before. Secondly the insertion of ac is pure conjecture and removes none of the difficulties of Conington's explanation while it certainly adds to the ugliness of the first words. Conjectural alterations are becoming the bane of modern scholarship, and to receive a pure guess, such as the addition of ac here, into the text, as some editors do, is rash in the extreme, for the mathematical probability that it is not what Virgil wrote is enormous.

688. vivo...ostia saxo Pantagiae] the mouth of the Pantagias formed of natural rock': the mouth of the river formed a natural harbour without artificial masonry having to be used. For vivo 'natural' cf. 1. 167 n.

689. iacentem] 'low-lying.'

690. talia] 'such places,' i.e. these and other similar places. relegens errata retrorsus litora: 'retracing again (lit. backwards') the shores by which he had wandered,' i.e. when he was with Ulysses. Though errare is a neuter verb, yet, as it may have a cognate acc., e.g. errare iter to wander a journey,' errare litus 'to wander along a shore,' so it may have a passive part. = 'traversed' or 'passed in wandering.'

692-715. We sail to Ortygia, where the Grecian river Alpheus emerges after its passage under the sea at the fountain Arethusa. Thence we pass Helorus, Pachynum, Camarina, Gela, Agrigentum, Selinus, Lilybaeum, and reach at last the dreary coast of Drepanum. There I lost my dear father Anchises-a calamity that neither Helenus nor Celaeno had foretold. That was the end of my woes, that the end of my wanderings; from there fortune brought me to your shores.

692. Sicanio praetenta sinu] 'stretching in front of a Sicilian bay': the bay is what was afterwards the famous harbour of Syracuse. It is protected from the sea by the Island of Ortygia on the N. and the promontory of Plemyrium on the S., the entrance between the island and the promontory being very narrow.

693. Plemurium undosum] Attention has already been called (516 n.) to Virgil's fondness for adding an epithet to a Greek noun which suggests its derivation: here undosum suggests the derivation from λnμuvpis 'flood-tide,' 'flood.' So 698 stagnantis Helori, Nos being a marsh'; 703 arduus Acragas, aκpos being 'lofty.'

Plemurium is also spelt in the MSS. Plemmyrium, and Plemyrium. The u of λnμμvpis is long in Attic Greek but the quantity varies in other writers.

priores] 'men of old'.

694. Alpheum...] 'the story is that Alpheus, a stream of Elis, forced his secret way hither beneath the sea, and now at thy fountain, O Arethusa, he....' Notice that the oblique narration which follows fama est breaks off at mare and that qui...undis is direct speech.

The Alpheus is the chief river of Peloponnesus; in its course it twice passes underground, and the story was that the rivergod Alpheus pursued the nymph Arethusa and that Artemis changed her into the fountain Arethusa in Ortygia, but that Alpheus followed her under the sea and mingled his stream with hers. The fountain is on the very edge of the sea, so near that if it were not protected by an embankment it would be overwhelmed by it,' Henry 2. 531.

697. iussi...] Who had 'commanded' them or who the 'mighty deities of the place' were Virgil does not say, but his reference to the latter is obviously influenced by the great part which Syracuse played in Greek and Roman history, and iussi probably refers to the iussa Heleni (684), of which lines 374462 are only to be considered a summary, so that we need not be surprised by the absence of any mention of Ortygia there.

700. radimus] 'scrape,' 'graze': the expression seems borrowed from the chariot-races where the charioteers as they turn round the meta at the end of the course almost 'graze' it: cf. 5. 170 radit iter laevum interior where the word is used of a boat in a race rounding the rock which serves as a meta, and the 'rocks of Pachynus' are called metas 429.

fatis numquam...: Servius explains that there was once & pestilential marsh round the city and that when the inhabitants consulted the oracle with regard to draining it they received the reply μὴ κίνει Καμάριναν, ἀκίνητος γὰρ ἀμείνων ; spite of this they drained the marsh and their enemies advanced over the dry ground and took the city. numquam concessa moveri is a translation of ȧкívηтos 'not (allowed) to be disturbed' which is constantly used in Greek of things sacred which it is sacrilege to disturb or meddle with.

702. inmanisque Gelā flŭvii...] 'and Gela named after the name of its mighty river': cf. Thuc. 6. 41 tŷ tóλei åñò TOÛ Γέλα ποτάμου τοὔνομα ἐγένετο, and for the violence of the river Ov. Fast. 4. 470 verticibus non adeunde Gela. Others take inmanis Gela together, but as Gela was not a 'huge' town they are compelled to make guesses at the meaning of inmanis, such as that it is called 'monstrous' because its tyrants were

monsters.

Many consider the line spurious (1) because inmanis seems meaningless, (2) because the mention of 'Geloan plains' followed by a reference to the town Gela and the river Gela is very awkward, (3) because of the extraordinary lengthening of the final syllable of Gela=Téλā, (4) because Virgil regularly contracts the gen. of nouns with nom. in ius, ium, see Pub. Sch. Gr. § 23.

704. magnanimum] See 53 n. quondam: 'once,' 'of old.' Of course when Aeneas visited Sicily none of the towns mentioned were in existence and the whole passage is therefore full of anachronisms. Here however the anachronism is very violent, for the reference is to the victories in horse-racing celebrated by Pindar and won by Theron who was tyrant of Agrigentum B.C. 488-472; these triumphs Virgil, perhaps inadvertently, makes Aeneas describe as won 'of old.' It is just possible to take quondam in the very rare sense some day,' 'in days to come' (cf. 6. 877), but the context is entirely against this, the whole passage being retrospective and historical, not prophetic.

66

705. palmosa Selinus] abounding in palms,' that is in the palma agrestis or dwarf palm. This plant is not to be confounded with the date palm.' Nettleship.

706. vada dura lego...] and thread the waters of Lilybaeum dangerous (or 'difficult') with hidden rocks': lego is used to describe the manner in which he picks' his way amid the sunken reefs.

707. inlaetabilis ora] 'desolate,' 'joyless shore.' The adjective has a double force: the coast is dreary and desolate by nature, but is rendered more dreary and desolate by the death of Anchises. Cf. Tennyson, Locksley Hall :

'O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more! O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore !' 710. pater optime] Observe the pathetic change from narrative to direct personal address.

fessum deseris: the language is reproachful, thou dost abandon me in my weariness,' .e. although worn out with dangers I need all thy help.

711. nequiquam] 'in vain,' because Aeneas had hoped to bring his father in safety to his promised home in Italy. erepte voc. for nom. by attraction to pater optime.

712. cum multa horrenda moneret] 'amid all his warnings of terror'; lit. 'when he warned (me) of many terrible things.

713. dira Celaeno] The adjective is emphatic: Celaeno was a prophetess of evil' but she had never prophesied such evil as this.

Here the narrative of Aeneas ends and the poet again becomes the narrator.

716. intentis omnibus unus] 'alone to the eager throng': the somewhat forced antithesis between omnibus and unus is intended to place the figure of Aeneas in artistic contrast with the faces of his audience all eagerly turned towards him. The description recalls the words which introduce his narrative; see 2. 1.

717. fata...] 'was telling the tale of his heaven-sent destiny.'

718. factoque...] and here making an end rested.' Notice the suggestion of stillness and repose in the final word quievit; it presents a contrast with the tale of adventure which had just been told and the description of Dido's tragic passion which is to follow.

BOOK IV

1-30. Throughout the night Dido cannot rest, for the story and the image of Aeneas recur ever to her mind. At dawn she opens her heart to her sister, and, after dwelling on the charms of her guest, declares that, were she not resolved since the death of Sychaeus to abjure all thoughts of love, she could have yielded to this passion, but that now she prays heaven to destroy her rather than allow her to be unfaithful to the troth she had plighted to the dead.

1. cura] regularly used of the 'pain' or 'trouble' caused by love, cf. 6. 444. For the effect of Aeneas' story on Dido, cf. Othello 1. 3. 158 seq.

'My story being done,

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs...'

2. vulnus...] 'feeds the wound with her veins and is consumed with a hidden fire.' The wound drains her life-blood, and so she is said to feed it with her veins.' The double metaphor of 'a wound' and 'fire' is suggested by the fiery arrows of Love, cf. 66-73.

3. multa...multus] Closely with recursat and so almost adverbially = 'oft...oft.'

6. lustrabat...umentemque...dimoverat] 'was lighting... and had dispersed.' Prose would invert the order of the two clauses or make the second subordinate ('when she had dispersed') to the first.

For lustro, cf. 607. The phrase lustrabat lampade is copied from Cic. Aratea 237 lustrantes lumine mundum | orbes stelligeri, and Lucr. 5. 693 sol...terras et caelum lumine lustraws; 5. 1436 mundi...templum | sol et luna suo lustrantes lumine, where lustro must be used, like illustro, 'light,' 'illuminate,' though Conington says that there is no authority for such use and here renders traverses' (cf. 3. 385) or 'surveys' (cf. 6 679).