The Aeneid of Virgil - Part 13
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Part 13

Aeneas stood wrathful in arms, with rolling eyes, and lowered his hand; and now and now yet more the speech began to bend him to waver: when high on his shoulder appeared the sword-belt with the shining bosses that he knew, the luckless belt of the boy Pallas, whom Turnus had struck down with mastering wound, and wore on his shoulders the fatal ornament. The other, as his eyes drank in the plundered record of his fierce grief, kindles to fury, and cries terrible in anger: 'Mayest thou, thou clad in the spoils of my dearest, escape mine hands? Pallas it is, Pallas who now strikes the sacrifice, and exacts vengeance in thy guilty blood.' So saying, he fiercely plunges the steel full in his breast. But his limbs grow slack and chill, and the life with a moan flies indignantly into the dark.

THE END.

NOTES

BOOK FIRST

l. 123--_Accipiunt inimic.u.m imbrem._ Inimica non tantum hostilia sed perniciosa.--Serv. on ix. 315. The word often has this latter sense in Virgil.

l. 396--_Aut capere aut captas iam despectare videntur._ Henry seems unquestionably right in explaining _captas despectare_ of the swans rising and hovering over the place where they had settled, this action being more fully expressed in the next two lines. The parallelism between ll. 396 and 400 exists, but it is inverted, _capere_ corresponding to _subit_, _captas despectare_ to _tenet_.

l. 427--_lata theatris_ with the balance of MS. authority.

l. 550--_Arvaque_ after Med. and Pal.; _armaque_ Con.

l. 636--_Munera laet.i.tiamque die_ ('ut multi legunt,' says Serv.), though it has little MS. authority, has been adopted because it is strongly probable on internal grounds, as giving a basis for the other two readings, _dei_ and _dii_.

l. 722--_The long-since-unstirred spirit._

And weep afresh love's long-since-cancell'd woe.

SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet x.x.x.

l. 726--_dependent lychni laquearibus aureis._ Serv. on viii. 25, _summique ferit laquearia tecti_, says 'multi lacuaria legunt. nam lacus dic.u.n.tur: unde est . . . lacunar. non enim a laqueis dicitur.' As Prof.

Nettleship has pointed out, this seems to indicate that there are two words, _laquear_ from _laqueus_, meaning chain or network, and _lacuar_ or _lacunar_ from _lacus_, meaning sunk work.

BOOK SECOND

l. 30--_Cla.s.sibus hic locus._ Ad equites referre debemus.--Serv. Cf.

also vii. 716.

l. 76--Omitted with the best MSS.

l. 234--_moenia pandimus urbis._ Moenia cetera urbis tecta vel aedes accipiendum.--Serv. This is the sense which the word generally has in Virgil: it is often used in contrast with _muri_, or as a synonym of _urbs_; and in most cases _city_ is its nearest English equivalent.

l. 381--_caerula colla tumentem._ Caerulum est viride c.u.m nigro.--Serv.

on vii. 198. Cf. iii. 208, where it is used of the colour of the sea after a storm.

l. 616--_nimbo effulgens._ est fulgidum lumen quo deorum capita cinguntur. sic etiam pingi solet.--Serv. Cf. xii. 416.

BOOK THIRD

l. 127--_freta concita terris_ with all the best MSS.; _consita_ Con.

l. 152--_qua se Plena per insertas fundebat Luna fenestras._ The usual explanation, which makes _insertas_ an epithet transferred by a sort of hypallage from _Luna_ to _fenestras_, is extremely violent, and makes the word little more than a repet.i.tion of _se fundebat_. Servius mentions two other interpretations; _non seratas, quasi inseratas_, and _clatratas_; the last has been adopted in the translation.

In the pa.s.sage of Lucretius (ii. 114) which Virgil has imitated here,

Contemplator enim c.u.m solis lumina . . .

Inserti fundunt radii per opaca domorum,

it is possible that _clatris_ may be the lost word.

l. 684--

_Contra iussa monent Heleni, Scyllam atque Charybdim Inter, utramque viam leti discrimine parvo Ni teneant cursus._

In this difficult pa.s.sage it is probably best to take _cursus_ as the subject to teneant (_cursus teneant_, id est agantur.--Serv. Cf. also l.

454 above, _quamvis vi cursus in altum Vela vocet_), _viam_ being either the direct object of _teneant_, or in loose apposition to _Scyllam atque Charybdim_.

l. 708--_tempestatibus actis_ with Rom. and Pal.; _actus_ Con. after Med.

BOOK FOURTH

Totus hic liber . . . in consiliis et subtilitatibus est.

nam paene comicus stilus est. nec mirum, ubi de amore tractatur.--Serv.

l. 273--Omitted with the best MSS.

l. 528--Omitted with the best MSS.

BOOK FIFTH

l. 595--_iuduntque per undas_, omitted with the preponderance of MS.

authority.

BOOK SIXTH

l. 242--Omitted with the balance of MS. authority.

l. 806--_virtutem extendere factis_ with Med.; _virtute extendere vires_ Con.

BOOK EIGHTH

l. 46--Omitted with the majority of the best MSS.

l. 383--_Arma rogo. Genetrix nato te filia Nerei_.

_Arma rogo._ hic distinguendum, ut cui petat non dicat, sed relinquat intellegi . . . _Genetrix nato te filia Nerei._ hoc est, soles hoc praestare matribus.--Serv.