Macrobius' Saturnalian Slander: Concerning Vergil and Pisander

The gentle Vergil, whom instructors call the Mantuan swan, perhaps because he was not born in that city, he considered one of the most terrible pedants ever produced by antiquity. Des Esseintes was exasperated by his immaculate and bedizened shepherds, his Orpheus whom he compares to a weeping nightingale, his Aristaeus who simpers about bees, his Aeneas, that weak-willed, irresolute person who walks with wooden gestures through the length of the poem. Des Esseintes would gladly have accepted the tedious nonsense which those marionettes exchange with each other off-stage; or even the poet's impudent borrowings from Homer, Theocritus, Ennius and Lucretius; the plain theft, revealed to us by Macrobius, of the second song of the Aeneid, copied
almost word for word from one of Pisander's poems; in fine, all the unutterable emptiness of this heap of verses.

-Joris-Karl Huysmans, À rebours. Trans. by John Howard

What "plain theft"? Was Vergil a thief? Of course; he was a poet. And why should it at all matter? Did not the ancient poets plagiarize each other shamelessly, cribbing lines and similes, descriptions and metaphors, forcing dactyls and iambs to shed one meaning, one setting, and to adopt another meaning in a new scene, a different situation? Naturally; this was, and still is, the business of the poet. And therein lies the rub: it is the difference and the variations in which the poet, whom one may freely call a plagiarist, adopts (steals?) another poet's lines to suit their own purpose. There is little more pleasing for the reader than to read a line of Vergil and catch within his dactyls a simile recognizable from Homer, or espy a word or two, a little snippet snatched here from Lucretius or there from Catullus; indeed, the very thing of which Des Esseintes complains in the passage above taken from À rebours, what he sneeringly calls Vergil's "impudent borrowings", should be the very trait in Vergil which makes him a great poet: that his scope and breadth are wide, and his ability to adopt and adapt beautiful and recognizable passages, lines, and words from other artists is adroitly executed. Let one complain of these "impudent borrowings" all one desires; but know that the entire nature of artistic endeavor is caught up in the selfsame accusation. But none of this quibbling is any excuse for sloppy slandering. Calling a poet a plagiarist, a thief, in a way in which the poet is not is quite unfair and does nothing to aid the reader in understanding the poet's work, in walking the poet's walk, so to speak. Therefore, we ought to understand the difference in a poet adopting and adapting parts of another's words against the outright taking of whole passages, even books, without any alteration or adaptation, the "plain theft" as it is called in the above passage; furthermore, we ought to set out with an aim to correct where such a slander is found, such as here, recorded by Huysmans and leveled by Macrobius against Vergil. After a little research and reading, we shall find that either something more complex than what first meets the eye could be at work here, or Macrobius was simply mistaken.

Firstly, what is Macrobius' charge? In the fifth book of the writer's Saturnalia, which takes the form of a Platonic or Ciceronian dialogue during the eponymous seasonal festivities, the characters continue their discussion of Vergil and his writings:

1 Tunc Evangelus inridenti similis: Bene, inquit, opifici deo a rure Mantuano poetam conparas, quem Graecos rhetoras, quorum fecisti mentionem, nec omnino legisse adseveraverim. Unde enim Veneto rusticis parentibus nato, inter silvas et frutices educto, vel levis Graecarum notitia litterarum?           

Then Evangelus made a grin as if mocking and spake: "Well thou art to compare the Poet hailing from the Mantuan countryside with God the Creator. Yea, I declare the Poet hath not been entirely read by those Greek rhetoricians whom thou hast made mention. For whence came his skill? If born he was of country parents near Venice, brought up amidst woods and trees, whence came his polished skill in Greek letters?" 

2 Et Eustathius: Cave, inquit, Evangele, Graecorum quemquam vel de summis auctoribus tantam Graecae doctrinae hausisse copiam credas, quantam sollertia Maronis vel adsecuta est vel in suo opere digessit. Nam praeter philosophiae et astronomiae amplam illam copiam, de qua supra disseruimus, non parva sunt alia quae traxit a Graecis et carmini suo tamquam illic nata conseruit.           

And Eustathius spake: "Have some caution, Evangelus, that thou trust'st that any of the Greeks or any of that abundant font of most noteworthy authors clung to their Greek training as much as the adroit skill of Maro at once allowed him to gain, and then sprinkle throughout his own works. For outside of that same abundant font of philosophy and astronomers about which we argued above, not small are those other borrowings which he hath drawn from the Greeks and hath sown throughout his own song as those borrowings had been born therein." 

3 Et Praetextatus: Oratus sis, inquit, Eustathi, ut haec quoque communicata nobiscum velis, quantum memoria repente incitata suffecerit. Omnes Praetextatum secuti ad disserendum Eustathium provocaverunt.             

And Praetextatus spake: "Please, Eustathius, discuss with us such things as these as well, as much as what can be brought up in thy memory which hath been so a-suddenly roused." And then they all followed Praetextatus and called on Eustathius to argue. 

4 Ille sic incipit: Dicturumne me putatis ea quae vulgo nota sunt, quod Theocritum sibi fecerit pastoralis operis auctorem, ruralis Hesiodum, et quod in ipsis Georgicis tempestatis serenitatisque signa de Arati Phaenomenis traxerit, vel quod eversionem Troiae cum Sinone suo et equo ligneo ceterisque omnibus quae librum secundum faciunt a Pisandro paene ad verbum transcripserit:             

And so thus he began: "Do ye think that I would speak of those things which are commonly known, such as how the Poet made use of Theocritus as a model for his shepherd's works? for his farming songs Hesiod? and for his weather forecasts in his own Georgics he drew from the signs taken from Aratus' Phaenomena? Or what of the Fall of Troy with his Sinon and wooden horse and all the rest which make up the his second book -- translated nearly word for word from Pisander? 

5 qui inter Graecos poetas eminet opere quod a nuptiis Iovis et Iunonis incipiens universas historias quae mediis omnibus seculis usque ad aetatem ipsius Pisandri contigerunt in unam seriem coactas redegerit et unum ex diversis hiatibus temporum corpus effecerit, in quo opere inter historias ceteras interitus quoque Troiae in hunc modum relatus est, quae Maro fideliter interpretando fabricatus sibi est Iliacae urbis ruinam?              

"And of this Pisander, who among the Greek poets stands foremost because in his work -- which from the marriage of Jove and Juno begins and then contains the entire history of the rest of the ages of the world up to Pisander's own present age -- he re-ordered into a single series all the stories he had gathered together and he did cause a single corpus to be made from the different gaps of time, and among the rest of these stories was the destruction of Troy also told, a story which Maro fashioned in his own way by faithfully translating the ruin of the city of Ilium? 

6 Sed et haec et talia ut pueris decantata praetereo."            

"But both these and such things I dismiss as if rote chanted to boys in school." 

-Macrobius, Saturnalia V.ii.1-6. Trans. is my own.

"[D]ecantata" indeed. Eustathius continues his oration for a time in much the same vein, touching on things every schoolboy should know, such as how the first half of The Aeneid is modeled off of Homer's Odyssey, while the latter half after The Iliad -- all good on that front; but the speaker's offhanded claim that the entirety of the second book of Vergil's Aeneid is merely a verbatim translation of a certain Pisander's mighty and laborious work is quite an accusation, not to mention that said accusation is included in a preterition worthy of Cicero's Catilinarian invectives. Additionally, Eustathius mentions other poets in the same breath alongside this Pisander, but apart from Homer (a few lines down), Vergil is not accused of stealing 'ad verbum" from any one of them. So, keeping in mind that the ancients could distinguish between borrowing, cribbing, adopting & adapting, and outright stealing, word-by-word theft, verbatim copying, and the like, then what is Eustathius (and by extension, Macrobius) talking about? Who is this Pisander, the author of this mighty work here extolled?

Many commentators note that there are two poets called Pisander known to the Greeks1: the first is a 7th century B.C. epicist hailing from Rhodes who authored Ἡρακλεία "The Herakleid", a work centering on the labors of Herakles; the second is an A.D. 3rd century poet hailing from Laranda who authored the Ἡρωικαὶ θεογαμίαι "The Heroic Marriages of the Gods". This is most likely the poet to whom Eustathius refers, as the Ἡρωικαὶ θεογαμίαι was composed of some sixty volumes and did indeed have as its subject the whole history of the world. The historian Zosimus references his work in a Herodotean aside concerning Alaric's stop at town called Emo which, according to legend, had been founded by the Argonauts: 

"Afterwards placing |155 their ship, the Argo, on machines purposely constructed, they drew it four hundred stadia, as far as the sea-side, and thus arrived at the Thessalian shore, as is related by the Poet Pisander, who has comprehended almost the whole story in a poem called The Heroic Marriages 65/77 of the Gods." 

-Zosimus, Ἱστορία Νέα "New History" Book V; 29. Trans. by Green and Chaplin

It appears we are speaking of the same work and thus the same writer. However, there is one near-insurmountable problem: one must take into account that Vergil himself hails from the 1st century B.C, some four hundred years earlier than this Larandan Pisander, and because of this, the latter would have to be more influenced by the former than vice-versa. And just in case the 7th century B.C. Pisander is forgotten as a suspect, his own work concerning Herakles would hardly have contained the Fall of Troy as Vergil told it in his own second book of The Aeneid, and thus would have most likely been a poor model for our Roman poet's purposes.

So where does one go from here? This is where the journey leading towards the solution to this mystery splits branching into four differing paths (and scholars seem to amusingly choose one or sometimes more of these paths as another place to stake their claim, dig in their heels, and make ready for a long siege): either, firstly, Macrobius is correct about his character's assertion that Vergil copied off a certain Pisander's Fall of Troy and passed it off as his own second book of The Aeneid; or secondly, Macrobius is mistaken about Pisander and has done so purposefully; or thirdly, Macrobius is just plain mistaken about Pisander and is ignorant of his mistake; or, finally, Macrobius is correct in his character's assertions, and it is some error on part of an editor, commentator, or reader that has perverted the writer's original meaning so it seems to be a mistake. 

The firstly enumerated option, in which Macrobius is correct in Eustathius' assertion that Vergil copied off of an otherwise unknown poet named Pisander, requires us to entertain the idea that there was another now-lost poet named Pisander who lived before Vergil's own age, and who has subsequently been erased from history (cf. footnote#1) apart from scant and fleeting references. However, as far-fetched as this idea may be, it is not entirely without precedent: the famous and oft-quoted Catullus himself would have been lost to us modern readers had not his writings survived the centuries in a single manuscript copy. The odds of some future scholar finding in a Old World tomb or in a jar or in a cave hitherto lost evidence of a mighty and learned pre-Augustan Age Pisander who wrote of The Fall of Troy and whose Greek verses mysteriously match up with Vergil's famous Latin hexameters are not entirely non-existent, but highly improbable.

The antepenultimate option, in which Eustathius is incorrect in his assertion concerning Pisander, but Macrobius is aware of his character's mistake, requires the reader to look at The Saturnalia and its characters as a whole: for if intentional, then there must be a reason for Macrobius to do it. Does it serve some purpose for Macrobius in writing The Saturnalia to have Eustathius chant and list such things about Vergil as if they were schoolboy rote ("decantata")? Is it meant to be clear that Eustathius is mistaken about Pisander, and that his mistake is framed by a preterition? The purpose of preterition is to draw attention to a thing by declaring the thing ought not to have attention drawn to it. Is Eustathius being used as a mouthpiece by Macrobius to make some subtle and smarting observation about youth being taught errors in their classrooms by memorizing mistakes during their lessons? This question is larger and more complex than what this present writing is meant to examine; it should be sufficient, however, to reassert that the summary of Pisander's poem provided by Zosimus proves that at least Eustathius, if not Macrobius himself, is thinking of the same poet, and is thus mistaken.

The penultimately-enumerated option is the one which is most easily commented upon via Lex Parsimoniae: Macrobius is just wrong. Under this assumption, no creation of a fabled Pisander is needed, no mental gymnastics are necessitated, and no linguistic jujutsu is required to try and justify what the man has written: he was merely mixed-up and meant another author or date or whatever, for the Pisander who lived in the reign of Alexander Severus could not have influenced Vergil who himself lived centuries earlier. This option is most likely to be correct out of the enumerated four above, given that Eustathius' convenient summary of his Pisander's work matches the historian Zosimus' summary of the work of Pisander who hailed from the reign of Alexander Severus. If Eustathius and Zosimus are speaking of the same Pisander (and they rather conclusively seem to be), then the same Pisander could not have influenced Vergil. Ergo, Macrobius/Eustathius is merely mistaken.

Finally, we come to the last option, the one which renders the entire accusation entirely pointless from the start. Besides the use of the phrase "paene ad verbum transcripserit" ("[Vergil] translated nearly by the word / word-for-word"), Eustathius/Macrobius' language concerning how Vergil treats his poetic models is rather standard and non-nefarious: fecerit sibi ("he made for himself"), traxerit ("he drew"), fideliter interpretando fabricatus sibi ("he fashioned for himself by faithfully translating") all seem to denote how Vergil treated any and all of his models, be the model Homer, Lucretius, Ennius, or Catullus. In fact, just a little ways further in the text, one finds Eustathius/Macrobius using much the same language he uses when he accuses Vergil of plagiarizing Pisander as when he describes how Vergil models himself off of Homer: "Et si vultis me et ipsos proferre versus ad verbum paene translatos... (And if ye even wish me to offer a few verses [of Homer] which [Vergil] translated nearly to the word/ word-for-word." V.3.1). He then offers snippets and stanzas of Homeric lines and their Vergilian copies. So, did Vergil really copy Homer "ad verbum"? Of course not. One might say Vergil drew (traxerit) from many different authors and sources, and he made (fecerit) and fashioned (fabricatus) his own version (sibi) from those earlier works. Even so, is this accusation of paene ad verbum transcripserit and fideliter interpretando fabricatus, and ad verbum paene translatos so much different than what Catullus did to one of Sappho's famous fragments for his own Carmen LI ("Ille mi par esse deo videtur")? Given all of this, and given how the ancients view poetic plagiarism as a whole, are Eustathius' words meant to be an accusation or charge of malice at all? Did Macrobius even mean to throw shade on Vergil? Or do our modern eyes read his words, see in these words our modern sensibilities concerning plagiarism, and then react to these words appropriately? I must admit, I was surprised at the variance in tone between Huysmans' sneering treatment of the accusation and reading the offhanded and indifferent accusation offered by Macrobius himself. We must keep in mind that some fifteen centuries or more separate Huysmans and us from our subject matter; therefore, we ought to always ask ourselves, are we reading the ancients rightly?

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1. If only it were so easy: many scholars actually do posit the existence of a third Pisander based on mentions made in various mythographic scholia tied to the writings of Pseudo-Apollodorus, and perhaps to Apollonius of Rhodes and Euripides -- I have not included this third Pisander in this present writing because he is a little on the spurious side. Despite the number of scholars (such as John Conington, Nino Marinone, Alan Cameron, Deubner, Felix Jacoby, and E.L. de Kock) who believe in the existence of a mythographer named Pisander, the evidence of such a person is nonexistent outside of the above-named scholia, which, in the end, amounts to a handful of prose fragments, the dating of which cannot be conclusively determined. For while Pseudo-Apollodorus will occasionally mention that a different version of the story he's telling might come from a certain "Peisandros" (e.g. Biblioteca I.8.5), it remains inconclusive as to whether Apollonius or Euripides made any use of him (or even if he existed to be made use of); frankly it seems unlikely he is a source of Euripides -- he seems informed by the tragedian. Indeed, some scholars, believe this Pisandran material belongs to Pisander of Rhodes, the epicist, and thus dates from the 7th century B.C; others, like de Kock, argue that the material originating from this Pisander belongs to the Hellenistic Age, or even (bizarrely) after Pseudo-Apollodorus. Additionally, the scholia don't even quote Pisander; they merely provide a summary of his telling (the scholium on Euripides opens with: "As Pisander tells the story..." and ends with: "This is what Pisander says"). 

If I may be allowed to throw my own wrench into the whole ungainly mess, I would argue that Diodorus Siculus, a contemporary of Vergil, claims in his Historical Library that no complete history or telling of the pre-Trojan War period existed to his knowledge:

ἐν μὲν ἓξ ταῖς πρώταις ἀνεγράψαμεν τὰς πρὸ τῶν Τρωικῶν πράξεις τε καὶ μυθολογίας, καὶ τοὺς χρόνους ἐν ταύταις ἐπ' ἀκριβείας οὐ διωρισάμεθα διὰ τὸ μηδὲν παράπηγμα περὶ τούτων παρει . . .  

"While in the first six books I wrote down before the deeds and the myths of the Trojans, and the times in these tales I could not define the dates with any accuracy on account of there being no such fixed chronology of events..."   

                                      -Diodorus Siculus, Βιβλιοθήκη ἱστορική, "Historical Library" 40. Trans. is my own.

If this mysterious mythographer Pisander was so well-known that he is a worthy source of quotable material on myths, why does Diodorus not know of him or his work?

All in all, the only thing these fragments prove is that a Greek man called Pisander was quoted several times by another mythographer (and maybe few other writers) concerning various mythological episodes. Why should this scantily-quoted writer identified as Pisander also automatically be a great and influential, yet otherwise unknown mythographer named as a source for Vergil's Aeneid? Furthermore, why should one be at all hard-pressed to prove that Eustathius is talking about a different Pisander from the one who seems to have written the work which he conveniently takes some effort to describe? If the historian Zosimus is correct in his reference to Pisander, then how many Pisanders wrote lengthy mythological histories of the world starting with the marriage of Jove and Juno and were called "Heroic Marriages of the Gods"?
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