Acrostics Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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.