etc.
102 ‘When the whole Horace had lost its natural colour, and the soot was
sticking to the blackened Virgil.’ vii. 226.
103 Green’s History of the English People, p. 37.
104 Quoted by Comparetti; and also in Bähr’s Römische Literatur.
105 Works of Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, by John Small, M.A., vol.
i. p. cxlv.
106 Carlyle’s Translation of the Inferno.
107 Mr. Small, in his account of the writings of Bishop Gavin Douglas,
says, ‘The works of Virgil passed through ninety editions before the
year 1500.’
108 See Conington’s Introduction to the Aeneid.
109 Appendix to the Henriade.
110 Dict. Philos., art. Epopée.
111 Quoted by Comparetti.
112 Sainte-Beuve, ‘Causeries du Lundi.’
113 By Mr. Payne, in the Clarendon Press Series.
114 ‘Who shall say what share the turning over and over in their mind,
and masticating, so to speak, in early life as models of their Latin
verse, such things as Virgil’s
Disce, puer, virtutem ex me, verumque laborem,
or Horace’s
Fortuna saevo laeta negotio,
has not had in forming the high spirit of the upper class in France
and England, the two countries where Latin verse has most ruled the
schools, and the two countries which most have had, or have, a high
upper class and a high upper class spirit?’ High Schools and
Universities in Germany, by M. Arnold.
115 ‘Add too the companions of the Muses of Helicon, amongst whom Homer,
the peerless, after holding the sceptre—.’
116 Tac. Ann. iv. 38.
117 i. 24. 11.
118 Vol. i. p. 197, Hare and Thirlwall’s translation.
119 Lectures on Roman History, vol. iii. p. 131 _et seq._ (London,
1855.)
120 Conington’s Virgil, Introduction to vol. ii.
121 Introduction to Eclogue v.
122 Book iii. chap. xiv.
123 He adds the comment, ‘Equidem dubito num legerit. Nam et philologos
ita iudicare audivi de Virgilio ut non legisse eos appareret.’
124 Questions Contemporaines. L’Instruction Supérieure en France.
125 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, Part II. chap. v.
126 Roman Empire, chap. xli.
127 Étude sur Virgile.
128 La Cité antique.
129 Études sur la Poésie latine.
130 ‘A land of old renown, mighty in arms and the richness of its soil.’
131 ‘Perseverantissimo agrorum colendorum studio veteres illi Sabini
Quirites atavique Romani,’ etc. Columella.
132 Cf. Lucretius, iii. 105–106:
Quod faciunt nobis annorum tempora, circum
Cum redeunt felusque ferunt variosque lepores.
133 ‘Hail mighty mother of harvests, Saturnian land, mighty mother of
men.’
134 ‘Virgile fut en effet une des âmes les plus chrétiennes du
Paganisme. Quoique attaché de tout son cœur à l’ancienne religion,
il a semblé quelquefois pressentir la nouvelle, et un Chrétien pieux
pourrait croire qu’il ne lui manqua pour l’embrasser que de la
connaître.’ Gaston Boissier.
135 ‘As it falls it awakens a hoarse murmur among the smooth stones, and
with its bubbling waters cools the parched fields.’
136 It is in the poems connected with this theme that Horace writes most
from the heart; yet even where he writes chiefly from the head he
imparts the same vital realism to the results of his reflection.
137 ‘We are not the first to whom things of beauty appear beautiful,—we
who are mortal men, and behold not the morrow.’
138 Grammar of Assent, by J. H. Newman.
139 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
140 Quoted by Reifferscheid in his Suetonii Reliquiae.
141 For the name _Catalepton_ cp. Professor Nettleship’s _Vergil_ in
_Classical Writers_, p. 23.
142 ‘Sed tanta inchoata res est, ut paene vitio mentis tantum opus
ingressus mihi videar, cum praesertim alia quoque studia ad id opus
multoque potiora impertiar.’ Macrob. Sat. i. 24. 11. The ‘potiora
studia’ seem clearly to mean the philosophical studies, to which his
biographer says he meant to devote the remainder of his life after
publishing the Aeneid.
143 ‘A way remote from the world and the path of a life that passes by
unnoticed.’
Cp. ‘Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.’
144 Cf. Reifferscheid, Quaestiones Suetonianae, p. 400. Hagen, De
Donatianae Vergilii vitae Codicibus, prefixed to his edition of the
Scholia Bernensia. De vita et scriptis P. Vergili Maronis narratio,
prefixed to Ribbeck’s text in the Teubner edition of Virgil.
145 Ribbeck, Prolegomena, cap. viii.
146 Gossrau, in his edition of the Aeneid (1876), argues and quotes
authorities in favour of retaining the older form _Virgilius_.
147 Cf. Pliny, Ep. iii. 7. Martial, xii. 67:—
Octobres Maro consecravit Idus.
148 ‘But no single day used then to give to their doom many thousands of
men marshalled under their standards.’ Lucret. v. 999.
149 ‘And larger shadows are falling from the lofty mountains.’
150 ‘From here, under some high rock, the song of the woodsman will rise
into the air.’
151 ‘I had indeed heard that from the spot where the hills begin to draw
themselves away from the plain, sinking down with a gentle slope, as
far as the river and the old beeches, with their now withered tops,
your Menalcas had saved all his land by his songs.’
152 ‘Yet we shall reach the town: or if we fear that night may first
bring the rain—’
153 ‘The herds will not lack their clear springs, nor their pasture.’
154 Cf. Eustace, vol. i. chap. v. Compare also the following
characteristic passage quoted from Dickens by Mr. Hare in his Cities
of Northern and Central Italy: ‘Was the way to Mantua as beautiful
when Romeo was banished thither, I wonder? Did it wind _through
pasture land as green, bright with the same glancing streams_, and
dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees? _Those purple mountains
lay on the horizon_, then, for certain.’ Dickens certainly was not
looking for Virgilian reminiscences in writing this description.
155 ‘And thou, Benacus, uprising with waves and roar like that of the
sea.’
156 ‘And such a plain as ill-fated Mantua lost, a plain which fed its
snow-white swans on its weedy river.’
157 Aeneid, x. 204.
158 ‘Vergilius—nomen vix dubiae originis Gallicae. Cf. Vergiliae
(stellae), Propert. i. 8. 10, Plin. fq. Οὐεργιλία (Oppid. Hispan.),
Ptol. 2. 5. Radix vetust. Camb. _guerg._ (efficax) gl. Ox. extat
etiam in vetusto nomine apud Caes.’ Zeuss, Grammatica Celtica, p.
11, edit. altera: Berol. 1871.
159 Cic. Epp. ad Att. vii. 7; ad Fam. xvi. 12.
160 Cic. Epp. ad Att. v. 2.
161 ‘But if a chaste and blooming wife, beside,
His cheerful home with sweet young blossoms fills,
Like some stout Sabine, or the sunburnt bride
Of the lithe peasant of the Apulian hills.’ Martin.
162 ‘Meanwhile, cheering her long task with song, his wife runs over the
web with her sounding shuttle.’
163 Ferunt infantem, cum sit editus, neque vagisse, et adeo miti vultu
fuisse, ut haud dubiam spem prosperioris geniturae jam tunc
indicaret.
164 Siquidem virga populea more regionis in puerperiis eodem statim loco
depacta ita brevi evaluit tempore ut multo ante satas populos
adaequasset, quae arbor Virgilii ex eo dicta atque etiam consecrata
est summa gravidarum ac fetarum religione.
The resemblance of the name to the word virga is probably at the
root of this story.
165 ‘You will now be to him what Mantua and Cremona were before.’
166 ‘Hence, away, empty phrases of the Rhetoricians, words swollen with
water not from a Greek source, and you, ye Stilos, and Tarquiti, and
Varros, tribe of grammarians oozing over with fat, away hence
tinkling cymbal of our empty youth.... I shape my course to the
blessed harbours, in search of the wise words of great Siron, and
will redeem my life from every care.’
167 ‘For, I shall own the truth, ye were dear to me.’
168 ‘But me a passionate delight hurries along over the lonely heights
of Parnassus.’
169 ‘When I would sing of kings and battles, Apollo pulled my ear and
warned me.’
170 ‘Cottage that belonged to Siron, and poor plot of ground, although
deemed great riches by your former owner.’
171 Hor. Ep. ii. 1. 246.
172 ‘Tenderness and grace have been granted to Virgil by the Muses who
delight in the country.’
173 ‘Maecenas goes to play at fives, Virgil and I to sleep, for that
game does not agree with those suffering from dyspepsia and weak
eyes.’
174 ‘Yet there will remain some vestiges of the ancient sin, which will
induce men to tempt the sea in ships.’
175 ‘No more sincere souls has the earth ever borne, nor any to whom
there is a more devoted friend than I.’
176 ‘I then had my home in sweet Parthenope, happy in the pursuits of an
inglorious idleness.’
177 ‘You sing, beneath the pine-woods of the shaded Galaesus, Thyrsis
and Daphnis on your well-worn reeds.’
178 Cf. supra, p. 69.
179 ‘Nam plerumque a stomacho et a faucibus ac dolore capitis laborabat,
sanguinem etiam saepe rejecit.’ Cf. what Sainte-Beuve says of Bayle:
‘Il lui était utile même d’avoir cette santé frêle, ennemi de la
bonne chère, ne sollicitant jamais aux distractions.’
180 Cp. Journal of Philology, Part III. Article on the twenty-ninth poem
of Catullus.
181 The German historians of Roman literature are more just in their
judgment of Virgil’s character than of his genius. Thus W. S.
Teuffel puts aside these scandals with the brusque and contemptuous
remark—‘Der Klatsch bei Donatus über sein Verhältniss zu seinen
Lieblingssklaven Alexander und Kebes, so wie zu Plotia Hieria, einer
amica des L. Varius, beurtheilte nach sich selbst das was ihm an
Vergil unbegreiflich war.’
182 ‘He was gentle here on earth, and is gentle there.’ Aristoph. Frogs,
82.
183 Cf. Reifferscheid, p. 67.
184 ‘Whatsoever it shall be, every fortune must be mastered by bearing
it.’
‘Learn, my son, from me to bear yourself like a man and to strive
earnestly, from others learn to be fortunate.’
185 Compare the lines of Coleridge on hearing ‘The Prelude’ read aloud
by Wordsworth:—
‘An Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted.’
186 ‘I, the idle singer of a pastoral song, who in the boldness of youth
made thee, O Tityrus, beneath the shade of the spreading beech, my
theme.’
187 The lines of Propertius—
Tu canis umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi
Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin harundinibus,
might suggest the inference that the seventh was composed at the
time when Virgil was residing in the neighbourhood of Tarentum. But,
at the time when Propertius wrote, Virgil was engaged in the
composition of the Aeneid, not of the Eclogues. The present ‘canis’
seems rather to mean that Virgil, while engaged with his Aeneid, was
still conning over his old Eclogues. Yet he must have strayed
‘subter pineta Galaesi’ some time before the composition of the last
Georgic. It has been remarked by Mr. Munro that the ‘memini’ in the
line
Namque sub Oebaliae memini me turribus arcis
looks like the memory of a somewhat distant past. Could the villa of
Siron have been in the neighbourhood of Tarentum? (a question
originally suggested by Mr. Munro); may it have passed by gift or
inheritance into the possession of Virgil, and was he in later life
in the habit of going to it from time to time? or was the distance
too great from Mantua for him to have transferred his family
thither?
188 ‘This taught me “the fair Alexis was loved by Corydon,” this too
taught me “whose is the flock? is it the flock of Meliboeus?”’
189 viii. 56. 12.
190 Ep. ad Att. i. 12.
191 Dr. Kennedy refers to no less than seventeen parallel passages from
Theocritus, many of them being almost literal translations from the
Greek poet.
192 ‘Look, the steers are drawing home the uplifted ploughs.’
193 ‘O that it would but please you to dwell with me among the “homely
slighted” fields and lowly cottages, and to shoot the deer.’
194 ‘The Gods too were dwellers in the woods, and Dardanian Paris. Leave
Pallas to abide in the towers which she has built; let our chief
delight be in the woods.’
195 Dr. Kennedy refers to twenty-seven parallels from Theocritus.
196 ‘Pollio loves my song, though it is but a shepherd’s song.’ ‘Pollio
himself too is a poet.’
197 ‘Who hates not Bavius may he be charmed with thy songs, O Maevius!’
198 ‘Menalcas Vergilius hic intelligitur, qui obitum fratris sui Flacci
deflet, vel, ut alii volunt, interfectionem Caesaris.’ Comment. in
Verg. Serviani (H. A. Lion, 1826).
199 See Conington’s Introduction to this Eclogue.
200 ‘No beast either tasted the river or touched a blade of grass.’
201 Compare M. Benoist’s note on the passage.
202 ‘Proximis diebus equorum greges, quos in traiciendo Rubicone flumine
consecrarat ac vagos et sine custode dimiserat, comperit
pertinacissime pabulo abstinere ubertimque flere.’ Sueton. lib. i.
c. 81.
203 ‘As to Bacchus and to Ceres so to thee shall the husbandmen annually
make their vows; thou too wilt call on them for their fulfilment.’
204 ‘The star beneath which the harvest-fields should be glad in their
corn-crops, and the grapes should gather a richer colour on the
sunny hill-sides.’
205 ‘Graft your pears, Daphnis: your fruits will be plucked by those who
come after you.’
206 Kennedy.
207 ‘Here the green Mincio fringes its bank with delicate reeds, and
swarms of bees are buzzing from the sacred oak.’
208 ‘This I remember, and that Thyrsis was beaten in the contest: from
that time Corydon is all in all with us.’
209 Cf.
Ergo _tua_ rura manebunt—
Ille _meas_ errare boves—
Multa _meis_ exiret victima saeptis.
210 Candidior postquam tondenti barba cadebat—
Fortunate senex.
211 See Kennedy’s note on the passage.
212 ‘Though all your land is choked with barren stones or covered with
marsh and sedge.’—P.
213 ‘And larger shadows are falling from the lofty mountains.’
214 M. Benoist.
215 ‘Shall some unfeeling soldier become the master of these fields, so
carefully tilled, some rude stranger own these harvest-fields? see
to what misery fellow-countrymen have been brought by civil strife!’
216 ‘Now in defeat and sadness, since all things are the sport of
chance.’
217 ‘Me too the shepherds call a bard, but I give no ear to them; for as
yet my strain seems far inferior to that of Varius and of Cinna, and
to be as the cackling of a goose among tuneful swans.’ Compare the
lines which Theocritus applies to Lycidas:—
Καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼν Μοισᾶν καπυρὸν στόμα, κἠμὲ λέγοντι
πάντες ἀοιδὸν ἄριστον· ἐγὼ δέ τις οὐ ταχυπειθής,
οὐ Δᾶν· οὐ γάρ πω κατ’ έμὸν νόον οὔτε τὸν ἐσθλόν
Σικελίδαν νίκημι τὸν ἐκ Σάμω, οὐδὲ Φιλητᾶν
ἀείδων, βάτραχος δὲ ποτ’ ἀκρίδας ὥς τις ἐρίσδω.
Theoc. vii. 37–41.
218 ‘Varus, thy name provided only Mantua be spared to us.’ ‘Daphnis,
why gazest thou on the old familiar risings of the constellations?’
219 ‘And now you see the whole level plain [sea?] is calm and still.’
220 i. 496.
221 Compare Gaston Boissier, La Religion Romaine d’Auguste aux Antonins:
‘Il y a pourtant un côté par lequel la quatrième églogue peut être
rattachée à l’histoire du Christianisme; elle nous révèle un certain
état des âmes qui n’a pas été inutile à ses rapides progrès. C’était
une opinion accréditée alors que le monde épuisé touchait à une
grande crise et qu’une révolution se préparait qui lui rendrait la
jeunesse.... Il regnait alors partout une sorte de fermentation,
d’attente inquiète et d’espérance sans limite. “Toutes les créatures
sonpirent,” dit Saint Paul, “et sont dans le travail de
l’enfantement.” Le principal intérêt des vers de Virgile est de nous
garder quelque souvenir de cette disposition des âmes.’
222 Any child born of this marriage in the year 40 B.C. must have owed
its birth, not to Antony, but to Marcellus, the former husband of
Octavia.
223 The application of the words ‘magnum Iovis incrementum’ by the
author of the Ciris (398) to Castor and Pollux suggests a doubt as
to Mr. Munro’s interpretation of the words, accepted by Dr. Kennedy;
though at the same time there is nothing improbable in the
supposition that Virgil gave a meaning to the words which was
misunderstood by his imitator.
224 ‘And will rule the world in peace with his father’s virtues.’
225 Fuit enim hic poeta, ut scrupulose et anxie, ita dissimulanter et
clanculo doctus, ut multa transtulerit quae, unde translata sint,
difficile sit cognitu. Sat. v. 18.
226 Quae a penitissima Graecorum doctrina transtulisset. Ib. 22.
227 De Graecorum penitissimis literis hanc historiam eruit Maro. Ib. 19.
228 ‘Receive a song undertaken at your command.’
229 ‘When the dew on the tender blade is most grateful to the flock.’
230 ‘I shall hurl myself headlong into the waves from the high
mountain’s crag.’
231 ‘But I think that the finest lines in the Latin language are those
five which begin—
Saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala.
I cannot tell you how they struck me. I was amused to find that
Voltaire pronounces that passage to be the finest in Virgil.’ Life
and Letters of Lord Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 371, 372.
232 ‘It was within our orchard I saw you, a child, with my mother
gathering apples, and I was your guide: I had but then entered on my
twelfth year. I could just reach from the ground the fragile
branches: the moment I saw you how utterly lost I was, how borne
astray by fatal passion.’
233 ‘I loved you, maiden, when first you came with my mother wishing to
gather hyacinths from the mountain, and I guided you on the way: and
since I saw you, from that time, never after, not even yet, can I
cease loving you; but you care not, no, by Zeus, not a whit.’
234 Compare 85–86 with Lucret. ii. 355, etc.:—
At mater viridis saltus orbata peragrans.
235 ‘And would that I had been one of you, and had been either shepherd
of your flock or the gatherer of the ripe grape.’
236 ‘I am resolved rather to suffer among the woods, among the wild
beasts’ dens, and to carve my loves on the tender bark of the
trees.’
237 ‘First my Muse deigned lightly to sing in the Sicilian strain, and
blushed not to dwell among the woods.’
238 ‘Nor need you be ashamed of your flock, O Godlike poet; even fair
Adonis once fed his sheep by the river-banks.’
239 Compare the following passage from one of the prose idyls of G.
Sand: ‘Depuis les bergers de Longus jusqu’à ceux de Trianon, la vie
pastorale est un Éden parfumé où les âmes tourmentées et lassées du
tumulte du monde ont essayé de se réfugier. L’art, ce grand
flatteur, ce chercheur complaisant de consolations pour les gens
trop heureux, a traversé une suite ininterrompue de _bergeries_. Et
sous ce titre, _Histoire des bergeries_, j’ai souvent désiré de
faire un livre d’érudition et de critique où j’aurais passé en revue
tous ces différents rêves champêtres dont les hautes classes se sont
nourries avec passion.’ François le Champi.
240 ‘Among the lonely haunts of the shepherds and the deep peace of
Nature.’
241 ‘One may not now hold converse with him from a tree or from a rock,
like a maid and youth, as a maid and youth hold converse with one
another.’
242 Compare the account of the origin of pastoral poetry in Müller’s
Literature of the Greeks.
243 ‘But I attune the plaintive Ausonian melody.’ Incertorum Idyll. 1.
100–101. (Ed. Ahrens.)
244 Compare Symonds’ Studies of Greek Poets, First Series, The
Idyllists.
245 Wordsworth’s great pastoral ‘Michael’ is a marked exception to this
general statement. So, too, love can hardly be called the most
prominent motive in Tennyson’s ‘Dora.’
246 ‘Poured forth its rustic banter in responsive strains.’
247 Idyl vii. 97, vi. 2.
248 Idyl xi. 2–6, xiii. 2.
249 Preface to Poems by M. Arnold, First Series.
250 vii. 19, 20:—
καί μ’ ἀτρέμας εἶπε σεσαρώς
ὄμματι μειδιόωντι, γέλως δέ οἱ εἴχετο χείλευς.
251 x. 41:—
θᾶσαι δὴ καὶ ταῦτα τὰ τῶ θείω Λιθυέρσα.
252 ‘Next well-trimm’d
A crowd of shepherds, with as sunburnt looks
As may be read of in Arcadian books;
Such as sat listening round Apollo’s pipe,
When the great deity, for earth too ripe,
Let his divinity o’erflowing die,
In music, through the vales of Thessaly.’
And again:—
‘He seem’d,
To common lookers on, like one who dream’d
Of idleness in groves Elysian.’
Keats, Endymion.
253 ‘Often, I remember, when a boy I used to pass in song the long
summer days till sunset.’
254 ‘Then he tells in song how Gallus as he strayed by the streams of
Permessus was led by one of the sisters to the Aonian mount.’
‘All those strains, which when attuned by Phoebus, Eurotas heard,
enraptured, and bade his laurels learn by heart, he sings.’
255 Compare for this use of _mollis_ in the sense of ‘impressible’
Cicero’s description of his brother Quintus (Ep. ad Att. i. 17):
‘Nam, quanta sit in Quinto fratre meo comitas, quanta iucunditas,
quam mollis animus et ad accipiendam et ad deponendam iniuriam,
nihil attinet me ad te, qui ea nosti, scribere.’
256 ‘Fundit humo facilem victum _iustissima_ tellus.’
257 ‘There all alone he used to fling wildly to the mountains and the
woods these unpremeditated words in unavailing longing.’
258 ‘He, his snow-white side reposing on the tender hyacinth,—’
259 ‘We leave the dear fields’—‘Therefore you will still keep your
fields, large enough for your desires’—‘He allowed my herds to
wander at their will, even as you see’—‘Ah! the hope of all my
flock, which she had just borne, she left on the bare flint
pavement’—‘Go on, my she-goats, once a happy flock, go on.’
260 This is the tone of the whole of the first Elegy of Tibullus, e.g.
Ipse seram teneras maturo tempore vites
Rusticus et facili grandia poma manu.
Nec tamen interdum pudeat tenuisse bidentem, etc.
261 ‘You are but a clown, Corydon, Alexis cares not for gifts.’
262 ‘As if this could heal my madness.’
263 ‘Ah! may the rough ice not cut thy tender feet.’
264 ‘Shall I see you from afar hang from some bushy rock.’
‘Here green Mincio forms a fringe of soft reeds along his bank.’
265 ‘I shall not yield in song either to Thracian Orpheus or to Linus,
though he be aided by his mother, he by his father, Orpheus by
Calliope, Linus by the fair Apollo. Even Pan, should he strive with
me with all Arcadia as umpire, even Pan would say that he was
vanquished, with Arcadia as umpire.’
266 ‘On this side, with its old familiar murmur, the hedge, your
neighbour’s boundary, on all the sweets of whose willow blossom the
bees of Hybla have fed, will often gently woo you to sleep; on that
from the foot of a high rock the song of the woodman will rise to
the air; nor meanwhile will your darlings, the hoarse wood-pigeons,
cease to coo, nor the turtle-dove to moan from the high elm-tree.’
267 Poems by Matthew Arnold. Memorial Verses:—
‘He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round,’ etc.
268 ‘Such charm is in thy song for us, O Godlike poet, as is to weary
men the charm of deep sleep on the grass, as, in summer heat, it is
to quench one’s thirst in a sparkling brook of fresh water.’
269 ‘What gifts shall I render to you, what gifts in recompense of such
a strain: for neither the whisper of the coming south wind gives me
such joy, nor the sound of shores beaten on by the wave, nor of
rivers hurrying down through rocky glens.’
270 Coleridge’s Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 411.
271 Life and Letters, vol. i. p. 371.
272 From the similarity between the lines in Hor. Sat. i. 1. 114,
Ut cum carceribus missos,
and those at the end of Georg. i. 512,
Ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigae,
it has been argued that Georgic i, at all events, must have appeared
before the first Book of the Satires. Ribbeck supposes that the
lines of the Georgics may have been seen or heard by Horace before
the appearance of the poem, and imitated by him. But is it likely
that Horace would have appropriated an image from an _unpublished_
poem? Is it not as probable that Virgil was the imitator here, as in
other passages where he uses the language of contemporaries, e.g. of
Varius, Ecl. viii. 88?
273 Compare the contrast drawn by him between Ennius and the
contemporary ‘Cantores Euphorionis,’ Tusc. Disp. iii. 19.
274 Cf. also W. F. Teuffel’s History of Roman Literature, chap. i. note
1.
275 ‘You sing the lore of the old poet of Ascra, of the field on which
the corn, the hill on which the grape grows.’ iii. 32. 77–78.
276 ‘The city which is called Rome, O Meliboeus, I thought, in my folly,
was like this city of ours.’
277 ‘For safe the herds range field and fen,
Full-headed stand the shocks of grain.’
278 ‘Now each man basking on his slopes
Weds to the widowed trees the vine.’
279 ‘Thy era, Caesar, which doth bless
Our plains anew with fruitfulness.’ Martin.
280 Compare Merivale’s History of the Romans under the Empire, chap.
xli. ‘The tradition that Maecenas himself suggested the composition
of the Georgics may be accepted, not in the literal sense which has
generally been attached to it, as a means of reviving the art of
husbandry and the cultivation of the devastated soil of Italy; but
rather to recommend the principles of the ancient Romans, their love
of home, of labour, of piety, and order; to magnify their domestic
happiness and greatness, to make men proud of their country on
better grounds than the mere glory of its arms and the extent of its
conquests. It would be absurd to suppose that Virgil’s verses
induced any Roman to put his hand to the plough, or to take from his
bailiff the management of his own estates; but they served
undoubtedly to revive some of the simple tastes and sentiments of
the olden time, and perpetuated, amidst the vices and corruptions of
the Empire, a pure stream of sober and innocent enjoyments, of
which, as we journey onward, we shall rejoice to catch at least
occasional glimpses.’
281 E.g.
Aus_im_ vel tenui vitem committere sulco;
and again,
Neve _tibi_ ad solem vergant vineta cadentem, etc.
282 De Senectute, xv. xvi.
283 ‘What makes the cornfields glad, beneath what constellation,
Maecenas, is right to turn up the soil, and wed the vine to the
elms,’—
284 De Re Rustica, i. 2.
285 Georg. ii. 145, etc.; Aen. iii. 537.
286 ‘Nec dubium quin, ut ait Varro, ceteras pecudes bos honore superare
debeat, praesertim autem in Italia, quae ab hoc nuncupationem
traxisse creditur, quod olim Graeci tauros Ἰταλοὺς vocabant.’
287 ‘Although neither Calabrian bees produce honey for me, nor does my
wine grow mellow in a Formian jar, nor fleeces grow rich in Gallic
pastures.’ Compare too
Ego apis Matinae
More modoque, etc.
The importance of honey as a source of wealth is referred to by
Mommsen in his History of Rome, book v. chap. xi. ‘A small
bee-breeder of this period sold from his thyme-garden, not larger
than an acre, in the neighbourhood of Falerii, honey to an average
annual amount of at least 10,000 sesterces (100_l._).’
288 ‘Illis enim temporibus proceres civitatis in agris morabantur.’
Columella.
289 ‘I shall not here detain you with any tale of fancy, and winding
digressions and long preambles.’
‘The other themes that might have charmed the vacant mind, are all
hackneyed now.’
290 Cf. Tac. Ann. ii. 59–61: ‘M. Silano, L. Norbano consulibus
Germanicus Aegyptum proficiscitur _cognoscendae antiquitatis_.’ The
whole account of the tour of Germanicus illustrates the cultivated
taste for foreign travel among the Romans of the later Republic, the
Augustan Age, and early Empire, and also the mysterious interest
which has attached to Egypt from the earliest times known to
history.
291 This is distinctly stated by Servius in two places, his introductory
comments on Eclogue x, and on Georgic iv, and seems sufficiently
attested. Besides, the introduction into the Georgics of such an
episode as the ‘Pastor Aristaeus’ requires some explanation.
292 Both the nexus of the sense and the rhythm condemn the latitude of
transposition which Ribbeck allows himself. Perhaps the only
alteration which is absolutely demanded is at iv. 203–205. The lines
there, as they stand, clearly interrupt the sense, and are more in
place either after 196 or after 218. The strong line,
Tantus amor florum et generandi gloria mellis,
is a fitting conclusion for the fine paragraph beginning
Nunc age, naturas apibus quas Iuppiter ipse, etc.
Either of these places seems more suitable for the lines than that
after 183. It is possible that the conjecture which Ribbeck adopts
from Wagner, ‘absoluto iam opere in marginem illos versus a poeta
coniectos esse,’ may give the true explanation of the misplacement
of the lines, though this does not seem to apply to any other
passage in the poem. Such bold changes as those introduced by
Ribbeck at ii. 35–46, and again at iii. 120–122, are not required by
the sense, and are condemned by rhythmical considerations. The line
119,
Exquirunt calidumque animis et cursibus acrem,
is weak for the concluding line of the paragraph, which ends much
more naturally with that transposed from 122 to 99,
Neptunique ipsa deducat origine gentem,
as it is Virgil’s way to introduce his mythological illustrations
after his real observations are finished. The paragraph of four
lines, Quare agite o proprios ... Taburnum, stands bald and bare in
the position Ribbeck assigns it, between 108 and 109. The minor
changes for the most part disturb old associations and throw no new
light on the poet’s thought.
293 ‘While charmed with the love of it, we travel round each detail.’
294 ‘To invest these poor interests with a new glory.’
295 Cf. Col. iii. 15: ‘Ut Mago prodit, quem secutus Vergilius tutari
semina et muniri sic praecepit,’ etc.
296 Cf. Col. iv. 9: ‘Nam illam veterem opinionem non esse ferro
tangendos anniculos malleolos quod aciem reformidant, quod frustra
Vergilius et Saserna, Stolonesque, et Catones timuerunt,’ etc. Also
ix. 14: ‘Ceterum hoc eodem tempore progenerari posse apes iuvenco
perempto Democritus et Mago nec minus Vergilius prodiderunt.’ As a
trace of Virgil’s imitation of Varro, compare the passage where,
after speaking of the injury done by goats to the vine, Varro says,
‘Sic factum ut Libero Patri repertori vitis hirci immolarentur,’
with Georgic ii. 380, ‘Non aliam ob culpam,’ etc.
297 ‘From dust in winter, from mud in spring time, you will reap great
crops, Camillus.’
298 ‘He, my son, is a worthy man, and a good farmer, whose implements
shine brightly.’
299 i. 269.
300 ‘Ceres first taught mortals to turn up the earth with iron.’
301 ‘Pray, farmers, for wet summers and dry winters’—‘And may have
called forth the rain by vows’—‘Especially worship the Gods, and
offer the yearly sacrifices to mighty Ceres.’ Cf. Ἔργ. καὶ Ἡμ. 463:—
Εὔχεσθαι δὲ Διὶ χθονίῳ Δημήτερί θ’ ἁγνῇ.
302 The great confusion into which it had fallen before its reformation
by Julius Caesar may have made this return to the primitive
‘Shepherd’s Calendar’ familiar to Virgil’s youth.
303 ‘When the white bird, abhorred by the long snakes, has come.’ Cf.
Ἔργ. καὶ Ἡμ. 448:—
Φράζεσθαι δ’ εὖτ’ ἂν γεράνου φωνὴν ἐπακούσῃς.
304 The same suggestion of the ancient and unchanging nature of this art
is vividly conveyed in the Chorus of the Antigone:—
Θεῶν τε τὰν ὑπερτάταν Γᾶν
ἄφθιτον ἀκαμἀταν ἀποτρύεται,
ἰλλομένων ἀρότρων ἔτος εἰς ἔτος, ἱππείῳ γένει πολεύων.
305 ‘There, as they say, there is either the silence of midnight, and a
thicker darkness beneath the canopy of night, or else the dawn
returns to them from us and brings back the day; and when the
morning sun breathes on us with the first breath of his panting
steeds, there the glowing star of evening is lighting up her late
fires.’
306 ‘They are glad, now that the rains are over, to revisit their young
brood and their dear nests.’
307 Introduction to Notes, ii. p. 315.
308 Compare the contemptuous expressions used by Cicero, Tusc. Disp. ii.
3, of those who had written on the Epicurean philosophy in Latin. It
seems strange, if he had any hand in editing his poems, that he
makes no exception there in favour of Lucretius.
309 Compare Munro’s notes _passim_, and specially the note on Lucret.
iii. 449.
310 Compare Georg. iii. 291 with Lucret. i. 926.
311 Chap. iii. p. 109.
312 Merivale’s Roman Empire.
313 ‘What remains of tilled land, even that Nature by its own force
would overgrow with briars did not the force of man resist it,
inured, for the sake of living, to ply, with pain and labour, the
stout mattock, and to split up the new earth with the deep-sunk
ploughs: did not we, by turning up the fruitful clods with the
plough-share, and subduing the soil of the earth, call forth the
seeds to the birth, they could not of their own impulse come forth
into the clear air. And after all, sometimes the products of much
toil, when they are already in blade and in beauty over the earth,
either the Sun in heaven scorches with excessive heat, or sudden
rains and chill frosts ruin them, and the blasts of the winds in
wild hurricane make them their sport.’ Lucret. v. 206–217 (See
Munro’s note on the passage). Cf. Georg. ii. 411; i. 198; i. 208;
ii. 237; ii. 47; i. 197. Compare also Virgil’s use of _subigere_ and
_vertere_ as applied to the soil.
314 ‘And now the aged peasant, shaking his head, often sighs forth the
complaint, that the labour of his hands has come to naught.’ Lucret.
ii. 1164, etc.
315 v. 932. etc.
316 ii. 1160, etc.
317 ii. 1146; v. 95.
318 Compare Lucret. v. 1367–1369 with Georg. ii. 36. Compare also
Virgil’s use of _indulgere_ and _indulgentia_.
319 ‘After that they essayed now one, now another, mode of tilling the
dear plot of ground, and they saw that the earth made wild fruits
into fruits of the garden, by a kindly and caressing culture.’
320 De Senectute, xv.
321 v. 204, etc.
322 Georg. i. 237–8.
323 Ib. 128.
324 Cf. Georg. i. 351–353:—
Atque haec ut certis possemus discere signis,
Aestusque pluviasque et agentis frigora ventos,
Ipse Pater statuit, quid menstrua Luna moneret.
325 ‘Travailler et prier, voilà la conclusion des Georgiques.’ From an
article in the Revue des Deux Mondes (vol. 104), called Un Poëte
Théologien, by Gaston Boissier.
326 Compare, among many other similar instances, such expressions as
these:—
Labor actus in orbem
Agricolis redit.
Omnia quae multo ante memor provisa repones.
Quae vigilanda viris.
Continuo in silvis magna vi flexa domatur, etc.
327 ‘And is incessantly drilling the land, and exercising command over
the fields’—‘Then at length exercise a stern command, and restrain
the wild luxuriance of the branches’—‘They will, with no reluctant
obedience, adopt any ways you bid them.’
328 ‘Whether it is that the heat opens up various ways of access and
relaxes the secret pores, where the sap may enter into the young
plants.’
329 ‘That he owed allegiance to no master.’
330 ‘But your excellence and the hope of the delightful enjoyment of
your friendship.’ ‘O my pride, O thou, to whom I justly ascribe the
greatest share of my renown.’
331 ‘While mighty Caesar is hurling the thunder-bolts of war by the deep
Euphrates, and, a conqueror, issues his laws among willing subjects,
and is already on the way which leads to Heaven.’
332 ‘Gods or Goddesses whose task it is to watch over the fields.’
333 ‘Blessed too was he who knew the Gods of the country.’
334 Compare the first book of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum.
335 Servius has the following note on the passage:—‘Stoici dicunt non
esse nisi unum deum, et unam eandemque (esse) potestatem, quae pro
ratione officiorum nostrorum variis nominibus appellatur. Unde
eundem Solem, eundem Liberum, eundem Apollinem vocant. Item Lunam,
eandem Dianam, eandem Cererem, eandem Iunonem, eandem Proserpinam
dicunt; secundum quos, pro Sole et Luna, Liberum et Cererem
invocavit.’
336 ‘Nor is it without good result that golden-haired Ceres beholds him
from Heaven on high.’
337 Quoted by M. Benoist.
338 ‘But on whom she gazes with bright and favourable aspect, for them
the field bears the ear of corn abundantly.’
339 Cf. ‘Incolumi Iove et urbe Roma.’ Hor. iii. 5. 12. Cf. also iii. 3.
42; iii. 30. 8.
Cf. also ‘Sedem Iovis Optimi Maximi auspicato a maioribus pignus
imperii conditam,’ etc. Tac. Hist. iii. 72; and ‘Sed nihil aeque
quam incendium Capitolii, ut finem imperio adesse crederent,
impulerat,’ iv. 54.
The Capitol is the symbol of the eternal duration of the Empire to
Virgil also:—
Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet, imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.
Aen. ix. 448–9.
340 Tac. Ann. iv. 38.
341 ‘Giver of fruits, and lord over the seasons.’
342 Cf. Tac. Ann. iii. 54. ‘At Hercule nemo refert quod Italia externae
opis indiget, quod vita populi Romani per incerta maris et
tempestatum cotidie volvitur.... Hanc, Patres Conscripti, curam
sustinet princeps, haec omissa funditus rem publicam trahet.’
343 ‘From this land thy white herds, Clitumnus, and the bull, most
stately victim, after bathing often in thy sacred stream, have led
the procession of the Roman triumphs to the temples of the Gods.’
344 ‘I too must try to find some way by which I may rise aloft, and be
borne triumphant through the mouths of men.’
345 ‘I shall have all Greece to quit Alpheus and the groves of
Molorchus, and to contend before me in the race and with the cestus
of raw hide.’
346 ‘Soon I shall gird myself up to celebrate the fiery battles of
Caesar.’
347 ‘And when the parched field is all hot and its blades of corn are
withering, look! from the brow of its sloping channel he tempts
forth the rushing stream: it as it falls awakens a hoarse murmur
among the smooth stones, and with its bubbling waters cools the
tilled land.’ i. 107–110.
348 ‘Mark too, when in the woods, the walnut, in great numbers, clothes
itself in blossom and weighs down the fragrant branches, if there is
abundance of fruit, the corn crops will likewise be in abundance,
and there will come a great threshing with a great heat.’ i.
187–190.
349 ‘There is no other land of plain from which you will see more wains
wending their way home with the lagging steers.’ ii. 205–206.
350 ‘They let them feed in lonely pastures, and by the bank of brimming
rivers, where moss abounds and the grass is greenest, and where
caves give shelter, and the shadow of some rock is cast far in
front.’ iii. 143–145.
_ 351 a._ ‘The young plant shoots up under the mighty shadow of its
mother.’
_b._ ‘Rending them from the loving body of their mother.’
_c._ ‘Will cast off their woodland spirit.’
_d._ ‘And marvels at its strange leaves and fruits not its own.’
_e._ ‘Lest the plants through the sudden change should fail to
recognise their mother.’
_f._ ‘And the plants will lift up their hearts.’
_g._ ‘By their strength they may become accustomed to mount aloft
and despise the winds.’
_h._ ‘And while they are still in the first stage of growth or their
leaves are new, you must spare their infancy.’
_i._ ‘Before that they shrink from the steel.’
_k._ ‘Especially while the leaf is still tender, and all unwitting
of its trials.’
352 As an instance of the last, cf. iii. 316, 317:—
Atque ipsae memores redeunt in tecta, suosque
Ducunt.
353 ‘These passions of their hearts and these desperate battles are all
stilled to rest, by the check of a little handful of dust.’ Compare
Horace’s line, Od. i. 28. 3:—
_Pulveris exigui_ prope litus parva Matinum
Munera.
354 ‘What joy to plant Ismarus with the vine, or to clothe the mighty
sides of Taburnus with the olive.’
355 ‘And now the last vintager sings with joy at completing all his
rows.’
356 iii. 321–338.
357 ‘So too looked even Saturn, when with nimble movement, at the
approach of his wife, he let the mane toss on his neck, and, as he
sped away, made high Pelion ring with his shrill neighing.’
358 ‘So with the snowy gift of wool, if one may believe the tale, did
Pan, the God of Arcadia, charm and beguile thee, O Luna, calling
thee into the deep groves; nor didst thou scorn his call.’
359 ‘These laws and everlasting covenants were at once established by
Nature for particular places, from the time when Deucalion first
cast stones into the empty world, whence men, a hard race, were
born.’
360 ‘The resources of art prove baneful: its masters retired baffled,
Chiron, son of Philyra, and Melampus, son of Amythaon.’
361 ‘The healing art muttered in speechless fear.’
362 ‘Thrice let the auspicious victim pass around the young crops.’
363 ‘And invoke thee, Bacchus, in their joyous chants, and in honour of
thee hang soft faces waving in the wind from the high pine tree.’
364 ‘Just as happens to the rower who scarcely keeps his boat against
the stream, if he slackens his stroke, and has it swept headlong
down the channel of the river.’
365 ‘The best days of life are those which fly first from unhappy
mortals: then disease steals on, and sad old age.’
366 ‘When they behold the Sun, that we see the stars of night, and that
they share alternately with us the divisions of the sky, and pass
their nights parallel to our days.’
367 The passage in the Georgics may be compared with those passages
which Mr. Munro quotes in his note to Lucret. i. 1.
368 W. Savage Landor.
369 ‘And their brazen vessels constantly split asunder, and the rough
icicle froze on their unkempt beards.’
370 ‘When the snow lies deep, when the rivers force the masses of ice
slowly down.’
371 ‘Where dark Galaesus waters the yellowing cornfields.’
372 ‘In his heart he enjoyed wealth equal to the wealth of kings; and as
he returned late at night he loaded his board with a feast
unbought.’
373 Cf. Ecl. viii. 6; Aen. i. 244.
374 Cf. supra, p. 239.
375 ‘Those who ministered to them, came into close contact and bore the
labour, which a feeling of honour compelled them to undergo, and the
appealing voice of the weary sufferers, mingling with the voice of
their complaining. It was in this way accordingly that the best men
died.’
376 ‘Neither the shade of the high groves, nor the soft meadows can
rouse any feeling, nor the river which rolling over stones in a
stream purer than amber hurries to the plain.’
377 ‘Nor can the tender willows and the grass fresh with dew, and the
rivers gliding level with their banks, delight her heart, and banish
her sorrow.’
378 ‘The ploughman goes sadly on his way, separating the sorrowing steer
from his dead brother.’ The truth of this picture is confirmed by a
modern writer, who, in her idyllic stories from the rural life of
France, seems from time to time, better than any modern poet, to
reproduce the Virgilian feeling of Nature. ‘Dans le haut du champ un
vieillard, dont le dos large et la figure sévère rappelaient celui
d’Holbein, mais dont les vêtements n’annonçaient pas la misère,
poussait gravement son _areau_ de forme antique, traîné par deux
bœufs tranquilles, à la robe d’un jaune pâle, véritables patriarches
de la prairie, hauts de taille, un peu maigres, les cornes longues
et rabattues, de ces vieux travailleurs qu’une longue habitude a
rendus _frères_, comme on les appelle dans nos campagnes, et qui,
privés l’un de l’autre, se refusent au travail avec un nouveau
compagnon et se laissent mourir de chagrin. Les gens qui ne
connaissent pas la campagne taxent de fable l’amitié du bœuf pour
son camarade d’attelage. Qu’ils viennent voir au fond de l’étable un
pauvre animal maigre, exténué, battant de sa queue inquiète ses
flancs décharnés, soufflant avec effroi et dédain sur la nourriture
qu’on lui présente, les yeux toujours tournés vers la porte, en
grattant du pied la place vide à ses côtés, flairant les jougs et
les chaînes que son compagnon a portés, et l’appelant sans cesse
avec de déplorables mugissements. Le bouvier dira: “C’est une paire
de bœufs perdue: son frère est mort, et celui-là ne travaillera
plus. II faudrait pouvoir l’engraisser pour l’abattre; mais il ne
veut pas manger, et bientôt il sera mort de faim.”’ La Mare au
Diable. G. Sand.
The famous picture in Lucret. ii. 355–366,
At mater viridis ... notumque requirit,
shows a similar observation of the strength of bovine affection.
379 ‘What avail all their toil or their services to man? what that they
have upturned the heavy earth with the plough-share? and yet they
have received no harm from Massic vintages or luxurious banquets;
their food is leaves and simple grass, their drink is the water of
fresh springs, and rivers kept bright by their speed; and no care
breaks their wholesome sleep.’
380 ‘The guardian power of the groves, for whom three hundred snow-white
steers browse in the rich thickets of Cea.’
381 ‘On the one side Euphrates, on the other Germany sets war afoot:
neighbouring cities, breaking their compacts, are in arms against
each other; Mars, in unhallowed rage, is abroad over all the world;
even as when the chariots have burst forth from the barriers, they
bound into the course, and the charioteer, vainly pulling the reins,
is borne along by his steeds, and the chariot no longer obeys his
guidance.’
382 ‘And the cattle spoke, horror unutterable’—‘And the images of ivory
within the temples weep in sorrow, and the images of bronze sweat.’
383 ‘A voice too was heard by many through the silent groves, speaking a
mighty sound, and ghosts, wondrous pale, were seen in the dusk.’
384 ‘And dogs of ill omen and dire birds gave signs’—‘and mountain-built
cities echoed through the night with the howl of wolves.’
385 ‘Doubtless too the time will come when in those lands the
husbandman, as he upheaves the earth with his crooked plough, will
find javelins eaten away by rough rust, or with his heavy mattock
will strike on empty helmets, and marvel at the huge bones in their
tombs, now dug open.’
386 ‘There is no due honour now to the plough, the fields are desolate,
and those who tilled them are gone, and the crooked pruning-hooks
are forged into the stiff sword.’
387 ‘This land has reared a valiant race of men, the Marsi and Sabellian
youth, the Ligurian trained to hardship, and the Volscian spearmen.’
388 ‘This too bore the Decii and the great Camilli, the Scipios, men of
iron in war, and thee, great Caesar, who now, ere this victorious in
the furthest coasts of Asia, art turning away the unwarlike Indian
from the hills of Rome.’
389 ‘It is in thy honour that I enter on the task of treating an art of
ancient renown.’
390 ‘Besides many famous cities, with their massive workmanship, many
towns piled by the hand of man on steep crags, and rivers gliding
beneath walls that have been from of old.’
391 ‘Though no lofty mansion with proud portals pours forth from all its
chambers its wave of those who pay their court in the morning.’—
‘Though there are no golden statues of youths through their
chambers, holding blazing torches in their right hands.’
392 ‘They revel in the bloodshed of their brethren.’
393 ‘By the bloodshed of their fellow-citizens they amass an estate, and
covetously double their riches, heaping murder upon murder: they
take a cruel joy in the sad death of a brother; and hate and fear
the board of their kinsmen.’ Lucret. iii. 70–73.
394 ‘Meantime his dear children hang with kisses round his lips; a pure
household keeps well all the laws of chastity.’
395 ‘Soon no longer shall thy home receive thee with glad greeting, nor
thy most excellent wife, nor thy dear children run to meet thee to
snatch the first kiss.’
The most classical of our own poets seems to combine both
representations with the thought and representation of an earlier
passage of the Georgics
(Et quidam seros hiberni ad luminis ignes, etc.)
in the familiar stanza—
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;
No children run to meet their sire’s return,
And climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
396 ‘Hence he supports his country and his humble home, hence his herds
of cattle, and his well-deserving steers.’
397 Cp. ‘Le mot triste et doux de Virgile: “O heureux l’homme des
champs, s’il connaissait son bonheur” est un regret, mais, comme
tous les regrets, c’est aussi une prédiction. Un jour viendra où le
laboureur pourra être aussi un artiste, si non pour exprimer (ce qui
importera assez peu alors) du moins pour sentir le beau.’ G. Sand.
398 Virgil rightly connects this greatness with the site of Rome in the
line,
Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces.
It was from the necessities imposed by that site that Rome at an
early period became the largest urban community in Italy, and was
forced, in consequence of the contiguous settlements of other races,
to begin that incorporating and assimilating policy which ultimately
enabled her to establish universal empire. Cp. ‘Rome herself, like
other cities of Italy, Gaul, and elsewhere, grew out of the
primitive hill-fortresses; the distinction between Rome and other
cities, the distinction which made Rome all that she became, was
that Rome did not grow out of a single fortress of the kind, but out
of several.’ Historical and Architectural Sketches, by E. A.
Freeman, D.C.L., etc.—Walls of Rome, p. 160.
399 Cf. ‘Itaque in hoc Latio et Saturnia terra, ubi Dii cultus agrorum
progeniem suam docuerunt.’ Columella.
400 ‘Such was the life that the old Sabines lived long ago, such the
life of Remus and his brother; thus in truth brave Etruria grew
strong and Rome became the glory of the world, and though a single
city enclosed seven hills within her wall. Nay, even before the
Sovereign-lord, born on Dicte, wielded the sceptre, and an unholy
generation feasted on slaughtered steers, this was the life of
Saturn on earth in the golden age. Not yet had men heard the blare
of the war-trumpet, not yet had they heard the clang of the sword on
the hard anvil.’
401 ‘Come then, ye tillers of the soil, learn the special modes of
husbandry, each according to its kind.’
402 E.g. Col. iv. 9: ‘Nam illam veterem opinionem damnavit usus non esse
ferro tangendos anniculos malleolos, quod aciem reformidant, quod
frustra Vergilius, et Saserna, Stolonesque et Catones timuerunt.’
Virgil is there quoted along with the recognised authorities on
agriculture. This is often done in matters on which Columella agrees
with him, e.g. i. chap. 4: ‘Si verissimo vati velut oraculo
crediderimus dicenti.’
403 Cp. Gisborne’s ‘Essays on Ancient Agriculture,’ and ‘Forest Trees
and Woodland Scenery,’ by W. Menzies, Deputy Surveyor of Windsor
Forest and Parks. The following extracts from the last-named work—a
work which combines thorough practical knowledge with true poetical
feeling—support the statement in the text: ‘All the methods, both
natural and artificial, of propagating trees are described in
graphic language. Virgil also fully describes the self-sowing of
trees, artificial sowing, propagating by transplanting of suckers,
propagating by pegging down the branches till they strike root at
the point of contact with the earth, and propagating by simply
cutting off a small branch from the top and placing it in the moist
warm earth. All these are correct. Indeed, the art is little
advanced since the time of Virgil,’ p. 46. Mr. Menzies suggests an
ingenious explanation of Virgil’s mistake as to what trees could be
grafted on one another. In speaking of the Aeneid he bears further
testimony to the accuracy of Virgil’s observation: ‘The poet was
equally great and observant of the details of woodcraft, and must
have watched keenly the details of the foresters around him,’ p. 50.
This remark reminds us of the fact that one of his father’s means of
livelihood was ‘silvis coemendis.’ At p. 53 Mr. Menzies draws
special attention to the description of the mistletoe in Book vi,
and of the aged elm under which the Shades are described as resting.
404 Cp. Holdsworth’s Remarks and Dissertations on the Georgics.
405 Compare the distinction drawn out by De Quincey, and originally
suggested by Wordsworth, between the literature of knowledge and the
literature of power.
406 ‘A Venetian born of peasant parents, reared in a rough woodland
country.’ Macrobius, v. 2.
407 ‘To listen to their elders, to point out to younger men the ways by
which their substance might be increased, the passions that lead to
ruin be weakened.’ Ep. ii. 1. 106–107.
408 Georg. i. 56–59.
409 E.g. iii. 408:—
Aut impacatos a tergo horrebis Hiberos.
410 Ἔργ. κ. Ἡμ. 310.
411 ‘This retreat—charming to me, nay, if you believe me, even beautiful
in itself.’
412 ‘Sweet interchange
Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains.’
Paradise Lost, Book ix. II. 115–116.
413 ‘Such as we often look down on in some mountain dale.’
414 ‘In early spring when chill waters are streaming down from the hoary
sides of the hills, and the clod breaks up and crumbles beneath the
west wind.’
415 ‘Whirling whole forests in its mad eddies, Eridanus, monarch of
rivers, swept them before it, and bore over all the plains herds of
cattle with their stalls.’
416 The lines,
‘And now we passed
From Como, when the light was gray,
And in my head for half the day,
The rich Virgilian rustic measure
Of Lari Maxume, all the way,
Like ballad-burthen music, kept,’ etc.,
are so familiarly known that they hardly need to be quoted in
support of this statement. But among other testimonies to the power
of Virgilian associations, one may be quoted from another great
poet, whose mind was less attuned to Latin than to Greek and English
poetry. Goethe, in his ‘Letters from Italy,’ mentions, on coming to
the Lago di Garda, that he was reminded of the line,
Fluctibus et fremitu adsurgens, Benace, marino.
He adds this remark: ‘This is the first Latin verse, the subject of
which ever stood visibly before me, and now, in the present moment,
when the wind is blowing stronger and stronger, and the lake casts
loftier billows against the little harbour, it is just as true as it
was hundreds of years ago. Much, indeed, has changed, but the wind
still roars about the lake, _the aspect of which gains even greater
glory from a line of Virgil_.’
417 ‘All gods and goddesses whose task it is to watch over the fields.’
418 Cp. Mommsen, book i. chap. 2: ‘As the Greek when he sacrificed
raised his eyes to Heaven, so the Roman veiled his head; for the
prayer of the former was vision, that of the latter reflection.’ Cf.
also Lucret. v. 1198:—
Nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri
Vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras;
and Virg. Aen. iii. 405–409:—
Purpureo velare comas adopertus amictu.
* * * * *
Hunc socii morem sacrorum, hunc ipse teneto;
Hac casti maneant in religione nepotes.
419 ‘Meanwhile cheering her long task with song his wife runs over her
web with shrill-sounding shuttle.’
420 Compare the double meaning of ‘moenia’ and ‘munia,’ as illustrated
by Mommsen.
421 Cp. Mommsen, book i. chap. 2.
422 ‘The characters and tasks and hosts and battles.’
423 ‘They themselves supply the sovereign and tiny citizens of the
community.’
424 ‘So great is their passion for flowers, so great is their pride in
producing honey.’
425 ‘But the stock remains eternal, and through long years the fortune
of the house stands steadfast, and the grandsires of grandsires are
counted up.’
426 Compare with this the character of the Italian race given in the
speech of Remulus, Aen. ix. 603, etc.:—
Venatu invigilant pueri, etc.
427 ‘There are forests and the lairs of wild beasts, a youth inured to
hardship and accustomed to scanty fare, worship of the gods and
reverence yielded to parents.’
428 This abstinence is indirectly inculcated and illustrated in such
passages as iii. 209, 524, iv. 197, etc.
429 It is among the blessings of the countryman’s lot enumerated in the
passage ‘O fortunatos,’ etc., that he is removed from the painful
sight of the contrasts between poverty and riches which the life of
a great city presents—
neque ille
Aut doluit miserans inopem aut invidit habenti.
430 Il. xxi. 257–262.
431 ‘Out of the tranquil deep current of ocean.’ Professor Lushington’s
Inaugural Lecture delivered to the Students of the Greek Classes in
the University of Glasgow, November, 1838.
432 ‘Which rolling over rocks in stream purer than amber makes for the
plain.’
433 ‘Forthwith as the winds are rising, either the channels of the sea
begin to boil and swell, and a dry crashing sound to be heard on the
lofty mountains, or the shores to echo far with a confused noise,
and the uproar of the woods to wax louder.’ G. i. 356–9.
434 E.g. those of Lucretia, Virginia, Coriolanus, Brutus, T. Manlius,
etc.
435 Cf. Annals, iii. 5, ‘Veterum instituta ... meditata ad virtutis
memoriam carmina,’—quoted by Teuffel.
436 Cf. Horace’s Ode, ‘Scriberis Vario,’ etc., which shows at least that
Agrippa desired to have a poem written in honour of his exploits.
437 Diomedes, quoted by Teuffel.
438 Rumoresque serit varios ac talia fatur. Aen. xii. 228.
Furius in decimo:
Rumoresque serunt varios et multa requirunt.
Nomine quemque vocans reficitque in proelia pulsos. Aen. xi.
731.
Furius in undecimo:
Nomine quemque ciet; dictorum tempus adesse
Commemorat.
Deinde infra:
Confirmat dictis simul atque exuscitat acres
Ad bellandum animos reficitque ad proelia mentes.
439 Pro Arch. 11.
440 Ep. ad Att. i. 16: ‘Epigrammatis tuis, quae in Amaltheo posuisti,
contenti erimus, praesertim quum et Chilius nos reliquerit, et
Archias nihil de me scripserit; ac vereor, ne, Lucullis quoniam
Graecum poema condidit, nunc ad Caecilianam fabulam spectet.’
441 Also one on his exile.
442 Epist. ad Q. Fratrem, lib. ii. 16.
443 ‘Though anxious to do so, worthy father, I have not strength enough;
for it is not every one who can describe the lines bristling with
pikes, nor the Gauls dying in the fight with broken spear point, or
the wounded Parthian falling from his horse.’
444 ‘Nor should I choose rather to write prosaic discourses than to
treat of historic deeds, and to describe the scenes of other lands
and rivers and castles perched on mountains, and barbarous realms,
and the wars brought to an end over the whole world under thy
auspices.’
445 ‘Or whether gorged with rich tripe (_al._ with huge paunch
distended) Furius will spit his white snows over the Alps in
winter-time.’ The ‘Furius’ mentioned here is supposed to be M.
Furius Bibaculus, the reputed author of a poem on the Gallic War, as
well as of the Epigrams, ‘referta contumeliis Caesarum,’ of which
Tacitus speaks (An. iv. 34).
446 ‘While blustering Alpinus strangles Memnon, and disfigures and
bemires the source of the Rhine by his description.’
447 Sat. i. 10. 46.
448 ‘Such love songs Varro too composed after finishing his Jason,
Varro, the great passion of his own Leucadia.’
449 Schwabe, Quaestiones Catullianae, p. 279.
450 ‘For my strain seems not yet to be worthy of Varius or Cinna, but to
be as the cackling of geese amidst the melody of swans.’
451 Mentioned by W. S. Teuffel. Perhaps the best known poem in our own
literature of this type is ‘The Campaign’ of Addison.
452 ‘Who takes on himself to write the story of Augustus’ deeds, who
perpetuates to distant ages the memory of wars waged and the peace
concluded?’
453 ‘If our song be of the woods, let the woods be worthy of a consul.’
‘I must essay a way by which I too may be able to rise above the
ground, and to speed triumphant through the mouths of men.’
454 ‘So vast a toil it was to build up the Roman people.’
455 ‘And now the mighty Aeneas shall rule over the Trojans, and his
children’s children who may be born hereafter.’
456 ‘Aeneas with those belonging to him starting for Hesperia.’
457 Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 298.
458 The account here given of the development of the legend is taken
from Schwegler, Römische Geschichte.
459 The growth of this legend is discussed with learning and ability by
Professor Nettleship in his ‘Vergil,’ pp. 46–61.
460 Suetonius says of the Emperor Claudius, ‘Iliensibus, quasi Romanae
gentis auctoribus, tributa in perpetuum remisit, recitata vetere
epistula Graeca Senatus populique Romani Seleuco regi amicitiam et
societatem ita demum pollicentis, si consanguineos suos Ilienses ab
omni onere immunes praestitisset.’ For these and other official
recognitions of the connexion between Rome and Ilium, see Schwegler,
Römische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 305 et seq.
461 Mommsen (book iii. ch. 14) quotes these two lines from an Epigram
composed in the name of Flamininus:—
Αἰνεἀδας Τίτος ὕμμιν ὐπέρτατον ὤπασε δῶρον
Ἑλλήνων τεύξας παισὶν ἐλευθερίαν.
462 Livy, xxv. 12.
463 Aen. v. 117–123.
464 ‘When old Priam fell beneath the Pelasgian host.’
465 ‘From Jove is the origin of our race: in Jove, as their fore-father,
the Dardan youth exults; our king himself the Trojan Aeneas is of
the high lineage of Jove.’ Aen. vii. 219–221.
466 ‘Lo the star of Caesar sprung from Dione hath advanced’—‘wreathing
his brows with the myrtle sacred to his mother.’ Cf. Sic fatus velat
materna tempora myrto. Aen. v. 72.
467 ‘There shall be born of an illustrious line a Trojan Caesar,
destined to make ocean the boundary of his empire, the stars the
boundary of his fame, Julius, a name handed down from mighty Iulus.’
Aen. i. 286–288.
468 ‘Oxus forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain cradle in Pamere.’
Sohrab and Rustum.
469 Cf. Hor. Od. iii. 17. 2–4:—
Quando et priores hinc Lamias ferunt
Denominatos, et nepotum
Per memores genus omne fastos, etc.
470 ‘The place was called Ardea long ago by our fathers: and now Ardea,
a name of might, haunts the spot.’
471 ‘And after suffering much in war too, before he could found a city,
and find a home for his gods in Latium—from whom is the Latin race,
and the lords of Alba, and the walls of lofty Rome.’
472 ‘Nay, but it is Poseidon, the girdler of the earth, that hath been
wroth continually with quenchless anger for the Cyclops’ sake whom
he blinded of his eye.’ Butcher and Lang.
473 ‘Who in understanding is beyond mortals and beyond all men hath done
sacrifice to the deathless gods who keep the wide heaven.’ Butcher
and Lang.
474 Lucret. iii. 836.
475 ‘There was a city of old, dwelt in by settlers from Tyre,
Carthage,—that this should hold the empire of the world, if by any
means the fates should allow, is even then the fond desire and
purpose of the goddess. Yet she had heard that a new race was
issuing from Trojan blood, destined hereafter to overthrow the
Tyrian towers,—and from them should spring a people, wielding wide
sway, and of proud prowess in war, who should come to lay waste
Libya—so did the Parcae roll on the circling events.’
476 ‘There shall come a fitting time for fight, seek not to hasten it
on, when fierce Carthage shall hurl against the Roman towers a
mighty ruin, through the open gateways of the Alps.’
477 ‘There remains deeply rankling in her heart the memory of the
decision of Paris, and of the wrong of her slighted beauty, of the
hated family, and the honours of the ravished Ganymede.’
478 ‘Through varied accidents, through so many perils, we hold our
course to Latium, where the Fates reveal to us a peaceful
settlement.’
479 ‘Who should hold sea and land in universal sway.’
480 ‘Iulius a name handed down from mighty Iulus.’
481 ‘Looking down on the sail-winged sea, and low-lying lands, and the
coasts and wide nations.’
482 ‘Smiling on her with that look with which he clears the sky and the
storms, the father of men and gods,’—
483 ‘Within unhallowed Rage, seated on a heap of cruel arms, and bound
with a hundred knots of brass behind his back, will chafe wildly
with blood-stained lips.’ Cf. the note on the passage in Servius:
‘In foro Augusti introeuntibus ad sinistram fuit bellum pictum et
furor sedens super arma aenis vinctus, eo habitu quo poeta dixit.’
484 ‘There is a place named by the Greeks Hesperia, a land of old
renown, mighty in arms and the richness of its soil—the Oenotrians
dwelt in it. Now the story is that their descendants have called the
nation Italia from the name of their leader.’
485 Sat. v. 2. 4.
486 ‘And you will come to the land Hesperia, where Lydian Tiber flows
between rich fields of men with tranquil stream.’
487 The line
Quod per amoenam urbem leni fluit agmine flumen
occurs among the fragments of Ennius, and has been imitated also by
Lucretius (v. 271).
488 Serv. Comment. on line 486.
489 ‘An ancient city, that held empire through long years, is falling in
ruins.’
490 ‘Let their descendants piously observe this ceremony.’
491 ‘Whether they are preparing to bring all the woes of war on the
Getae, or the Hyrcanians, or the Arabs, or to hold their way to the
Indians, and to go on and on towards the dawn, and to claim back the
standards from the Parthians.’
492 ‘And the good apart, and Cato giving to them laws.’
493 Audire est operae pretium procedere recte
Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere vultis.
494 ‘Yes, let her spread her name of fear,
To farthest shores; where central waves
Part Africa from Europe, where
Nile’s swelling current half the year
The plains with plenty laves.
* * *
Let earth’s remotest regions still
Her conquering arms to glory call
Where scorching suns the long day fill,
Where mists and snows and tempests chill,
Hold reckless bacchanal.’ Martin.
495 ‘To them I assign no goal to their achievements, no end,—I have
given empire illimitable.’ i. 278–9.
496 ‘The Romans, lords of the world, and the people clad in the gown.’
i. 282.
497 ‘Here the house of Aeneas shall rule in all coasts, and their sons’
sons, and they who shall be born from them.’ iii. 97–8.
498 ‘We, who under thy protection have traversed the heaving sea in thy
fleet, we shall raise to the stars thy descendants in days to come,
and shall give empire to thy city.’ iii. 157–9.
499 ‘But that he should be one to rule over Italy the mother of empire,
echoing with the roar of war, who should transmit a race from the
high line of Troy, and bring the whole world beneath his laws.’ iv.
229–31.
500 ‘Thine be the task, O Roman, to sway the nations with thy imperial
rule—these shall be thy arts—to impose on men the law of peace, to
spare those who yield, and to quell the proud.’ vi. 852–4.
501 ‘Strangers shall come as thy sons-in-law, destined by mingling their
blood with ours to raise our name to the stars—whose descendants
shall see all things, where the Sun beholds either Ocean in his
course, overthrown beneath their feet and governed.’ vii. 98–101.
502 ‘While the house of Aeneas shall dwell by the Capitol’s immoveable
rock, and a Roman lord hold empire.’ ix. 448–9.
503 ‘Rightly shall all the wars destined to come hereafter subside in
peace beneath the line of Assaracus.’ ix. 642–3.
504 ‘The race that mixed with Ausonian blood shall arise from them, thou
shalt see transcend men, nay even gods in piety; nor shall any
people equally pay homage to thee.’ xii. 838–40.
505 vii. 219, etc.
506 Hor. Od. iii. 5. 9.
507 The Latin name seems rather associated with the thought of the other
great distinguishing characteristic of the Romans, their capacity
for law. Cf. Hor. Od. iv. 14. 7, ‘Quem legis expertes Latinae,’ etc.
Virgil may intend to indicate this peaceful attribute of the Latins,
in contradistinction to the warlike energy of the other Italian
races, in the line (Aen. vii. 204),—
Sponte sua veterisque dei se more tenentem.
508 ‘The men in whom even then the Italian land rejoiced as her sons,
and their fiery spirit in war.’ vii. 643–4.
509 iii. 539:—Bellum, O terra hospita, portas.
510 ‘A hardy stock, we bear our new-born sons to the rivers, and harden
them with the chill cold; as boys they ply the chase and give the
woods no rest: it is their pastime to rein the steed and aim their
arrows from the bow. But our warrior youth, patient in toil and
inured to scanty fare, either subdues the soil with the harrow or
makes towns shake by their assault. Each period of life wears away
in arms, and with the butt end of the spear we goad the steer; nor
does the lethargy of age impair our spirit or change our vigour: our
hoary hairs we press with the helmet, and it is our joy ever to
gather fresh booty and to live by foray.’ ix. 603–613.
511 ‘The men who dwell in high Praeneste and the tilled land where Gabii
worships Juno, and the Hernican rocks, sparkling with streams, they
whom rich Anagnia and thou, father Amasenus, feedest.’ vii. 682–5.
512 ‘They who dwell among the crags of grim Tetrica, and the mount
Severus, and Casperia and Foruli and the river of Himella; they who
drink of the Tiber and Fabaris, whom cold Nursia sent, and the hosts
of Horta and the Latin tribes; and those whom Allia, name of ill
omen, divides with its stream flowing between them.’ vii. 713–7.
513 ‘They who plough thy glades, Tiberinus, and the hallowed shore of
Numicius, and work the Rutulian hills with the ploughshare, and the
ridge of Circeii, the fields of which Jove of Anxur is guardian, and
Feronia glorying in her green grove—where the black marsh of Satura
lies, and where with cold stream through the bottom of the vales
Ufens gropes his way and hides himself in the sea.’ vii. 797–802.
514 This view of Virgil’s pride in the qualities of the Italians is not
incompatible with the fact to which Mr. Nettleship has drawn
attention (Suggestions Introductory to a Study of the Aeneid, pp. 13
et seq.), that Virgil represents their earlier condition as one of
turbulent barbarism. Virgil seems to have regarded ‘the savage
virtue of his race,’ although requiring to be tamed by contact with
a higher civilisation, as the ‘incrementum’ out of which the martial
virtue and discipline of the later Italians was formed:—
Sit Romana potens Itala virtute propago.
515 ‘Tears to human sufferings are due, and hearts are touched by the
common lot.’
516 ‘There will come a time as the years glide on, when the house of
Assaracus will reduce to bondage Phthia and famous Mycenae, and lord
it over vanquished Argos.’ Aen. i. 283–5.
517 ‘He shall overthrow Argos and the Mycenae of Agamemnon, and the king
himself of the line of Aeacus, descendant of the puissant Achilles.’
vi. 839–40.
518 ‘Again he has set before us in Ulysses a profitable example of the
power of courage and wisdom.’ Ep. i. 2. 17, etc.
519 Annals, ii. 88.
520 It is remarked by Helbig, in his ‘Campanische Wandmalerei,’ that
among the many paintings found at Pompeii dealing with mythological
and similar subjects, only one is founded on the incidents of the
Aeneid.
521 Cp. Mr. Nettleship’s Suggestions, etc., p. 10, and the passages from
Cicero there quoted.
522 ‘Thou rulest the world by bearing thyself humbly towards the Gods.’
523 ‘The destinies of thy descendants remain unchanged, nor does my
purpose make me waver.’
524 ‘King Jove is impartial to all: the Fates will find their own way.’
x. 112–3.
525 ‘All-powerful fortune and fate from which there is no escape.’
526 ‘As the doom of the empire was pressing on to its accomplishment.’
i. 33.
527 ‘Nations were subdued, kings were taken prisoners, and Vespasian
made known to the fates.’ Agric. 13.
528 ‘The leadership of Mucianus, the name of Vespasian, and the fact
that nothing was too difficult for the fates to accomplish.’ Hist.
ii. 82.
529 ‘The irony of human affairs.’ Ann. iii. 18; cf. the lines of
Lucretius. v. 1233–5:—
Usque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam
Opterit et pulchros fascis saevasque secures
Proculcare ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur.
530 ‘The instability of fortune, which confounds the highest with the
lowest.’ Hist. iv. 47; Hor. Od. i. 34. 12.
531 ‘A night bright with stars, as if for the purpose of proving the
crime, was granted by the gods.’ Ann. xiv. 5.
532 Ann. iv. 28.
533 Ib. i. 30.
534 Ib. xii. 43.
535 Ib. iv. 1.
536 ‘All which events happened with such entire indifference on the part
of the gods, that Nero continued his career of empire and crime for
many years afterwards.’ Ann. xiv. 12.
537 Cf. Tac. Ann. xi. 24: ‘Quid aliud exitio Lacedaemoniis et
Atheniensibus fuit, quamquam armis pollerent, nisi quod victos pro
alienigenis arcebant?’ etc.
538 ‘Her sacred emblems and her gods Troy commits to thy care—take these
as the companions of thy fates.’
539 ‘With his comrades and his son, the Penates and the great gods.’
540 Aen. viii. 679.
541 ‘The rites of religion and the new Gods shall come from me—let the
power of arms be with my father-in-law Latinus—let him keep his
established rule.’ Aen. xii. 192–3.
542 ‘We mark it gliding above the topmost roof of the house, hide itself
in a bright stream in the forest of Ida, marking out the way.’ Aen.
ii. 695–7.
543 ‘Cease to hope that the determinations of the Gods can be turned
aside by prayer.’
544 i. 543.
545 ‘May the gods, if any Powers regard the merciful, if righteousness
and a pure conscience avail aught anywhere, bring to thee a worthy
recompense.’ i. 603–5.
546 ‘Almighty Jove, if thou hast not yet utterly hated the Trojans to
the last man, if thy mercy as of old still regards human troubles.’
v. 687–9.
547 ‘May the gods, if there is any pity in heaven to take heed of such
things, thank thee as thou deservest and make due recompense to thee
who hast made me to behold my son slain before my face, and hast
stained a father’s countenance with the pollution of death.’ ii.
536–9.
548 ‘Here they by whom their brethren were hated, while life was with
them, or a father struck, or a client dealt with treacherously, or
who brooded alone over some discovered treasure and assigned no
share to their kindred—and they are the greatest multitude—and they
who were put to death as adulterers, and they who followed to war an
unholy standard, and they who feared not to be false to the fealty
they owed their lords, imprisoned await punishment.... Here is one
who sold his country for gold, and made it subject to a powerful
master; another made and unmade laws for a bribe; another violated a
daughter’s bed in forbidden wedlock—all men who dared some monstrous
deed of sin, and enjoyed its fruits.’ vi. 608–14, 621–4.
549 ‘Here a company, who received wounds fighting for their country, and
they who were pure priests, while life was with them, and they who
were holy bards and who spoke in strains worthy of Phoebus, or they
who improved life by their discoveries, and who by their good deeds
made others keep them in memory.’ vi. 660–4.
550 Cf. At Tiberius, nihil intermissa rerum cura, negotia pro solatiis
accipiens. Tac. Ann. iv. 13.
551 iii. 132–7:—
Ergo avidus muros optatae molior urbis
Pergameamque voco, et laetam cognomine gentem
Hortor amare focos, arcemque attollere tectis,—
* * * * *
Iura domosque dabam.
552 ‘The funeral was most remarkable for the display of ancestral
images, as the founder of the Julian house, Aeneas and all the Alban
kings, and Romulus founder of the city, and after them the Sabine
lords, Attus Clausus, and the other images of the Claudii, in a long
line passed before the eyes of the spectators.’ Ann. iv. 9.
553 ‘And do we still hesitate to find by our deeds a wider field for our
valour, or does fear hinder us from establishing ourselves on
Ausonian soil?’ vi. 807–8.
554 ‘Then the ages of cruel strife will become gentle, and war be laid
aside: hoary faith, and Vesta, Quirinus with his brother Remus,
shall give laws.’ i. 291–3.
555 ‘Augustus Caesar, of descent from a god: who shall establish again
the golden age of Latium over fields where Saturn once reigned.’ vi.
793–5.
556 ‘Him hereafter, laden with the spoils of the East, thou shalt
welcome in heaven and feel no fear longer; he too will be invoked
with prayers.’ i. 289–90.
557 ‘By the manners of the olden time and its men the Roman State stands
firm.’
558 Il. xx. 105.
559 For an instance of the number of slaves in a single household in the
reign of Nero compare the speech of C. Cassius in Tac. Ann. xiv. 43:
‘Quem numerus servorum tuebitur, cum Pedanium Secundum quadringenti
non protexerint?’ The simplicity of the old Roman life which Virgil
idealises in the Georgics, as compared with the luxurious indulgence
of the later Republic and the Empire, was in a great measure due to
the comparative rarity of slavery in the earlier ages of Roman
history.
560 Cf. ‘Virgil’s Aeneis war der früheste Versuch in dieser künstlichen
oder phantastischen Fassung des Epos, das erste romantische
Heldengedicht, und machte den Uebergang zu den gleich zwitterhaften
Epen der modernen Zeit.’ Bernhardy, Grundriss der Römischen
Litteratur.
561 It is probably too early to institute a comparison between the epic
of Virgil and any recent work of imagination, but not too early to
indicate adherence to those critics who find a parallel not in art
and genius only, but in the simplicity and sincerity of nature
revealed in their works, between the author of the Aeneid and the
author of the ‘Idylls of the King.’
562 This intention was well brought out in an article in Fraser’s
Magazine, which has since been republished by Mr. Froude in his
‘Short Studies on Great Subjects.’
563 ‘Her robe flowed down to her feet, and she was revealed by her
movement as indeed a goddess.’ ‘But I who move in state as the queen
of the gods.’
564 ‘To each man his own day is appointed: brief and irrecoverable is
the time of life to all; but to spread one’s name widely by
achievements, this is the work of valour.’ Aen. x. 467–9.
565 ‘Looking forth from the deep he raised his calm head from the
surface of the wave.’ Cf. Weidner’s Commentary on the First Two
Books of the Aeneid.
566 ‘Apollo of Actium, marking this, was bending his bow from above.’
567 ‘Speed well, O boy, in thy young valour; such is the way to the
stars, thou child of the gods and sire of gods to be: rightly shall
all the wars that are destined to be, cease under the sway of the
line of Assaracus: nor is Troy wide enough to hold thee.’ Aen. ix.
641–4.
568 ix. 717.
569 ‘Forthwith she thus addressed the sister of Turnus, she a goddess,
her a goddess of the meres and sounding rivers; such the hallowed
office that Jove, high king of Heaven, bestowed on her as the price
of her love.’ Aen. xii. 138–41. This passage, with its monotonous
and rhyming endings—sororem—sonoris—honorem,—is probably one of
those which Virgil would have altered had he lived to give the
‘limae labor’ to his work.
570 vii. 81, etc.
571 ‘Then the queen of the Gods gliding from Heaven, with her own hand
pushed the lingering gates, and, as the hinge moved, she, with the
might of Saturn’s daughter, bursts open the iron-fastened doors of
War.’ vii. 620–2.
572 ‘In her true semblance as a Goddess, in form and size as she is wont
to appear to the dwellers in Heaven.’
573 ‘The awful forms become visible and the mighty majesty of the Gods
hostile to Troy.’
574 Cp. De Coulanges, La Cité Antique.
575 ‘Even then the dread solemnity of the spot awed the frightened
peasants: even then they trembled before the wood and rock. This
grove, he says, this hill with leafy summit, some God—what God we
know not—inhabits: the Arcadians believe that they have beheld even
Jove himself, when oft-times he shook the blackening aegis in his
right hand, and summoned the storm clouds.’ viii. 349–54.
576 ‘That it may not be able to be received within the gates or drawn
within the walls, nor to guard the people beneath its ancient
sanctity.’ ii. 187–8.
577 ‘Quitting shrines and altars, all the Gods by whom this empire stood
fast, have departed.’ ii. 351–2.
578 ‘With his own hand he bears the sacred emblems and the defeated Gods
and drags his little grandson.’ ii. 320–1.
579 ‘We bear bowls foaming with warm milk, and saucers of sacred blood,
and lay his spirit to rest in the tomb, and call him for the last
time with a loud voice.’ Aen. iii. 66–8. The passage is referred to
by M. de Coulanges in one of the early chapters of ‘La Cité
Antique.’
580 ‘O light of the Dardan land, most trusted hope of the Trojans, why
hast thou tarried so long? from what shores, Hector, dost thou, the
object of much longing, come? how, after many deaths of thy kinsmen,
after manifold shocks to the city and to those who dwell within it,
do we, in our utter weariness, behold thee? what cruel cause hath
marred thy calm aspect, or why do I behold these wounds?’ ii. 281–6.
581 ‘He makes no reply, nor detains me by answer to my idle questions,
but with a deep groan from the bottom of his breast, “Ah fly,” he
says, “Goddess-born, and wrest thyself away from these flames: the
enemy holds the walls; Troy falls in ruins from its lofty summit;
enough has been granted to my country and to Priam; could Pergama
have been defended by any single hand even by this it should have
been defended. Troy commits to thee her sacred emblems and household
Gods: take them as companions of thy destinies, seek a fortress for
them, which thou shalt raise of mighty size after thy wide
wanderings over the deep are over.”’
582 ‘At a time when Andromache, in a grove in front of the city by the
stream of Simoeis—not the true Simoeis—happened to be bringing the
yearly offering of food, a melancholy gift to the dead, and to be
calling his Manes to the tomb of Hector—the empty mound of green
turf which she had hallowed with the two altars, which gave food for
her tears.’ iii. 301–5.
583 ‘Besides there was within the palace a marble chapel in memory of
her former lord, which she cherished with marvellous reverence,
wreathing it with snow-white fillets and festal leaves.’ iv. 457–9.
584 ‘The Manes send unreal dreams to the world above.’
585 ‘Where her former husband Sychaeus sympathises with all her sorrows
and loves her with a love equal to her own.’
586 Cp. ‘Un Poëte Théologien,’ in the Revue des Deux Mondes.
587 Cf. Aen. v. 236:—
Vobis laetus ego hoc candentem in litore taurum
Constituam ante aras, voti reus, extaque salsos
Porriciam in fluctus, et vina liquentia fundam.
viii. 273:—
Quare agite, O iuvenes! tantarum in munere laudum
Cingite fronde comas et pocula porgite dextris.
588 Created out of his ships.
589 ‘Nay when thy fleet, after crossing the seas, shall have come to
anchor, and, after raising altars, thou shalt pay thy vows upon the
shore, then veil thy head with a purple robe, lest, while the
consecrated fires are burning in the worship of the Gods, the face
of some enemy may meet thee, and confound the omens.’ iii. 403–7.
590 ‘Highest of Gods, Apollo, guardian of holy Soracte, in whose worship
we are foremost, in whose honour the heaped-up pinewood blazes,
while we, thy worshippers, with pious trust, even through the midst
of the flame plant our steps deep in the embers.’ xi. 785–8. Cp. the
Beltane fires which are said to be still kept up among remote Celtic
populations, and which seem to be a survival of a primitive
Sun-worship.
591 ‘Idle superstition, which knows not the ancient Gods.’
592 Ann. iv. 33.
593 It is true, as Gibbon remarks in his Dissertation on the Sixth Book
of the Aeneid, that the expression ‘dare iura’ is only once applied
to Aeneas—but it is the regular expression used of a ruler of a
settled community, as for instance of Dido. It is applied at the end
of the Georgics to Augustus, ‘per populos dat iura.’
594 ‘While the house of Aeneas shall dwell by the steadfast rock of the
Capitol, and the fatherly sway of a Roman shall endure.’ Cp. the
application of ‘pater’ as an epithet of Aeneas, and Horace’s line in
reference to Augustus—
Hic ames dici pater atque princeps.
595 ‘A palace, august, vast, propped on one hundred columns, stood in
the highest place of the city, the royal abode of Laurentian Picus,
inspiring awe from the gloom of woods and old ancestral reverence.,
Here it was held auspicious for kings to receive the sceptre and
first to lift up the fasces: this temple was their senate-house,
this the hall of their sacred banquets; here after sacrifice of a
ram the fathers used to take their seats at the long unbroken
tables.’ vii. 170–6.
596 ‘After the Powers on high determined to overthrow the empire of Asia
and the nation of Priam that deserved no such fate, and proud Ilium
fell, and Troy built by Neptune is reduced utterly to ashes.’ iii.
1–3.
597 ‘An ancient city, that held empire through many years, is falling in
ruins.’ ii. 363.
598 ‘Such was the final doom of Priam; this the end allotted to him,
while he saw Troy on fire and its citadel in ruins,—Troy that
formerly held proud sway in Asia over so many peoples and lands.’
ii. 554–7.
599 ‘I have lived, and finished the course that fortune gave me; and now
my shade shall pass in majesty beneath the earth; I have founded a
famous city, I have seen my own walls arise.’ iv. 653–5.
600 The Peloponnesian war, which united the Dorian and oligarchical
States of Greece under the lead of Sparta against Athens and her
allies, admits, as is indicated by Thucydides in his Introduction,
of the best parallel to the Trojan war, as represented by Homer.
601 ‘In rough guise, armed with javelins and wearing the skin of a
Libyan bear.’
602 ‘And seated him on a couch of leaves and the skin of a Libyan bear.’
603 ‘Here others lay the broad foundations for theatres, and hew out
from the rocks huge columns, the high ornaments of a future stage.’
i. 427–9.
604 ‘Bronze was the threshold with its rising steps, bronze-bound the
posts, of bronze the doors with their grating hinges.’ i. 448–9.
605 ‘And marvels at the skill of the artists working together and the
toil with which their works are done, he sees the whole series of
the battles fought at Troy and the war whose fame was already noised
through all the world.’ i. 455–7.
606 ‘Burning lamps hang from the roof of fretted gold, and torches with
their blaze banish the night.’
607 ‘Youth of surpassing spirit, the higher thou risest in thy towering
courage, the more fit is it that I take earnest counsel and weigh
anxiously every chance.’ xii. 19–21.
608 ‘The care thou hast for my sake, I pray thee, Sire, for my sake to
lay aside, and allow me to hazard my life for the prize of honour. I
too,’ etc.
609 ‘Thou too, O Turnus, would’st now be standing a huge trunk with thy
arms upon thee, were but thy age equal to his and the strength
derived from years the same.’ xi. 173–4.
610 ‘But why, in my misfortune, am I detaining the Trojans from deeds of
arms—go, and mindful bear these commands to your king.’ i. 561, etc.
611 ‘Banish fear from your hearts, ye Trojans, lay aside your cares, our
hard lot and my new rule force me to take such anxious measures, and
to guard my realm on all its wide frontiers. Who cannot have heard
of them who follow Aeneas and of the city Troy, its men and manful
prowess, or the fires that raged in that mighty war? Not so dull are
the hearts of us the people of Phoenicia, nor is it so far away from
our Tyrian city that the Sun yokes his horses.’
612 ‘His woolly sheep follow him; this is his sole joy and solace of his
suffering.’ iii. 660–1.
613 ‘We see standing by him, all of no avail, the stern-eyed brothers
dwelling on Etna, bearing their heads high in air, a grim assembly.’
iii. 677–9.
614 ‘But not even thus though hard-bestead did he forget the raft, but
springing after it laid hold of it among the waves, and sat down in
the middle, thus escaping the issue of death.’
615 ‘We leave the harbours of Ortygia and scud over the open sea, and
skirt the coasts of Naxos, on whose ridges the companies of Bacchus
revel, and green Donysa, Olearos, and snow-white Paros, and the
Cyclades spread over the sea, and the narrow waters studded with
frequent isles. The mariner’s cheer arises with varying rivalry.’
iii. 124–8.
616 ‘On the fourth day for the first time the land at length appeared to
rise up, to open up the view of its distant mountains, and to send
its rolling smoke on high.’ iii. 205–6.
617 ‘And now the stars had disappeared, and in the first blush of dawn
we see far off the dim outline of the hills and the low land of
Italy.’ iii. 521–3.
618 ‘The longed-for breezes blow stronger, and the harbour now nearer
opens up, and the temple of Minerva comes into sight on the cliff.’
iii. 530–1.
619 ‘Soon we leave out of sight the airy heights of the Phaeacians, and
skirt the shores of Epirus and draw near the Chaonian harbour, and
approach the lofty city of Buthrotum.’ iii. 291–3.
620 ‘Camarina comes into sight far away, and the plains of the Gela, and
vast Gela called from the name of the river—after that high Acragas
shows its mighty walls afar—in old days the breeder of high-mettled
steeds.’ iii. 701–4.
621 ‘To these he adds Amaster son of Hippotas, and follows plying them
with his hurled spear Tereus and Harpalycus and Demophoon and
Chromis.’ Aen. xi. 673–5.
622 ‘To whom Zeus gave from youth even to old age the grievous task of
war, till we each should die.’ Il. xiv. 85–7. The fascination which
the poem has even for modern readers is due, in no slight degree, to
the spell which some aspects of war exercise over the imagination in
all times.
623 ‘They ply their spears with redoubled force, both the Trojans and
Mnestheus himself with the flash of lightning.’
624 ‘There is here, here a spirit that recks not of life.’
625 Cf. viii. 510:—
ni, mixtus matre Sabella,
Hinc partem patriae traheret.
626 ‘Us the fates summon hence to other scenes of woe, to the same grim
wars.’ xi. 96–7. Cf. the epithet ‘lacrimabile,’ which he applies to
war.
627 ‘Press not further in thy hate.’
628 ‘The short-lived and ill-starred loves of the Roman people.’
629 ‘If in any way thou canst break the cruel bonds of fate, thou too
shalt be a Marcellus.’
630 ‘And the sword-point pierced through the shield, slight defence in
his menacing onset, and the tunic which his mother had interlaced
with threads of gold.’ x. 817–8.
631 ‘But then, when he beheld the look and face of the dying youth, he,
the son of Anchises, that face so wondrous pale, he uttered a deep
groan in his pity, and held out his hand, and the thought of all his
love for his father came over his mind.’ x. 821–4.
632 ‘Ye too fell in the Rutulian fields, Larides and Thymber, twin sons
of Daucis, most like to one another, indistinguishable to your own
family, and a most pleasing cause of confusion to your parents.’ x.
390–2.
633 ‘Immediately the whiz of the arrow and the sound of the air were
heard by Arruns at the same moment as the iron fixed in his body.
Expiring and uttering his last groan, forgotten by his comrades, he
is left on the unheeded dust of the plain; while Opis flies aloft to
high Olympus.’ xi. 863–7.
634 ‘Between it Tiberinus with his fair stream, in rapid eddies and
yellow with much sand bursts forth into the sea.’
635 ‘There was a custom in Hesperian Latium which from that time onward
the Alban cities observed, and now Rome, mistress of the world,
observes.... With his own hand, arrayed in the robe of state of
Quirinus, his toga girt with the Gabian girding, the Consul unbars
the creaking gates: with his own voice he calls for battle; the rest
of the warlike youth echo him, and the brazen horns combine with
their hoarse accompaniment.’ vii. 601–15.
636 ‘Rhaebus, we have lived long, if aught is long to mortals,’ etc.
Aen. x. 861, etc.
637 Trist. ii. 533–4.
638 ‘Whate’er it be, every fortune must be conquered by endurance.’
639 ‘Then he cheers his comrades and soothes the fears of sad Iulus,
telling them of their destinies.’
640 ‘And now higher rises the fierce rage of the Trojan leader.’
641 ‘A great deed has been done, my warriors,—let all fear be banished.’
This contrast was suggested by Mr. Nettleship’s interpretation of
the character of Turnus (‘Suggestions,’ etc., pp. 15 _et seq._). As
will appear later, I am inclined to think that he insists too
exclusively on the ‘violentia,’ which is undoubtedly a strong
element in the character of the Italian hero. The antagonism of
Turnus to Aeneas, as of the Italians to the Trojans, he justly
regards as an instance of the strife of passion with law. If the
Greek drama suggested the ethical aspect of this strife, a
comparison with Horace, Ode iii. 4, of which Ode the leading idea is
the superiority of the ‘vis temperata’ over the ‘vis consili
expers,’ as illustrated in the wars of the Olympian Gods with the
Titans, and in the triumph of Augustus over the elements of disorder
opposing him, suggests that the political inspiration of the idea
came from ‘the stately mansion on the Esquiline’—
‘Molem propinquam nubibus arduis.’
642 ‘Nor shall it irk me to remember Elissa, while I can remember my own
self, while breath animates my frame.’
643 ‘But my longing for thee, the thought of all thy cares, noble
Odysseus, and of all thy gentleness bereft me of sweet life.’
644 La Cité Antique.
645 ‘And now that I am a man, and know it from the lips of others, and
feel my spirit wax strong within me.’
646 ‘And his spirit was wroth that the stranger tarried long at the
door.’
647 ‘Where the white lilies blush with the mingling of many roses.’
648 ‘For my rest is assured, my haven is close at hand—it is of happy
funeral rites that I am bereft.’
649 ‘Now be each mindful of wife and home: recall now the mighty deeds,
your fathers’ renown.’
650 ‘I give back Pallas even as was due to him; whatever respect there
is to a tomb, whatever comfort in burial, I freely bestow.’ Cp. the
contrast:—
ἦ ῥα καὶ Ἕκτορα δῖον ἀεικέα μήδετο ἔργα.
651 ‘The Aetolian and Arpi will not aid us, but Messapus will and
fortunate Tolumnius.’
652 ‘For you and my father-in-law Latinus, I, Turnus, second to none of
the men of old in valour, have devoted this my life: “me only Aeneas
challenges”—ay, let him challenge me; nor let Drances rather, if
this is the anger of Heaven, pay the penalty by his death, or if it
is a call to valour and glory, let the valour and glory be his.’
Aen. xi. 440, etc.
653 Napier’s Peninsular War, Death of Sir John Moore.
654 ‘Is death then so sad a doom? Be ye merciful to me, spirits of the
dead, since the favour of the Powers above is turned from me; a
spirit, pure and untainted by that shame, I shall pass to you, never
dishonouring my mighty ancestors.’ Aen. xii. 644–8.
655 ‘It is the Gods that terrify me, and the enmity of Jove.’
656 ‘He who first won my love has taken it with him: let him keep it and
treasure it in his tomb.’
657 ‘Often his own heroic spirit, often the glory of his race, recur to
her mind: his looks remain deep-printed in her heart, and his words,
nor does her passion allow her to rest.’
658 ‘That forsooth is the task of the Powers above; this trouble vexes
their tranquil state.’
659 ‘I trust indeed, if the pitiful Gods avail aught, that among the
rocks in mid sea thou shalt drink deep of the cup of retribution,
and often call on Dido by name; I, from far away, will follow thee
with baleful fires, and when chill death has separated my spirit
from my frame, my shade will haunt thee everywhere; heartless, thou
shalt suffer for thy crime: I shall hear of it, and this tale will
reach me among the spirits below.’
660 ‘Arise thou, some avenger, out of my bones, who with brand and sword
mayest chase the settlers from Troy, now, hereafter, whensoever
there shall be strength to bring thee forth.’
661 ‘I have built a famous city: I have seen my own walls arise:
avenging my husband, I exacted retribution from an unkind brother;
fortunate, alas! too fortunate, had not the Trojan keels ever
touched our shore.’
662 ‘I shall die unavenged,’ she says, ‘still let me die—it is thus,
thus, I fain would pass to the shades: may the cruel Trojan drink in
with his eyes the sight of this fire from the deep, and carry along
with him the omen of my death.’
663 ‘Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood,
Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern
From her false friend’s approach in Hades, turn,
Wave us away, and keep thy solitude.’
The Scholar Gipsy, by Matthew Arnold.
664 ‘At length she started away and fled unforgiving into the shades of
the forest, where her former husband, Sychaeus, feels with all her
sorrows and loves her with a love equal to her own.’
665 Landor’s Pentameron.
666 ‘It was when their first sleep begins to weary mortals.’
667 ‘The broad waters of Sigaeum reflect the fire.’
668 ‘There is dread on every side, while the very silence awes the
mind.’
669 ‘But some way off in a lonely bay the Trojan women apart were
weeping for their lost Anchises, and as they wept were gazing on the
deep—“Ah, to think that so many dangerous waters, so vast an expanse
of sea remained still for them, the weary ones!” was the cry of
all.’
670 ‘In her dreams Aeneas himself fiercely drives her before him in her
frenzy; and she seems ever to be left all alone, ever to be going
uncompanioned on a long road, and to be searching for her Tyrians on
a desert land.’
671 ‘Powers whose empire is over the spirits of the dead, and ye silent
shades.’
672 ‘Behind his war-horse Aethon, with all his trappings laid aside,
goes weeping, wetting his face with great drops. Others bear his
spear and shield—the rest of his armour Turnus keeps—then follow in
mournful array the Trojans, and all the Tyrrhenian host, and the
Arcadians with arms reversed.’
673 iv. 143, etc. Referred to in the ‘Parallel Passages’ in Dr.
Kennedy’s notes.
674 Referred to by M. Benoist.
675 ‘Or with the grandeur of father Appenninus himself, when he makes
his waving ilexes heard aloud, and is glad as he towers with snowy
summit to the sky.’
676 ‘Either on the banks of the Po, or by the fair Adige.’
677 ‘As Ganges swelling high in silence with its seven calm streams, or
the Nile when with its fertilising flood it ebbs from the plains,
and has already subsided within its channel.’ ix. 30–2.
678 ‘As many as the leaves that fall in the woods at the first cold
touch of autumn, or as many as the birds which are gathered to the
land from the deep, when the chill of the year banishes them beyond
the sea, and wafts them into sunny lands.’ vi. 309–312.
679 ‘Like the moon when one sees it early in the month, or fancies he
has seen it rise through mists.’
‘So to see, as when one sees or fancies he has seen the dim moon in
the early dawn.’
680 ‘As when a purple flower cut down by the plough pines and dies, or
as poppies droop their head wearily, when weighed down by the rain.’
681 ‘Like a delicate violet, or a drooping hyacinth, when plucked by a
maiden, from which the bloom and the beauty have not yet
departed—but the earth does not now nourish it and supply its
forces.’
682 ‘Ac ne quid impetum moraretur quaedam imperfecta transmisit, alia
levissimis versibus veluti fulsit, quos per iocum pro tibicinibus
interponi aiebat ad sustinendum opus, donec solidae columnae
advenirent.’ Donatus, quoted by Ribbeck in the Life prefixed to his
smaller edition of Virgil.
683 ‘But I the stately Queen of the Gods.’
684 ‘And first Achates struck a spark from a flint, and caught the light
in some leaves, and cast dry sticks about them to feed them, and
blew the spark within the fuel into a flame.’
685 ‘Worthy to be happier in a father’s command and to have another
father than Mezentius.’
686 ‘Yield not thou to thy hardships, but advance more boldly against
them.’
‘Learn from me, my child, to bear thee like a man and to strive
strenuously, from others learn to be fortunate.’
‘Have the courage, stranger, to despise riches, and mould thyself
too to be a fit companion of the God.’
687 ‘Ah! fly that cruel land, fly that covetous coast.’ Mentioned by Mr.
Symonds in his History of the Renaissance in Italy.
688 Grammar of Assent, by J. H. Newman, D.D.
689 To attempt to translate these ‘pathetic half-lines’ etc., apart from
their context, would only be to spoil them, without conveying any
sense of the feeling latent in them.
690 Aut videt, aut vidisse putat.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
The author’s footnotes have been moved to the end of the volume.
In Chapter V on page 180, the printer has missed the section heading “II.”
It has been restored; the two following section headings were changed from
“II.” to “III.” (page 185) and “III.” to “IV.” (page 190), matching the
Table of Contents. In the Table of Contents, several page references were
corrected: “61” changed to “60”, “294” changed to “295”, “354” changed to
“355”, “364” changed to “365” (twice).
The last footnote on page 232 and the first footnote on page 232 have been
combined, since the only reason for the separate notes was a page break in
the original edition.
The following typographical errors were corrected:
page 2, period added after “Catullum”
page 52, “of” added between “testimony” and “Ovid”
page 65, “inuenissem” changed to “invenissem”
page 91, “nfluence” changed to “influence”
page 132, “neighborhood” changed to “neighbourhood”
page 145, quote added after “âmes.”
page 244, period added after “V”
page 322, “Hyrcansive” changed to “Hyrcanisve”
page 363, “Gründriss” changed to “Grundriss”
Unusual spellings (“develope”, “ascendency”), spelling variations (“Garda”
and “Guarda”; “Aeneis” and “Aeneid”, “steadfast” and “stedfastly”,
“acknowledgment” and “acknowledgement”, “judgement” and “judgment”,
“unmistakable” and “unmistakeable”, “medieval” and “mediaeval”) and
variations in hyphenation (“background” and “back-ground”, “birthday” and
“birth-day”, “commonplace” and “common-place”, “cornfields” and
“corn-fields”, “lawgiver” and “law-giver”, “lifelike” and “life-like”,
“lifetime” and “life-time”, “masterpiece” and “master-piece”,
“ploughshare” and “plough-share”, “reorganisation” and “re-organisation”)
are retained.