The Scholar and His Correspondents, ICS, 33-34

Herbert Jennings Rose (18831961) The Scholar and His Correspondents1
DOMENICO ACCORINTI for Katharine Fewster

This paper aims both to throw new light on H. J. Rose (18831961), Professor of Greek at the University of St Andrews (192753) and best known as the author of A Handbook of Greek Mythology (1928), and to rekindle interest among scholars for his work in the areas of ancient religion, classical mythology, and folklore. His unpublished correspondences with Raffaele Pettazzoni, Professor of the History of Religions at University of Rome, Sir DArcy Wentworth Thompson, Professor of Natural History at St Andrews University, and Dorothy L. Sayers, the renowned crime writer and author of a lyrical translation of Dantes Divina Commedia some extracts from which are here presented, besides being, as well as the other scholarly correspondences, an important source for our understanding of behindthe-scenes philological activity, contribute a vivid portrait of a polymath
This essay reproduces, in a more extended form and with a different subtitle (the original one was A Gifted and Omnivorous Scholar), a paper delivered on 5 April 2009 at the Classical Association Annual Conference 2009 held jointly with the Classical Association of Scotland and hosted by the Department of Classics, University of Glasgow. An expanded version of the same paper was also presented as a research seminar on 6 April 2009 at the University of St Andrews, School of Classics, in the presence of scholars such as the late Sir Kenneth J. Dover and Ian G. Kidd. I thank Prof. Christopher J. Smith, at that time Proctor and Provost of St Leonards College (now Director of the British School at Rome), for kindly inviting me to give the lecture at the University of St Andrews where Herbert J. Rose taught from 1927 to 1953. My heartfelt thanks are due to Mrs Katharine Fewster (she was among the St Andrews audience), the last surviving member of Roses large family, who answered questions, looked up information, and identified persons related to her father. I also express my gratitude to my Scottish friend, Robert Learmonth, for reading a first version of this paper. Furthermore, I wish to thank the anonymous referees for helpful comments and Danuta Shanzer, editor of ICS, for her valuable editorial work, which has improved the presentation of the paper.
65
66
Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

who professed . the Solonian motto
Otto Skutsch (190690), in his posthumous essay, Recollections of Scholars I Have Known, told the following anecdote:
[At St. Andrews] the Professor in Greek was H. J. Rose, and he seemed to know everything. One evening I mentioned to him that I thought I had observed something interesting in the clausulae of St. Augustine. Yes, said he, and went to a drawer to fetch out copious notes he had written on precisely that point. For a man whose main interest was religion and folklore that wasnt bad! He was a wonderful chessplayer. I thought I was reasonably good myself, but every time we played he had me tied up in knots after half a dozen moves. It was many years later that I got rid of the feeling of inferiority which that gave me. It was when Prof. Penrose, the father of the British chessmaster, told me that old players would sometimes wonder what had become of young Rose, who had drawn with Capablanca or whoever it was. And when they were told that 2 he had become a Professor of Classics, they would say: What a pity!
My paper attempts to throw new light on H. J. Rose, Associate Professor of Classics at McGill University, Montreal (191115), Professor of Latin at Aberystwyth (191927) and later Professor of Greek at the University of St Andrews (192753), a scholar of great learning, a polymath and polyglot (he translated several works in his field from German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish and he also published in 1927, with Thomas Gwynn Jones, a translation into Welsh of Greek epigrams, Flowers from an Ancient Garden).3 He was also
Recollections of Scholars I Have Known, ed. A. Bierl and W. M. Calder III, HSCP 94 (1992): 387408 at 403. Skutsch published two articles in collaboration with Rose: Mactare-Macula?, CQ 32 (1938): 22023; Once more macte, CQ 36 (1942): 1520. Roses natural gifts have been happily rendered by W. L. Lorimer, his successor at St Andrews, in an impassioned obituary tribute, Herbert Jennings Rose, 18831961, PBA 48 (1962): 397410 at 408: A superb memory and vast knowledge were the outstanding elements of Roses intellect. But the weight of his learning did not retard his mental movements. On the contrary, he was extremely agile of mind; the hosts of facts were kept in a state of permanent mobilization, and ordinarily the particular item or items required on any occasions could be brought into play on the instant. 3 Blodau o Hen Ardd: Epigramau Groeg a Lladin (Wrecsam, 1927). See A. D. Nock, Herbert Jennings Rose, Gnomon 34 (1962): 42426 at 425: Nihil tetigit
Domenico Accorinti
67
a fine chessplayer. Such was Rose, the most famous of the Canadian classicists,4 best known to scholars for his annotated translation of Plutarchs The Roman Questions (1924),5 the edition of Hyginuss Fabulae (1933 or 1934),6 and especially for his popular A Handbook of Greek Mythology (1928).7 Some unpublished material of great interest, such as the correspondence with Raffaele Pettazzoni, Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Rome, of which I am preparing an edition for Brill, that with Sir DArcy Wentworth Thompson, Professor of Natural History at St
quod non ornavit was said of Jebb; for Rose you might add, nihil tetigit quod non amavit. It is characteristic of his breadth of interest and sympathies that while at Aberystwyth he picked up a few words of Welsh and joined with T. Gwynn Jones in issuing a slim volume of Greek and Latin poems with Welsh translations. 4 Cf. R. L. Fowler, Rose, Herbert Jennings, in Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists, ed. W. W. Briggs Jr., prepared under the auspices of the American Philological Association (Westport/London, 1994), 53638 at 537. 5 The Roman Questions of Plutarch: A New Translation with Introductory Essays and a Running Commentary (Oxford, 1924; repr. 1975). The publication of the book was delayed owing to the War, as the author wrote in the preface (7), in which he also explained to what audience his work was addressed: The bulk of this work was planned and written before the War or in the early stages thereof. After a delay of some four years, caused by military service, the author resumed and completed it, without substantially modifying what was already written. Hence but little use has been made of anything published since 1914, which is the less to be regretted because most peoples studies were interrupted during the same period and for the same reason. There are to-day a fairly large number of students of classics who take a keen interest in the religions of antiquity, and of educated people generally who study Comparative Religion. For the sake of both these classes it is desirable that some at least of the sources of our knowledge of Roman cults should be published in a convenient form, with adequate comment, not overloaded with matter interesting chiefly to professed philologists. 6 Hygini Fabulae, recensuit, prolegomenis commentario appendice instruxit H. I. Rose (Lugduni Batavorum s.d.). Lorimer, Herbert Jennings Rose, 405n1: By a strange oversight this landmark in the study of Hyginus bears no date. It was either 1933 or 1934 (Rose gives both these dates in different places elsewhere). 7 A Handbook of Greek Mythology Including Its Extension to Rome (London, 1928; 6th ed. 1958; German trans. [Mnchen, 1955; 5th ed. 1978]; Spanish trans. [Barcelona, 1970]).
68
Andrews University, and the other correspondence with Dorothy L. Sayers, the detective novelist and author of a lyrical translation of Dantes Divina Commedia, gives a better understanding of his extraordinary erudition and insatiable desire for multifarious knowledge, and it may also rescue from oblivion, at the distance of fairly fifty years from his death, a scholar whose work in the field of ancient religion, of classical mythology, and of folklore and folktales seems, for the most part, to have been forgotten by modern critics. To begin with, I must explain in a few words how became interested in such a scholar. It was March 2005, when I visited the library Giulio Cesare Croce, San Giovanni in Persiceto (near to Bologna), where Mario Gandini, with the patience of Job, has been devoting himself for half a century to the archive of Raffaele Pettazzoni (18831959), Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Rome.8 The librarian, urging me to browse through books, papers and letters belonging to his famous fellow citizen, revealed to me that a considerable correspondence was still unpublished, the one with Herbert Jennings Rose. After hearing the name, I was both surprised and curious, since, for one like me, familiar with Nonnus of Panopolis (5th century), the Greek poet of the Dionysiaca and the Paraphrase of St Johns Gospel, that name immediately recalled, notas it would have been obvious for othersthe author of A Handbook of Greek Mythology, but the one who had contributed a mythological introduction and notes to the Loeb edition of Nonnuss Dionysiaca with.9 So, without a second thought, and before going through the letters spanning more than 30 years, from 1927 until 1958, to see if they were worth reading (and publishing), I decided that daywith the help of Mario Gandinis prompt and enthusiastic agreementthat I would undertake the edition of Pettazzonis and Roses correspondence, stung, if I can put it like that, by a Dionysiac gadfly. This correspondence, I refer particularly to the letters written by Rose, was an eye-opener. Step by step, I discovered a talented and eccentric Canadian scholar who had moved to Scotland and was in love with Scotland, a letter-
See M. Gandini, Il fondo Pettazzoni della biblioteca comunale G. C. Croce di San Giovanni in Persiceto (Bologna), Archaeus 7 (2003): 29397. 9 Nonnos, Dionysiaca, with an English translation by W. H. D. Rouse, mythological introduction and notes by H. J. Rose and notes on text criticism by L. R. Lind, 3 vols. (Cambridge MA/London, 1940).
Domenico Accorinti
69
writer of sly humor, a man who, despite his immense learning, never stifledas happens sometimes in the res publica litterarum the strong and innate desire to communicate his own knowledge to the others, either scholars or students, adjusting it to the audiences level of knowledge. Then, I threw myself into this work with eagerness, and tried to unearth all possible material on Rose, having also the good luck to get in touch with Mrs. Katharine Fewster, the only one of Roses seven children still surviving. One thing leads to another, as is well known! So I ended up by running my eye even over the likewise unpublished correspondence of Rose with Sir DArcy Wentworth Thompson, his colleague at St Andrews, which I learned about from the entry devoted to Rose by Professor Elizabeth M. Craik in The Dictionary of British Classicists,10 and the one with Dorothy L. Sayers, of which Rose himself speaks in a letter written to Pettazzoni (see below). Cooperate and Research: A Letter to William Blair Anderson But, before reading some excerpts from these three dossiers of letters, I would like to start with a document dating back to the years after the First World War. It is a letter that Rose, then Professor of Latin at Aberystwyth, wrote on Easter Eve (3 April) 1920 to the classicist William Blair Anderson (18771959),11 at that time Dean of the Faculty of Arts of the Manchester University, and future Housmans successor at Cambridge as Kennedy Professor of Latin (193642) and editor of Sidonius for the Loeb Classical Library.12 After a first part dedicated to Lucan, in which Rose made some suggestions to Anderson who was preparing an edition (promised but never completed) of the Pharsalia:
Your letter which I received to-day was most welcome, as I wanted to get into touch with you. Naturally, you are welcome to make what use you like of any suggestions of mine in so important a work as a really
Rose, Herbert Jennings (18831961), in The Dictionary of British Classicists, ed. R. B. Todd et al. (Bristol, 2004), 3.83436 at 835. 11 The letter is in St Johns College Library, Cambridge, among the personal papers of William Blair Anderson (box 2, no. 20); see http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0275%2FAnderson. I am grateful to Mr Jonathan Harrison, Special Collections Librarian of St Johns College, for providing me with a copy. 12 Sidonius: Poems and Letters, 2 vols. (Cambridge MA/London, 193656).
10
70

adequate edition of Lucan. I hope by the way that you will find room in the introduction to treat of a very interesting point of literary history, namely the battle royal, corresponding to the rhetorical fight mirrored in Tacitus de oratoribus, between the classicists and modernists,so far as our documents for that particular age go, between the rhetor in Petronius and Lucan. I think on the whole that Petronius Bellum Ciuile is a parody on the sort of thing a classicist would write if he attempted a Pharsalia, not a serious criticism.
he turns to speak on the role of philology in postwar England. Rose is sure that many European scholars could not wish for anything better than to throw off the yoke of Germany and make England their centre.13 Thanks to its language, England is the only country fated to become a centre for publishing learned works, but to carry out such a planhe claimsthe English must cooperate, not only with each other but with foreign scholars too. In short, this is time for making a clean sweep of the obsolete German methods, and then, with the native ability which is to be found here, and the freshness of outlook which amid all their faults is the charm of such men as Gilbert Murray, we may rise to leadership again in philology, using the term in its widest sense. That the collaboration in the field of philology is essential, Rose vigorously reasserted at the end of this important letter, where he made a statement with which one must agree: Also I wish it were fully recognised that anyone in an academic post who does not research or intend to research is a disgrace to his profession:14
For an history of classical scholarship in Germany during the First World War, see S. L. Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 17501970 (Princeton, 1996), 23162. Academic anti-Germanism had arisen in the USA before wars outbreak; see W. M. Calder III, The Refugee Classical Scholars in the USA: An Evaluation of Their Contribution, ICS 17 (1992): 15373 at 15760. 14 The scholarly collaboration and research were also actively promoted by W. A. Oldfather (18801945)he was almost the same age of Rosea German scholar in America according to the expression coined by W. M. Calder III; see M. Armstrong, A German Scholar and Socialist in Illinois: The Career of William Abbott Oldfather, CJ 88 (1993): 23553 at 236 (esp. 23537); idem, Oldfather, William Abbot, in Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists, 45961; idem, William Abbott Oldfather on Foolish Tolerance, in In Pursuit of Wissenschaft:
13
Domenico Accorinti
I hope your diaconal [sic] duties will soon leave you more leisure. I have so far had two things to be thankful for; that in the army I never was C.S.M. [Company Sergeant Major] of a Hdqrs. Coy. [Headquarters Company], and that in academic life I have not been dean of anything; 16 but, like Foxy, Ive ad the grace to pity em. We are indeed in a period of reconstruction, and I see in it a great opportunity, though it is one which calls for desperate work. Many continental scholars,I know this 17 from Baudis of Prague, philologist and folklorist, are only to [too] anxious to throw off the yoke of Germany and made England their centre; for clearly unless we all take to writing in Latin again, Bohemia or Sweden can never be the great country for the publication of learned works. But if we are to be a centre, we must in every way cooperate with one another and with foreigners, overcoming our curious dread or committing ourselves in print which has so far resulted in our being represented, to readers abroad, largely by amiable amateurs or halflearned cranks. German methods, as I see it, are worn out; we can copy what is good in them,their thorough collecting of material,and avoiding what is bad,their uncritical following of one another (I have traced a quotation, and a wrong one at that, through half-a-dozen successive Germans) and their endless pilings up of weak arguments in the hope of making one strong one [sic] to support a pre-conceived hypothesis; then, with the native ability which is to be found here, and the freshness of outlook which amid all their faults is the charm of such men as Gilbert Murray, we may rise to leadership again in philology, using the term in its widest sense.
15
71
Festschrift fr William M. Calder III zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. S. Heilen et al., Spudasmata 119 (Hildesheim/Zrich/New York, 2008), 1526. 15 One of the anonymous referees pointed out that diaconal must be a slip of the pen for decanal: That is very odd. Diaconal means of a deacon. Was Anderson a lay preacher? Or did Rose write diaconal, when he meant to write decanal, of a dean? 16 Rose quotes by heart from The Flag of Their Country, chap. 7 of Stalky & Co., a school novel published in 1899 by Rudyard Kipling, in which the School Sergeant, Foxy, says: Ive never been a Volunteer-sergeant, thank Godbut Ive always had the consideration to pity em. Im glad o that. 17 The Celtist Joseph Baudi (18831933) was professor at the Universities of Bratislava and Prague, and member of the Royal Irish Academy. Among his works, we may quote Czech Folk Tales (London, 1917), Grammar of Early Welsh (Oxford, 1924) and Struktura jazyk indoevropskch (Bratislava, 1932).
72

I hope to get a chance to talk a little on this theme in a paper before 18 the Class. Ass. this month. It will be a sort of interim report on some work I am doing on a field next to untouched,at least the work on it has never been coordinated,and I shall hint that the way to do such things is to collaborate and keep on collaborating. I wish there were some sort of a clearing-house, something like the Berliner Wochenschrift fuer Philologie, which would continually keep us in touch with each others researches and problems. Also I wish it were fully recognised that anyone in an academic post who does not research or intend to research is a disgrace to his profession.
I have quoted this letter at some length because it is perhaps the most vivid presentation of how Rose viewed academic work: a scholar must neither be confined to his own branch of learning nor be content with a monastic existence, but duty bound to cooperate in research with others. So, inspired by this view and titillated by an innate and unslakable curiosity, Rose kept in touch with many colleagues and scholars, at home and abroad, never missing the chance to debate about ancient religion, folklore and classics.19
The CAs meeting referred to was held in Newcastle and Durham from the 14th to the 16th April 1920. Since he was ill, the presidential address of William Warde Fowler (18471921), The Imagination of the Romans, was read by Robert S. Conway (18641933); see P. Hooker, Annual General Meetings, Presidents, and Addresses, in The Classical Association: The First Century 19032003, ed. C. Stray (Oxford, 2003), 27583 at 276. On the role and work of the Classical Association during and after the First World War, see Stray, ibid. 3437. 19 In this context, it is useful to quote two letters from the correspondence Pettazzoni-Rose (see below). In the first, dated 5 June 1928, Rose, referring to the paper Relations between Etruscan and Roman Religion he had read at the 1st International Etruscan Congress (see below), later published under the title On the Relations between Etruscan and Roman Religion, SMSR 4 (1928): 16178, wrote: It is most flattering that you and Prof. Minto both wish to publish my relazione; it will be the first time I have had anything of mine translated, although I have written for publication once or twice in languages other than my own, and I hope it will contribute a little to those closer relations between Italian and British scholars which, I hold, would be much to the benefit of both sides. In the second one, written on 6 September 1946, just about one year after the end of the Second World War, he missed the 1st International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (London, 30 July4 August 1934), where he had met Pettazzoni, and consoled himself with the thought that he would publish a book on the folklore of Chios in
18
Domenico Accorinti Correspondence with Raffaele Pettazzoni
73
Raffaele Pettazzoni was just one of the many scholars with whom Rose kept in touch for a long time. They, both born in 1883, had met for the first time in Paris at the International Congress of History of Religions (813 October 1923), and then they met again at least on seven other occasions.20 The 218 letters (129 Rose, 89 Pettazzoni) that they exchanged between 1927 and 1958except in the years of the Second World War21bear witness to a continuous and productive relationship between the two, cemented by the translation into English, made by Rose, of Pettazzonis Essays on the History of Religions (1954), and The All-Knowing God (1956),22 as Rose himself later recalled in a letter written to Mario Gandini on 15 March 1960:
I first became acquainted with him at a congress in Paris, I think in 1922 [1923], and ever since we remained in touch with one another, save in the unhappy years of the recent war, which divided our countries. I liked
collaboration with a Greek scholar (see below at n23): Vous rappellez-vous [sic] le Congrs anthropologique dil y a je ne sais plus combien dannes, o nous nous sommes rencontrs University College? Hlas! la coopration scientifique internationale quand recommencera-t-elle encore? Le livre sur le folk-lore de lle de Chios dont je moccupe en collaboration avec un ami grec (voici, au moins, une uvre internationale!) doit paratre en 1947. 20 Firenze-Bologna, 1st International Etruscan Congress (27 April5 May 1928); London, Jubilee Congress of the Folk-Lore Society (1925 September 1928); Lund, 5th International Congress of the History of Religions (2729 August 1929); London, 1st International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (ICAES) (30 July4 August 1934); Amsterdam, 7th Congress for the History of Religions (49 September 1950); Roma, 8th International Congress of History of Religions (1723 April 1955); Amsterdam, 150th anniversary of The Netherlands Academy (4 May 1958). 21 There is a gap in the correspondence between 25 March 1940 and 17 August 1944. Actually, after Italys entry into the war (10 June 1940), Pettazzoni and Rose could not communicate with each other for a long time. On the Pettazzoni-Rose correspondence, see D. Accorinti, Il carteggio Raffaele PettazzoniHerbert Jennings Rose (19271958), Quaderni di storia 69 (2009): 15597. 22 R. Pettazzoni, Essays on the History of Religions, trans. H. J. Rose (Leiden, 1954); idem, The All-Knowing God: Researches into Religion and Culture, trans. H. J. Rose (London, 1956), a translation or rather an editio minor of Pettazzonis Lonniscienza di Dio (Torino, 1955).
74

him at once, and always admired his extremely learned and ingenious works, although we differed on many minor points. It was my pleasant task later on to render two of his books into English, LOnniscienza di Dio (published by Methuen, London, under the title The All-knowing God), and a collection of his shorter pieces, printed by Brill of Leiden, which I think appeared only in my version. Naturally these kept us in close touch, suggestions and criticism going back and forth frequently.
The majority of the correspondence deals with comments on these two books of Pettazzoni, data on published articles and papers of both scholars, historical information, criticisms of other scholars work, and mention of meetings and programmes of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR). But letters also mirror life itself, and the ones Rose wrote to Pettazzoni are no exception: they breathe his strong, generous and intriguing personality. I would like to start with some of the letters written before, during and after the Second World War. After receiving a letter (no longer extant) in which Pettazzoni must have informed him of the effects of the anti-Jewish Racial Laws, promulgated by the Fascist regime of Mussolini in early September 1938, on Arnaldo Momigliano (190887), who had lost his chair of Roman history at the University of Turin, Rose, asked by his friend to help the Italian scholar to look for an appointment abroad, wrote on 30 November 1938:
When your letter came, telling me of the misfortune of our colleague A.M., I tried to think of some way in which I could be helpful to him, for I know the good quality of his work. So far, however, I have not been able to discover any way to be of service in the matter; if I do, I will let you know. You are of course aware that there are many such claims now upon us in this country. Do you happen to know if he has a good speaking knowledge of English? I know he can read it, but can he also lecture in it? If so, it is possible that sooner or later he might be invited to address some learned body here or in America on some subject connected with his field of research.
Nine months later, just a few days before the war broke out, Rose, who was giving courses of lectures in the USA at Harvard University, sent the translation of some chapters of The All-Knowing God to his Italian friend, and in a letter written from Cambridge MA on 20 August 1939, which gives the best evidence of his love for Italy and its culture, expresses the foreboding that Italy, seconding the plans of Germany, might unfortunately go to war against Great Britain:
Domenico Accorinti
Need I say how earnestly I hope that the arrival of this letter and the packet will find our countries in their natural state of peace with one another? I love Italy too much to bear the thought of her being ravaged by contending armies, as she undoubtedly will be if dragged by the mad ambition of a foreigner into a hopeless and disastrous war against those who should be her friends and allies.
75
That Rose was anxious about the fate of Pettazzoni and other Italian scholars appears from a letter which he wrote to his friend on 17 August 1944, a letter that breaks a forced silence of more than four years, and is valuable evidence of Roses impressions of war from St Andrews, providing information on his family and academic work during that terrible time:
Dear Colleague, It was announced to-day by our Postmaster-General that civil correspondence was now possible with several parts of Italy, including Rome, and I hasten to write to you. Has the War left you safe and well, and has any continuation of your work been possible? If so, I hope that later, when parcel post facilities begin, you will let me have any part of LOnniscienza di Dio which I have not yet seen. Have you any news of those friends of ours whose Universities are on territory still held by the enemy, such as Plinio Fraccaro? You perhaps know that A. Momigliano is safe in Oxford and continuing to work there. He now writes very good English; I do not know his plans for the future. My family has been very fortunate. Save for one son, my youngest, who died owing to an accident in no way connected with the War, all my children are well. Two of them are with their ships; the other sons are not physically fit for service, and are at civilian occupations, and my daughters are with me. All I have actually seen of the enemy was a sudden glow in the sky, one evening long ago, which I afterwards learned was caused by a German plane blowing up. Of course, in the days when the Luftwaffe was still strong, I heard their machines overhead often enough, but that is far behind us now. I am working, at the moment, chiefly on the large book concerning the Folklore of Chios which P. P. Argenti, of the Greek Legation, and I are writing in collaboration.23 Now and again I write a little of a commentary on Aeschylus
Cf. P. P. Argenti and H. J. Rose, The Folk-Lore of Chios, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1949).
23
76

which I mean to bring out, perhaps two years after peace comes again.24 The news that Rome, Assisi and Florence received little or no serious damage has been a great relief to us in this country. One may now hope that Bologna, Pisa, Venice and the other cities still beyond the reach of our armies will be as fortunate. Yours sincerely, H. J. Rose.
Even after the Second World War was over, Rose spotlighted the international political situation and the post-war conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, the so-called Cold War, as we read in a letter he wrote to Pettazzoni on 14 April 1948, where he alludes to the coming Italian election of 18 April 1948, which the Christian Democrats won, becoming the ruling party. This letter also makes reference to Roses many academic engagements, one of which was the Marett Lecture at Exeter College, Oxford on Mana in Greece and Rome, dedicated to Robert R. Marett (18661943), the anthropologist whose theory of pre-animism influenced Rose:25
All goes quietly here, and if the Western nations maintain their firm attitude against Russia, the chances of the quiet continuing are better than they seemed a few weeks ago. If another war comes, it will be the worst and most devastating yet; so much seems clear. But considering the relative mental abilities of East and West, only one ending is possible; we should certainly win sooner or later, but no doubt at horrible cost to civilisation. I hope your elections pass quietly and show a substantial majority for the more reasonable parties. I am at present lecturing on Herodotos, Theokritos, and Greek Religion to various classes, which seem interested. I have plenty of occupation for the next few months, with various engagements here and elsewhere, including Edinburgh and Oxford. One, which pleases me greatly, is the Marett Lecture at Exeter College, Oxford, in memory of the great anthropologist, whom I knew well and from whom I learned much. I mean to speak on Mana in Greece and Rome.
Cf. A Commentary on the Surviving Plays of Aeschylus, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 195758). 25 Mana in Greece and Rome was delivered at Exeter College on 5 June 1948 and later published in HTR 42 (1949): 15574. On Marett see H. J. Rose, Robert Ranulph Marett, 18661943, PBA 29 (1943): 35770.
24
Domenico Accorinti
77
But skimming through the letters could be useful to discover other salient features of Roses personality and interests, such as the self-confessed idleness, his devotion to Solonian motto (frg. 28 GentiliPrato), his nonconformism, his sense of humor and obviously his passion for chess. More than once Rose hints at his own idleness, for instance, a letter in French he wrote to Pettazzoni on 24 September 1929, in which he refers to an article later published in Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni:26
Hier soir, jai triomph de ma paresse habituelle, et jai compos le petit essai dhagiographie que voici. Je serais heureux de le voir paratre dans les pages de Studi e Materiali.
and the one, dated 30 March 1948, in which he speaks about a paper on Plutarch he would have delivered at a meeting of the Classical Association of Scotland:
Things are going much as usual here. We are just finishing our Easter vacation and lectures begin again on Thursday, April 1. I have been rather idle, doing little except prepare a paper which I am to read to the Classical Association of Scotland early in May. I mean to speak on Plutarch, avoiding technical details and making a plea for less neglect of him; he is, I think, my favourite of the Hellenistic authors.
By the way, what he says here of Plutarchhe is, I think, my favourite of the Hellenistic authorsshould not, in my opinion, surprise anyone familiar with the encyclopedic nature of Roses knowledge. As learned and curious man as the author of Parallel Lives and Moralia was, he had to become his auteur de chevet! Still apropos of Roses self-confessed idleness, one might mention a letter he wrote to Dorothy L. Sayers on 27 May 1955, two years after he retired, in which he quotes Dantes Purgatorio 22.4041, two lines which have puzzled the interpreters:
I continue to be pretty busy, for a retired man. Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fame 27 Delloro, lappetito de mortali?
San Miniato, SMSR 5 (1929): 23136. With what constraint constrainst thou not the lust | Of mortals, thou devoted greed of gold! (trans. Sayers). On this notorious critical crux, see Sayerss appendix, note C (The Sacra Fame Riddle), to the translation of Dantes Purgatory,
27
26
78

In other words, if I can pick up a bit by writing or translating or lecturing about this and that, I do, despite my great natural talent for lazing.
One cannot be expected to take these words seriously. To judge by Roses extensive bibliography alone, which, apart from books, amounts to hundreds and hundreds of articles and reviews published every year at a frenzied pace, one can hardly credit this self-impugned great natural talent for lazing unless his idleness must be interpreted as an otium litterarium, according to Montaignes rhetoric of oisivet as an art of life in the Essais:
Dernirement que je me retirai chez moi, dlibr autant que je pourrai, ne me mler dautre chose que de passer en repos et part ce peu qui me reste de vie, il me semblait ne pouvoir faire plus grande faveur mon esprit, que de le laisser en pleine oisivet, sentretenir soi-mme, et sarrter et rasseoir en soi: ce que jesprais quil peut meshuy faire plus aisment, devenu avec le temps plus pesant, et plus mr. Mais je trouve, variam semper dant otia mentem [Lucan, Phars. 4.704], quau rebours, faisant le cheval chapp, il se donne cent fois plus daffaire soi mme, quil nen prenait pour autrui; et menfante tant de chimres et monstres fantasques les uns sur les autres, sans ordre et sans propos, que pour en contempler mon aise lineptie et ltranget, jai commenc de les mettre 28 en rle, esprant avec le temps lui en faire honte lui-mme.
For a man whose prodigious intellectual workreading, teaching, lecturing and writingwas his daily bread, retirement was not welcome, but Rose made a virtue of necessity, and his forced retirement from St Andrews University at age 70 proved an opportunity to extend his knowledge in fields
The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine: Cantica II, Purgatory <Il Purgatorio>, trans. D. L. Sayers (London, 1955); A. M. Chiavacci Leonardi, Dante Alighieri: Commedia, vol. 2: Purgatorio (Milano, 1994), 664 (Nota integrativa). As it seems, Rose, who is alluding to his lucrative activity as writer, translator, and lecturer, follows the interpretation which Sayers explained in her appendix: It remains possible to read for perch (why?), per che (by what?) and to construe: By what [crooked ways] dost thou not drive (guide, compel) | human appetite, O accursed greed of gold? 28 De loisivet (1.8), cf. also De la solitude (1.39), De la prsomption (2.17), De la vanit (3.9), and De lexperience (3.13). On this topic see V. Krause, Montaignes Art of Idleness, Viator 31 (2000): 36180.
Domenico Accorinti
79
other than Greek, as he confided to Pettazzoni in a letter written on 8 April 1953:

This is my last term in active work at the University. Unlike Rome, St. Andrews retires its professors finally at the end of that session which contains their seventieth birthday; there is nothing corresponding to your five extra years of partial activity. I much regret it, for I am still vigorous, mentally at least, and feel capable of at the very least another decade. But I hope to find occasional occupation, say in the U.S., which I have more than once visited to give courses of lectures. In the meanwhile, I have my books and of course the University library, also occasional visits to Oxford to renew old acquaintances and read in the Bodleian, and I hope to fill some of the more obvious gaps in my knowledge. Even if I confined myself to Greek, which I do not intend to do, there is very much which I either do not know at all or know very imperfectly.
That Rose admitted being, in a sense, a polymath can be read between the lines of a letter he wrote from Oxford to Pettazzoni on 16 July 1954, in which he, evoking the interviews he had had with E. A. Barber (18881965)29 and Stefan Weinstock (190171),30 compared himself to Didymus, the Hellenistic scholar and grammarian who flourished in Alexandria in the second half of the 1st century B.C., nicknamed (braze-gutted) and (book forgetter) for the enormous quantity of books he had written (according to tradition, 3500 or 4000 works), and that is why he often contradicted himself, being unable to recollect what he had already written:
I am enjoying a few days change of scene here and getting some little matters attended to which are better done at Oxford than at St. Andrews. I have plenty of work on hand, but not so pressing that any of it need be done by a particular hour of a particular day. It has involved pleasant
On Eric A. Barber (18881965), editor of Sexti Properti carmina (Oxford, 1953; 2nd ed. 1960) and rector of Exeter College (194356), see L. Lehnus in Dictionary of British Classicists; G. Barber, Latin and Greek Versions & Tributes by Eric Arthur Barber (18881965) Sometimes Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, Humanistica Lovaniensia 56 (2007): 295330 (esp. 29597). 30 On Weinstock, who held the only Roman Religion Lecturership at Oxford in the universitys history (195269) and was elected a non-tutorial-fellow of Exeter College (1965), see C. R. Phillips III in Dictionary of British Classicists, an essential entry to get an idea of such a scholar who evoked a spectrum of responses (1045).
29
80

interviews with those admirable scholars Barber and Weinstock. The latter has on hand some most interesting speculations as to the true derivation and meaning of penates, in which he makes use of a little note of mine which I published in the C.R. for 1928 and had forgotten all 31 about. I must try to avoid the unhappy experience of Didymos Chalkenteros, who having denounced certain views in a lecture was afterwards shown arguments in favour of them in one of his own books!
Rose was also an expert chess player, and, after his chair of Greek passed to William Laughton Lorimer (18851967), the Professor Emeritus continued both to work at odd moments on Aeschylus, as he wrote to Pettazzoni on 16 October 1953:
My successor, W. L. Lorimer, has now been formally inaugurated and will, I know, conduct my old department excellently. I have the title of Professor Emeritus and maintain close and friendly relations with my former colleagues. At odd moments I continue to revise my commentary on Aeschylus.
and for recreation solving chess problems and playing games by correspondence, as he said to his Italian friend in a letter written on 20 October 1953:
I read and write and the humour takes me, and for relaxation I solve chess problems or play games by correspondence; two of them are with an Italian doctor, by name Fontana, who plays quite excitingly and has 32 got both games into complicated positions.
A New Title of Fortuna, CR 42 (1928): 171. The Italian doctor alluded to by Rose was Giovanni Fontana, judge of the Court of Cassation; see G. Di Liberto, A. Petrillo, and P. Silvestri, Una storia di scacchi lunga centanni: Il circolo scacchistico genovese Luigi Centurini (18931993) (Genova, 2001), 1067, an abstract of which is available at http://www.centurini.it/storia.htm#introduzione. I should like to thank Vittorio Piccardo, senior international master and past President of Societ Scacchistica Savonese, who gave me some data on this chessplayer (email, 18 June 2008): Per quanto ne so le notizie che Lei possiede su di lui sono corrette: giocatore di scacchi per corrispondenza, negli anni 50 socio dellAssociazione Scacchistica Italiana Giocatori per Corrispondenza A.S.I.G.C. . . . Credo abbia concluso la sua carriera in Magistratura con lo stesso grado di Presidente di Sezione di Corte dAppello del collega e comune amico dott. Lino Bossi. Nelle parole di Mr. Herbert Jennings Rose
32
31
Domenico Accorinti
81
Birds of a feather flock together, as the saying goes. One of Roses pupils at St Andrews was Douglas C. C. Young (191373), a true polymath who was one of the most brilliant and bizarre personalities of the 20th-century Scottish Renaissance: scholar, essayst, translator, Scottish poet and politician.33 Rose entrusted an original and vivid portrait of Young to a letter written to Pettazzoni on 23 September 1948:
A clever, though eccentric younger colleague of mine, formerly my pupil, is now in Rome, working at the Bibliotheca Apostolica on some MSS. of Theognis, whom he is editing. His name is D. C. Young. If you should meet him, you will find him entertaining and full of curious bits of information and peculiar political views. He is a Scottish Nationalist, that is to say one of a little group of people who want to see Scotland an independent, or practically independent country; is there not a similar local party in Sicily? At least he is neither communist nor fascist and does not favour violent methods of any kind. One of his accomplishments, I believe, is to play the bagpipes, the Scottish national instrument, the music of which some find inspiriting and some intolerably harsh; de gustibus. . . . For myself, I regard it as the finest military music in the world, having often marched to it, but not suitable for indoor performances. Young can speak both French and Italian pretty well, I understand.
Rose too was free from all conventions, as Lorimer emphasized in the warm tribute to his predecessor:
Roses was a strongly marked personality, some traits of which were thrown into relief by a healthy, if at times exaggerated, disregard of 34 convention.
So it is no surprise that he joked about his honorary doctorate35 in a letter he wrote to Pettazzoni on 28 June 1954, an amusing excursus on the academic
riconosco lo stile di Giovanni Fontana. Quite exciting: veramente emozionante! Sulle sessantaquattro caselle egli amava vivere pericolosamente! 33 On Young see A Clear Voice: Douglas Young, Poet and Polymath. A Selection from His Writings with a Memoir, ed. C. Young and D. Murison (Edinburgh, 1977); cf. also J. Russell in Dictionary of British Classicists. 34 Lorimer, Herbert Jennings Rose, 410. 35 Rose was awarded an honorary degree (LL.D.) by the University of St Andrews on 29 June 1954. The Rev. Professor J. H. Baxter, dean of the Faculty of Divinity,
82
degrees in England and Scotland quite different from those in use in other European countries:
To-morrow I take an honorary doctorate, curiously enough the first doctorate of any kind I have ever had. In my generation, very few Oxford or Cambridge graduates who intended to teach ever troubled to take anything higher than the degree of Master of Arts, which oddly enough expresses no more than seniority. Any Bachelor of Arts who cares to maintain his connection with his college by paying some small annual fees will after a certain lapse of time be formally presented for the Masters degree by that college. A Master of Arts is a full member of the University and may vote on certain deliberative bodies which determine its policy and organisation. In Scotland there is no such degree as Bachelor of Arts, though there is a bachelors degree in other faculties. All arts graduates are Masters. It is all so very different from any system in use on the Continent that it must be extremely puzzling to visitors. I long ago got used to being addressed as Herr Doktor and its equivalents in other languages when abroad. On the other hand, our people address any physician as Dr. So-and-So, though he very likely has no doctorate, but is simply a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, the usual first medical degree, which qualifies him to practice. But a surgeon, though he may be very distinguished and hold half-a-dozen doctorates, prefers to be addressed as Mr. So you may have Dr. Jones, a very ordinary general practitioner, sending his patient to Mr. Smith, who is an excellent surgeon and probably will be Sir John Smith before long.
But Rose shows himself also as a keen humorist, as in this letter written to Pettazzoni on 4 April 1955, in which he alluded to an almost unintelligible Norse lecture on palynology, the science that studies pollen, which he had attended at The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters during his stay in Oslo to give the Eitrem lectures:
Yes, I enjoyed my stay in Oslo very much. The Norwegians were most kind and hospitable to me, and I made some pleasant new acquaintances.
conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity, and the laudatory address was delivered by Arthur A. Matheson (192081), professor of Scots Law in the University of Dundee, but formerly Classical Exhibitioner at Balliol (he had obtained his degrees, M.A. with first-class honours in Classics, and LL.B. with distinction, from the University of Edinburgh), see appendix.
Domenico Accorinti
I lectured first on Mars, next on mana in popular Greek thought, finally 36 on cult-images. The lectures are to come out in Symbolae Osloenses. I also attended, by invitation, a meeting of their academy. I understood never a word of the paper which was read, but heard later that it dealt with pollen-analysis; but the supper which followed needed no translation, and I had a pleasant talk with the Praeses of the academy, who speaks excellent English and told me a number of interesting stories. I picked up a few words of Norse without much difficulty, as I 37 already knew a little Swedish.
83
And to conclude discussion of Roses correspondence with Pettazzoni one might cite the last one, written by Rose on 23 December 1958 and dealing with Angelo Brelich (191377), who succeeded Pettazzoni in 1958 in the chair of History of Religions at Rome, and Kroly Kernyi (18971963), who had been Brelichs mentor. Roses criticism spares neither Brelich, nor Kernyi, but it is ruthless towards the latter, for there was no love lost between the author and the translator of Die Heroen der Griechen.38 Rose
Cf. Some Problems of Classical Religion, Eitrem Lectures 1 (Oslo, 1958); see the reviews by W. K. C. Guthrie, CR n.s. 10 (1960): 17879; and E. D. Phillips, JHS 81 (1961): 19495. Rose gave the three Eitrem LecturesMars (117); Mana in Popular Greek Thought of Classical Date (1833); Concerning Images (3450) on March 1955. 37 I thank Prof. Nils Roar Slthun, head of the Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, for forwarding my email (22 June 2008) to Ms Line Therese Naevestad, senior executive officer of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, who kindly answered my questions about both the meeting of the academy and the lecture on palynology alluded to by Rose: The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters had a common meeting on 25 March 1955. A Professor of Botany, Ulf Hafsten (19221992), held a lecture called Trekk av den senkvartre utvikling i Oslo-traktenit has to do with pollen-analysis. The President of The Academy in 1955 was Professor Francis Bull (18871974) (email, 23 June 2008). 38 See a note of Kernyis Tage- und Wanderbcher 19531960 (Mnchen/Wien, 1969), dated Ascona, 16 February 1959, in which the Hungarian scholar accused his adversary (Gegner), Rose, of making some mistakes in translating his book Die Heroen der Griechen (Zrich, 1958) into English: Erst jetzt beginne ich auch mit The Heroes zufrieden zu sein, nachdem ich den englischen Text zum dritten Mal auf die bersetzungsfehler hin durchkorrigiert. Es war doch eine zweifelhafte Gunst des Schicksals, da der Gegner H. J. Rose die bersetzung machte. Ein Triumph wohl im Fach, den ich schon in Rom bei dem anderen groen Kollegen dieses Schlages zu
36
84
also mentions the translation he was making of a long historical work of Veit Valentin (18851947), the German historian and archivist who defended the democratic state during the Weimar Republic, adding an interesting comment on this kind of stopgap work:
So Brelich succeeds you in the chair. He has, I think, improved considerably of late; I have written a short review of his new book, Gli eroi greci, for C.R. and a longer and more elaborate one for Gnomon, in which I express a large amount of disagreement; but undoubtedly he has lost the wildness of his earlier works, though his smaller publication, Tre 39 variazioni, still has some rather nonsensical things in it. I wish Kernyi showed a like progress towards greater sanity. Of late I was asked to translate a recent work of his on the Greek heroes, and did so, for a London publisher who pays well for such things, but although it is not so wild as some of his earlier books it makes fundamental assumptions with which I cannot agree. I am now busy with other rendering from German, a long work on universal history by the late Veit Valentin, quite good and in a lively, interesting and interested style. This will keep me rather busy for some time; so far I have translated close on 100,000 words of it
fhlen bekam, als ich zufllig auf ihn stie. Und selten hat sich ein unzustndiger Kritiker so entblt wie dieser, durch seine sprachlichen und sachlichen Entgleisungen. Sie waren besonders im Anschaulichen horrend: swampy path zweimal fr Saumweg (am Isthmos!). Blind fr das Konkreteblind aber auch fr die geistige Nuance. Ist die Eigenart meiner Darstellung stark genug, umnach der Beseitigung der grbsten Fehlerzum Leser durchdringen zu knnen? Es ist die Frage der inneren Sprache, die ich durch das Redenlassen des antiken Stoffes erreichen sollte. Sie sollte tnendurch das roughmindedness von Rose (28283). Roses translation was published in the same year: K. Kernyi, The Heroes of the Greeks, trans. H. J. Rose (London, 1959). 39 Roses reviews of Gli eroi greci: Un problema storico-religioso (Roma, 1958) appeared in Gnomon 31 (1959): 38589, and CR n.s. 10 (1960): 4850. Tre variazioni romane sul tema delle origini (Roma, 1958) too was reviewed by Rose in CR n.s. 9 (1960): 17778, who had already noticed Brelichs first works: Aspetti della morte nelle iscrizioni sepolcrali dellimpero romano (Budapest, 1937), CR n.s. 51 (1937): 23334, where Rose also discussed F. de Ruyt, tudes de symbolisme funraire, Bulletin de lInstitut Historique Belge de Rome 17 (1936): 16469, and Die Geheime Schutzgottheit von Rom (Zrich, 1949), CR 64 (1950): 15758.
Domenico Accorinti
and the whole is not far short of half a million. It serves to fill up the 40 time while I lack ideas of my own.
85
Correspondence with DArcy Wentworth Thompson The correspondence between Rose and DArcy Wentworth Thompson (18601937), that rare combination of the humanist and the naturalist to borrow an apt description,41 is in the Special Collections Department of the University of St Andrews,42 and amounts to 55 letters, nearly all from Rose (51) to Thompson (4), and dated between 1924 and 1942. Unlike the correspondence between Rose and Pettazzoni, it consists primarily of philological notes. Rose here sacrificed his true talent of letter writer on the altar of philology, but that is exactly the reason why the letters to Thompson, which he went on sending through the post even after he moved from Aberystwyth to St Andrews (the house where he lived from 1939 to 1952, at 17 South Street, was a stones throw from his colleagues residence [at 44 South Street]), show Roses linguistic curiosity and voracious reading. Among the Greek authors, cited are Aelian, Apollonios Rhodios, Aratos, Aristophanes,43 Aristotles, Diophantos, the so-called Geoponica, a twentybook collection of agricultural lore dated back to 10th century, Hesychios, Nonnus, Pherekydes, Sophocles, and, among the Latins, such authors as Caesar, Horace, Ovid, Pliny, Statius and Virgil. The correspondence begins with a letter that Rose wrote to Thompson on 11 October 1924, asking his opinion on a botanical point in Caesars Bellum civile, and no wonder. . . . But this letter arouses our interest because Rose, who is sending to Thompson some of his screeds, refers to their
Rose might allude to V. Valentin, Weltgeschichte, Vlker, Mnner, Ideen, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1939). 41 On DArcy Wentworth Thompson the Younger, see M. E. Irwin in Dictionary of British Classicists. 42 I thank Dr Norman H. Reid, Keeper of Manuscripts and Muniments, Head of Special Collections, University of St Andrews Library, who has kindly provided me with a copy of this important material. 43 Aristophanes was one of Roses favourite authors, see Lorimer, Herbert Jennings Rose, 399: He gave courses on Greek religion and ancient history, but he devoted his lectures mainly to poetical textsHomer, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes (with peculiar zest), Callimachus, and Theocritus; Herodotus was also sometimes taken up.
40
86
diversions, musical, philological, and other, on the voyage to Canada, and that clearly means that the Canadian was at once on the same wavelength as the Scot:
Dear Prof. Thompson, I send you, as I promised to do, some of my screeds which may prove of interest. I retain most pleasant memories of our diversions, musical, philological, and other, on the voyage to Canada. Now I am back at the old mill again and would like to know your opinion on a botanical point in Caesar. Bell. Ciu. III 48,1 he says: est etiam genus radicis inuentum ab eis qui fuerant ab alebribus (so Holder, ualeribus codd.) quod appellatur chara, quod admixtum lacte multum inopiam leuabat. id ad similitudinem panis efficiebant. eius erat magna copia. Have you any opinion as to what chara was? Lewis and Short say wild cabbage, which is presumtive [sic] evidence that it is something else. Yours sincerely, H. J. Rose.
The letter that Rose sent to Thompson on 25 May 1927 reveals his mood before coming to St Andrews to succeed John Burnet (18631928) as Professor of Greek. He was enthusiastic about the change of scene and colleagues, and showed in particular his appreciation of William L. Lorimer, who after his disappointmenthe himself had applied for the Chair of Greekbehaved in the most sporting manner possible. That Rose kept on good terms with Lorimer, destined to succeed him in 1953, is undeniable: suffice it to read the genuine tribute that Lorimer would pay later to his predecessor in Proceedings of the British Academy (1962). This letter, which Rose wrote from Aberystwyth, contains also an interesting note on the Scots usage of syne that, according to his opinion, corresponded perfectly to the Latin mox, and was preferable to anon, an archaic English word:
Dear Prof. DArcy Thompson, Many thanks for your letter. I expect to be quite happy at St. Andrews, where I am apparently to have agreeable colleagues (not that I have disagreeable ones here, by any means), interesting work, a very fair salary, and opportunity for a good row or two. I have several friends in Scotland, and expect to make more; in particular, I have taken a great liking to Lorimer, who was runner-up for the Chair of Greek, lost it by what was, I fancy, a narrow margin, and behaved in the most sporting manner possible. My objection to translating mox by anon is that that word is no longer current English. But is there not a Scots use of syne which corresponds pretty exactly to the Silver Age use of mox, or have dialect novels deceived me? I
Domenico Accorinti
87
seem to recollect sentences like this: I telt him the mistress wesna at hame, and syne he gaed awa (Ego negaui ipsam domi esse, atque is mox abiit). In itself, anon is a good rendering, e.g., 44 Anon he finds him.
Scholarly correspondences provide important evidence of often invisible philological activity, and the one between Rose and Thompson does not disappoint. So, thanks to these letters, it emerges that Rose made some suggestions to Thompson who was one of the contributors to the ninth edition of Liddell and Scotts Greek-English Lexicon (1940). Herewith a few examples. In a letter dated 29 October 1929, Rose wrote:
Dear DArcy, Why does LS say that the (Ar., Birds 303) is a bird of prey? The text gives no guide whatsoever; it is true that the next bird after it is an , but then the one just before is a , so you might equally well argue that it is a sort of pigeon. I hope this guess will be cleared out of the new edition. There seems to be no other mention of the creature, and of course the name may be corrupt; Blaydes offers a guess or two, more suo.
Thompson followed Roses advice, since the reference to prey was removed from the new edition of LSJ s.v. . Likewise, in the letter written on 27 November 1932, Rose called Thompsons attention to the meaning of the word = (a small kind of owl):
Elizabeth M. Craik, who was among the St Andrews audience, properly remarks: Well, Rose was a Canadian! And I think he did misunderstand his dialect novels. In the sentence I telt him the mistress wesna at hame, and syne he gaed awa by far the most natural way to understand syne is as a causal conjunction therefore; just possibly it might be regarded as an explanatory adverb for that reason. In regular usage, still current in Scots, syne or sine maintains a sense allied to that of since. Chambers Scots Dictionary s.v. sine: (adv.) ago; then; in that case; late; (conj.) since; because; therefore; s.v. sin: (adv.) since; ago; since then; (prep.) since; from the time that; (conj.) since; seeing that; s.v. syne: (adv.) ago; since; from that time; then; at that time; afterwards; next in time; in that case; late; (prep.) since; (conj.) since, then, thereupon, therefore. So I dont think syne will do as a translation of mox. Oddly, anon has come back into current colloquial English as in See you anon (email, 12 April 2009).
44
88

Dear DArcy, 1. You will no doubt add to L.S. s.u. the meaning vouched for by Hesychio [sic] s.u., and mentioned in your Glossary p. 183. Add there the ref. to Hesychios; alter the ref. to Ant. Lib. to read 21,5 (the latest ed. divides the chapters into handy sections) and add Hyginus, fab. 28, where the true reading, given by the one MS, which survives here, is est styx inter, columnam sedens ad quam sunt deligati, there is a screech-owl between them, sitting on the pillar to which they are bound (sedere is sometimes trans. in late Lat.).
And Thompson once again valued Roses correction, see LSJ s.v. , 4: = , Ant. Lib. 21.5, Hygin. Fab. 28.4 Rose, Hsch.: cf. . However there is no trace in LSJ s.v. of a suggestion which Rose made in a letter of 10 November 1932:
Dear DArcy, in Geoponica xi,15, title, must certainly mean frankincense-tree, not rosemary, whatever it may mean elsewhere. See the whole chapter. Will you send this to LS, or shall I?
45
But at other times the roles were reversed and Rose turned to the scholarnaturalist for enlightenment, as in an undated letter, whose terminus ante quem can be established on the basis of Thompsons reply written on 14 October 1928. It should be noted, though, that Rose warmly addresses the colleague as Mi frater:
Mi frater, What kind of flower is the . . . , of Soph., O.C. 682? Jebbs note proves conclusively that Jebb did not know, but very little else, and I shall have to tell my class something about it when I read the passage.
The postcard which Rose sent on 2 January 1938 from his home at Edgecliff East, The Scores, St Andrews to Thompsons house at 44 South Street, contains another botanical curiosity:
A botanical puzzle for you: what plant does Nonnos allude to, Dionys. xxxii, 2830?
The 1968 supplement of Liddell Scott and Jones alters the reference to Geoponica (11.16.1).
45
Domenico Accorinti
, , , .
89
Unfortunately, the reply is missing, as are nearly all the letters from Thompson to Rose, but, thanks to the note that Rose wrote on this passage of the Dionysiaca for the Loeb editionProbably myrtle, which is often associated with the rose, and it is of course associated with Myrrha.46, we can guess how Thompson solved the botanical puzzle submitted by Rose. Interesting is also the letter dated 12 February 1940, in which Rose discusses a passage from Aristophanes Birds 1122, , , , , adding a quotation from the Rubiyt of the Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayym (10481122), translated into English by Edward Fitzgerald (180983).47 I shall give it in full:
Dear DArcy, A propos of your Glossary, p. 242, have you noticed that the second messenger in Ar., Birds, 1122, is a carrier-pigeon, wh. [which] is why he comes in cooing like one? Omar Khayam has a similar pun, if one may trust FitzGerald, I saw the solitary Ringdove there And Coo, coo, coo, she cried, and Coo, coo, coo. That being, I understand, the Persian for . Yours ever, H. J. Rose. P.S. Glossary, ibid., delete the ref. to Pausanias, which anyhow should be VI,9,3. It was not a but a which carried the news of Taurosthenes victory, as the gender of the part. shows; anyhow, there seems to be no variant. , Aelian, l.c.
We do not have Thompsons answer, but the solution that Rose later proposed in The Classical Review, The Messenger coos simply because he
Nonnos, Dionysiaca, vol. 3 (1940): 446nc. E. Fitzgerald, The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym, rendered into English Verse (London, 1859; 5th ed. 1889).
47
46
90
is a pigeon, a carrier, appropriately bringing the news,48 did not win his approval, as we can read in the reply which Thompson published in the same number of the review:
Pace Professor Rose (C.R. liv. 79), there is nothing to suggest that the messenger was a bird, any more than the herald in the same play. He comes running in (), as a pigeon would be the last bird to do; he comes puffing and panting, pouf, pouf, after his run, to tell what the birds are doing; and what they did surprised him mightily, 49 . . . .
Apart from these ornithological disagreements, the relationship between Rose and the author of A Glossary of Greek Birds50 was invariably productive, and they frequently complimented one another. If Thompson addressed Rose as Eruditissime, carissime in a letter dated 18 March 1933, Rose, when the colleague was knighted, celebrated him with an occasional distich written on 11 May 1937:
51 .
Correspondence with Dorothy L. Sayers The third dossier of correspondence to be discussed is of a different character. Not infrequently, to paraphrase a passage from Umberto Ecos The Name of the Rose,52 letters speak of letters. Rose himself mentioned his correspondence with Dorothy L. Sayers (18931957), the inventor of Lord
Aristophanes, Birds, 1122, CR 54 (1940): 79. Aristophanes, Birds, 1122, CR 54 (1940): 188. 50 DArcy W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Birds (Oxford, 1895; 2nd ed. 1936). 51 Not so much we rejoice with you in your title | as in knowing that you are worthy of this title. 52 U. Eco, The Name of the Rose, trans. W. Weaver (New York, 1983), 286: Often books speak of other books. Often a harmless book is like a seed which will blossom into a dangerous book, or it is the other way around: it is the sweet fruit of a bitter stem. In reading Albert, couldnt I have learned what Thomas might have said? Or in reading Thomas, know what Averroes said? True, I said amazed. Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realised that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves.
49
48
Domenico Accorinti
91
Peter Wimsey, in a letter written to Pettazzoni on Easter Eve (20 April) 1957, in which he referred to the recent death (17 December) of Dantes translator, adding that she was a wonderful letter writer:
Recently we lost a quite prominent figure in modern English literature, Dorothy L. Sayers, who among other very ingenious works was the author of verse translations, with brief commentary, of Dantes Inferno and Purgatorio, and was at work on the Paradiso shortly before her last illness. I never met her, but we corresponded, mostly on mythological matters which had puzzled her in elucidating Dante. She wrote delightful letters.
The correspondence between both Rose and Sayers is preserved in the Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, Illinois, and is part of the collection of Sayers letters (folder 351).53 It amounts to 35 letters, 16 from Rose and 19 from Sayers, spanning the period from 1946 to 1949 (28 letters) and 1954 to 1957 (7 letters).54 The exchange of letters begins on 22 April 1946 (Easter Monday). Rose, after reading a letter that Sayers wrote to his
Five volumes of Sayerss letters have been published, edited by Barbara Reynolds, president of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, who completed the translation of Dantes Paradise which the famous novelist left unfinished when she died (see below n56): The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 18991936: The Making of a Detective Novelist (London, 1995); The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 19371943: From Novelist to Playwright (Cambridge, 1997); The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 19441950: A Noble Daring (Cambridge, 1998); The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 19511957: In the Midst of Life (Cambridge, 2000); The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: Child and Woman of Her Time. A Supplement to The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers (Cambridge, 2002). Only one letter of the correspondence alluded to by Rose has been published so far: the one Sayer wrote to Rose on 11 June 1957, thanking him for sending his review of Robert Gravess Greek Myths (1955) that had appeared in CR n.s. 5 (1955): 2089; see Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 19511957, 39193. 54 I thank Mrs Jasmine Simeone, secretary of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, who first provided me with useful details about this correspondence. I am grateful also both to Mrs Marjorie Lamp Mead, associate director of the Wade Center, and Mrs Laura C. Schmidt, archivist of that institution, for helping me to have a copy of these letters and for permission to publish this paper. Finally I thank David Higham, the Sayers literary executor, for permission to photocopy the original material that I am planning to publish.
53
92
old friend E. V. Rieu (18871972), the editor of Penguin Books,55 the series in which Sayerss translation of Dantes Divina Commedia later appeared, 56 decided to get in touch with her. She was grappling at the time with the mythology in Dantes poem. Before enlightening Sayers about the identification of the Manto of Inf. 20.55 and Purg . 22.113 with the daughter of Teiresias, although Dantes mention of the Theban prophetess in the second cantica seems unlikely, Rose confesses himself an aficionado of Sayerss works, both Petro-Harriettian and theological,57 and, at the end of his letter, maintains that he is not a Dante-scholar, and remains an expert in mythology, since there are still some people who expect a professor of Greek to know all the stories:
Emile V. Rieu started working for Methuen Publishing in 1923, becoming director (from 1933 to 1936) and later editorial adviser. He is especially known for his translations of Homer and as editor of Penguin Books, the series he founded with Sir Allen Lane (190270), opened in 1946 with Rieus translation of Odyssey; see L. Hardwick in Dictionary of British Classicists; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford, 2004). Rose studied at Balliol College Oxford as a Rhodes scholar from Canada (19047), where he met Rieu. Dorothy L. Sayers was in correspondence with Rieu, whom she addresses as Dear Mr. Odissey-man in a letter written on 26 March 1946; see Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 19441950, 213; cf., for other letters, 78, 13134, 236, 26768, 271, 34445, 36869, 4089, 44546, 455, 45758, 500 502; Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 19511957, 49, 6869, 7879, 9394, 100101, 10810, 13132, 13335, 170, 22627, 32425, 35961, 36162, 363. 56 Sayerss translation of Hell and Purgatory was published between 1949 and 1955: The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine: Cantica I, Hell <LInferno>, trans. D. L. Sayers (London, 1949); The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine: Cantica II (above at n27). After her death, Barbara Reynolds completed the translation of Dantes Paradise, left unfinished by Sayers: see The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine: Cantica III, Paradise <Il Paradiso>, trans. D. L. Sayers and B. Reynolds (London, 1962). 57 With Petro-Harriettian works, Rose refers to Sayerss Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series that began with Whose Body? in 1923. Miss Harriett Vane, a detective novelist whom Lord Peter falls in love with, was introduced by Sayers in Strong Poison (1931). As to the Sayerss theological books, we may quote The Greatest Drama Ever Staged (1938), The Mind of the Maker (1941), Creed or Chaos? (1949).
55
Domenico Accorinti
93
17 South Street, St. Andrews, Fife, Easter Monday. <1946> Dear Miss Sayers, My old acquaintance Rieu has shown me your letter concerning Manto, and I write partly in hopes of relieving your distraction, partly to tell you how very much I have enjoyed your works, both Petro-Harriettian and theological. My family also has pretty well read them to pieces. 58 The Manto of Inf. XX,55 is past all doubt the daughter of Teiresias. Dante found her in Vergil, Aen. X,198 sqq. Ocnus . . . fatidicae Mantus et Tusci filius amnis, qui muros matrisque dedit tibi, Mantua, nomen. . . . As to Purg. XXII,113 I fear the only possible solution is bonus dormitat Dantes. No one would understand la figlia di Tiresia as anyone else. Daphne daughter of T. occurs only, so far as I know, in Diod. Sic. IV,65,6, again inaccessible to Dante. That Daphne and Manto are the same person is a reasonable guess. Finally, Manto daughter of Herakles is but a poor ghost. She occurs in one passage of Daniels Servius (Servius auctus), the note on Aen . X,198 which Dante could hardly know: alii Manto, filiam Herculis, uatem fuisse dicunt. Where he got her from, no one knows, and no one else that I can find seems ever to have heard of her. I think you may safely neglect her. This I write from but a gentlemans knowledge of Dante but some acquaintance with mythology, for there are still those who postulate of a professor of Greek historias ut nouerit omnis. Yours H. J. Rose. sincerely,
59
Manto fu, che cerc per terre molte; | poscia si puose l dove nacqu io; | onde un poco mi piace che mascolte (Inf. 20.5557). Sayers translates Was Manto, she that searched through many a land | Ere settling in my birthplace; thats a tale | Id like to tellbrief patience, then, command; see her note on line 55: Manto: the daughter of Tiresias. The founding of Mantua by Manto is mentioned in Aeneid x.198200. 59 Vdeisi quella che mostr Langia; | vvi la figlia di Tiresia, e Teti, | e con le suore sue Dedamia (Purg. 22.11214), She who led down the troops to the Langeia; | There is the daughter of Tiresias, there | Thetis, and, with her sisters, Deidamia (trans. Sayers).
58
94
In reply to his letter, Sayers wrote to thank Rose on 24 April 1946, and asked him if she might approach him once again with other mythological puzzles, admittingeither with false modesty60 or because she was actually in awe of the St Andrews professor of Greekthat she was lacking in classical education,61 and would have needed to find someone to undo the knot as in Dantes encounter with Farinata among the heretics in Inf. 10.9596:
But my classical equipment is, alas! very scanty, and ill-fitted for the critical part of my job. . . . If I get into any more inextricable tangles in the Classical Department, may I approach you with them, after the manner of Dante with Farinata solvetemi quel nodo 62 che qui ha inviluppata mia sentenza? It would be very kind of you if I might. In the meantime I thank you very much again, both for your timely help, and also for the kind things you say about my booksI am glad you and your family have got enjoyment from Peter, and even also from my rash incursions into theology!
So Rose, who quickly responded to her call for help on 26 April 1946,
You are of course heartily welcome to write and put before me any other difficulties arising out of mythological allusions and the like. Dantes classical knowledge was a bit shaky.
began to be a sort of mythological consultant to Sayers for more than 10 years, and the notes which Sayers added to her translation of Dante owe
See the letter Sayers sent to E. V. Rieu on 9 September 1949: If I have not long been a Dantist, I am at least a Romance linguist and, to some extent, a mediaevalist. I was a scholar of my college, I am a Master in my University; I took First-class Honours, and was, after all, a scholar and poet before I was anything else (Reynolds, Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 19441950, 457). 61 Sayers recollects her classical studies at Oxford in The Teaching of Latin: A New Approach, chap. 8 of The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement and Other Posthumous Essays on Literature, Religion and Language (London, 1963). She speaks of her Latin knowledge in a letter to Rose dated 29 April 1946: I began to learn Latin at the age of six, but it never took properly with me. If I had been born a mediaeval and could have learnt to speak the stuff, I should have been all right. 62 Pray solve me this perplexity, | Which ties my brains in a tight knot indeed (trans. Sayers).
60
Domenico Accorinti
95
much to this correspondence. The Divina Commedia acted as go-between for the Author and the Professor to yield the gift of such charming letters, so it could truly be said, borrowing the words Dante put in Francescas mouth in the Fifth Circle of Hell,
Galeotto fu l libro e chi lo scrisse (Inf. 5.137) The book was Galleot, Galleot the complying (trans. Sayers)
Thus Sayers bowed to the great learning of Rose, as we read in a letter written on 8 August 1946,
Dear Professor Rose, Here I am again. After an interval, mostly occupied with the production of a 63 play of mine at Lichfield, I have returned to cope with Dante, and have two little problems to submit to your great learning.
and was astonished by this, as when, after reading a letter from Rose dated 27 January 1949, in which he explained to her who Leontius Pilatus (14th century), author of a Latin translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey, was, she wrote to him on 1st February 1949:
Dear Professor Rose, Is there anything you dont know?
Rose, for his part, writing on 21 December 1946 to thank her for the sending of some delightful renderings from Dante, paid an enthusiastic homage to the inspired translator:
Dear Miss Sayers, Many thanks for your delightful renderings from Dante. They read like original poems and the Italian does not show through the English, which to my mind is the true virtue of a translation. I was interested also to learn the rules for writing canzoni, though it is not likely I shall compose any myself, such talents as I have not lying in that direction.
Without a close empathy between them, no doubt these letters would not have been written. It provides quite a few examples of how learning is
Sayers alludes to The Just Vengeance, a play commissioned for the 750th anniversary of Lichfield Cathedral and there performed in June 1946; see Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 19441950, 18790.
63
96
combined with inventiveness. It is well known that Rose had a superb memory,64 but sometimes it failed him. Thus he happened to write to Sayers on 5 November 1947, asking her to give him a reference to a passage in one of Peter Wimseys detective stories that cited Aeschyluss Prometheus Bound, for he wanted to quote it in his commentary on Aeschylus:
A small matter of imperfect recollection came up the other day while I was getting on with a commentary on Aeschylus which I work at in spare times. There is a detective story in which the detective, wrongly but cleverly, suggests that refers to the chuckle of the sea against shingle. Is it Lord Peter, and if 65 so, where? It seems to lie between him and Reggie Fortune. If you remember the passage, I should be glad of a reference. I want to explain in my note why it is wrong. . . . many-dimpled smile of ocean; but where, again I cannot at this distance of time recollect.
Sayers too, following in Didymos Chalkenteross footsteps, had no precise idea where the passage could be found, as she wrote to Rose in a letter dated 11 November 1947, in which she admitted that Peter Wimseys interpretation was wrong:
Dear Professor Rose, Yes, it was Peter Wimsey; but just at the moment I havent the faintest notion where! I have written fifteen volumes of the blighter and have by this time rapturously forgotten almost everything about them. I will try to chase it up, or get one of his fans to do it for me. I have no doubt Peter is wrong about it! It has been objected to before, on the grounds that there are no tides in the Mediterranean or (if the Mediterranean is proved to be subject, like other parts of the world, to the laws of Nature) that, if it has tides, they do not chuckle. I may say that neither Peter nor I originated the interpretationI read it 66 somewhere, as an alternative suggestion to P.T.O.
See Lorimer, Herbert Jennings Rose, 408. Reggie Fortune, doctor and detective, is a famous character of Henry Christopher Bailey (18781961). 66 The letter continued on a second page that is now missing, as Laura C. Schmidt, archivist at the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, informed me (email, 20 January 2009): I have examined our original copy of the letter you mention, and although at one time Im sure there was a second page, there is no continuation of the letter as we have it now. Since it is a carbon copy, the second page might have been
65
64
Domenico Accorinti
97
It is unclear how and when Rose tracked down the quotation from The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face, the best story in Sayerss collection Lord Peter Views the Body (1928),67 but he later wrote in his commentary on Aesch. Pr. 8892:
The ingenious suggestion which Miss Sayers puts into the mouth of Lord Peter, that the phrase refers to the chuckle of the waves against a beach far below, is contrary to the use of which refers to the appearance rather than the sound of a laugh, especially when used otherwise than of human beings. By calling it , Prometheus refers to the proverbially incalculable number of the waves, cf. e.g., Theokritos, xvi,60, Verg., G., ii,108, and for a related idea (the amount 68 of water in the sea), oracle ap. Hdt., i,47,3.
Another time, after getting a letter from Sayers, dated 28 April 1948, in which she appeared anxious about her commentary on Dante and puzzled by the old quotations related to the so-called poets,
Dear Professor Rose, I am still struggling (at proof stage) with the critical apparatus of the Inferno. All Dantes mediaeval commentators agree in saying that Saturn (identified, after the high Roman fashion, with Cronos) is said by the poets to have been the first king of Crete. But which poets?
Rose tried to console her by explaining the connection of Kronos-Saturn with Crete and how to assess the tradition according to the poets. But the letter
removed merely in the course of business or used as scrap paper. Unfortunately theres no way to tell where the 2nd page carbon copy ended up, and as we dont have the original signed letter Im afraid were out of luck for the time being. Sorry I could not be of more help. Blessings, Laura. 67 One morningit happened to be the Monday morningWimseys voice became slower and more reluctanthe went down as usual. The tide was not yet fully in, but he ran out over the rocks to where he knew there was a deep bathingpool. He plunged in and swam about, and let the small noise of his jangling troubles be swallowed up in the innumerable laughter of the sea. Eh? quotation from the classics. So people say it means the dimpled surface of the waves in the sunlightbut how could Prometheus, bound upon his rock, have seen it? Surely it was the chuckle of the incoming tide among the stones that came up to his ears on the lonely peak where the vulture fretted at his heart. 68 A Commentary on the Surviving Plays of Aeschylus, 1.252.
98
that he wrote to her on 30 April 1948 is quite remarkable for other reasons. Rose begins with a slightly varied quotation from The Walrus and the Carpenter, a narrative poem by Lewis Carroll, recited in chapter four of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1872) by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice (I weep for you, the Walrus said; I deeply sympathize), then moves to a sentence from Sayerss Clouds of Witness (1926), where the author used bompstable (ch. 6),
The glass-blowers cat is bompstable, said Mr. Parker aloud and distinctly. Im charmed to hear it, replied Lord Peter, with a friendly grin. Had a good nap, old man? Iwhat? said Mr. Parker. . . . You said The glass-blowers cat is bompstable, retorted Lord Peter. Its a perfectly rippin word, but I dont know what you mean by it. Bompstable? said Mr. Parker, blushing slightly. Bompoh, well, perhaps, youre rightI may have dozed off.
a word that does not appear in any dictionary:

Dear Miss Sayers, I weep for you, the mythologist said, I deeply sympathize. The tangles of post-classical perversions of mythology are not easy to unravel. But here are some pieces of a clue at least. First, all this stuff about Kronos-Saturn is not honest mythology at all, but for the most part Euhemerism, and corrupt at that. ... Now comes the question how Dante, who knew no Greek and certainly had not read Diodoros, got to know all this. I suppose the commentators on Vergil would tell him something. Servius on Aeneid viii,319 says: nam Saturnus rex fuit Cretae, quem Iuppiter filius bello pepulit. hic fugiens ab Iano est susceptus, qui regnabat in Italia. D., I suppose, would read Vergil with the help of Servius or of some kind of commentary derived chiefly from him. . . . As to some other points. Dont be worried by statements, late classical or fairly early modern, that the poets say this and that. They spring from the assumption that mythology was invented by poets. . . . So if you find somebody saying that according to the poets the glass-blowers cat is bomstable [sic], that is simply the older equivalent of a modern dictionary article running thus: BOMSTABLE [sic]; in mythology, an epithet (meaning unknown) of glassblowerscats, see D. Sayers, Cloud of witness, p. so-and-so.
Domenico Accorinti
99
As regards the first quotation from Lewis Carroll, Rose, who, as Lorimer writes, was von Haus aus a lover of stories and story-telling, a born court shenachie, had his lot been cast in the Middle Ages,69 knew The Walrus and the Carpenter by heart and had often recited the poem to his children.70 But it is also likely that a book like Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, a literary jeu desprit based on a game of chess, was a favourite of that wonderful chessplayer, professor Rose. As to the second sentence, the apt quotation from Clouds of Witness reveals once more that Rose was a devoted reader of her detective novels. Enchanting, indeed, Sayers found this letter, writing to Rose on 3 May 1948. In her reply, she quoted the words that Dante addressed to Virgil in Inf. 11.9193 (again a metaphor befitting the knowledge, see Inf. 10.9596, quoted above), and looked forward to acknowledging Roses kindness in the third volume of her translation,71 declaring herself her deeply obliged, humble servant:
Dear Professor Rose, Thank you so much for your enchanting letter. Please dont weep for me. For one thing, I can say to you as Dante says to Virgil: O Sol, che sani ogni vista turbata, tu mi contenti s, quando tu solvi,
Herbert Jennings Rose, 401; cf. Nock, Herbert Jennings Rose, 425: He had a natural feeling for stories as such, and a sure instinct for distinguishing earlier and later elements. 70 Apropos of Rose Gods and Heroes of the Greeks (London, 1957), Lorimer, Herbert Jennings Rose, 403 writes: Though hardly what is ordinarily understood by a childs book, it is dedicated to all the children who like me to tell them storiesa goodly band, if we include with them all who as children at any time have listened with wonder and enjoyment to the big man . 71 See also what Sayers wrote to Rose on 31 October 1949, enclosing a copy of her translation of Dantes Inferno: You will not find in it the acknowledgment of your help and kindness that is your due; I am saving all the acknowledgments until (God willing) the work is complete, when I shall devote a stately paragraph to them. But death prevented her from finishing her work and putting Roses name in the acknowledgments.
69
100

che, non men che saver, dubbiar maggrata.
72
For another, I like the mediaevals, and am quite used to them. I dont mind how post-classical their stories are, or how fantastic their etymologies. . . . Thank you very much again. I will now proceed to polish up my entry on 73 Crete, putting responsibility for Saturns presence there on Servius. By the way, as the Inferno is already burdened with a long preface and much other preliminary matter, I am not giving a list of the many people to whose kindness I am indebted for, etc. Since I hope (God and the Atom Bomb permitting) one day to finish the job, I propose to put all these honoured names together in one list and place them in the Paradiso, which I am sure is the most suitable place for them. But in case I die before then, please be assured that I always remain, Your deeply obliged, humble servant.
Finally, of great interest is the letter which Rose wrote to Sayers on 9 November 1954 to thank her for a copy of her book on Dante,74 for it deals with literary criticism. Rose considers the author an eccentric female in finding meaning in the poetry, as opposed to that contemporary criticism for which it is nothing but an expression of emotions that could evoke the role of Frre Jean des Entommeures, one of Rabelaiss most sympathetic characters, in the storm at sea in the Quart Livre des faictz et dicts hroques du bon Pantagruel,75 and to put it, adapting the words from a speech of Patience, or Bunthornes Bride (1881), the two-act comic opera (music by Arthur Sullivan) of Gilbert (18361911),76 The meaning doesnt matter if its only
O sun that healest all dim sight, thou so | Dost charm me in resolving of my doubt, | To be perplexed is pleasant as to know (trans. Sayers). 73 See her entry Saturn, in Hell, Glossary: Since Zeus-Jupiter was fabled to have been born in Crete (probably by a further identification with some native Cretan god), the connection with Crete was extended to Saturn also; so that by the time we get to Servius, the commentator of Virgil (fl. c. A.D. 400), we find him writing in a note on Aen . viii.319: for Saturn was king of Crete, and was overthrown in war by his son Jupiter. And fleeing hence, he was hospitably received by Janus, who was then reigning in Italy. 74 Probably the Introductory Papers on Dante (London, 1954). 75 See F. M. Weinberg, Frre Jean, vangelique: His Function in the Rabelaisan World, Modern Language Review 66 (1971): 298305. 76 If youre anxious for to shine in the high sthetic line as a man of culture rare, | You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them everywhere. | You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your
72
Domenico Accorinti
101
idle chatter | Of a Freudo-Jungian kind. Rose, however, agrees that Dantes verses did have a meaning for his learned medieval readers:
Dear Miss Sayers, Very many thanks for your book on Dante, which came this morning. I expect much pleasure and profit from reading it, in all probability sandwiched between slices of my old friend Plutarch, part of whom I have just got in a new 77 edition. You are an eccentric female to expect poets to mean something. The modern trend of criticism (or is it yesterdays trend? Fashions succeed with dizzying haste these days) seems to be that poets should signify nothing much, but evoke emotions after a manner which to my ear suggests the remarks of Frre Jehan during the storm. As Gilbert might have said if he had been born later, The meaning doesnt matter if its only idle chatter Of a Freudo-Jungian kind. But of course you are interested in Dante, who was so hchst unmodern that he actually believed something and could reason about it intelligibly. Consequently he committed the gross solecism of writing verses which conveyed some kind of meaning to a reasonably careful reader. Perhaps, in his corner of the Elysian Authors Club, he now amuses his fellow-members by remarks, not too polite, on sundry productions of the last thirty of forty years. I send an offprint of a recent paper of mine, in which you will see that I 78 assume Dantes guide to have attached ideas to his words. Yours very sincerely, H. J. Rose.
complicated state of mind, | The meaning doesnt matter if its only idle chatter of a transcendental kind. 77 Some years later, in a letter to Raffaele Pettazzoni dated 23 February 1958, Rose wrote: Now I am looking into the possibility of getting out new editions of two earlier works of mine, which are now out of print, my edition of the Fabulae of Hyginus (Sijthoff, 1934) and The Roman Questions of Plutarch (Clarendon Press, 1924). Mais cest toujours la question dargent! Yet Rose did not get a new edition, neither of the Roman Questions nor of the Fabulae; see, however, his Second Thoughts on Hyginus, Mnemosyne 4.11 (1958): 4248. 78 Rose refers to his Some Second Thoughts on Vergils Eclogues, Mnemosyne 4.7 (1954): 5768.
102
What Became of Rose? 79 Before ending my paper, I cannot shirk a question that is not marginal, namely what of Rose has lasted in the study of ancient religion, of mythology, and of folklore and folktales.80 Even though his lasting legacy in these three fields lies beyond the scope of my present paper, I would like to make a few remarks on this subject. As for the first two, nearly 100 years after the commented translation of The Roman Questions was planned and written,81 anyone acquainted with Plutarchs book 4 of the Moralia still consults and discusses (even critically) Roses 1924 volume,82 and the same goes for the edition of Hyginuss Fabulae he produced in the 1930s.83 Even now that for the former work we have the Bud volume by Jacques Boulogne,84 and for the latter one both Marshalls and Boriauds editions,85 yet his two books on Plutarch and
I draw these words from the title of an amusing chapter in the book by Bruce Hayden, Cabbage Heads and Chess Kings (London, 1960), 15558 (I am indebted for this quotation to the chess historian Alan McGowan, Chess, Scotland). 80 I quote from the anonymous referees report: What of Roses has survived the last fifty, 100 years since it was written and is still indispensable to scholars? Why should we bother about him? 81 See above at n5. 82 See, for instance, J. Scheids cours at the College of France in 20056 under the general title Religion, institutions et socit de la Rome antique. Les Questions Romaines de Plutarque. Une promenade imaginaire dans la vieille Rome (www.college-de-france.fr/default/EN/all/reg_ins/resumes.htm); F. Mora, Nuclei dinteresse e strategie interpretative nelle Quaestiones Romanae di Plutarco, Gerin 25 (2007): 32970; S. Verdegem, Plutarchs Quaestiones Romanae and His Lives of Early Romans, in The Unity of Plutarchs Work: Moralia Themes in the Lives, Features of the Lives in the Moralia, ed. A. G. Nikolaidis, Millennium-Studien 19 (Berlin/New York, 2008), 17185 at 17277. 83 See above at n6. 84 Plutarque, uvres morales, vol. 4: Conduites mritoires de femmes, tiologies romainestiologies grecques, Parallles mineurs, texte tabli et traduit par J. Boulogne, Collection des Universits de France (Paris, 2002). 85 Hygini Fabulae, ed. P. K. Marshall, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Stuttgart/Lepizig, 1993; 2nd ed. Mnchen/Leipzig, 2002); Hygin, Fables, texte tabli et traduit par J.-Y. Boriaud, Collection des Universits de France (Paris, 1997; 2nd ed. 2003).
79
Domenico Accorinti
103
HyginusI am referring particularly to his wide introduction to The Roman Questions and to his copius notes to the edition of Hyginus86will remain an useful (may I say fundamental) tool for the study of these authors. Further, the rewrite of his A Handbook of Greek Mythology,87 made by R. Hard in 200388 and recently also translated into Castellano by J. Cano Cuenca,89 gives witness to the success of his 1928 book, wich had reached a sixth edition by 1958 and had been translated into German in 1955 and into Spanish in 1970. One could also note such a revival of interest in Roses Ancient Greek Religion (1946) and Ancient Roman Religion (1948),90 both reprinted again together in one volume under the title Ancient Greek and Roman Religion in 1995 (the first edition appeared in 1959), and this in despite of being, the Roses handbooks, representative of authors era.91 Moreover, I may mention
See the review to Hyginuss reprint edition (1963) by J. Praux, AC 34 (1965): 617: Il reste nanmoins que le futur diteur des Fabulae, et souhaitons-le prochain, devra tenir le plus grand compte de ldition de Rose, qui lui donnera dabondants matriaux dans les notes, qui en dfinitive restent mes yeux lapport essentiel de cette dition.; Marshall, Hygini Fabulae (1993) xiii: qua erat doctrina rerumque mythicarum peritia uerbis Hyginianis plurimam lucem praesertim in Commentario suo infudit. 87 See above at n7. 88 The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology, based on H. J. Roses Handbook of Greek Mythology (London/New York, 2003). 89 El gran libro de la mitologa griega basado en el manual de mitologa griega de H. J. Rose (Madrid, 2008). 90 The two little books on Greek and Roman religion were published in Hutchinsons University Library series (London). 91 See D. Boedeker in Mentor: Guide bibliographique de la religion grecque. Bibliographical Survey of Greek Religion, ed. A. Motte et al., Kernos Supplement 2 (Lige, 1992), 618 no. 1599 (on Roses Ancient Greek Religion): In most respects, the A.s handbook fairly represents contemporary (1946) scholarly consensus; F. Graf in S. I. Johnston, Panel Discussion: Magic in the Ancient World by Fritz Graf, Numen 46 (1999): 291325 at 318n60 (criticizing the idea that Roman religion was more magical than religious, since it placed a high value on ritual): As did, to name just one author of an entire generation, H. J. Rose, Ancient Roman Religion (London, 1948); see also Lorimer, Herbert Jennings Rose, 405: Readers of the Roman volume who do not share the authors gusto for the details of superstitious ritual might be willing to forgo some of the rites described to make room for a fuller treatment of some of the later developments.
86
104
here, among his numerous scripta minora, the two articles on the fragment from Pindar quoted by Plato at Meno 81bc (133 Maehl.) which Rose published in 1936 and 1943.92 They contain a convincing interpretation of Persephones grief referred to the loss of her son Dionysus, murdered according to the Orphic tradition by Titans, with which most modern scholars agree, like A. Bernab who follows Rose in his edition (2004) of OF 443 (= Pind. frg. 133 Maehl.), l. 1 | (ad loc. de Baccho a Titanibus discerpto, ut optime explicavit Rose).93 As for the third, I need hardly recall that Rose published in 1949, in collaboration with P. P. Argenti, the two magnificent volumes of The FolkLore of Chios, the first comprehensive survey of a definite region of modern
The Ancient Grief: A Study of Pindar, Fragment 133 (Bergk), 127 (Bowra), in Greek Poetry and Life: Essays Presented to G. Murray on His Seventieth Birthday (Oxford, 1936), 7996; The Grief of Persephone, HTR 36 (1943): 24750. 93 Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta. Poetae Epici Graeci, pars 2.1, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Mnchen/Leipzig, 2004), 374. I thank Prof. Alberto Bernab for expressing to me his own opinion on Roses two articles quoted above: Ambos me parecen trabajos excelentes, que muestran una slida forma de aproximarse a los textos, un tanto heterodoxa con respecto a los britnicos, reacios a ver en los textos de los grandes poetas el mnimo influjo de lo rfico. Creo que la argumentacin es muy aceptable (email, 17 January 2010). See also S. I. Johnston, in F. Graf and S. I. Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (London/New York, 2007), 6869 and 196n12; A. Bernab and A. I. Jimnez San Cristbal, Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets, with an iconographical appendix by R. Olmos and illustrations by S. Olmos [2001], trans. M. Chase, Religions in the GraecoRoman World 162 (Leiden/Boston, 2008), 72; M. A. Santamara lvarez, Pindaro y el orfismo, in Orfeo y la tradicin rfica: Un reencuentro, ed. A. Bernab and F. Casadess (Madrid, 2008), 2.116184 at 116970 (with bibliography at 1170n29). Contra R. G. Edmonds III, Tearing Apart the Zagreus Myth: A Few Disparaging Remarks on Orphism and Original Sin, Classical Antiquity 18 (1999): 3573; L. Brisson, Platon, Pythagore et les Pythagoriciens, in Platon source des Prsocratiques: Exploration, ed. M. Dixsaut and A. Brancacci (Paris, 2002), 2146 at 42; J. Holzhausen, Pindar und die Orphik zu Frg. 133 Snell/Maehler, Hermes 132 (2004): 2036. For the Orphic doctrine of original sin, cf. R. G. Edmonds III, A Curious Concoction: Tradition and Innovation in Olympiodorus Orphic Creation of Mankind, AJP 130 (2009): 51132.
92
Domenico Accorinti
105
Greece,94 and he edited in 1940 and 1960, with W. J. Watson and D. MacLean, More West Highland Tales,95 still both of them invaluable reference works. Should I also add his miscellaneous notes on Canadian, English, Scottish, and Welsh customs appeared regularly in the journal Folklore since 1912,96 a real folklore treasure for posterity? Desideratum Almost half a century ago, W. L. Lorimer, speaking of the countless articles and reviews produced by the pen of his predecessor, wrote that
no account of these [articles and reviews] can be attempted here, but the hope may perhaps be expressed that one or more of his old students will undertake the laborious but eminently worthwhile task of compiling a complete bibliography of his writings. . . . His intellectual measure cannot be taken from his books alone. Many, perhaps most, of his original contributions to classical learning are to be sought in his numerous articles in journals, and it would be a service to scholarship, if a selection of these could be made by some expert in his own field and published in book form, along with the already suggested bibliography 97 of his writings.
His appeal fell on deaf ears, and it is to be hoped that Scotland, and, first of all, St Andrews, the university where Herbert Jennings Rose taught for 27 years, that town which he loved so much, can fulfil such a desideratum and publish both Roses complete bibliography and a selection of his major articles in book form. This service to scholarship, even though belated, would nevertheless be much appreciated, and, indeed, would be just what that
D. A. Baerreis, Folklore 63 (1950): 38081 at 380. See also, in the same journal, the previous review by R. M. Dawkins, Folklore 61 (1950): 3840 at 40: Here we have a mass of material such as has not been collected from any other island, material of great and indeed permanent value, and now made all of it accessible to the English reader. 95 More West Highland Tales, orally collected by the late J. F. Campbell; transcribed and translated from the original Gaelic by J. G. MacKay; ed. W. J. Watson, D. MacLean, and H. J. Rose; 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 194060; repr. 1994). 96 See E. H. and H. J. Rose, Folklore Notes from the Province of Quebec, Folklore 23 (1912): 34547 and 46263. The initials E. H. must probably be referred to Roses wife, Eliza Harriet (ne Plimsoll). 97 Lorimer, Herbert Jennings Rose, 4078.
94
106
big man . . . with the face of a cheerful kindly Viking, according to the well-chosen definition by Arthur Darby Nock which I will quote in full, deserves:
Rose was a big man, in personality as in physique, healthy in mind and body, with the face of a cheerful kindly Viking, and with a great sense of fun as well as a high seriousness. Wholly without selfconsciousness as also without malice, supremely happy in his family relationships, infinitely generous in his help and encouragement to younger scholars, 98 he loved life and loved the human race.
Appendix Laudatory address delivered by Arthur A. Matheson on the occasion of the honorary degree (LL.D.) conferred to Herbert J. Rose by the University of St Andrews on 29 June 1954 (The Scotsman, 30 June 1954)99
The late A. E. Housman, that mighty master of Latin, abandoned the study of Greek because, as he said, he found that he could not attain to excellence in both. The graduand vacated a Chair of Latin in order to occupy our Chair of Greek but without prejudice to linguistic versatility. Just as he is amphibious in sport, so is he also in scholarship; in either ancient discipline he has attained to excellence. No single wheel for him; he rides with ease and skill upon the Classic bicycle. It were superfluous in this company, sir, to rehearse in detail the curriculum vitae of this great man. Suffice to say that he came to Britain from Canada as one of the first of the Rhodes Scholars: that, after a flirtation with Oxford and an episode in Aberystwyth, the graduand in 1927 found his true-love St Andrews in Scotland; she has had his hearth ever since, and he hers: an historic and happy union of the Thistle and the Rose. He is a polymath in the tradition of the late A. E. Taylor. His prodigious learning, lightly carried, his acute judgment, magnanimously wielded, his unflagging zest for life and the humanities, his gift for the vigorous phrase, his unequalled skill in imparting knowledge, his picturesque and powerful personality have made of him a living legend of incarnate mythan appropriate destiny for a pundit of folk-lore. It is little wonder that he is a Fellow of the British Academy and of famous learned societies from Italy to Sweden. With his admirable handbooks on Greek mythology and
98 99
Nock, Herbert Jennings Rose, 42526. Katharine Fewster kindly provided me with a copy of this article.
Domenico Accorinti
on the Greek and Latin literatures and his profound studies of primitive cultures and of religion in Greece and Rome he has given to hundreds of thousands of readers in many lands something of his own vivid insight into thought and feelings of ancient societies, from the most rudimentary to the most sophisticated. For the scholar, he has produced the first scientific edition of Hyginus and countless contributions to the interpretations of many authors. His long-elaborated commentary on Aeschylus is receiving final touches in the house once occupied by Wallace Martin Lindsayquod felix faustumque sit! There is an unfortunate provision whereby Professors must retire just at the age when at any rate the more precocious of them might fairly hope to be approximating towards intellectual maturity. The graduand, albeit rude donatus, comes before us to-day in the ample vigour of his prime. For this distinguished Grecian our first wish is polla ta ete; we assure him that he has our warmest aspirations for his hours of labour and of leisure alike, upon the chequerboard of nights and days.
107
Pisa domenico.accorinti@gmail.com

The Scholar and His Correspondents, ICS, 33-34

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Scholar and His Correspondents, ICS, 33-34

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Herbert Jennings Rose (18831961) The Scholar and His Correspondents1

DOMENICO ACCORINTI for Katharine Fewster

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Domenico Accorinti Correspondence with Raffaele Pettazzoni

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

other than Greek, as he confided to Pettazzoni in a letter written on 8 April 1953:

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

a word that does not appear in any dictionary:

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

Illinois Classical Studies 3334 (20082009)

You might also like