Othello, Virgil, And Montaigne

Noting that there are recurrent references to antra vasta in the Aeneid, Kenneth Muir has identified the poem as a probable source for Shakespeare's use of the Latinate 'antres' in Othello's speech to the Venetian Council. Muir is interested in the frequency of the Virgilian phrase rather than the identificationof a particular passage, though he does note that there are references to antra vasta in Aeneid III. Here, Dewar-Watson elaborates that the possibility of a localized debt to Aeneid III deserves further examination. She notes that the focus of the cavernous landscape which is described in this section of Virgil's poem is the Cyclops, himself a cave-dweller.