Antiquitopia

John Hobbins has a nice posting on "proleptic metaphor" in Job 28. Take a look . He writes, and maybe this will be a good appetizer: Skilled authors are in fact very good at planting semes early on in a stream of discourse such that, at the appropriate time, they will, retroactively, bear metaphorical fruit.* Be sure to read the asterisk at the bottom! *It is fun, in a statement about metaphor, to use an expression like “planting semes.” I’ve run across people whose wooden view of Scripture makes them break into a sweat when they realize that the Bible contains playful etymologies which, from a linguistic point of view, are false. Sooner or later, when reading the Bible or anything else, it is necessary to “let it be,” to quote the Beatles. As Picasso said, “art is a lie which tells the truth.” The Bible is full of truth, but its authors are as faithful to their subjects as Picasso was to his. Since I am a believer, my response is: praise be to God. Or...to bring in Dante, I...

And so it went through all of Latium; and when the Trojan hero has seen this, he wavers on a giant tide of troubles; his racing mind is split; it shifts here, there, and rushes on to many different plans, turning to everything; even as when the quivering light of water in bronze basins reflected from the sun or from the moon's glittering image glides across all things and now darts skyward, strikes the roof's high ceiling. (Virgil, Aeneid 8.22-32; trans. Mandelbaum) This is one of my favorite similes in the Aeneid .