correspondence between Vergil and Augustus; on the date of Macrobius, see the now classic article by Alan Cameron, "The Date and Identity of Macrobius," Journal of Roman Studies 56 (1966): 2538; see also Philippe Bruggisser, "Prcaution de Macrobe et datation de Servius," Museum Helveticum 41 (1984): 162173, placing the height of Servius' working life between 394 and 409 A.D. ; further, Holtz, Donat , pp. 223230. The lives of Vergil have been edited by C. Hardie, Vitae Vergilianae antiquae , which includes the Vitae by Donatus, Servius, Probus, and Focas and the excerpts about Vergil from the Chronicle of Jerome; the edition by I. Brummer, Vitae Vergilianae , contains the Vita by Donatus, including Donatus' introduction to the Eclogues , along with the Vitae that were also edited by Hardie, plus the Vita by Philargyrius and the Vita Noricensis ,...