Sympathy For The Devil: The Romantics’ Reveling in Rebellion

 

Many writers of the British Romantic movement, chief among them Byron, Blake, Keats, and the Shelleys, owed a great debt to Milton’s Paradise Lost, for they were drawn to not only Milton’s beautiful and evocative verses, and not merely to dressing The Bible in Vergilian trappings, but, importantly, to the central, yet ambivalently sketched, character of Satan; in particular, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, an update of the tragedy by Aeschylus, likewise uses Milton as a model by focusing the author’s efforts on creating sympathy for a misunderstood character’s righteous rebellion against an oppressive authority. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley first published Prometheus Unbound, his four act lyrical drama “chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla (Shelley Preface),” in 1820. Shelley’s great Miltonian drama reworks another primordial creation myth, that of the Grecian Prometheus, specifically as told by the Athenian dramatist Aeschylus in his Prometheia trilogy, which consists of the surviving first play, Prometheus Bound (first staged in 430 B.C.), and the two lost sequels, Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-Giver. Fragments of these sequels survive (one of which, notably, is quoted by Cicero and may be his own Latin translation of a passage of the now-lost Prom. Unb.) as well as the bare outline of the plot and resolution. In Prometheus Bound, Zeus has Prometheus chained to the peaks of the Caucasus Mountains for gifting mankind with arts and fire; the Titan there bemoans his lot to a chorus of Oceanids and laments that his only crime was showing sympathy to humanity: 

PROMETHEUS: “But for those sad wretched human beings, 

 [Zeus] showed no concern at all. He wanted 

 to wipe out the entire race and grow 

 a new one in its place. None of the gods 

 objected to his plan except for me. 290 

 I was the only one who had the courage. 

 So I saved those creatures from destruction 

 and a trip to Hades. And that is why 

 I have been shackled here and have to bear 

 such agonizing pain, so pitiful to see. [240] 

 I set compassion for the human race 

 above the way I felt about myself, 

 so now I am unworthy of compassion” (Aeschylus).

At the end of the play, Zeus (through his messenger Hermes) threatens further punishment upon the Titan, if Prometheus will not reveal a prophesied threat to the Olympian’s tyrannical rule:

 HERMES: [...] If these words of mine

 do not convince you, think about the storm,

 the triple wave of torment which will fall

 and you cannot escape. First, Father Zeus

 will rip this mountain crag with thunder claps 1260

 and bolts of flaming lightning, burying

 your body in the rock, and yet this cleft

 will hold you in its arms. When you have spent [1020]

 a long time underground, you will return

 into the light, and Zeus’ winged hound,

 his ravenous eagle, will cruelly rip

 your mutilated body into shreds

 and, like an uninvited banqueter,

 will feast upon your liver all day long,

 until its chewing turns the organ black” (Aeschylus). 1270

This threat to Zeus’ rule was his proposed marriage to the sea goddess Thetis, a union which Prometheus foresaw would beget an offspring greater than his father (and thus bringing about Zeus’ end). By the end of The Prometheia, Thetis has married the mortal Argonaut, Peleus (who will become the father of Achilles), and thus averted disaster to Zeus’ reign; therefore, a reconciliation occurs between Zeus and Prometheus, Olympian and Titan, after Herakles frees the captive from his mountaintop prison and eagle torturer. 

Shelley’s Prometheus shares many similarities with Aeschylus’ woeful hero, but the Romantic poet casts his rebellious character in the same mold as that of Satan from Paradise Lost; and yet, unlike Milton’s proud and corrupting angel, Shelley’s tormented Titan is “the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends” (Shelley Preface). Like Aeschylus, Shelley’s Prometheus is cast as an all-around good and moral hero, but it is in the ending of their respective works where Shelley diverts most from Aeschylus, for there is no reconciliation at the conclusion of Shelley’s Unbound, as the poet was “averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind” (Shelley Preface). Instead of Olympian and Titan reconciling, Shelley’s Zeus is overthrown in the way prophesied by Prometheus, and not only is “the Champion” freed from “the Oppressor”, but the whole of humanity casts off its own tyrannical leanings and unites together:

      SPIRIT OF THE HOUR: “[...] even so the tools

      And emblems of its last captivity,

      Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,

      Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.

      And those foul shapes,--abhorred by god and man,              180

      Which, under many a name and many a form

      Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and execrable,

      Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world,

      And which the nations, panic-stricken, served

      With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love

      Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,

      And slain among men's unreclaiming tears,

      Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate,--

      Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines.

      The painted veil, by those who were, called life,              190

      Which mimicked, as with colors idly spread,

      All men believed and hoped, is torn aside;

      The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains

      Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man

      Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,

      Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king

      Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man

      Passionless--no, yet free from guilt or pain,

      Which were, for his will made or suffered them;” (Shelley Act III).

This liberation here imagined is, strikingly, not unlike how Shelley describes in his Author’s Preface to Prometheus Unbound his own indebtedness he (and the other Romantics) felt towards Milton:

“We owe the great writers of the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion. We owe Milton to the progress and development of the same spirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition or the opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its collected lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is now restoring or is about to be restored” (Shelley Preface).

Treating Paradise Lost as something akin to the very forbidden fruit described within the poem’s verses, the Romantics reworked old mythologies and stories, such as tales about Prometheus, and gave these narratives new life by recasting them with a Miltonian flair and generating sympathy for a tragic and misunderstood creation rebelling against a perceived oppressive authority of its creator. 

The result of this “liberated” view of literature afforded the Romantic writers by Milton’s Paradise Lost was that they felt that they were writing and expressing themselves more freely than in previous ages. These authors write as though they had been freed and awakened to a new way of thinking about the world, as if they had been bestowed with hitherto “forbidden” knowledge like the mortals at the close of Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound:

       THE EARTH: “The lightning is [Man’s] slave; heaven's utmost deep

        Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep

        They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!           420

        The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;

        And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,

        'Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none’” (Shelley Act IV).

Lincoln and Euclid's Elements - Quod Erat Demonstrandum

An excerpt from Ketcham's "The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Entering the Law":

"In treating of this topic, it will be necessary to recall certain things already mentioned. One characteristic which distinguished Lincoln all through his life was thoroughness. When he was President a man called on him for a certain favor, and, when asked to state his case, made a great mess of it, for he had not sufficiently prepared himself. Then the President gave him some free advice. 'What you need is to be thorough,' and he brought his hand down on the table with the crash of a maul,–'to be thorough.' It was his own method. After a successful practise of twenty years he advised a young law student: 'Work, work, work is the main thing.' He spoke out of his own experience.
There is one remarkable passage in his life which is worth repeating here, since it gives an insight into the thoroughness of this man. The following is quoted from the Rev. J. P. Gulliver, then pastor of the Congregational church in Norwich, Conn. It was a part of a conversation which took place shortly after the Cooper Institute speech in 1860, and was printed in The Independent for September 1, 1864[:]
'Oh, yes! "I read law," as the phrase is; that is, I became a lawyer’s clerk in Springfield, and copied tedious documents, and picked up what I could of law in the intervals of other work. But your question reminds me of a bit of education I had, which I am bound in honesty to mention.
'In the course of my law reading I constantly came upon the word demonstrate. I thought, at first, that I understood its meaning, but soon became satisfied that I did not. I said to myself, What do I do when I demonstrate more than when I reason or prove? How does demonstration differ from any other proof? I consulted Webster’s Dictionary. They told of "certain proof," "proof beyond the possibility of doubt"; but I could form no idea of what sort of proof that was. I thought a great many things were proved beyond the possibility of doubt, without recourse to any such extraordinary process of reasoning as I understood demonstration to be. I consulted all the dictionaries and books of reference I could find, but with no better results. You might as well have defined blue to a blind man. At last I said,–Lincoln, you never can make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means; and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father’s house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what demonstrate means, and went back to my law studies.”

Bless him.

Greek Kappas Can Also Stand In For Latin Qu's

[1] Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις ἐξῆλθεν δόγμα παρὰ Καίσαρος Αὐγούστου  

ἀπογράφεσθαι πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην:             

           And it happened in those days that there came out a decree from Caesar Augustus that the whole world be enrolled; 

[2] αὕτη ἀπογραφὴ πρώτη ἐγένετο ἡγεμονεύοντος τῆς Συρίας Κυρηνίου:              

            This first enrollment occurred while Quirinius was governing Syria.

                                      -ΚΑΤΑ ΛΟΥΚΑΝ - The Gospel of Luke 2.1-2. Trans. is my own

When reading an ancient text, it is often helpful to keep in mind that what one is reading has probably been a good deal influenced by what a scribe has heard. Elisions and other orthographic alterations often occur in texts which were dictated by an author to a scribe, for the scribe would merely record what the master spoke aloud, elisions and all.
This process of dictation becomes even more woolly when one begins translating between languages; for example, what would an ancient Greek speaker hear when a Roman said the name "Augustus" to him? How would the Greek accent that name? Would he pay much attention to how the Roman said it, or would his natural Hellenic tendencies take over and would he pronounce it as a Greek speaker would (cf. Catullus LXXXIV)? By comparison, we know what the Greeks did with proper nouns like Jesus and John: the Hebrew יֵשׁוּעַ "Yeshua" was transliterated as Ἰησοῦς ("Iesous") by the Greeks; and John originates from the Hebrew יוֹחָנָן "Yokhanan", which was taken by Greeks as Ἰωάννης ("Ioannes"), and then by the Romans as "Iohannes/Ioannes" to be later Anglicized to "John". 
Roman names like "Valerius" gave the Greeks some additional trouble, as the V, making a w sound (the digamma having dropped out of Greek centuries earlier) was transliterated by ou: Οὐαλέριος.
So, wanting some of the sounds common in Hebrew (e.g. "sh", "v/w"), the Greeks did what they could with what they had.
Armed with this knowledge, we can clearly see from the above verses how Luke transliterated "Augustus": "Αὐγούστου" is the Genitive of Αὔγουστος - no problems there. 
But what about a name like Κυρήνιος? The transliteration of this name would be Kurenios, which would be further Latinized to Cyrenius - but could the name also be transliterated as "Quirinius", as Classical Greek lacks the "qu" sound?

What evidence may we gather which proves how scribes of the day grappled with their own spelling conventions in transliterating the Greek kappa to the Latin q and vice versa? In the Regula Sancti Benedicti ("The Rule of St. Benedict"), a guide written in the early 6th century A.D. for the formation and maintenance Western Christian monastic communities, St. Benedict tells when the Christian liturgical prayer, Kyrie eleison ("Lord, Have Mercy") is to be said:

"Post hos, lectio Apostoli sequatur ex corde recitanda, et versus, et supplicatio litaniæ, id est Quirie eleison. 

"After these [prayers], a reading of the Apostle may follow, which is to be recited by heart, and verses, and the petition of litany -- that is, the Kyrie eleison."                       

                                                                    -Regula Sancti Benedict IX. Trans. is my own.

This petition is, of course, Greek, and is written properly as Κύριε, ελέησον, and is usually transliterated as "Kyrie, eleison". This is not, however, how St. Benedict (or, at least, his scribe) has written the prayer: the scriptor has exchanged the Greek kappa in Κύριε with q- to give us "Quirie eleison".
And lest it be pointed out how dubious and misguided it is to entirely trust an Internet source, let us turn to a handful of manuscripts (which are numbered) of the same text which were written in the various centuries spanning from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages and focus our attention on how the Kyrie is spelled with both k's and q's (and even c's!):

1.

St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. Sang. 914, dated first third of the 9th century A.D.

2.

Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS.197, fol. 32v, dated late 10th century A.D.

3.

Hatton 48, Canterbury, c. 8th century A.D.

Other instances of the Kyrie in the Regula and its manuscripts follow suit (sometimes the same manuscript will exhibit different spellings!). Since the variance of spellings between k's and q's (and even c's!) in the many centuries following the diminishing of the Roman empire in the West, it is reasonable to assume that such differences and confusions were most likely commonplace throughout the entire intercourse of Greek and Latin. 

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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