Latin Essay #2

I've identified two ways in which Virgil displays his largely perceptual understanding of the world in his writing. The first is that he uses concretes ideas in place of abstracts. He does this by employing a concrete where an abstract is meant; as in "tenui meditaris avena" (you meditate with a slender stalk) to mean you dote upon or adore. Also, he does this by replacing an abstract idea with a physical scenario which implies the idea. For example, he writes "illius aram saepe tener nostris ab ovilibus imbuet agnus" (a tender lamb from our fold often stains the altar of that god) when he is referring to an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice. Next, there are his actual words. As I've demonstrated with perfacere, in order to indicate abstract actions such as to accomplish the Latin language takes simple concrete verbs and modifies them.

As compelling as the first argument is I am going to exclude it from my essay and focus only on the modification of verbs. This is because my only source for this essay is the poetry of Virgil. And since the first type I identified is a method of arranging words commonly used in poetry I don't think it is appropriate to use as evidence. Though, in poetry one can use abstracts to represent concretes also and Virgil exclusively represents abstracts with concretes, it would take an exhaustive account to demonstrate that claim and I don't wish to write a book on the subject.

I'm thinking of reserving this for the end. I generally pick one common argument against my case and refute it at the end of my essay. So, I can use this to address the argument that my piece only looks at poetry. I specifically choose my examples because they are common words throughout all of Latin rather than only constructions of Virgil.