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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
In C.Q. xxiii. 2 (1929) Dr. C. M. Bowra examined the Ennian phrases in the Aeneid which Virgil adopted but transformed. Bowra, whose object was to investigate the reasons which led Virgil to make slight changes in these echoes, naturally had nothing to say about those borrowings which remained unaltered in Virgil. Of these, perhaps the most striking is the allusion to Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator in v. 846 above. The following points can be noted about the line:
1. It is not a subconscious, or apparently purposeless, reminiscence of familiar words, a habit of which the best-known example is Aen. vi. 460, invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi, cf. Cat. lxvi. 39.
page 40 note 1 Virgil's debt to Ennius has been often discussed, see especially Norden, Ennius und Vergilius, 1915, and Appendix I in the same scholar's edition of Book vi.
page 40 note 2 But Dio Cassius distinguishes this Cato as τóν Κτωνα τóν πáνυ (xxxvii. 22). It is possible that by his great-grandson's time the use of Maior (in another sense) both hints at magnus and obscures it.
page 41 note 1 A frequent play, e.g. Lucan, i. 135 (stat magni nominis umbra) or of Cato the Elder himself, ibid. vi. 790–1 (maior Carthaginis hostis, non serviluri maeret Cato fala nepotis).
page 41 note 2 Perhaps the original ran something like magnumque ferebat magnu’ Cato populi Romani rebus honorem.
Cato himself, boastfully sa facon, expressed rather similar sentiments, if we are to believe the stories in Plutarch, , Cato Major, xiv. 2–3Google Scholar.
page 41 note 3 That is, in addition to the oxymoron in sense and sound derived from associating the dactylic rapitis, Fabii with Cunctator and the spondees of the next line (pointed out by Norden in part), and to the allusion hinted at in fessum to the great number of heroes produced by the gens Fabia (396 of the name fell at the Cremera).
page 42 note 1 I had noted several other instances of direct and acknowledged quotation (punctuated as such) in our modern poets, but the example given (as being from a ‘classic’) I owe to Professor E. C. Llewellyn.
page 42 note 2 Servius on v. 846 quotes the Ennian original with the comment ‘sciens enim Vergilius quasi pro exemplo hunc versum posuit’: on which H. E. Butler, following Norden, remarks ‘Ser-vius is clearly defending Vergil against those who charged him with plagiarism–e.g. the Aeneido-mastix of Carbilius.’ Servius’ defence is that v. 846 is a quotation. In this instance ille es is a clear prelude to direct citation.
page 42 note 3 According to this view of the lines the quis of vv. 841 and 842 achieves a much wider defacto reference. It need not in its enlargement apply to writers only, but through them it includes every Roman citizen; for the latter will have the well-known quotations from the poets on their lips. Once again the phrase chosen (quis? and not an equivalent for qui poeta?) lends itself to the extension.
page 42 note 4 This punctuation is tacitly admitted, at least for vv. 845–6, by the latest editor (1941) of Book vi, Sir Frank Fletcher, who translates: Thou, thou art he, their ‘Greatest’, who ‘alone Dost by delay our fortunes fall’n restore.’ But he leaves the Latin text unpointed. F. Richards's translation of v.846 is also punctuated as a quotation. For the need of inverted commas in Latin see Tyrrell and Purser on Cic. Epp. ad att. vii. 7. 1.
