For over two decades now The Cambridge Companion to Virgil has maintained its value as a textbook, guidebook and an introduction to the academic debates surrounding Virgil – no small merit in a publication. The second edition is more than just a revised version of the 1997 volume: due to its nine new chapters it stands as an independent work next to the first edition, a collection of papers with a wide range of topics that both reflect the long tradition of Virgilian scholarship and raise some more topical concerns and emphases in the field of Classics.
The most conspicuous feature of the second edition is its strong emphasis on reception. The volume is based on the premise that reception and interpretation are inseparable: the lasting impact of Virgil's poetry is due to its capacity for constant reinterpretation within new temporal contexts. The sections of the book have been reorganised under five headings: ‘Receptions’, ‘Forms’, ‘Contexts’, ‘Themes’ and ‘Envois’, but the power of the reader is an overarching theme in each of them. Doubtless, there are those readers who would have preferred a more traditional approach, with the focus on the author; however, bearing in mind the volume's aim to respond to contemporary debates in the field of Classics, the road taken is definitely justified. While the updated volume makes clear Virgil's immense significance to the Western world, not only to its literary traditions but also to its values and mentalities, it manages to do so without old-fashioned canonisation of the authorial voice.
At the same time, the volume acknowledges the weight of tradition when it comes to Virgil scholarship. The Companion is not a revolutionary attempt at subverting the theoretical starting points of reading Virgil, but rather, as a textbook should be, a comprehensive look at the multiple, dissonant voices within the field. The volume is marked by a plurality of readings, and the editors have made the conscious decision not to strive to reconcile them all.
While all the chapters save one have been revised and updated (with new bibliographies), there are also nine completely new chapters that either replace papers in the first edition or deal with a new topic. For instance, a chapter on the Appendix Vergiliana (Chapter 4) has been added – poems often overlooked in Virgilian scholarship due to the contemporary consensus that they are works wrongly attributed to Virgil. Because of the volume's emphasis on reception, the Appendix is, however, extremely relevant, as it allows us to understand some of the first appropriations of Virgil's poetry. S. McGill discusses the Appendix as pseudepigraphy through the examples of Ciris, Culex, Catalepton, Dirae and Priapea. McGill's treatment of the topic is delicate and well informed – he successfully avoids the futile juxtaposition between ‘authentic’ and ‘fake’, and instead deals with the themes of transparency and deception, impersonation and hindsight. While McGill critically discusses the ‘credibility’ of the Appendix in antiquity, he also underlines the great heterogeneity of these poems – just like there is more than one Virgil, there was also more than one way of stepping into his shoes.
Another valuable addition to the second edition is G. Clark's chapter about St Augustine's reception of Virgil (Chapter 5). Augustine's role in conveying Virgil's work to new Christian audiences can hardly be exaggerated. His power in deciding what parts of Virgil's poetry were worthy of remembering is a legacy that in many ways still affects the poet's renown in the Western world. Clark's chapter makes Augustine's crucial role in this cultural transmission evident. When examining the Church Father's conflicted relationship to Virgil, her focus is strongly on Augustine's audience's response – she discusses his readers’ familiarity with Virgil, and how their expectations impacted the ways Augustine used Virgil.
D. Fowler's chapter on Servius’ Virgil commentary has been revised by S. Casali and F. Stok (Chapter 6a). Compared to the detail-oriented original, a more general approach is favoured in this new version. The focus is strongly on religious matters, and a few new paragraphs have been added that deepen the treatment of Servius’ ‘balancing act’ – his adjustment to the new political situation and his attempt to offer his readers a way of reconciling their fondness of Virgil with their Christian faith. The greatest contribution of the chapter is that it challenges Servius’ canonised position in interpreting Virgil. The authors stress that the commentary is not a neutral source of information when it comes to the reception of Virgil in antiquity, rather it is one voice among many, with agenda and interests of its own.
In keeping with this theme, Casali and Stok have co-written a new chapter on lesser-known post-classical Virgil commentaries (Chapter 6b). With a detailed analysis of three commentaries – Philargyrius (fifth century), Pomponius Laetus (fifteenth century) and Juan Luis de la Cerda (seventeenth century) – they examine how the classical tradition worked as a model for cultural identity to readers who no longer had access to the historical context of Virgil's works. The chapter is a valuable contribution to the volume, as it represents a bridge between late antiquity and modern receptions of Virgil, a topic often overlooked. However, in order to better fit the ‘Receptions’ section, the chapter would have benefited from an approach that was a little less detail-oriented and better contextualised. As it is, the three commentaries, separated from each other by a millennium, remain somewhat disconnected case studies.
L.B.T. Houghton's ‘Virgil in Art’ (Chapter 9) replaces M. Liversidge's chapter by the same name in the 1997 edition. The chapter is based on the premise that all illustration is an interpretation: the Virgilian motifs in art always convey (and create) meanings relevant to the contemporary situation. Because of this, it would have been intriguing if examples chosen for closer scrutiny had represented a broader spectrum of contexts. As it is, the chapter is strongly focused on early modern art: the examples include (among other things) frescoes, sculptures, portraits, engravings, manuscript illustrations and woodcuts from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The chapter's greatest value lies in its broad and inclusive way of thinking about reception. Houghton emphasises the impact of the interpretative tradition on the visual interpretations of Virgil – furthermore, he pays attention to ‘the two-way traffic’, stressing how the visual interpretations continue to shape readers’ perceptions of the Virgilian corpus.
V. Moul's ‘Virgil as a Poet’ (Chapter 19) deals with Virgilian elements (similes, structures, sounds and meanings of words) with the focus on the reader's experience. Moul discusses aspects of Virgil's poetry that might be difficult to appreciate for someone who is not fluent in Latin and reads Virgil in translation (such as the poet's choice and juxtaposition of words to emotive effect). The associations in the reader's mind are of course beyond the poet's power to determine or predict – nevertheless, it is certainly true that many of Virgil's stylistic choices appear to strive for a strong emotional response in the reader, so the question of whether these emotions translate to other languages or cultural contexts is relevant. Moul also beautifully shows the lasting impact of Virgil's style in English verse classics, as she quotes passages from Keats, Milton, Frost, Browning, Wordsworth, Dryden and Shakespeare that recall (expressly or not) the Virgilian landscape.
H. Lovatt's ‘Character in Virgil’ (Chapter 21) discusses the theoretical approaches to characterisation through three examples: Menalcas in the Eclogues, Cyrene in the Georgics and Aeneas in the Aeneid. Lovatt stresses the power of the reader as she points out that ideas about the functioning of personalities are culturally determined – the ‘credibility’ of characterisation is conditioned by time and place. Lovatt also intriguingly discusses the complex relationship between the primary external narrator and the characters in the poem, and how they might take on each other's roles and characteristics. All in all, the chapter emphasises openness to interpretation as the defining characteristic of Virgilian characterisation – it does not bring much that is new to the table, but it is a useful introduction to the narratological approach to Virgil's poetry.
Mac Góráin's ‘Authority’ (Chapter 24) discusses power as the overarching theme in Virgil's poetry. Mac Góráin points out the multiple levels on which the theme operates, discussing both Virgil's poetic authority, attained through his appropriation of archaic epic tradition, and the theme of political authority in terms of the new Augustan regime. The chapter also pays attention to authority-struggles between different Virgilian characters; Mac Góráin uses Aeneas as an example of a character in whom the three spheres of authority (political, religious and martial) come together creating ideals of leadership relevant to the Augustan era. These are much debated themes in Virgilian scholarship, and even though the chapter is not a groundbreaking contribution to this discussion, it raises interesting questions about the age-old topic of poetry's relationship to power – about how claiming the tradition and shaping the past are issues crucial to both Virgil's work and to the Augustan period in general.
In the closing chapter dedicated to the future (Chapter 26), Mac Góráin discusses how the world has changed and how scholarship has developed since the first edition in 1997. He rightly points out that many of the themes in Virgil's poetry (colonisation, migration, cultural conflict) are now more topical than ever (or has there ever been a time when they would not have been?). Pondering on Virgil's place in the globalised world, Mac Góráin defends the crucial role of translations and interpretations in conveying Virgil's poetry to new audiences; he emphasises the ongoing need to study not only the Virgilian corpus, but the receptions of Virgil in contemporary cultural contexts. This raises an interesting question: how global is ‘the classic of all Europe’ or how much potential does it have to become global? What about the ongoing crisis of European identity, largely shaped by Virgil and by Christian interpretations of Virgil? Could Virgil once again, in the current political tumult, offer some common ground in the effort of finding unity in diversity? These are questions that for the time being must remain unanswered; however, the indisputable advantage of this volume is that it dares to ask questions that have no answer, and provokes the reader to come up with more. Altogether, the volume is a laudable update of an old classic – while giving a respectful nod to the tradition of Virgilian scholarship, it boldly looks into the future and invites the reader to stop and ponder about the value and the lasting impact of Virgil in the contemporary world.
