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Title: Virgil, Aeneid 7: A Commentary (Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava. Supplementum, 198) by Virgil, Nicholas Horsfall ISBN: 9-0041084-2-4 Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers Pub. Date: December, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $141.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent commentary
Comment: Horsfall's commentary is a welcome and much needed addition to the ever-growing number of studies on Vergilian criticism. First of all, it offers the most comprehensive, complex, and intelligent treatment of Aeneid 7. Book 7 occupies a central position in the Aeneid, being the opening unit of the second half of the epic, and it is loaded with a set of allusions and themes that both herald the new Italian era of the Trojan refuges and tie this "Iliadic" half of the epic with its "Homeric." Yet unitl recently students of Vergil were aided in their approach of book 7 by two rather limited and narrow commentaries, Williams' single volume Aeneid VII-XII, and C.J. Fordyce's Aeneid VII-VIII. Both of these studies spend too much time on vocabulary issues, they are rather erratic, and, in the case of Fordyce, rather frustrating in their inconsistency of managing bibligraphical citations, serving better an undergraduate novice of the text, rather than a more advanced student.

Horsfall himself is uniquely qualified to compose "the reference work" for book 7. This very book of the Aeneid has been the subject of his doctoral dissertation, while in the past thirty years he has published three books and several articles on Roman native tradition and mythology, early latin cults and their origin, latin ethnicity, all of them themes that dominate book 7 of the Aeneid, the very book witnessing Aeneas' arrival in Italy, and therefore functioning among others as an introduction--to us, the readers, as well as the Trojans themselves--of the native character, history, customs, and tradition of the new land and future country of the Trojans-soon-to-be Romans (cf. mainly, Horhfall and Bremmer, Roman Myth and Mythography [B.I.C.S. Supplement 52, 1987]; Horsfall, L'Epopea in Alambicco [Naples 1991]; and, ibid, A Companion to the Study of Virgil [Leiden 1995]). Turning on the work itself, Horshfall begins with an introduction covering: 1) Structure and brief summary of content; 2) Literary Sources, both Greek ( Homer, Greek tragedy, Callimachus), and Latin (Ennius, Sallust's Histories, Varro). 3) Language, Grammar, Syntax, Style, Metre. 4) Textual criticism and manuscript tradition. The exhaustive bibliography alone, which comes before the text and commentary, is perhaps as important as the rest of the book. Horsfall lists well over a hundred major works. Additional references are included in the commentary, and it would have been helpfull, since they are both many and important, if the author has assembled those in an appended reference list at the end. This confusion caused by scattered and delayed references is perhaps the only drawback of the work. Then comes the main section of the book: brief into and text, translation, and three indexes (English, Latin, Proper Names). Horsfall has incorporated in the text several ingenious emendations, the translation I found very helpful, and the wealth, acumen, and detail of the commentary would take pages to describe. Overall, this new volume comes to fill a long standing gap in the study of the Aeneid, and provide both Vergilian scholars and graduate students of Classics with an indispensable reference tool.