O Teucria's best sire, holds thee, and extinct

Iulus' hope; Sicania's straits at least,

And seats prepared, whence hither we were carried,

And king Acestes, let us seek again.”

So Ilioneus, and every Dardan mouth

Murmured assent. Then briefly Dido forth

670

Speaks with abased look :-" From your hearts all fear

Dismiss, O Teucri; set apart all care;
Necessity compels me, and my realm's

Newness, to take these measures, and my frontier

Fend with wide guard. Who not the race Enean

Knows, and Troy city; heroes, and heroisms,
And conflagration of so great a war?

Not so obtuse the breasts we Poeni bear,
Nor so averse yokes Sol from the Tyrian city.
Whether Hesperia great, and Saturn's fields,
Or Eryx' bounds ye choose, and king Acestes,
Safe I will send ye on with aid; with means
Plenteous rejoice ye; in these kingdoms here
Along with me to settle, if your wish be,

The city I found is yours; strand high your ships;
Trojan and Tyrian shall be one to me;

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685

690

And glad I were, that king Eneas' self

Were present here, compelled by the same Notus:
Scouts certainly through the sea-coasts I'll send,

And bid search Libya's extremes, lest by the waves
Eject, he wander in some wood or city.”

Emboldened by these words, Achates brave

And sire Eneas, from the cloud to break
Some time were burning; and Achates first

695

Bespeaks Eneas:-"Goddess-born, what thought

Now in thy breast springs? All things safe thou seest;

Fleet, crews recovered; absent one alone,

Whom in the midst of the waves ourselves saw sink:

All corresponds else to thy mother's words."
Scarce said, when suddenly the circumfused
Cloud cleaves, and purges into open air;
Forth stands Eneas, and in brilliant light
Refulges, face and shoulders like a God;
(f) For on the son the mother's self had breathed

The hair becoming, and the purple light, And joyous honors of the eyes, of youth; (9) Such added grace the hand to ivory gives,

(f) V.589.-Decoram Caesariem nato genetrix, lumenque juventae Purpureum, et laetos oculis afflárat honores. Juventae belongs to caesariem and honores, as well as to lumen; because, becoming hair and joyful brightness of the eyes belong, no less than a fresh colour, to youth; and because the expressions, decora caesaries and laetos honores, are weak and indefinite, unless joined with juventae.

(g) V. 592.—Quale manus, &c. The celebrated couplet, in which Thomson, speaking of Lavinia's lover, says,

He saw her charming, but he saw not half
The charms her downcast modesty concealed,
is not inapplicable to the commentators
and translators of this passage, who
have seen but half its charms, the
other half lying hid behind the slight
shading of Virgil's most delicate pen-
cil. Let us follow the traces which
lead to the retreat of the concealed
beauty. Virgil never uses a word
which is unnecessary, or which has
not an appropriate meaning and ob-
ject; but in the passage before us, he
applies to gold the adjunct yellow,

F

705

710

which is wholly useless unless it is emphatic, and something more is meant than appears at first sight. That it is emphatic, and that something more is meant than appears at first sight, the reader will, I think, be satisfied, on a review of the whole simile. Eneas, whom Venus has adorned with a fine flowing head of hair, and an unusual brilliancy and beauty of countenance, is compared, first, to an ivory image to which the hands of the artist have given the highest degree of polish the ivory representing the person of Eneas, and the polish the beauty super-added by Venus; and 2ndly, to a piece of wrought silver, or Parian marble, chased or framed in yellow gold-the silver or Parian marble being the resplendent face and bust of Eneas, and the yellow circumference, or frame, of gold, being the profusion of yellow hair, in which his face and bust seemed to be, as it were, set.

This interpretation of the passage (probable, even if there were no further evidence of Eneas's hair having been yellow, than is supplied by the passage itself, and by the universal sentiment of poetical antiquity, that yellow hair,

Or as when silver or the Parian stone

Is set in yellow gold, circumferent.

The queen he then accosts, and suddenly,
By all, says, unexpected :-" Whom ye seek,
Present behold; Trojan Eneas, snatched
From the Libyan waves. O thou, who pitiest sole
Troy's toils infandous; who, with us, of the Danaï
The leavings, us by every chance exhaust

Of sea and land, and needy of all things,
Sharest city and home, to pay thee worthy thanks
Excels our power, O Dido; excels the

power

Of all that now is of the Dardan race,
Over the great globe wheresoever scattered.
The Gods (if any Gods regard the pious,
If aught just anywhere), and thine own mind,
Conscious of right, reward thee worthily.
What so glad age produced thee? What so great
Parents thee such engendered? Whilst the river
Into the frith runs, whilst the mountain shadow
Lustrates the vale, whilst feeds the pole the stars,
So long for ever lasts thy name, praise, glory;
(h) Me whatsoever lands call."

Thus he said,

715

720

725

730

flavi crines, flava coma, was indispensable to beauty, whether male or female,) is strongly confirmed, I might almost say demonstratively proved, by the parallel simile in the fourth book, in which it cannot be doubted that Eneas's hair is compared to the yellow or golden hair, and even to the actual gold in the hair, of Apollo himself. Qualis ubi..........Apollo..........fronde premit crinem fingens, atque implicat AURO, En. iv, 143–148.

66

(h) V. 610.--Quae me cunque, &c. 'Quocunque abiero, beneficii accepti memor ero." Heyne. "In iis terris in quibus consedero, ut perennis sit beneficii tui memoria efficiam." Wagner. Both which interpretations are erroneous, Eneas's nobler sentiment being, no matter whither I may be called, no matter what becomes of me, your fame will last as long as the world itself. The reader will also recognise in the words, quae me cunque vocant

And his friend Ilioneus with right hand sought,
Serestus with his left; the others then,
And the brave Gyas, and Cloanthus brave.

Astound Sidonian Dido, at first aspect,
Then at so great misfortune, of the man;

And spake :-"What destiny, O Goddess-born,

735

Pursues thee through such perils? to these shores 740
Immane, what force applies thee? That Eneas
Art, whom boon Venus to Anchises Dardan
Gendered by side of Phrygian Simois' wave?
Well I remember, when from bounds paternal
Teucer expelled, to Sidon came, new realms
By aid of Belus seeking; then my sire
Belus had harried, and with victor sway
Was holding fruitful Cyprus; from that time
Known to me Troy's misfortune, and thy name,

And the Pelasgian kings: himself, the foe,

745.

7,50

Wont to extol with signal praise the Teucri,

And from the old Teucrian stock traced fain his birth.
Come, therefore, young men, and our dwelling enter;
Me, too, through many a toil tost, a like fortune
Hath willed to sit down in this land at last;
To succour misery, mine own sorrows teach me."
She says, and in the fanes same time proclaiming
Rites divine, leads Eneas to the palace ;

755

Nor to the crews the less sends to the shore
Bulls twenty, great-chined bristly boars a hundred, 760

terrae, (vocant being in the indicative, not the subjunctive mood,) a polite and graceful intimation, in an

swer to Dido's invitation (v. 572), that Eneas's duty leads him away from Carthage.

And, with their dams, a hundred fatted lambs,
And gifts and joy of the inspiring God.
(2) Splendid with regal luxury, the house

Is laid out, in the interior, for the banquet;
Art-labored cover-cloths superb of crimson;
Huge silver on the board; and sires' exploits
Gold carved, a long long story, from the old
Birth of the nation, down through many a hero.

Eneas, whose paternal love not suffered

(k) His mind to rest, Achates sends before

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770

Swift to the ships, these tidings to announce
Ascanius, and conduct him to the city;

All the dear parent's care is in Ascanius :

Gifts too from Troy's ruins snatched commands him bring,
The palle with signs and gold stiff, and the wimple 775

Round bordered with the bearsfoot's saffron flower;

The adorn of Argive Helen; which she brought

Out from Mycenae, when for Pergamus

She bouned her, and illicit hymeneals;

Of mother Leda gift admirable:

780

The sceptre too which Ilione had borne,

Eldest of Priam's daughters, and pearl necklace,
And double coronet of gems and gold.

Achates to the ships his way was wending,

These things to expedite; but Cytherea
New arts revolves, new counsels in her breast;

() V. 637.-Regali splendida luxu instruitur. The structure is splendida regali luxu, not instruitur regali luxu; as in v. 471, cruentus multá caede, not,

785

vastabat multa caede. See also note to dirae ferro et compagibus arctis, v. 293.

(k) V.644.-Praemittit. Prae-sciz., before the bearers of Dido's presents.