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D. The Latin Tradition 1 page

The loss of Greek in Italy was gradual. The language was naturally limited, even during the period of its greatest currency during the late Republic and early Empire, to the well-educated, and hence to the relatively affluent, and the radical changes in the social and economic order during the fourth century greatly depleted the potential audience for Greek literature in the West.

The Latin authors of greatest importance for the development of Platonism in late antiquity were Cornelius Labeo (mid third century), Calcidius, Marius Victorinus, and Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (probably all fourth century), Macrobius (whose commentary on Scipio's dream dates from about 430),[58] Favonius Eulogius and Martianus Capella (also fifth century), and finally Boethius (d. 524 or 525).[59] With these should be included St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), whose debts to Neoplatonism were very great.

None of these authors is explicitly concerned with expounding the meaning of the Iliad and Odyssey . Few of them had extensive direct personal knowledge of the text of Homer, and their references to Homer are sparse and largely at second hand. This in itself does not lessen their value as testimony to the transmission of the conception of the meaning of the poems we have been exploring. The process we see at work in these authors is one that was to influence the understanding of Homer throughout the Middle Ages. The text became progressively less accessible, and the meagre remains of the Greek philosophical tradition through which it filtered shaped conceptions of the sort of poet Homer was.

Of the earliest of the thinkers listed, Cornelius Labeo, there is little to

[58] This is the recent dating of Alan Cameron, "The Date and Identity of Macrobius," somewhat reluctantly accepted by Jacques Flamant, Macrobe et le néoplatonisme latin à la fin du ivsiécle , p. 140, over the earlier date (ca. 400) accepted by, for example, Karl Praechter, Die Philosophie des Altertums , pp. 651-52.

[59] The basis for this list is the treatment of Latin Neoplatonism in Praechter, Philosophie des Altertums , pp. 647-55.

― 250 ―

say.[60] He was apparently contemporary with Porphyry, to whom Wissowa compared him for his antiquarian interests.[61] His work survives only in references and citations in such authors as Arnobius, Macrobius, Augustine, Servius, and John Lydus. The references in Lydus's De mensibus are characteristic. He is cited as a source for a list of thirty names for Aphrodite (De mens . 1.21) and for accounts of various calendar customs (De mens . 3.10) including etymological explanations of month names (De mens . 3.1.25). Many of the subjects that interested him, including the problem of good and bad numina , that of whether intermediate beings should be called

or

, and an apparent desire to find a place for the God of the Old Testament in the Olympian system,[62] suggest that, like Porphyry, he may have been tapping a milieu such as that of the second-century Pythagoreans Numenius and Cronius. We cannot say with certainty whether he wrote of Homer, but in view of his other interests the probability that he did seems quite high. Although we cannot demonstrate it, the possibility remains that he may have passed on some elements of the allegorized Homer.



Calcidius offers us something rather more substantial to work on, with nine references to Homer and two to Hesiod.[63] Although Calcidius

[60] Along with the articles in P-W ("Cornelius [168] Labeo," P-W 4 [1901]:1351-55) and Real. Ant. Chr. ("Cornelius Labeo," vol. 3, cols. 429-37), the basic source on Cornelius Labeo remained W. Kahl, "Cornelius Labeo," until the recent appearance of a comprehensive study by Paolo Mastandrea, Un Neoplatonico latino, Cornelio Labeone (cf. on allegorical interpretation, pp. 181-82).

[61] P-W 4 (1901): 1352.

[62] See Macrob. Sat . 1.18.21-22.

[63]

― 251 ―

almost certainly wrote after the time of Porphyry, he shows little influence from Plotinian Neoplatonism.[64] Rather, his sources are to be sought among the Middle Platonists and, beyond them, in the Platonizing Stoic Posidonius.[65] More important than his sources, however, is his influence, which was perhaps greater than that of any other Latin Platonist. His version of the Timaeus was the only dialogue of Plato's known in Latin translation until the Phaedo and Meno were added to the list during the twelfth century,[66] and the commentary attached to that translation no doubt profoundly influenced the understanding of the meaning of Plato and of his relationship to the rest of Greek culture that was transmitted to the Latin West. His Timaeus may have been read by Augustine, though it appears probable that the latter used the now only partially preserved Ciceronian translation.[67]

In his commentary on the Timaeus , Calcidius turns not infrequently to Homer for support for his assertions. These references do not tell us anything about his understanding of the meaning of the passages in question, but they do make it clear that he considered Homer to be both a touchstone to test the validity of statements about reality and an authoritative theologian. Some of these references and citations recall the method of the Ps.-Plutarch essay on the life and poetry of Homer. In support of the claim that the faculty of vision is superior to that of hearing, Calcidius quotes several Homeric lines (Il . 3.217 and 12.466) demonstrating that the poet uses descriptions of the eyes to communicate truths regarding the mens atque animus of the individual.[68] The Platonic tripartite division of the soul, asserted as a Homeric doctrine by Ps.-Plutarch,[69] likewise appears in Calcidius and is illustrated by one of the Homeric passages also used in the same context by the author of "The Life and Poetry of Homer."[70] For Ps.-Plutarch, Odysseus addressing his heart and counseling patience during the period of his humiliation in his own palace represents the victory of the rational part of his soul

over the passionate part (

, or simply

), and in Calcidius these lines illustrate the victory of ratio over iracundia .[71] Equally striking

[64] Wallis, Neoplatonism , p. 166.

[65] Praechter, Philosophie des Altertums , p. 649.

[66] Klibansky, Continuity of the Platonic Tradition , pp. 22-29, and esp. p. 27, and Wallis, Neoplatonism , p. 166.

[67] Courcelle, Les Lettres grecques en occident , p. 157.

[68] Calc. In Tim . 266.

[69] Ps.-Plut. De vit. Hom . 129-31.

[70] Od . 20. 18; see Calc. In Tim . 183 and Ps.-Plut. De vit. Hom . 129.

[71] The contrasting citation, illustrating the victory of iracundia over ratio , is from Euripides' Medea . It is difficult to say whether this is an indication that Homer is here classed with less obviously "theological" literature such as fifth-century drama, or that Euripides, in Calcidius's mind, is a potential source of truth as well.

― 252 ―

as a demonstration of the connection between Calcidius and the Ps.-Plutarch essay is the claim that Homer shared the doctrine of Thales that the first principle was water:

And Homer is seen to be of the same opinion when he calls Oceanus and Tethys the parents of

and when he makes the oath of the gods to be water, which he calls "Styx," attributing this reverence to the ancients and considering nothing more revered than that which is sworn by.[72]

This similarity, however, may simply reflect the ultimate dependence of both passages on Aristotle[73] or some other commentator.[74] A very similar point is made, though ironically, in the Theaetetus , where Socrates claims that the verses on Oceanus and Tethys (Il . 14.201,302) were Homer's way of saying "that all things are born of streaming and movement."[75] Socrates is probably parodying Theaetetus's teachers here, and seems to be supporting Heraclitus rather than Thales by the Homeric reference, but it remains likely that Calcidius had in mind what he doubtless took for a Platonic/Socratic confirmation that the lines were to be read as a cosmological allegory. This likelihood is strengthened by his use of another allegory from the Theaetetus (In Tim . 328, echoing Theaet . 149c), this time based in etymology. In this passage, Calcidius explicitly cites the Theaetetus in claiming Homeric authority for the concept of the "wax in the soul"

, the central metaphor developed in Socrates' account of perception in that dialogue.

Likewise, in the discussion of the concentric spheres of the universe (Plato Tim . 36b-d), the rather puzzling assertion that the outer sphere, that of the fixed stars, is rotated "on the side on the right" (

,
Plato Tim . 36c6) is explained by reference to Il . 12.239,

[72] Inque eadem sententia Homerus esse invenitur, cum Oceanum et Tethyn dicat parentes esse geniturae, cumque iusiurandum deorum constituat aquam, quam quidem ipse adpellat Stygem, antiquitati tribuens reuerentiam et iureiurando nihil constituens reuerentius (Calc. In Tim . 280). Cf. Ps.-Plut. De vit. Hom . 93 and scholia ad loc .

[73] Arist. Metaph . A 983b. See Buffière, Mythes d'Homère , p. 87.

[74] Cf. Buffière in his edition of Heraclitus's Homeric Allegories , p. 26, n. 8 (p. 101) for a list of sources for this commonplace.

[75]

― 253 ―

dexter ad eoum volitans solemque diemque

,

which is apparently intended to give Homeric authority to the identification of the east with the right and the source of the apparent movement of the "fixed stars" (In Tim . 93).[76]

Thus Calcidius carries on the eclectic tradition, represented in Ps.-Plutarch, in Heraclitus, and elsewhere, that saw in Homer a traditional source of wisdom anticipating later philosophical developments. Like Numenius, however, Calcidius includes astrology among the important sources of wisdom and finds in Homer allegorical structures masking information about the stars.

Calcidius finds in the Timaeus the doctrine that, although stars do not produce events in this world, they do foretell them.[77] The doctrine is likewise shown to be Homeric because the "seer Homer" (vates Homerus ) indicates it in his description of the Dog Star:

iste quidem clarus sed tristia fata minatur.


(Il . 22.30)

The comparative material, including the observation that the Egyptians call the same star Sothis, suggests a possible Numenian source,[78] though there is no confirmation of this in the text and Calcidius does not hesitate elsewhere to cite Numenius by name.[79] Thus far the astrological wisdom attributed to Homer seems reasonable enough, and it would be difficult to deny that Homer does include some sort of astrology among the modes of divination. The distance between the sort of statements actually present and those Calcidius finds in Homer comes out, however, in the subsequent chapter of the commentary. There we are told that the Egyptians had a star—a god, naturally enough, because here the context is the dis-

[76] On this passage and its interpretation, see Taylor's note ad loc . (Commentary on Plato's Timaeus , pp. 150-52).

[77]

[78] Cf. Numenius fr. 31 = Porph. De ant . 21-24.

[79] E.g., Calc. In Tim . 295-99.

― 254 ―

cussion of the stars of the Timaeus that are explicitly gods (Plato Tim . 4od)—named Ach, that appeared only in certain years and portended great sickness and death:

Homer, moreover, who was an Egyptian (since he is said to have been Theban and so from the noblest city of the Egyptians) secretly designated this very star when, in the opening of the Iliad , he attributed the sickness and destruction not only of the heroes but of all the animals and cattle necessary for war to the "wrath of Achilles, " whose father was Peleus, but whose mother was a sea-goddess. Starting from this beginning, he fashioned the rest by poetic license.[80]

The scholia and commentators introduce astrological allegories,[81] but the present one is exceptionally farfetched, as well as far-reaching in its implications. The class of literature in which Calcidius places this strange allegorical epic is illustrated by an immediate parallel, the ostensible purpose of which is to show that the exceptional rising of a star can portend extraordinary good as well as extraordinary evil. We are told that "another holier and more venerable story" (alia sanctior et venerabilior historia ) made a star the precursor of the descent of God to redeem mankind and led the Magi to him (In Tim . 126).[82]

Another reference, bearing not upon a passage in the epics but simply on the cliché "Homer is a divine poet," is particularly interesting, though it does not attribute any special knowledge or surprising intentions to the poet. Calcidius is arguing against those thinkers who follow Heraclitus and deny the reality of the past and future (In Tim . 106). The past, he claims, exists "in that the mind perceives that it happened" (ut intellegatur fuisse ), just as we say "Homer is a divine poet" (ut cum Homerum esse dicimus divinum poetam ). The example is an ingenious one and the slightly unusual but easily understood use of the present infinitive makes the point extremely well. Any statement about Homer clearly refers to the very remote past. Still, by virtue of received tradition (both

[80] Homerus denique, qui idem fuerit Aegyptius, siquidem Thebanus fertur, quae ciuitas est apud Aegyptum nobilissima, ad ipsum latenter exequitur in Iliadis exordio, cure dicit propter iram Achillis, cuius pater Peleus, mater vero maritima fuerit dea, morbum atque interitum non modo clarorum virorum, sed aliorum quoque animalium et pecorum bello necessariorum extitisse. Quo quidem sumpto exordio cetera poëtica licentia finxit (Calc. In Tim . 126).

[81] See Buffière, Mythes d'Homère , pp. 593-94, for a selection of astrological commentaries.

[82] This reference to the New Testament is unique in Calcidius's commentary, but it is nevertheless probable that the author was a Christian. See, on this subject, Waszink in the preface to his edition, pp. xi-xii.

― 255 ―

oral and written) the cliché retains its truth and thus testifies to the reality of the past as something more substantial than the unknowable "downstream" of Heraclitus's famous image. As far as the cliché itself is concerned, Calcidius may be assumed to understand it as his other references to Homer suggest: Homer is "divine" in constituting an authoritative source of information about the human and the divine, and this information is regularly cloaked in allegory requiring explanation.

The final Calcidian reference to Homer is in many ways the most interesting because it makes explicit both the context in which Calcidius placed Homer and the tradition of interpretation that fed into the Timaeus commentary:

If the world is made of matter, then surely it was made of some previously existing evil substance. For this reason Numenius praises Heraclitus of Ephesus for rebuking Homer, since the latter desired the destruction and end of the evil that afflicts life, not realizing that what would please him would be the destruction of the world, because it would entail the destruction of matter, which is the source of evil.[83]

The exact reference in Homer could be any of several.[84] The impulse to expel evil from the world is, in any case, a commonplace, and Homer represents only a conspicuous and monumental statement of frustration and bitterness at the distance between what we can imagine our existence might be and what it is. Homer's assertion, however, as reflected in Calcidius's borrowed reference, takes on the force of a philosophical statement, subject to refutation. It furthermore demonstrates that Calcidius's Homer—and beyond that, Numenius's Homer—was authoritative but not infallible.

The Numenian source is explicit here, and much of the chapter in question, "On Matter" (In Tim . 248-355), is paraphrased from Numenius. There is a distinct possibility, moreover, that there is an intermediate source to be found for much of this material in Porphyry, either in the now fragmentary Timaeus commentary or in the lost treatise "On Matter"

.[85] There is, as already mentioned, little trace of Plo-

[83] Quod si mundus ex silua, certe factus est de existente olim natura maligna. proptereaque Numenius laudat Heraclitum reprehendentem Homerum, qui optauerit interitum ac uastitatem malis vitae, quod non intellegeret mundum sibi delere placere, siquidem silua, quae malorum fons est, exterminaretur (Calc. In Tim . 297).

[84] Cf. J. C. M. van Winden, Chalcidius on Matter , p. 113 and n. 1 and Des Places in his edition of Numenius (on fr. 52), p. 97, n. 9.

[85] Van Winden, Chalcidius on Matter , p. 247.

― 256 ―

tinian Neoplatonism in Calcidius, but Porphyry was deeply influenced by Numenius and commonly went directly to him, circumventing Plotinus, in commenting on a text. Although Calcidius's dependence on Porphyry remains conjectural and is by no means universally recognized,[86] it nevertheless raises the possibility that we have in Calcidius yet another example of the chain of transmission running from Numenius to Porphyry to the Latin Middle Ages, comparable to that which transmitted the cave of the nymphs allegory to Macrobius and beyond.[87]

The next figures of interest to us—Marius Victorinus, Augustine, Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, and Macrobius—are all associated with the pagan revival of the late fourth century and the Christian reaction against that revival.[88] We may look first at the contributions of the two Christians.

Marius Victorinus is remembered primarily as a Christian theologian and his intense interest in pagan philosophy predates the period of the revival, properly speaking, which may be taken to belong to the period between midcentury and 394. He was converted to Christianity in extreme old age between 353 and 357.[89] We may pass him by with only brief mention because there is little evidence that he was important in the developments under consideration. His major importance lies in his Latin translations of Greek philosophers and particularly in his influence on Augustine.[90] He translated Porphyry's Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle and certain "Platonic books" read by Augustine, variously said to have been selections from the Enneads or possibly Porphyry's De regressu animae .[91] His influence extends beyond Augustine to Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidore, and through all of these to the Latin Middle Ages.

[86] Dillon (Middle Platonists , p. 403) insists that "none of the alleged dependences on Porphyry . . . involve any compelling verbal or doctrinal similarity."

[87] See Appendix 4.

[88] See Herbert Bloch, "The Pagan Revival in the West at the End of the Fourth Century." Even accepting the very attractive suggestion of Alan Cameron ("Date and Identity of Macrobius," pp. 37-38), that Macrobius is glorifying the generation of Symmachus at a distance of half a century, the Saturnalia still issued, however indirectly, from that milieu and attempts to represent its values. On the milieu in general, see the recent comprehensive study by J. Wytzes, Der letzte Kampf des Heidentums in Rom .

[89] Cf. KP s.v. Marius Victorinus and Markus in CHLGEMP, pp. 331-40.

[90] See August. Conf . 8.2. On Victorinus's use of Porphyry and Numenius, see Mary T. Clark, "The Neoplatonism of Marius Victorinus the Christian."

[91] For a summary of the scholarly debate on the identification of the libri Platonicorum translated by Victorinus, see J. J. O'Meara, "Augustine and Neoplatonism," pp. 91-101.

― 257 ―

His surviving works, however, which are either rhetorical or theological, indicate no concern with the meaning of early poetry. We must nevertheless consider it probable that he provided the bridge by which Porphyrian Neoplatonic allegory of myth and ritual reached Augustine.

Although St. Augustine was unable to read Greek with ease and depended almost entirely on Latin sources,[92] his enormous influence during the Latin Middle Ages justifies some comments on his references to Homer. The influence of Plotinus and Porphyry on Augustine by way of the translations of Marius Victorinus was substantial.[93] His ideas on interpretation, however, clearly owe more to Christian tradition than to the pagan Neoplatonists, and he normally addresses himself only to biblical texts.[94] In one curious passage, however, he applies an allegorical interpretation to a passage from a pagan author. In discussing the claim in the Hermetic dialogue Asclepius (24) that Egypt was to become "full of tombs and dead men," Augustine claims that the voice here is not that of the author (Hermes Trismegistus), but rather that "the agony of the demons was speaking through him" (sed dolor daemonum per eum loquebatur ), anticipating the power of the relics and tombs of the Christian martyrs to exorcise them. Thus a pagan work, the fruit of the perverse inspiration of the daemones , takes on a complex structure of meaning that must be understood in terms of the motives of the dictating voices, and the Asclepius joins the Hebrew scriptures as a prefiguration of the triumph of Christianity (Civ. Dei 8.26). The Virgil of Eclogue 4 belongs in the same company,[95] though as we shall see, the Aeneid is fatally flawed.

Augustine's theory of signs, the scope of which is wide enough to include language, seems to represent a genuine innovation, though it grows out of earlier Stoic thought, with perhaps some admixture of Plotinus.[96] We find in Augustine a developed concept of the relationship of language to truth closely comparable to the one expounded a genera-

[92] "Nothing suggests that he ever read profane Greek authors, not even Plato, except in Latin translation." Harald Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics , p. 445. See, however, p. 586 of the same work on Augustine's school Greek.

[93] See Markus in CHLGEMP, pp. 339-40. Augustine uses Plotinus to explicate the Sermon on the Mount (Civ. Dei 10. 14).

[94] On the Old Testament as an allegorical representation of Christ and his Church to come, see Civ. Dei 16.2, and 13.2-1. On methodology of exegesis and on the deliberate obscurity of the scriptures, see Civ. Dei 11.19.

[95] See Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics , pp. 440-47. On Virgil's speaking poetice of Christ, see Civ. Dei 10.26.

[96] See R. A. Markus, "Augustine on Signs," pp. 64-65.

― 258 ―

tion later in Proclus, and here the analogy of divine apparition to linguistic sign is explicitly developed. God, though invisible in his true being (secundum quod est ) makes himself visible—that is, he projects into the world an image of himself suited to the capacities of those who see him (secundum quod poterant ferre cernentes ).

It should not disturb us that although God is invisible he is often said to have appeared in visible form to our ancestors. For just as the sound that renders audible a thought formulated in the silence of mind is something other than that thought itself, in the same way the shape by which God, who is by nature invisible, was made visible was something other than God himself. And yet he was seen in that bodily shape just as the thought was heard in the sound of the voice.[97]

This model of apparition corresponds to the first of the three modes of poetic representation of the divine discussed by Proclus.[98] In this mode, Proclus explains, apparent change attributed to the divine by the mythoplasts constitutes the adaptation to the capacities of the "receivers"

of the eternal essences existing beyond the sphere of coming-to-be and passing-away. Manifestations of the divine must be adapted to the capacities of the "participating beings," and thoughts in much the same way must endure fragmentation in time, which is absent from their true medium, in order to be communicated in language to our fragmented consciousness. Our senses encounter something other than the divine, than the thought—and yet the divine and the thought are in fact experienced in that something else.

This equation (God: God's manifestation:: thought: speech) is further developed by Augustine into a theory of divine expression that resolves the fundamental difficulty inherent in the idea of scripture as the word of God, and does so in a manner that again anticipates the similar discussion in Proclus.[99] Intermediaries are invoked in the form of angels, and although the process is not spelled out in detail, it is clear that the immediate communications from God to the highest angels are accomplished telepathically and non-discursively (non temporaliter sed, ut ita dicam ,

[97]

[98] In Rep . 1.111. See n. 97 above.

[99] See ch. 5B above.

― 259 ―

aeternaliter ) and these communications are simultaneous and eternal (nec incipit loqui nec desinit ). Through his intermediaries, however, God actually expresses himself syllable by syllable, each with its tiny duration, in the words of human speech (syllbatim per transitorias temporum morulas humanae linguae vocibus ).[100]

We are on familiar ground, then, when we examine Augustine's basic conception of language and the nature of the linguistic sign, and the privileged status of the scriptures is established along familiar lines. But Augustine, of course, benefitted from a clearly defined canon of scripture beyond which he had no need to look in search of truth. Even if Eclogue 4 has some affinity with the prophetic literature of the Jews, its privilege does not extend to the other works of Virgil. Augustine's condemnation of the Aeneid constitutes his only developed discussion of the meaning of an epic poem and serves to bring into focus an important aspect of his criticism of the pagan tradition. The Aeneid , for Augustine, is vitiated by the ultimate submission of the hero to the power of the daemones the pagans mistook for the divine itself. Bits of etymological fantasy penetrate into his language at this point and betray the underlying interpretive literature on Virgil that formed Augustine's conception of the meaning of the poem. Aeneas, we are told, may be envisaged as a type of the Christian hero—a martyr before the fact—in his attempt to combat the "powers of the air," the daemones or aeriae potestates (Civ. Dei 10.21). What is meant is his battle with Hera (etymologized into


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