Wednesday, June 01, 2022

 

Man Put to Death for Quoting Vergil

Dio Cassius 76.10.2 (tr. Earnest Cary, with his note):
While he was engaged in this war he put to death two distinguished men. One was Julius Crispus, a tribune of the Pretorians; and the reason was that Crispus, vexed at the war's havoc, had casually quoted some verses of the poet Maro,1 in which one of the soldiers fighting on the side of Turnus against Aeneas bewails his lot and says: "In order that Turnus may marry Lavinia, we are meanwhile perishing all unheeded." And Severus made Valerius, the soldier who accused him, tribune in his place.

1 Vergil, Aen. xi.371‑3.

ἐν ᾧ δὲ ἐπολέμει, δύο ἄνδρας τῶν ἐπιφανῶν ἀπέκτεινεν, Ἰούλιον Κρίσπον χιλιαρχοῦντα τῶν δορυφόρων, ὅτι ἀχθεσθεὶς τῇ τοῦ πολέμου κακώσει ἔπος τι τοῦ Μάρωνος τοῦ ποιητοῦ παρεφθέγξατο, ἐν ᾧ ἐνῆν στρατιώτης τις τῶν μετὰ Τούρνου τῷ Αἰνείᾳ ἀντιπολεμούντων ὀδυρόμενος καὶ λέγων ὅτι "ἵνα δη τὴν Λαουινίαν ὁ Τοῦρνος ἀγάγηται, ἡμεῖς ἐν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ παραπολλύμεθα." καὶ τὸν κατηγορήσαντα αὐτοῦ στρατιώτην Οὐαλέριον χιλίαρχον ἀντ᾽ αὐτοῦ ὁ Σεουῆρος ἀπέδειξεν.
Vergil, Aeneid 11.371-373 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):
What! that Turnus may be blessed with a royal bride,
are we, forsooth, we worthless lives, a crowd unburied and unwept,
to be strewn upon the plains?

scilicet ut Turno contingat regia coniunx,
nos animae viles, inhumata infletaque turba,
sternamur campis.
The passage from Dio Cassius isn't mentioned in Nicholas Horsfall's commentary on Vergil, Aeneid 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2003).



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