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The Dream of Ennivs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Extract

The dream related by Ennius in the first book of his Annales, in which the ghost of Homer appeared to him, has been the subject of much discussion. There are various pieces of evidence about it from which inferences can be drawn; sometimes, I think, too much has been inferred, sometimes too little. My chief object in this paper is to consider what exactly was the view held or expounded by Ennius regarding the nature of the soul and the conditions under which a ghost appears. But I propose in the first place to review the evidence and to contemplate the dream as a poetic product, a thing which has its place in the history of poetry and its affinities with similar passages in other authors.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1913

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References

page 188 note 1 For this reason I have never been able to see that much would be gained, or any real difference be made, if the late Dr. Verrall had been able to establish his very ingenious theory that the choreutae in the Heracles are asleep dur the apparition of Iris and Lyssa. The indica-tions of their falling asleep which he found are not really conclusive. But even if the Theban elders do sleep on the steps of the palace, would the spectators or even the most enlightened of them be at all likely to think of Iris and Lyssa, appearing on the θελογείον, as nothing at all but a dream of the choreutae or of the Coryphaeus ? (Four Plays of Euripides, pp. 168–174).

page 190 note 1 It has usually been supposed that ‘ wander-ing by the streams of Permessus’ signified elegiac poetry, erotic elegi. Elegi are tenues, exigu they would readily be thought of as humiles belonging to a lower region than the epos. Propertius, II, x, 25, 26: nondum etiam Ascraeos norunt mea carmina fontes, sed modo Permessi flumine lauit Amor. Skutsch, when he wrote Aus Vergils Fruhzeit, accepted this as clearly proved;but later, in Gallus und Virgil, he came to doubt it, finding in Nicander the lines (Theriaca 12): where Hesiod (the higher vein of the Epic) is associated with the Permessus. But this doubt seems to be carried too far. It may be admitted that the streams of Permessus had not come to be a recognized symbol for elegiac poetry in Nicander′s time. Perhaps Gallus may have had no very definite idea in his mind when he said, ‘I was wandering on the banks of Permessus.’ But it is highly probable that Propertius knew what virgn meant by ‘errantem Permessi ad flumina.’ Gallus had written elegies, and Virgil (if not Gal′us himself) took the banks of Per-messus′ to signify that.

page 190 note 2 Mr. Butler in his commentary gives strong reasons for cecinit rather than cecini, and cecinit is accepted also by Prof. Philhmore.

page 193 note 1 The peacock, L. Muller notes, was brought from the East to Samos in the sixth century—Samos, the birthplace of Pythagoras and, accord-ing to some, of Homer also. It was accounted the most beautiful of birds and the emblem of the starry sky. So it was no unfitting incarnation for a poet′s soul.

page 194 note 1 If he had known wireless telegraphy, he could perhaps have said that the selection was done by the recipient; innumerable ‘ films’ were constantly drifting up, and a mind consisting of cognate or similarly arranged atoms apprehended the ‘ films ’ with which it had affinity.