HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY FROM THE LIDRASY OF Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by ELDREDGE & BROTHER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. PREFACE. THE THE text of the first Six Books of the Aeneid here given, is the same as that in my edition of the whole poem. It is based upon a careful collation of the editions of Heyne, Wagner, Conington, Ribbeck, and Ladewig, with frequent reference to other standard authorities, and with constant and especial regard to the testimony of the best manuscripts. In the preparation of the Notes, the endeavor has been made to meet the actual wants of students in our schools; not forgetting that the best help one can give a learner is to teach him to help himself. Frequent references are made to the grammars most in use in this country, and explanations are furnished of passages difficult of interpretation, of peculiarities of syntax, and of such points of history, geography, mythology, and antiquities as require elucidation. In the Vocabulary, which I have prepared at the suggestion of many experienced and accomplished teachers, it is believed that a complete statement will be found of the Virgilian uses of each word, so far as the first Six Books of the Aeneid are concerned. The chief difficulties in scanning are solved in the Metrical Index; and in the Remarks which follow, information will be found on some points of classical versification which are not fully explained in our popular grammars. The Index of Proper Names adds some facts to those stated in the Notes and Vocabulary; and beginners may read with profit the Suggestions to Students on the 334th page. It will be seen that, in addition to the results of my own independent investigations, I have availed myself of the rich iii stores which have been accumulated by successive generations of able commentators. In all cases where I am indebted to any one, either for information, or for felicity of expression, I have endeavored to give due credit. The Arguments of the different Books have been taken from Bryce, with occasional additions and modifications; and parts of the Life of Virgil are compiled from Ladewig, Wagner, Thompson, Schmitz, and Long. I congratulate those who shall study this volume upon their introduction to one of the most charming of poets, who will delight them in their youth, and still more, if possible, when they read him anew in after-days. Let them dwell long and lovingly upon his graceful verses, committing some of his choicest passages to memory, and they will find on every perusal old beauties that never pall, and new ones continually presented from an exhaustless store. THOMAS CHASE. VIRIS ERVDITIS CAROLO THVRBER RVDOLPHO B. HVBBARD ELBRIGIO SMITH SCHOLAE LATINAE VIGORNIENSIS OLIM MAGISTRIS GRATI ANIMI MONVMENTO HIC LIBELLVS ESTO. LIFE OF VIRGIL. PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO (for so, and not Virgilius, the best MSS. give his name) was born at Andes, a little village about three miles below Mantua, on the 15th Oct., B. C. 70. His father, a comfortable farmer, spared no pains to give his son a liberal Greek and Latin education, sending him to school at Cremona, and, after he had assumed the manly gown at the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Milan, and finally to Naples, where he was instructed by the poet and philosopher Parthenius. After several years' residence at Naples, Virgil betook himself to Rome (B. C. 47), where he took lessons of the Epicurean Syron, the friend of Cicero, in philosophy, mathematics, and physics. His love of letters and of a country-life, as well as his feeble health, ill adapted for the strifes of the forum, or the hardships of military service, prevented his indulging an ambition for a public career, and caused him to withdraw to his farm at Andes, where he occupied himself with husbandry, and with the study of the Greek poets, especially Theocritus. In this period he wrote a number of short poems, some of which may have descended to our times; although the authenticity of the minor poems ascribed to Virgil is doubtful. In the year 42 he began to write his Bucolics, to which the name Eclogues was afterwards given by the critics. These are short pastoral poems, ten in number, and were probably all written before the year 37. They at once attracted attention and gained him fame and friends. Some lines from them being recited on the stage, when Virgil happened once to be in the theatre, the whole audience rose to do him honor. Their merit consists in their versification, which was smoother and more polished than the hexameters which the Romans had yet seen, and in many natural and simple touches. John Dryden, in the Dedication of his translation of the "Pastorals," says: "[Virgil] found the strength of his genius betimes, and was, even in his youth, preluding to his Georgics and his Aeneis. He could not forbear to try his wings, though his pinions were not hardened to maintain a long laborious flight. Yet sometimes they bore him to a pitch as lofty as ever he was able to reach afterwards. Lut when he was admonished by his subject to descend, he came down gently, circling in the air, and singing, to the ground; like a lark, melodious in her mounting, and continuing her song till she alights, still preparing for a higher flight at her next sally, and tuning her voice to better music." After the battle of Philippi (B. C. 42) Octavianus assigned to his soldiers lands in various parts of Italy; and the neighborhood of Cremona and Mantua (which had adhered to the cause of Brutus and Cassius) was one of the districts in which the soldiers were planted, and from which the former possessors were dislodged. Virgil was thus deprived of his property. It is said that it was seized by a veteran named Claudius or Clodius; that Asinius Pollio, who was then governor of Gallia Transpadana, advised Virgil to apply to Octavianus at Rome for therestitution of his land, and that Octavianus granted his request. It is supposed that Virgil wrote the Eclogue which stands first in our editions (but was fourth in the order of composition) to express his gratitude to Octavianus Caesar. There is an uncertain tradition of a subsequent dispossession from his estate, when he was obliged to flee before the sword of an angry soldier, and of a final restoration of his property after the peace of Brundusium. Virgil gained early the friendship of Maecenas, the confidential friend and counsellor of Augustus, and the munificent patron of men of letters, "whose house, whose table, and whose gardens, were the resort of all the wits, virtuosi, actors, joyous spirits, and agreeable idlers of Rome." * With the Emperor himself, with Maecenas and Pollio, and with all the members of the brilliant coterie of men of genius who surrounded the court of Augustus, he lived on terms of cordial intimacy. The successful productions of others afforded him as much pleasure as if they were his own. His large library was open to all men of learning; and he often quoted the saying of Euripides that "the property of friends is a common good," (rà rŵv piλwv kowά.) The most finished work of Virgil, his Georgica, an agricultural poem, was undertaken at the suggestion of Maecenas. Its object was "to recommend the principles of the ancient Romans, their love of home, of labor, 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 extent of its conquests. To comprehend the moral grandeur of the Georgics, in point of style the most perfect piece of Roman literature, we must regard it as the glorification of Labor." While writing this poem, Virgil composed many verses in the morning, but by evening reduced them to a very few; so that he used to compare himself to a bear, which licks its shapeless offspring into form. Wieland (quoted by Dean Milman, in his Life of Horace.) † Merivale's Hist, of the Romans under the Empire. |