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The Moon's Horses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
So far as I know, the manuscripts' fraternis in Prop. 2. 34. 52 ‘aut cur fraternis Luna laboret equis’ has never been doubted. I offer an emendation of it in this note.
Luna laboret ought to allude to lunar eclipse, but you cannot see it through the fog of fraternis equis. In C.Q.xliii (1949), 26–7, Shackleton Bailey dealt with the traditional claim for it, that the moon is eclipsed, not by the sun, by the presence of her brother's horses, but by their absence, just as in Virgil the sea and Ixion's wheel stand still when the winds' presence is no longer felt: ‘cum placidum ventis staret mare’ (Ecl. 2. 26), ‘Ixioni vento rota constitit orbis’ (G. 4. 484.). Simply, he saw no parallel between the unambiguous absence of those winds’ blasts and the alleged absence of the sun's horses here.
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References
1 E. V. D'Arbela translated ‘perché la luna si eclissi dinanzi ai cavalli fraterni’, and explained fraternis equis with ‘dinanzi al sole, perché si interpone la terra’ (Properzio. Elegie, vol. sec. [Milan, 1965], pp. 292–3) The fog is still there.
2 Vitr. g. 2. 3: ‘quot mensibus sub rotam sobs radiosque uno die, antequam praeterit, latens obscuratur.’ She reflects the sun's brightness back to him as Aristarchus held, or she yields her own brightness to his attractive rays and great heat, as Berosus believed: ‘cum autem cursum itineris sui peragens subiret sub orbem sobs, tune eam radiis et impetu caloris corripi convertique candentem propter eius proprietatem luminis ad lumen’ (Vitr. 9. 2. 1).
3 Enk, P. J. approved (Sex. Propertii Elegiarum Liber Secundus, pars altera [Leyden, 1962], 451–2).Google Scholar And G. Luck translated ‘warum Luna durch ihres Bruders Gespann in Bedrängis gerät’, citing 3. 5. 27–8 (‘qua venit exoriens, qua deficit, unde coactis / cornibus in plenum menstrua luna redit’) which he rendered ‘wie der Mond im Osten erscheint, wie er untergeht, wieso er jeden Monat seine Hörner zusammenbringt wad zu voller Grösse zurückkehrrt’ (Properz und Tibull: Liebeselegien [Zürich and Stuttgart, 1964], 149 and 165, with relevant notes). I share W. A. Camps's unwillingness to see any sort of lunar activity in that ‘qua venit exoriens, qua deficit’, for exoriens is likely to be a substantive, the sun (Properties. Elegies Book III [Cambridge, 1966], pp. 75–6).Google Scholar
4 A much milder image would be possible if fraternis equis could mean ‘at the approach of …’ (Camps, W. A., Propertius. Elegies Book II [Cambridge, 1967), 229). Pedantically, however, the moon approaches the sun, in Shackleton Bailey's argument.Google Scholar
5 Curtius, quoted above, used deficere of both lunar eclipse and lunar waning, but total, monthly defectus surely precludes laborer, as Pliny implies. At any rate, no Latin writer seems to have used laborare of lunar waning.
6 Cf. Prop. 1. 1. 19 (‘deductae quibus est fallacia lunae’), 4. 5. 13 (‘audax cantatae leges imponere lunae’), Juv. 6. 443 (‘una laboranti poterit succurrere Lunae’).