VIRGIL A THRACIAN ?
[To Tag EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—The obsession under which I have been labouring since I read, in your last issue, that Virgil was a Thracian has been strong. Mr. Garrod, as your reviewer notes, demurs to the "Classical Review," wherein I also myself have occasionally translated. The Merton Fellow votes for the Celtic stock of Maro. Surely this latter view is supported alike by tradition and internal evidence. That very drastic schoolboy horror, the Schema Etymologicum, works well in the Celtic interest, especially in Book vii. Take lines 712, 740 :—
". . . qui rosea rum a Velini," "et quos maliferae despectant moenia Abellae."
The first derives the Celtic rhos, exos : the second, the Celtic afal, malum (apple). What is a Thracian doing in this philological galley ? How did a Thracian come by the Celtic proper name Virgilius, connoting manliness P Macrobius and Horace attribute to Maro the very qualities which St. Paul does to those other Celts, the Galatians. Virgil's very executor (testamentary and literary) is a Celt, Tucca, whose name is to-day in Welsh the exact translation of sica. This philologio equation is classic. None but a Celt would have called the Po the " sovran stream," that Po whereby were Boii and "myriad tribes of Celts," as Plutarch tells us, citing poetry thereon into the bargain. Sunt lacrimae rerum could have been sung by none but a Romanized Celt. Thracian touches of cruelty are generally the very antipodes of gentle Maro. Lastly, for the moment, has the "Classical Review" Thracophil no fear before his eyes of Dante and the early Christian Church's lien on Maro P—I am, Sir, &a.,
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