The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 37

128 La Cite antique.

129 etudes sur la Poesie latine.

130 'A land of old renown, mighty in arms and the richness of its soil.'

131 'Perseverantissimo agrorum colendorum studio veteres illi Sabini Quirites atavique Romani,' etc. Columella.

132 Cf. Lucretius, iii. 105106:

Quod faciunt n.o.bis annorum tempora, circ.u.m c.u.m redeunt felusque ferunt variosque lepores.

133 'Hail mighty mother of harvests, Saturnian land, mighty mother of men.'

134 'Virgile fut en effet une des ames les plus chretiennes du Paganisme. Quoique attache de tout son cur a l'ancienne religion, il a semble quelquefois pressentir la nouvelle, et un Chretien pieux pourrait croire qu'il ne lui manqua pour l'embra.s.ser que de la connaitre.' Gaston Boissier.

135 'As it falls it awakens a hoa.r.s.e murmur among the smooth stones, and with its bubbling waters cools the parched fields.'

136 It is in the poems connected with this theme that Horace writes most from the heart; yet even where he writes chiefly from the head he imparts the same vital realism to the results of his reflection.

137 'We are not the first to whom things of beauty appear beautiful,-we who are mortal men, and behold not the morrow.'

138 Grammar of a.s.sent, by J. H. Newman.

139 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.

140 Quoted by Reifferscheid in his Suetonii Reliquiae.

141 For the name _Catalepton_ cp. Professor Nettles.h.i.+p's _Vergil_ in _Cla.s.sical Writers_, p. 23.

142 'Sed tanta inchoata res est, ut paene vitio mentis tantum opus ingressus mihi videar, c.u.m praesertim alia quoque studia ad id opus multoque potiora impertiar.' Macrob. Sat. i. 24. 11. The 'potiora studia' seem clearly to mean the philosophical studies, to which his biographer says he meant to devote the remainder of his life after publis.h.i.+ng the Aeneid.

143 'A way remote from the world and the path of a life that pa.s.ses by unnoticed.'

Cp. 'Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.'

144 Cf. Reifferscheid, Quaestiones Suetonianae, p. 400. Hagen, De Donatianae Vergilii vitae Codicibus, prefixed to his edition of the Scholia Bernensia. De vita et scriptis P. Vergili Maronis narratio, prefixed to Ribbeck's text in the Teubner edition of Virgil.

145 Ribbeck, Prolegomena, cap. viii.

146 Gossrau, in his edition of the Aeneid (1876), argues and quotes authorities in favour of retaining the older form _Virgilius_.

147 Cf. Pliny, Ep. iii. 7. Martial, xii. 67:-

Octobres Maro consecravit Idus.

148 'But no single day used then to give to their doom many thousands of men marshalled under their standards.' Lucret. v. 999.

149 'And larger shadows are falling from the lofty mountains.'

150 'From here, under some high rock, the song of the woodsman will rise into the air.'

151 'I had indeed heard that from the spot where the hills begin to draw themselves away from the plain, sinking down with a gentle slope, as far as the river and the old beeches, with their now withered tops, your Menalcas had saved all his land by his songs.'

152 'Yet we shall reach the town: or if we fear that night may first bring the rain-'

153 'The herds will not lack their clear springs, nor their pasture.'

154 Cf. Eustace, vol. i. chap. v. Compare also the following characteristic pa.s.sage quoted from d.i.c.kens by Mr. Hare in his Cities of Northern and Central Italy: 'Was the way to Mantua as beautiful when Romeo was banished thither, I wonder? Did it wind _through pasture land as green, bright with the same glancing streams_, and dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees? _Those purple mountains lay on the horizon_, then, for certain.' d.i.c.kens certainly was not looking for Virgilian reminiscences in writing this description.

155 'And thou, Benacus, uprising with waves and roar like that of the sea.'

156 'And such a plain as ill-fated Mantua lost, a plain which fed its snow-white swans on its weedy river.'

157 Aeneid, x. 204.

158 'Vergilius-nomen vix dubiae originis Gallicae. Cf. Vergiliae (stellae), Propert. i. 8. 10, Plin. fq. ??e?????a (Oppid. Hispan.), Ptol. 2. 5. Radix vetust. Camb. _guerg._ (efficax) gl. Ox. extat etiam in vetusto nomine apud Caes.' Zeuss, Grammatica Celtica, p.

11, edit. altera: Berol. 1871.

159 Cic. Epp. ad Att. vii. 7; ad Fam. xvi. 12.

160 Cic. Epp. ad Att. v. 2.

161 'But if a chaste and blooming wife, beside, His cheerful home with sweet young blossoms fills, Like some stout Sabine, or the sunburnt bride Of the lithe peasant of the Apulian hills.' Martin.

162 'Meanwhile, cheering her long task with song, his wife runs over the web with her sounding shuttle.'

163 Ferunt infantem, c.u.m sit editus, neque vagisse, et adeo miti vultu fuisse, ut haud dubiam spem prosperioris geniturae jam tunc indicaret.

164 Siquidem virga populea more regionis in puerperiis eodem statim loco depacta ita brevi evaluit tempore ut multo ante satas populos adaequa.s.set, quae arbor Virgilii ex eo dicta atque etiam consecrata est summa gravidarum ac fetarum religione.

The resemblance of the name to the word virga is probably at the root of this story.

165 'You will now be to him what Mantua and Cremona were before.'

166 'Hence, away, empty phrases of the Rhetoricians, words swollen with water not from a Greek source, and you, ye Stilos, and Tarquiti, and Varros, tribe of grammarians oozing over with fat, away hence tinkling cymbal of our empty youth.... I shape my course to the blessed harbours, in search of the wise words of great Siron, and will redeem my life from every care.'

167 'For, I shall own the truth, ye were dear to me.'

168 'But me a pa.s.sionate delight hurries along over the lonely heights of Parna.s.sus.'

169 'When I would sing of kings and battles, Apollo pulled my ear and warned me.'

170 'Cottage that belonged to Siron, and poor plot of ground, although deemed great riches by your former owner.'

171 Hor. Ep. ii. 1. 246.

172 'Tenderness and grace have been granted to Virgil by the Muses who delight in the country.'

173 'Maecenas goes to play at fives, Virgil and I to sleep, for that game does not agree with those suffering from dyspepsia and weak eyes.'