Saving the Hero: Or, Why Virgil Was No Plagiarist

The fundamental role that imitation played in Latin literature lies beyond any doubt. Ancient readers, however, did not deem every act of textual adaptation acceptable, and in fact relegated some to the category of plagiarism. In addition, disagreements recurrently arose in Latin literary history regarding whether an author had licitly imitated a source or had illicitly stolen from it. One writer whose reuse of models occasioned such controversy was the poet Virgil. This paper examines an ancient defense of Virgil against plagiarism charges that appears in Macrobius’ Sat. 6.1.1-7. My aims are to explore how the speaker, Furius Albinus, understands both plagiarism and its legitimate counterpart, imitation; to use Albinus’ apology as a springboard for investigating approaches to plagiarism elsewhere in Latin antiquity; and to examine what was at stake in the debate, so that insights might emerge into how plagiarism was stigmatized and punished in an age before copyright.
Scott McGill is an assistant professor of Classics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His book, Virgil Recomposed: The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity (APA Monograph Series, Oxford University Press) was published in 2005. His current book project is entitled Plagiarism in Classical Latin Literature. Professor McGill is also co-editing a volume of essays entitled The Roman Empire from the Tetrachy to Theodosius II: Politics,Society, Culture, Religion for Cambridge University Press, with Cristiana Sogno and Edward Watts.

This talk is sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.