though the charge is circumstantially made, it is discredited by the silence of other authorities, whose ignorance contrasts strangely with this schoolboy knowledge; and Heyne, in his first Excursus to this book, has made it more than probable that the plagiarism of the poet is really the blunder of the critic, who is supposed to have con. founded two Pisanders, one who lived before Virgil, but did not write the mythologicohistorical poem, and another who did write the poem, but lived after Virgil. The little that we know from Servius and others about the treatment of the stories of Laocoon and Sinon by earlier writers points rather to difference from Virgil's version than to identity with it: and though we must not build so much on this, as it is the wont of such witnesses to dwell rather on points of dissimilarity than on points of agreement, we may take it as showing that Virgil did really exercise his privilege of varying the smaller circumstances of the narrative, especially as his successors, Quinctus Smyrnaeus and Tryphiodorus, who are supposed to have been diligent copyists of the early writers, differ from him considerably in their manner of treatment. At any rate, whatever may have been Virgil's obligations to his predecessors for the incidents of his narrative, we cannot doubt that the golden thread which runs through the whole, the feeling of Aeneas himself, is substantially his own. The steps by which the hero comes to realize his position as an inhabitant of a captured city, a partizan of a cause against which the gods have finally declared,-steps indicated with such subtlety that it is only of late that they have been fully recognized (see on vv. 322, 402),— -are not likely to have been transmitted by legend, while they bear in themselves the strongest marks of the poet's peculiar art.

Perhaps there is no better way of estimating the greatness of Virgil in this book than by glancing at the manner in which the subject has been treated by the three later poets, Smyrnaeus, Tryphiodorus, and Tzetzes. With his example before them, not to mention the other writers whom they probably followed, they have yet contrived to divest a most stirring and pathetic story of a large part of its interest. Smyrnaeus bestows two of his fourteen books, the twelfth and the thirteenth, on the capture of Troy. He goes over much the same ground as Virgil; but his narrative is flat and lifeless: the incidents do not flow out of each other, and sometimes, instead of incident, we are put off with the tedious generality of a mere historical abridgment. Calchas advises the Greeks to try stratagem rather than force: Ulysses on the moment strikes out the notion of the wooden horse with all its details: Neoptolemus and Philoctetes, like Milton's Moloch, are for open war, and attempt to lead their people to battle at once, but are checked by a thunderbolt from Zeus, which quite overawes them-an incident briefly despatched, and apparently introduced for no object whatever. Soon after we hear that the gods are at war with each other, as in the twentieth Iliad, hurling as missiles the hills of Ida; but we are expressly told that while all nature is convulsed, the human combatants are unconscious of what is going on, and even this invisible warfare is soon terminated by another thunderbolt from Zeus, so that, as before, we are at a loss to understand the relevancy of the incident. When the horse is made, Sinon is left with it, having expressed to the Greeks his willingness to undergo burning alive, or any torture that the Trojans may inflict. Accordingly, he stands silent while the enemy surrounds him, trying him first with mild words of inquiry, afterwards with the harsher methods of mutilation and burning: and then, having given this undoubted proof of his courage, he voluntarily tells his story. Laocoon, who disbelieves him, is struck blind on the spot, the state of his eyes being described with a sickening minuteness of detail; yet even in this condition he continues urging his countrymen to burn the horse, and so the serpents are sent to destroy his children by his side. Cassandra then takes his place in denunciation, but is gibed at by the Trojans : she tries herself to burn or break open the horse, but torch and weapons are wrested from her. A paragraph is spent in enforcing the statement that the Greeks suffered during the sack as well as the Trojans,

and the modes of their deaths are enumerated with statistical particularity. Some, we are told, were hit by goblets, others by tables, others by torches and spits with meat adhering to them, others by hatchets : some have their fingers cut off in trying to ward off blows: some are bruised with stones, and some pierced with lances, which the Trojans were able to wield in spite of the wine they had drunk. We are told of Aeneas' escape, which it appears was owing partly, as in Virgil, to the protection of his mother, who warded off the weapons of the enemy, but partly also to a speech of Calchas to the Greeks, ordering them to spare him on account of his signal piety in taking his father and son with him rather than his treasure. But perhaps the greatest piece of flatness is found in Pyrrhus' speech to old Priam, who has been praying for death at his hands:

ὦ γέρον, ἐμμεμαῶτα καὶ ἐσσύμενόν περ ἀνώγεις·

οὐ γάρ σ' ἐχθρὸν ἐόντα μετὰ ζωοῖσιν ἐάσω·

οὐ γάρ τι ψυχῆς πέλει ἀνδράσι φίλτερον ἄλλο.

Tryphiodorus is a writer of a somewhat lower stamp, perhaps equal in power to Smyrnaeus, but inferior in taste and judgment. He concentrates himself chiefly on the wooden horse and the events immediately connected with it, fifty lines being given to a minute description of all its parts, from which it appears that it was a costly as well as elaborate performance, its eyes being made of beryl and amethyst, and its teeth of silver. Ulysses, as in Smyrnaeus, lays down the programme of operations: the heroes rise one after another, as at the challenge of Hector in the seventh book of the Iliad, and volunteer in the service; and when they are lodged in the horse, Pallas provides them with ambrosia; immediately after which they are aptly compared to beasts running down a rock to escape a winter torrent, and waiting in their den, famished with hunger. Sinon is left, mangled, like Ulysses in Helen's story in the fourth Odyssey, with stripes from his own hand, and tells a similar story to that in Virgil, except that he represents himself as having been scourged by his comrades because he refused to fly with them. The dragging of the horse into the city is detailed at tedious length,—— the agency of the gods, which duly appears later in the poem, being tastelessly anticipated, and Here being made to open the gates wider than usual, while Poseidon knocks down part of the stonework of the entrance. Cassandra protests, as in Smyrnaeus, and is severely upbraided by her father, who sends her to her chamber. Helen's story in Homer is again put under requisition, and the adulteress is made to address the Greeks within the horse in the tones of their respective wives; but the incident is an isolated one, and no attempt is made to harmonize it with the rest of the story. For the rest of the book the narrative proceeds more rapidly, the different events of the sack being despatched each in a few lines, without any attempt at pictorial narrative. The poet cannot, he says, tell all that happened on that night; that is a business for the Muses: he feels himself to be a chariot-driver nearing the goal. Tzetzes need hardly detain us a moment, as his narrative of the sack of Troy is utterly contemptible, with no pretension to poetry, and very little to style or metre. He is fortunately brief, and in fact presents a condensed resumé of the story as told by his various predecessors, Virgil included, the absence of detail enabling him in general to avoid the points in which they differ. There is however quite enough to distinguish him from them, or from any other writer professing to be a poet. When the heroes get into the horse, he takes the opportunity of telling us the personal characteristics of the leading Greeks, in lines like these:

Κάλχας μικρὸς ἔην, λεπτός, λευκός, δασυχαίτης,
κρᾶτα φέρων πολίην, ὁλόλευκον πρὸς δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ὑπήνην.
Τυδείδης δ ̓ ἄρα σώματι δεν τεσσαράγωνος,
εὐσχήμων, σίμος, στειναύχην, ξανθογένειος.

This he may have borrowed from Dares Phrygius, whose work, as we now have it, abounds in notices of the sort. But he is probably original when he says that he cannot tell what was the precise occasion on which Ulysses fell temporarily into the hands of the Trojans, his attention to the incident having been distracted by the cruel treatment he received from "the crafty wife of Isaac," or when he censures Tryphiodorus for talking of the horse as crowned with flowers when it was the depth of winter, and professes that he, Tzetzes, had been taught by Orpheus never to tell a falsehood. But it is an insult to Virgil even to mention such absurdities in connexion with the Second Book of the Aeneid.

A curious critique of Virgil's narrative from a military point of view by Napoleon I. may be found in an abridged form in the Classical Museum, vol. i. pp. 205 foll. It is needless to say that the story does not stand a test which it was never meant to stand: much of the Emperor's censure however falls really, not on Virgil, but on the legend which, as we have seen, he necessarily followed.

CONTICUERE omnes, intentique ora tenebant.
Inde toro pater Aeneas sic orsus ab alto:
Infandum, Regina, iubes renovare dolorem,
Troianas ut opes et lamentabile regnum
Eruerint Danai; quaeque ipse miserrima vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui. Quis talia fando
Myrmidonum Dolopumve aut duri miles Ulixi

1, 2.] Aeneas begins thus.'

1.] Ora tenere is not, as in G. 4. 483, equivalent to "linguam continere," but means to hold the countenance in attention,' as in 7. 250 (where observe the epithet defixa,' and comp. 6. 156), 8. 520. Intenti' then must be taken adverbially as part of the predicate, like 'defixi' in the passage last referred to. Silent attention is however the general notion: and it is probable that Virg. did not carefully distinguish the two senses of 'ora.' See 1. 256, "oscula libavit."

3-13.] The story is a painful one, but I will tell it.'

3.] Imitated from Od. 7. 241, ¿pyaλéov, βασίλεια, διηνεκέως ἀγορεῦσαι Κήδε: the conception of the speech itself however is of course taken from Ulysses' later narrative, books 9-12. Observe the order: Too cruel to be told, great queen, is the sorrow you bid me revive.' Infandum,' note on A. 1. 525. The word here seems to bear its transferred as well as its original

sense.

4. Ut follows renovare dolorem,' which is practically equivalent to narrare,' as it is in telling about sorrow once felt that the renewal of the pain consists. Häckermann, followed by Ladewig, Haupt, and Ribbeck, ingeniously puts a period after dolorem,' so as to connect 'ut...

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fui' with 'quis talia fando,' v. 6, the sen tence thus created being a sort of expan sion of v. 3, 'fando' answering to 'infandum:' but this, though rhetorically effective, would be hardly in Virg.'s manner, while it would detract from the propriety of the clause quaeque... fui,' if indeed it would not lead us rather to expect viderim ... fuerim.' I am glad to see that Wagn. (Lectt. Vergg. p. 415) defends the old pointing on similar grounds. Lamentabile is used proleptically. How the power of Troy and its empire met with piteous overthrow from the Danaans.'

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5.] Quaeque et quorum,' &c., also epexegetical of dolorem,' which is first explained generally, then limited, as Henry remarks, to the scenes which Aeneas wit nessed and those in which he took an active part-his personal narrative.

6.] 'Pars magna. Comp. 10. 426, "Lausus, Pars ingens belli," G. 2. 40. Fando,' in the course of speaking, v. 81. Wagn. aptly refers to Livy 8. 17., 21. 34, for instances of this use of the gerund in prose, illustrating it also by an imitation of this passage in Sil. 2. 651, "quis tristia fata piorum Imperet evolvens lacrimis? which shows that it is equivalent to the present participle.

7.] Myrmidonum Dolopumve,' not constructed with 'miles.' The Myrmidons

Temperet a lacrimis ? et iam nox humida caelo
Praecipitat, suadentque cadentia sidera somnos.
Sed si tantus amor casus cognoscere nostros
Et breviter Troiae supremum audire laborem,
Quamquam animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit,
Incipiam.

Fracti bello fatisque repulsi

Ductores Danaum, tot iam labentibus annis,
Instar montis equum divina Palladis arte
Aedificant, sectaque intexunt abiete costas ;

and Dolopes (I. 9. 484) were the soldiers of Achilles, the greatest, and Neoptolemus, the most savage, enemy of Troy. So the epithet 'duri is intended to mark the soldier by the general, perhaps with a reference to his Homeric title ToλÚTλas: see on 3. 94.

8.] Et iam,' an additional reason for declining the task: imitated from Od. 11. 330, where Ulysses breaks off in the middle of his narrative with a similar excuse.

9.] 'Praecipitat' is hurrying down the steep of the sky, midnight being past. Possibly also it denotes the fall of the dew, being connected with 'humida,' as "ruit" is with "imbriferum," G. 1. 313. For the intrans. use of the verb comp. Cic. de Orat. 3. 35, "sol praecipitans me admonuit." 10. Hom. Od. 11. 380.Amor,' as in 6. 133, where it is immediately explained by "cupido." For the construction, see on G. 1. 213.

11.] Supremum laborem,' its destruction, as "dies supremus" is the day of death, and "sors suprema (5. 190) the final doom. Claud. Eutrop. 2. 289, "Phrygiae casus venisse supremos." Labor' by itself means no more than Tóvos or μóxeos in Greek, sorrow or suffering, 1. 597., 2. 362., 4. 78., 9. 202. To hear the brief tale of Troy's last agony.'

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12.] Muretus thinks this passage imitated from Cic. Phil. 14. 3, 66 refugit animus, P. C., eaque formidat dicere." It is itself imitated by Sen. Ag. 417, "refugit loqui Mens aegra tantis atque inhorrescit malis," which seems to show, as Wund. thinks, that 'refugit' as well as 'horret' goes with meminisse.' The perf. seems best explained as expressing the instantaneous and instinctive action of the feeling. 13-39.] Despairing of reducing Troy by siege, the Greeks feign departure, having first built a wooden horse, which they fill

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15

with armed men, and leave behind them as a pretended offering to Pallas. We pour out of the town, and question what should be done with the horse, some being for taking it in, others for destroying it.'

13.] Incipiam' appears rightly understood by Henry, I will essay,' rather than I will begin.' E. 5. 10, G. 1. 5, Lucr. 1. 55. So the ordinary sense of "inceptum." Fracti,' nearly the same as "fessi," v. 109, but stronger. Repulsi,' beaten back from the attack on Troy.

14.] 'Ductores Danaum,' Lucr. 1. 86. Labentibus,' the present, is to be distinguished from "lapsis," though the stress falls as much on tot' and 'iam.' 'Now that the flying years had begun to number so many.'

15.] Instar montis,' with reference to the height rather than to the bulk. So 9. 674, "abietibus iuvenes patriis et montibus aequos," and Od. 9. 191., 10. 113, where the Cyclops and the queen of the Laestrygonians are compared to mountains. Comp. also vv. 186, 187, "Hanc tamen inmensam Calchas attollere molem Roboribus textis caeloque educere iussit." Divina Palladis arte' is a translation of Eur. Tro. 10, unxavaîσ Пádos. Hom. Od. 8. 493 has τὸν Ἐπειὸς ἐποίησεν σὺν Αθήνῃ. Pallas is selected from the deities favourable to the Greeks as the patroness of art. So she is the builder of the Argo, the first ship. See the next note. Rom. has 'divinae.'

are

16.] Aedificant' and 'intexunt both terms of ship-building. Catull. 62 (64). 9, "Ipsa (Pallas) levi fecit volitantem flamine currum, Pinea coniungens inflexae texta carinae," which Virg. perhaps had in his mind. Even costa is used in speaking of a ship, Pers. 6. 31. Lucr. 5. 1297 has "in equi conscendere costas."

Votum pro reditu simulant; ea fama vagatur.
Huc delecta virum sortiti corpora furtim
Includunt caeco lateri, penitusque cavernas
Ingentis uterumque armato milite conplent.

Est in conspectu Tenedos, notissima fama
Insula, dives opum, Priami dum regna manebant,
Nunc tantum sinus et statio male fida carinis;
Huc se provecti deserto in litore condunt.
Nos abiisse rati et vento petiisse Mycenas.
Ergo omnis longo solvit se Teucria luctu.

17.] 'Votum,' to Pallas, as explained v. 183. Serv. quotes from Attius (Deiph. fr. 1), "Minervae donum armipotenti hoc abeuntes Danai dicant," which he says was the inscription on the horse; and so Hyginus (fab. 108), “In equo scripserunt; Danai Minervae dono dant." Pallas is sent down, Il. 2. 156, to prevent the Greeks from departing. The custom of making vows for a safe return is largely illustrated by Cerda. Taubmann quotes an epigrammatic expression from Petronius, "in voto latent (Danai)." Ea fama vagatur:' the emphasis is on 'ea' rather than on ‘vagatur.' Such is the story they spread,' not 'the story spreads far and wide.' So "fama volat," 3. 121.

18.] Huc' is further defined by 'caeco lateri" ("huc includunt," G. 2.76), a mode of expression illustrated by Wagn. on E. 1. 54, and not unlike the double acc. in Greek, TÚTTW σe кepaλhν. Delecta virum corpora: Hom. Od. 4. 272, îπų žvɩ §‹σтų ἵν ̓ ἐνήμεθα πάντες ἄριστοι 'Αργείων. Thus 'sortiti' must mean simply having picked out,' as in G. 3. 71, unless we suppose a 'sortitio' to have taken place among the 'delecti,' so as to assign to some their places in the horse, while others, such as Agamemnon and Diomede, remained to organize the forces at Tenedos. 'Delecti' is the epithet of the chieftains at Aulis, Lucr. 1. 86. In Od. 8. 495, Ulysses is the main agent in putting the warriors into the horse, which he enters himself. Corpora,' periphrastic, like déuas, 5. 318., 6. 22, 391., 7. 650., 10. 430, though in each case there is of course a special significance in the word, as here to suggest the notion of occupying space.

19, 20.] Henry seems right in taking the latter part of the sentence as simply explanatory of the former, the armato milite' being identical with the 'delecta corpora,' but it is not so certain that these

are summed up in the nine who come out of the horse in v. 260, as vv. 328, 401, would lead us to suppose that the number was larger, even if we do not suppose Virg. to be in agreement with Hom., who in Od. 4.287, mentions one, Anticlus, not included in Virgil's list. Penitus' goes with 'conplent.'

21.] Notissima fama,' as Wagn. remarks, is said rather by the poet than by the hero (comp. 3. 704), though in Hom.'s time (II. 1. 38) the island is famous for a temple of Apollo Smintheus.

22.] Dives opum,' 1. 14.

23. The island is said to be a 'sinus,' a bay, forming a doubtful roadstead, being all for which it was then remarkable. 'Male fida,' opposed to "statio tutissima," G. 4. 421. Forb. rightly distinguishes statio' from 'portus,' and Henry appositely refers to Vell. Pat. 2. 72, "Exitialemque tempestatem fugientibus statio pro portu foret."

24. Huc' may be taken with con dunt,' as Forb. (G. 1. 442, "conditus in nubem"), but it had perhaps better go with provecti,' as otherwise we should have expected in litus.' 'Deserto in litore' shows that the change in the fortunes of Tenedos had already begun.

25.] Wagn. is hardly right in explaining vento petere' here and v. 180 to mean no more than "navibus petere." In 1. 307., 4. 46, 381, where similar expressions are used, the meaning evi dently is that the person is supposed to be driven by the winds: here the notion seems to be that of dependence on the winds, though we are meant to infer that the winds are favourable. Thus Heyne's interpretation "vento secundo" is virtually true. In 3. 563 the addition of 'remis' makes the case somewhat different.

26.] From Eur. Tro. 524, where the