Pièce 23 - Letter from A. E. Housman to W. H. Semple

1 folded sheet, 1 envelope

(With an envelope.)

—————

Transcript

Trinity College | Cambridge
9 May 1930

Dear Semple,

Much occupation, both serious and frivolous, has delayed me in answering your letter. I do not know that commentators either on Ovid or on Virgil have brought the two passages together, but I suppose you had better look at Frazer, whom I have not at hand. I should think that a connexion is quite possible, though atria Tiberina seems to have been a precise local name for the great crook in the river {1}, while domus, to judge from Stat. Theb. IV 831 (839) is wider.

Yours sincerely
A. E. Housman.

[Direction on envelope:] W. H. Semple Esq. | The University | Reading

—————

The envelope, which bears a 1½d. stamp, was postmarked at Cambridge at 7.15 p.m. on 9 May.

{1} The reference is to Ovid, Fasti, IV. 329–30. ‘It is a common opinion that the atria Tiberina mentioned by Ovid is a distortion of some obsolete local name. The site has been located on the spot where Ovid writes the River Tiber “turns left”, that is to say north, for the first time. Or, rather, where it used to turn, immediately east of the Ostian colonly, when it followed its ancient river bed … Unfortunately, the Tiber as a consequence of a disastrous flood, changed its course in 1557.’ (Leena Pietilä-Castrén, ‘Atria Tiberina: Remarks on Ovid’s Fasti 4,275–347’, Archon, xvii (1983), 64–5.)