And tell your king, that not his lot, but mine, Bluster, and in the closed winds-prison reign." (m) V. 146.—Aperit syrtes. All the commentators and translators adopt Heyne's interpretation of this passage, "via ex arenosis vadis facta, ut naves exire possent;-refer ad tres naves," (v. 110, 11). But the addition of vastas to syrtes shows plainly that the action of aperit is not merely on that part of the syrtes where the three ships were imbedded, but on the vast syrtes or the syrtes generally. I therefore take the meaning to be, that the God opened the syrtes, i.e. made them "apertas," open or safe for ships, by levelling them where they had been raised into partial inequalities by the storm, and by spreading the water evenly upon them, of such depth that vessels could sail over them without danger: the three imbedded ships were thus set afloat again. Vastas aperit syrtes, so understood, harmonises well with temperat aequor; for the sea ceased to break on the syrtes when they were levelled and deeply covered by the water. It is probable that apertas was the term ordinarily applied by seafaring men to express the safe state of the syrtes, or that state in which they were covered by water of depth sufficient for vessels to sail in. The same term is applied to the sea itself, both in our language 170 175 180 The ac and in Latin; Aperto mari navigare. (Plin. Hist. Nat. 1. 2, c. 46.) The poet, having stated the precise manner in which the God removed the other three ships from the rocks, judiciously avoids a similar particularity of description with respect to those which had been imbedded in the sand, leaving his reader to conclude that the ships were not neglected, when the shoals, in which they were imbedded, were made open and navigable. count which Sallust (Bell. Jugurth. c. 80) gives of the syrtes goes to confirm this explanation "duo sunt sinus prope in extrema Africa impares magnitudine, pari [natura: quorum proxima terrae praealta sunt; caetera, uti fors tulit, alta; alia in tempestate vadosa: nam ubi mare magnum esse et saevire caepit ventis, limum arenamque et saxa ingentia fluctus trahunt; ita facies locorum cum ventis simul mutatur: Syrtes ab tractu nominatae." Sallust's account of the Syrtes, dressed in poetical language, becomes Virgil's; and Virgil's turned into plain prose, becomes Sallust's. The historian describes the winds and waves as rendering the Syrtes now vadosas, now altas; while the poet ascribes the same effect to the agency Opens; the sea assuages, and o'er all The wavy summits skims on lightsome wheels. And fiercely ramps the crowd's ignobleness, The tired Eneadae, struggling to make Made by an isle's obtenture, on whose sides Breaks every wave in-rolling from the deep, (n) And splits into deep-dented sinuses: of Eurus and Neptune, the former of whom illidit (naves sciz.) vadis, atque aggere cingit arenae, i. e. makes the Syrtes vadosas, and dashes the ships upon them; the latter aperit syrtes, i. e. makes the vadosas, (the shallow and impassable, and therefore, closed) altas (deep and passable and therefore open, apertas) and thus frees and sets afloat the ships. Our author makes a precisely similar use of aperio, En. 10. 13, Exitium magnum atque Alpes immittet apertas; and thus we come round to that very common phrase, and use of the verb aperio, apertus campus. * B 185 190 195 200 (n) V. 161.-Sinus reductos. As it is impossible for a wave to cut itself (scindere sese) except into parts of itself, sinus must be (not as understood by some commentators and translators, sinus litoris, but) as rightly understood by Heyne, sinus undae, sciz. the hollows, or sinuosities, into which the wave cuts itself on the projections of the island. Heyne is, however, as I think, widely astray in his interpretation of reductos, which expresses, not the reflux of the wave, but, the permanent depth or concavity of the sinuses, into which the wave, (i.e. the water's edge,) is cut ; Vast rocks on each side, and twin cliff sky-threatening ; (0) Below, the undangerous waters' silent width, O'erhung with leafy shimmer, and the black 205 Of the living stone; the Nymphs' house: here no chains With seven, of all his fleet, collected, here Eneas enters; the land-amorous Trojans And stretch upon the shore their brine-steeped limbs. (p) And in the fuel hurries up the flame; (q) Then, of the world sore tired, their sea-spoiled Ceres, And Cerealian requisites, they ready, 210 215 sciz. as that depth, or concavity, would be represented in a chart. So, reductâ valle, En. vi, 703; reductis alis constiterant. Liv. xxii, 47. 66 (0) V. 164.-Aequora tuta silent. The commentators understand tuta in its passive sense, of being safe or protected, sciz. ipsa aequora ; 'a ventorum vi defensa"-Forbiger;" als particip. passiv. gesichert.”—Thiel. But, 1st, it were foreign to his subject, and little short of puerile in Virgil, thus to assign a reason for the silence of the sea within the cove. 2ndly This is not the meaning of aequora tuta, where it occurs again, En. v, 171. I therefore understand tuta to be here taken, if I may so say, actively; and to mean, as in En. v, 171, (and in Nepos, Themist. c. 2 “Praedones maritimos consectando mare tutum reddidit"), safe for ships. So understood, tuta is not only in the best harmony with Virgil's subject, and especially with lines 168, 169, but with its own verb; the sea was not merely safe for ships, but so safe as to be even silent. (p) V. 176. —Rapuitque in fomite flammam. Rapio is here used, not in its secondary, or derived, and most common sense, to rap, snatch, or seize, but in its original, and more abstract, sense of hurrying, or performing with rapidity, the act (of whatever kind,) indicated by the context. So Livy, xxx, 14, "Raptae prope inter arma nuptiae." So also Tacitus, Hist., iii, 30, "Rapi ignes Antonius jubet;" although perhaps there may be some degree of doubt, whether it is in this sense that Tacitus uses the word, and not in its more common sense of seizing, or snatching, as En. v, 660, "rapuitque focis penetralibus ignem.” (q) V.178.-Fessi rerum. Not simply wearied, but, fessi, wearied; rerum, of their condition, of the world. (r) And set about to scorch, and with quern-stone Meantime Eneas the cliff-top ascending, Caïcus' arms: no ship, but on the shore 220 225 Wandering, three stags he sees, whom the whole herd The leaders, carrying high their antlered heads 230 Till on the sward his victory has stretched, Numbering the ships, seven hugy carcases: 235 These, to the cove returning, he divides To all his comrades; then dispensing round The wine, those well-filled casks, of good Acestes The gift at parting on Trinacria's shore, (s) Their heart-grief with these words the hero cheers :- 240 (r) V. 180.-Eneas scopulum, &c. Up to a hill anon his steps he reared, From whose high top to ken the prospect round, If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd; But cottage, herd or sheep-cote none he saw, Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove, With chaunt of tuneful birds resounding loud. Par. Reg., b. ii. (s) V. 196.-Heros dividit, &c. Heros belongs to dividit, not to dederat, because, first, if it belong to dederat, the long series of verbs, videat, prospicit, constitit, corripuit, sternit, miscet, ab sistit, fundat, aequet, petit, partitur, dividit, mulcet, being left wholly without a nominative, the attention is directed rather to the acts themselves than to the actor; which cannot be supposed to have been the intention of the poet, the actor being no less a person than the hero of the poem. 2ndly, Dederat, inasmuch as it is joined by the conjunction to onerarat, shares its nominative, bonus Acestes, and has no occasion for any other. 3rdly, In the "O my comates, no novelty to us In worse afflictions past, these too will heaven 245 250 Such words he utters, and with huge cares sicked, 255 accurate language of Virgil, heros applied to dederat, in addition to its other nominative, would imply that there was something peculiarly heroic in Acestes's giving the wine, which yet was not the fact. See Note to v. 552, book ii. 4thly, It would have been rather derogatory to the hero of his poem, if Virgil had thus unnecessarily applied the term heros to so very unimportant and secondary a personage as 260 Acestes, at the very moment when he was leaving Eneas without any appellation or even so much as a bare mention of his name. 5thly, Heros placed just before the last of the long series of verbs descriptive of the acts of Eneas, draws back the attention, and places it on the hero of the poem even more powerfully than if it had been placed at the beginning of the series. |