Virgil and context

[Victor Steinbok]

David Post goes medieval on Caroline Alexander daring to suggest in her
op-ed that a translation of a line from Aeneid that is to be inscribed
on the NYC 9/11 memorial. [Emphasis added.]

http://tinyurl.com/3rzmf94
> Sorry, but Caroline Alexander does not get to decide for the rest of
> us what those words on the inscription "mean." Neither, actually, does
> Virgil (though he's got a helluva better claim on it than she does).
> /The words mean what we decide they mean./ This notion that they're
> somehow frozen forever in time, attached to Virgil's tale, is
> ridiculous and the worst form of elitism. "No day shall erase you from
> the memory of time" strikes me as a perfectly appropriate sentiment
> for this memorial. That Virgil used these words for a different
> purpose is interesting and entirely irrelevant to whether they are
> appropriate.

This is followed with a gratuitous defense of Constitutional Originalism
by distinguishing it from the statement above. Post may have all his
ducks in a row--in his own mind--but the irony of his position clearly
escapes him. I'd give an analysis opposing both of these viewpoints, but
I don't have a blog to post it on. ;-) Besides, it would be a waste of time.

     VS-)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org