In Joris-Karl Huysmans’s (“WEESE-mons’s”) novel À rebours (“ah ruh-BOOR”), the protagonist Des Esseintes (“day zay-SANT”) considers this author to be “one of the most terrible pedants ever produced by antiquity.” For 10 points each:
[10e] Des Esseintes describes the protagonist as a “weak-willed, irresolute person who walks with wooden gestures” in what author’s Aeneid?
ANSWER: Virgil [or Publius Vergilius Maro]
[10m] Des Esseintes was willing to excuse Virgil’s “impudent borrowings” from Homer, Lucretius, Ennius, and this author. Virgil’s Eclogues were modeled on the bucolic Idylls of this poet, who is mentioned in the first of the Sonnets from the Portuguese.
ANSWER: Theocritus
[10h] Des Esseintes could not excuse Virgil’s “plain theft” of Pisander, as revealed by this author. This 5th-century author wrote the lore book Saturnalia and a commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio.
ANSWER: Macrobius [or Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius]
<AR, European Literature>