Undaunted and relentless, the ‘commentators’ commentator', as De Gruyter's back cover dubs its recent acquisition, has given birth to the fifth tome of his series, the one book that was even ‘beyond’ Austin (xxvii). Unsurprisingly for Nicholas Horsfall's readers, his Aen. 6 is almost as intimidating as Virgil's: H. writes ‘in the shadow of Norden’ (Appendix 3, 645–54) and in the wake of La Cerda and Henry as a vehement defensor Vergilii; and from this perspective, H.6 is in clear continuity with its Brill siblings 7, 11, 3 and 2. Yet this time the book's contents are a perfect match for the commentary: this is a labyrinth of soluble and insoluble riddles, of gold-sparkling discoveries tinkling through Sibylline notes; its impressive use of previous scholarship will take you indeed in antiquam siluam from which the profani are apparently recommended to hold back from the very beginning (ix; wrongly, I reckon, since both the translation and the grammatical and stylistic notes actually make an extremely helpful tool for undergraduates).
Virtues and vices of H.'s commentaries are familiar. Alongside impressive erudition, encyclopaedic afflatus and brilliant specific solutions, H. also remains faithful to his idiosyncrasies: elliptical expressions and convoluted structures, insertion of personal notes, the crisp treatment of the Enciclopedia Virgiliana (since H.6 has seen the light at the same time as the new Virgil Encyclopedia, contributors may now start to shiver, wondering what treatment — if any — VE shall receive alongside EV in the next H.) and the dismissal of many younger Virgilians, for which they ‘might now begin to grasp the reason(s) why’ (639). As previously, the commentary is packed with contributions passed over in silence that H. invites experts to notice (xxxix), so that it can easily become an unpleasant ‘spot the absentee’ game for readers — and indeed reviewers. Treatment of scholarship, in its form at least, is sometimes dictated by personal relationships (with no one reproached as harshly as H. himself), as emphasized by passing notes and a fascinating biographical appendix of H.'s story with Aen. 6 (Appendix 2, 631–43).
The commentary as usual includes an exhaustive treatment at virtually every point (the only exception being 6.700–2, treated at H.2.792–4) and twenty dense digressions on specific passages, the most noteworthy of them perhaps SC (Sibyl(s) and Cave(s), 70–84), the GB (The Golden Bough, 152–7) and the PH (the Parade of Heroes, 510–19). Among recurrent positions are the view of Book 6 as ‘a masterpiece of eschatological bricolage’ (xxv–vi); the rejection of the straightforward identification of the Sibyl's cave with Maiuri's ‘Antro’; of Norden's reading of augural connotations in Aeneas' quest for the GB; of D'Arms', Segal's, Dyson's and Thomas' links between the GB's resistance and Aeneas' disobedience to the Sibyl's orders; the conviction of the chronological priority of G. 4 over Aen. 6; the teleological nature of Book 6 as a climactic ascent towards the PH; the scepticism towards Zetzel's, Hardie's and Feeney's readings of the PH; the certainty of an influence of Augustus' laudatio funebris on Marcellus on Virgil. To these one may add H.'s well-known and more than sharable positions that the Aeneid should not be read according to the argument ‘Virgil would have corrected this had he lived’ (although he is certain that two versions of Palinurus in Books 5 and 6 ‘would never have coexisted after a final revision’ (276)) and that Virgil's alleged inventions are always based on and surrounded by complex erudition.
The single notes refreshingly emphasize some neglected aspects (for example, the comic tones of the Sibyl's dialogue with Charon, Cicero's influence on Virgil, Virgil's careful reading of Plato), yet others seem to be overlooked, especially when it comes to intertextual dialogue. Among the texts whose relationship to Book 6 I was hoping H. would enlighten for us were Horace's C. 1.12 and especially Pindar's Ol. 2 — yet neither of them is deemed worthy of a substantial discussion. The indebtedness of Book 6 to Lucretius, who surfaces constantly in the loci paralleli but is strangely absent from the introductory list of sources, is highlighted at pivotal points in the narrative, but does not deserve an organic treatment. Among the characters, I strangely found Dido the one analysed in less depth: I was surprised to see H. raising doubts about the parallels between Dido and Pasiphae at 6.26 (89), and I was expecting a note on the connection between the mysterious identity of the sacerdos at 6.244 (whom I am not at all convinced ‘could … be an anonymous Trojan priest’ (219)) and the equally ambiguous sacerdos of 4.509; in the Underworld, H. does not discuss the parallels between Helen and Dido most evident in the Bacchic rites (cf. 6.517 and 4.300–3 with Krummen, Poetica 36 (2004), who also points out a similarity between Dido and Helen in the mention of the Eurota at 1.498) and I suspect that a parallel between Eriphyle (6.445) and Dido may be found in the shared model of Clytemnestra. Furthermore, the anachronism implied in Aeneas' arrival at Cumae (66) could have been coupled with the similar anachronism of Aeneas arriving at Carthage, also recollected by the parallel between 6.6–7 and 1.174–6. Generally, readers may also be let down by some of H.'s readings ‘in the light of history’: for example, in his comprehensive list of questions related to 6.460 (345), he does not signpost the Egyptian context of Berenice in relation to the Dido/Cleopatra allegory. Allusions to the civil wars are recognized (Deiphobus' mutilation, 345; nn. on 6.560 quae scelerum facies and 612–13 arma … impia), yet I was puzzled by the need to pin down some identifications as if they must equate to ‘modern’ sinners (I find the idea that Cleopatra is the dominum of 6.621 especially bizarre), on which I was also surprised not to find a reference to the beginning of Lucr., DRN 3.
H.'s text differs from Mynors' in seventeen instances: eleven involve punctuation (at least three relevant, 6.122, 750–1 and 713, the latter a brilliant suggestion by Michael Reeve; at 430 and 882 the translation does not follow H.'s preferred punctuation), three text (664 alios to Mynors' aliquos even though the corruption from aliquos is easier to explain; 746 reliquit to relinquit; 806 follows Henry in reading uirtute extendere uires rather than uirtutem extendere factis) and three orthography (848 and 862 prefer the spelling uoltus to uultus; 893 does not allow somni a capital S, highlighting H.'s preference for the Gates of Dreams rather than Sleep); the n. at 242 incorrectly assigns Aornon to Mynors' edition. Yet the commentary reveals further objections: in four lines (512, 516, 827, 869) the lectio preferred in the commentary does not match the agreement with Mynors apparently professed by the text, and the endorsement of Conte's brief lacuna after 601 is not shown in the text.
As often noted for the Brill volumes, the copy-editing does not do justice to the author and his work, yet I suspect it has deteriorated from the previous standards: if A. Hardie found around forty misprints in H.11 (BMCR 2004.05.03), I counted no fewer than 170, most of them involving punctuation (among which the wild use of brackets to which H.'s readers are by now accustomed), but also misprints in the Latin text (6.41 Teucros and the whole of line 729 are missing, Caeneus should be in 449, not 448), untranslated lines (28, caeca in 30, 326, nuper in 338, et funere mersit acerbo in 429, 510, acceleremus in 630, 729, 758), misprints in English, Latin, Italian and French, some wrong references and slips of the author (my favourite in 98, where Catullus' leptotes seems transferred to Virgil's Underworld: caeco (>tenui) uestigia filo). I am not the first to claim that it is a shame to see H.'s monumental work in such a poor editorial shape.
Now that we are into the second tetrad, and that we see both references and objections to H.'s previous commentaries unavoidably increase in each latest volume of H., one cannot help but wonder what the whole of H.'s Aeneid shall look like. In the meanwhile, we are promised H.1, which I for one shall await impatiently. And this is not just because of these volumes' immediate usefulness. In the ever increasingly hectic and injudicious world of REF-oriented academia, H.'s work continues to refresh Virgilians with some of the fundamental yet too easily forgotten lessons: the importance of grasping the grammar and style of an author who sets up his own rules; the ‘unhelpful myth’ (xxxix) of bibliographical comprehensiveness; the warning not to rely solely on the contributions of recentiores (who are sometimes deteriores); the ultimate unreliability of digital word searches; and the unavoidable reality that the increasing entrenchment of today's scholars into their own specialized fields is no match for good commentaries.
