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DIRAE 15: AN EMENDATION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2018
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Here, too, it may initially appear reasonable to see in uobis the same group of people, but there is little doubt that it must refer to senis nostri felicia rura, which can hardly be anything but a vocative (cf. 33 ueteris domini felicia ligna, likewise a vocative). If condatis does not refer to people, one may be tempted to accept the humanist conjecture sulci and construe the verb as addressed to the furrows. Yet I rather doubt that an address to the farm (or to the grove, as at line 33, or to the springs and the fields, as at line 90) can justify apostrophizing something as technical and down-to-earth as furrows. I think Fraenkel is right to insist on relating condatis to the same vocative as uobis, that is, rura. This interpretation is supported by the fact that the two stanzas are closely analogous (as we soon shall see in greater detail).
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This paper was produced during the term of a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship funded by the Irish Research Council (project ID: GOIPD/2016/549).
References
1 See van der Graaf, C., The Dirae (Leiden, 1945), 17–18Google Scholar. Rupprecht, Contrast K., Cinis omnia fiat: Zum poetologischen Verhältnis der pseudo-vergilischen »Dirae« zu den Bucolica Vergils (Göttingen, 2007), 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who takes both 9 uobis and 15 condatis to refer to ‘in der zweiten Person angesprochenen zukünftigen (verhinderten) Nutznießer’.
2 As van der Graaf (n. 1), 19 does.
3 Fraenkel, E., ‘The Dirae’, JRS 56 (1966), 142–55, at 145Google Scholar.
4 Thomas, R.F., ‘Exhausted oats ([Verg.] Dirae 15)?’, AJPh 109 (1988), 69–70, at 69Google Scholar.
5 Kenney, E.J., ‘Dirae (Lydia)’, in Clausen, W.V. et al. , Appendix Vergiliana (Oxford, 1966), 1–14, at 5Google Scholar. Kenney's conjecture was intended to avoid the awkwardness of taking Cereris with auenas (‘oats of Ceres’).
6 Thomas (n. 4), 70 (translations are Thomas's).
7 Thomas (n. 4), 69.
8 The most reasonable interpretation I can think of is to take Shackleton Bailey's text as referring to the spontaneous growth of wild oats: ‘may you (rura) receive in your furrows oats so as to render them sterile for wheat’. But I think this still produces the wrong sense: the point of the whole passage is not that the soil should become unsuitable for farming in some future, but that it should yield no harvest to its new owners already now (and despite all their effort).
9 The omission of u in forms of pinguis is fairly common in manuscripts.
10 Giardina, G., ‘Nuovi emendamenti al testo delle Dirae e della Lydia pseudovirgiliane’, QUCC 92 (2009), 167–73, at 167Google Scholar. The collocation pinguia … praedia is paralleled at Cypr. Gall. Ios. 34 pinguia qui Medium lustrant dum praedia terrae (referring to the fertility of the land of Canaan). Alternatively, one might consider iugera, though it seems weaker palaeographically (cf. Sid. Apoll. Carm. 7.381 uertit inexcoctam per pinguia iugera glebam).
11 Fraenkel (n. 3), 145 is not certain: ‘We do not know whether a fastidious Roman reader would have objected to avenae in this line denoting weeds and shortly afterwards (19) the shepherd's pipe.’ By contrast, Rupprecht (n. 1), 67 n. 68 sees in auenis in line 19 ‘[e]in gelungenes Wortspiel mit den verdörrten avenae (»Haferhalme«) aus Dirae 15’.
12 For collocation of Cererem with sulcis, cf. Manilius 3.664 mandant et sulcis Cererem; more generally, cf. Verg. G. 1.223 sulcis committas semina. If we take condatis to refer to the new owners rather than to the farm, the line will likewise make perfect sense: ‘may you plant wheat in furrows of sterile sand’.