Browsing the admirable
@rogueclassicist Twitter feed recently, I was interested to read an extract from a
cookbook, posted by US academic and classicist Angela Taraskiewicz. And a remarkably erudite cookbook it
was: its recipe for currant tea scones noted that the first written appearance
of the word scone was in “an early
sixteenth-century translation of the Aeneid
by the Scottish poet Gavin Douglas.”
Could this proto-scone
be a Scots rendering of the phrase adorea
liba in Aeneid book VII, Angela wondered? She was referring to lines
109-110 (adorea liba per
herbam/subiciunt epulis), where the Trojans are having an outdoor meal and put
these liba on the grass as platters for their various
meats.
Gavin Douglas |
The flowr sconnys war set in, by and by/ With other mesis, sik as wer reddy...
It should be a matter
of deep national pride for Scotland that the first complete translation of
Virgil’s Aeneid done in the British Isles, and indeed in any Germanic language,
was in Scots. Gavin Douglas, at the time Provost of the Church of St Giles, later Bishop of Dunkeld, composed it at the behest of his patron, Henry,
3rd Lord Sinclair; it was completed in 1513, which turned out to be
an interesting year for both men.
A flavour of Douglas’
translation may be had from the epic's famous opening lines:
Even if it may be argued there are better translations per se, Douglas’ Eneados has a case to be considered the most vigorous, vital and, well, fun rendition of the epic poem: not only does it have scones, but it also includes the first written occurence of the exclamation Wow!
But let us to return
to our scones, and their crucial role in the narrative structure of the Aeneid.
As we have seen, they appear early in Book VII, when the Trojans are
celebrating landfall in Italy: for the first six books, which are Virgil’s hommage to Homer’s Odyssey, Aeneas has
been wandering the Mediterranean in search of a new home, even going so far as
to visit the Underworld for help; the remainder of the work will follow the
Iliad in describing a land war and battle of champions. An apparently
insignificant joke about dough becomes the fulcrum upon which are balanced the
Odyssean and Iliadic halves of the Aeneid.
Back in Book III,
Aeneas and his refugees from Troy land on the Strophades, in the Ionian Sea.
They are delighted to see that the island is populated with tasty-looking
livestock, and set about barbecuing a few. Unfortunately, the island is also
home to the Harpies, monstrous birds of prey with a female human face. Like hungry
seagulls spying a chip wrapper, they descend upon the Trojans’ lunch and then generally crap
all over the picnic. Aeneas tells his men to gather all the gear up, and they
move elsewhere; no sooner do they get the charcoal alight again, when the dread
creatures return. This time the hungry Trojans fight back, chasing them off
with sword and shield.
The head Harpy,
Celaeno (a drery prophetes, says
Douglas) perches on a rock and somewhat huffily addresses the Trojans: "So you’re willing to fight us over
stolen meat? You try to drive us innocent Harpies from our own home? Well hear
this: you may reach Italy, but you will never have your own city until you have
suffered such starvation that you will chew your own tables.” And with that,
the feathered femme fatale flies off. This curse puts a bit of a crimp on the
party, and the Trojans make sail from the Strophades without delay.
A deep-fried half-pizza supper |
Having scoffed the toppings, the Trojans
are still hungry, and set about eating the crusty square base: Ne spair thai
not at last, for lak of meat/ Thar fatal four-nukit trynschour for to eyt. Ascanius,
Aeneas’ young son, blurts out a joke: “Heus! etiam mensas consumimus”
“Och!” quod Ascanius, “how is this befall?/ Behald, we eyt our tabillis up and all!”
Now, this is a beautiful little narrative set-up
and pay-off that signals the turning point of the Aeneid. The wandering is at
an end; but the war for a homeland is yet to begin. The scene is full of wit,
charm and dramatic irony, as the audience enjoys Virgil’s call-back to the
curse of Celaeno, the Harpy-in-Chief: that the price of a home would be desperate
starvation. We are relieved that such a dire curse is dispelled so painlessly;
we are amused that the mask of tragedy has unexpectedly been turned to a smiley
face; we are delighted that an evil omen is defeated by a child’s innocent
remark that they had been so hungry that they had eaten their tables.
Except that Virgil, apparently, seems to
have forgotten all about the blood-curdling Harpy prophecy in Book IV; instead,
he gives Aeneas a portentous aria: Hail, land promised by fate and hail, to
you, trusty gods of Troy! Here is our home, here is our own country! Aeneas then
explains at length that his father Anchises had told him that all this would
happen. He even quotes his dad verbatim: Son, when you’re in a strange land and
you get so hungry that you devour your own tables:
Ramembir, in that place, or near fast by/ To found thy first cite with thi hand.
One can imagine this fairly obvious error in the storyline puzzling not only to the Trojan veterans of the Strophades adventure; but also the more attentive of the real-life audience. It is, literally, Virgil's epic fail.
Trojan picnic |
A more likely explanation is that Virgil changed
his mind mid-composition, but died before he was able to make the consequential
amendments elsewhere in the work. According to his biographer Donatus, Virgil’s
dissatisfaction with the incomplete work was such that he ordered the poem to
be destroyed after his death. Augustus himself countermanded the instruction
and had it published. Doubtless the emperor was a genuine poetry lover; but the
Aeneid also had powerful propaganda value to the ruling Julian regime.
The pizza/scone incident is sandwiched (sorry)
between two other big set-pieces: the procession of future Roman heroes in Book
VI, and the description of the scenes from future Roman history on Vulcan’s shield in
Book VIII.
In Book VI, Aeneas’ visit to the underworld
culminates in his late father Anchises showing him a long queue of noble souls
who have undergone a sort of Platonic metempsychosis and are awaiting
reincarnation as future Romans. Chief among them are members of the Julian dynasty:
Augustus Caesar, his adoptive father Julius Caesar; and his nephew and
prospective heir, Marcellus. Of divine heritage, they will restore a golden age
to Rome:
Cum of the goddys geneology and kyn/ Quhilk sall agane the goldin warld begyn.
Anchises also sets out his famous mission
statement for Rome, a sort of ethical genocide policy: parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos: spare the defeated and
destroy the proud in war.
Aeneas’ mother, the goddess Venus, also has
something to contribute regarding her descendants’ role in Roman greatness. In
Book VIII she brings him armour and a shield, on which are engraved depictions
of the most significant events in future Roman history. Forty lines suffice to
cover from the time of Romulus to the Catilinarian conspiracy; no fewer than
fifty-eight are devoted to the Battle of Actium and Octavian/Augustus’ triumph
over Mark Antony and Cleopatra, thus confirming him as sole ruler of the Empire.
Having so deliberately highlighted Rome’s
destiny, and identified the current imperial family with the hero Aeneas and
the gods themselves, Virgil perhaps reconsidered the source of the prophecy
associated with the establishment of the city. Rather than allow the foundation of Rome to be heralded by a
birdwoman of ill omen -almost an obscene parody of the Roman eagle- the
messenger becomes father Anchises and, by some unexplained logic, Jupiter
himself. Virgil, or perhaps his political masters, decided Rome should have a
more exalted foundation myth.
You lookin' at me, Antony? |
There can be no doubt that the Aeneid ends on a rather sour note.
The spreit of lyfe fled murnand with a grane/ And with disdeyn vnder dyrk erth is gayn.
But it's a bit of a stretch to say that this proves that Virgil was a sort of literary fifth-columnist within the Principate. The very attractiveness of the theory should give us pause, lest wishful thinking persuade us that Virgil mirrors our own 21st Century liberal mores. Perhaps, in his depiction of the liquidation of Turnus, Virgil was trying to make a point about dictatorship and the violent suppression of opposition; on the other hand, he may simply have been anticipating Lenin's apocryphal line about omelettes and eggs. We'll never know.
More about Douglas' translation, in the context of the year 1513, next time.