Troy's name have sounded, us, through diverse sea-plains Of Libya driven: pious Eneas I, Famed above ether; with Penates snatched From the foe-midst aboard, in quest I voyage, Of Italy ancestral, and a kin 460 Sprung from Jove highest; Phrygia's main, with ships Led, and pursuing an appointed fate; Convulsed by Eurus and the waves, survive Scarce seven; myself, from Europe driven and Asia, : 465 470 And seek direct the precinct of the queen ; 475 For thy returning company, and fleet Brought back with Aquilo's reverse, and lodged Yon joyous troop behold, of twice six swans, (k) V. 395.-Capere terras (Fr. prendre terre) to take the land; to land; sciz. from a ship; here applied to landing from the air or alighting on the ground. Cesar de Bell. Gall. iv, 36, makes a very similar use of the 480 . Their lighting place to survey; as with wings Stridorous, they sport returned, and round the pole 485 From her shede exhaled and ambrosial hair; Down to her footsole flowed her robe, and true Goddess was in her gait. He, recognising 490 His mother, with these words her flight pursued:- 495 (2) "Thy son, so oft with false similitudes, (m) Cruel thou too, why mockest? why allowest not Hand to hand join, and true words hear and answer ?” So he upbraids, and bounes him for the city. But Venus, with murk air, them, as they went, 500 Ample cloak nebulous; that no one, them Might see, or touch, or hinder, or the cause is so fond, and for a most remarkable The acts ascribed to the swans in the two following lines, as well as their 505 apparent looking down on the ground, are subsequent to their alighting from their flight before the eagle. (2) V. 407.-Falsis ludis imaginibus. Mock us with his blest sight, then snatch him Par. Reg., ii, 56. hence, (m) V. 407.-Tu quoque. Not tu quoque ludis, but tu quoque crudelis, sciz. as well as those other deities who take delight in persecuting me. (n) V. 416. Ubi templum illi. Meantime, where guides the path, they have seized their way; And now the hill ascend, which rising still And rising o'er the city, on its towers Opposite looks down. Eneas the vast construct, The din, the causeys; ardent Tyrians slack not; (0) These, the walled circuit of the citadel 510 Building, and with their hands the stones uprolling: 515 And furrow round; laws and executive They choose, and holy senate; here some dig Others lay deep; and from the rocks out-hew, 520 These words as usually rendered (ubi the second, the works at which both templum est illi) are mere prose. They become poetic, however, if templum be referred as an additional nominative to calent, so as to agree with that verb in the loose sense in which Virgil delights to connect a second subject or a second object with his verb (see note v. 395), or a second verb with his subject or object. See En. i, 230, and note to En. ii, 552. (0) V. 423.-Pars ducere muros. If muros be, as hitherto supposed, the walls of the city, Virgil has been guilty of a gross incorrectness in his division of the Tyrians into pars and pars; for-1st. One and the same pars could not be employed at works so remote from each other as the building of the walls of the city, sciz. at the circumference, and the building of the citadel, sciz. at the centre. And, 2ndly. The first pars would be necessarily mixed up and confused with were engaged (sciz. ducere muros urbis, et concludere sulco,) being close to and connected with each other. But let us understand muros to be the walls of the citadel, arcis being suggested after muros by the immediately following arcem, and we render the division perfectly correct and complete; the one pars being employed altogether at the centre about the citadel; and the other altogether towards the circumference, in choosing, and enclosing with a trench, the site for the houses: and this division is the more complete, because the two works are distinct, not only in their situation but in their nature; the one being the erection of a fortress, the other the laying out of a site for peaceful dwellings, and enclosing it, or marking its bounds with a furrow. For proof that citadels, no less than cities, had muri, see Livy, xxiv, 3; xxv, 11; xxv, 25. Columns immane. Busy they are as bees, In flowery rural, neath young summer's sun, And savory smells of thyme the fragrant honey: 66 525 "O fortunate, whose walls already rise," 530 Eneas says, the city-tops up-eyeing; And entering cloud-wrapt, mixes in the midst, (Miraculous to tell), unseen of any. Stood, mid the city, a grove's most joyful shade, Where erst the wave-and-whirlwind-buffeted 535 Poeni exhumed the mettled courser's head, Of royal Juno the appointed token, And wealthy-wallowing the race should live. Dido was founding, opulent in gifts And the God-presence; high on steps arose (2) Whose brazen-columned, brazen-architraved 540 (p) V. 431.—Adultos-having undergone their transformations, and assumed the perfect or adult insectform, that of imago. Gentis because "solae communes gnatos habent." Georg. iv, 153. (q) V. 448.-Nixaeque aere trabes. Virgil's principal commentators, while they agree in adopting the vulgar reading of this passage, nexaeque aere trabes, differ toto caelo in its interpretation. Heyne (who is followed by Wagner) having justly rejected the E usually received meaning (“ aere nexae vulgo sic accipi videas, ut postium, h.e. trabium, ex ligno v. c. abiegnarum, vincula et clavi seu unci sint ex aere") as utterly unworthy of the dignity of the description, gives his own interpretation in these words: "nexaeque liminibus (adjunctae et impositae limini) trabes (postes) surgebant (erant ex) aere." Wunderlich, on the other hand, objecting with equal justice to Heyne's gloss, that aere cannot be separated from nexae, and that there is a manifest Entrance, and valved door on the hinges grating. In this grove first a novelty presents, Eneas hope for safety, and more trust (r) Repose in his down-beaten circumstance; For whilst, the queen awaiting, he contemplates incorrectness in the double construction, aerea surgebant and surgebant aere, understands nexae aere to be equivalent to aereus. But if equivalent to aereus, nexae aere had better been omitted, as embarrassing the construction without conveying any meaning not already conveyed by aerea, the action of which is as full and perfect on trabes as on limina. Besides these separate, there is one general, objection to all the explanations which have been, or, as far as I can see, can be offered of this reading; viz., that they all so limit Virgil's description as to make it the description, not of a temple, or the façade or portal of a temple, but of a mere door; the sum total of the sense contained in the two lines being, that there were steps up to the door, the sill, posts, and valves of which were of brass. I therefore unite with Catrou in rejecting the common reading, as incapable of affording any good sense, and in adopting the more unusual one, nixaeque, the authorities for which are enumerated in Heyne's Variae Lecti ones. This reading being adopted, the passage becomes disembarrassed of all difficulty, the construction clear, and the meaning harmonious to the context, and worthy of Virgil. Limina is the entrance or portal, (in which wide sense the plural limina will be found to be much more frequently used by Virgil than in its narrow and limited sense of sill or threshold. "Limina perrumpit." En. ii, 480. "Penetrant limina." Georg. ii, 504. "Irrumpit limina." En. iv, 645, &c.) Trabes are 545 the roof. "Trabes supra columnas et paratatas et antas ponuntur." Vitruv. B. iv, c. 2. And again, B. iv, c. 7. 'Eaeque trabes compactiles ponantur ut tantam habeant crassitudinem quan tae summae columnae erit hypotrachelium. That these trabes were sometimes of brass, or overlaid with brass, appears from Claudian, 33, 342; "Trabibus solidatur ahenis Culmen." Aerea surgebant is the common predicate of limina and trabes: nixae aere the special predicate of trabes, which are represented as leaning on brass (sciz. brazen columns), the precise position of the trabes (the modern architrave), as described by Vitruvius. The picture presented is that of the whole façade of the temple, consisting of the brazen limina (or parts immediately about the door, and in particular probably the front wall of the temple as seen behind the columns) the brazen architrave, supported on brazen columns, and the brazen folding or valved doors, all elevated on a flight of steps. The palace of Alcinous (Odyss. vii), the Roman Pantheon, and the doors of the court of Solomon's temple, afford well-known exemplifications of the ancient practice of plating various parts of buildings with brass, for the sake of ornament. In further confirmation of the reading nixae, I may observe that the omission of columns in the description of so great and magnificent a temple, would have been very singular and remarkable. (r) V. 452.-Afflictis. See note, En. the beams or architraves supporting ii, 92. |