The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 46

480 'Iulius a name handed down from mighty Iulus.'

481 'Looking down on the sail-winged sea, and low-lying lands, and the coasts and wide nations.'

482 'Smiling on her with that look with which he clears the sky and the storms, the father of men and G.o.ds,'-

483 'Within unhallowed Rage, seated on a heap of cruel arms, and bound with a hundred knots of bra.s.s behind his back, will chafe wildly with blood-stained lips.' Cf. the note on the pa.s.sage in Servius: 'In foro Augusti introeuntibus ad sinistram fuit bellum pictum et furor sedens super arma aenis vinctus, eo habitu quo poeta dixit.'

484 'There is a place named by the Greeks Hesperia, a land of old renown, mighty in arms and the richness of its soil-the Oenotrians dwelt in it. Now the story is that their descendants have called the nation Italia from the name of their leader.'

485 Sat. v. 2. 4.

486 'And you will come to the land Hesperia, where Lydian Tiber flows between rich fields of men with tranquil stream.'

487 The line

Quod per amoenam urbem leni fluit agmine flumen

occurs among the fragments of Ennius, and has been imitated also by Lucretius (v. 271).

488 Serv. Comment. on line 486.

489 'An ancient city, that held empire through long years, is falling in ruins.'

490 'Let their descendants piously observe this ceremony.'

491 'Whether they are preparing to bring all the woes of war on the Getae, or the Hyrcanians, or the Arabs, or to hold their way to the Indians, and to go on and on towards the dawn, and to claim back the standards from the Parthians.'

492 'And the good apart, and Cato giving to them laws.'

493 Audire est operae pretium procedere recte Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere vultis.

494 'Yes, let her spread her name of fear, To farthest sh.o.r.es; where central waves Part Africa from Europe, where Nile's swelling current half the year The plains with plenty laves.

Let earth's remotest regions still Her conquering arms to glory call Where scorching suns the long day fill, Where mists and snows and tempests chill, Hold reckless baccha.n.a.l.' Martin.

495 'To them I a.s.sign no goal to their achievements, no end,-I have given empire illimitable.' i. 2789.

496 'The Romans, lords of the world, and the people clad in the gown.'

i. 282.

497 'Here the house of Aeneas shall rule in all coasts, and their sons'

sons, and they who shall be born from them.' iii. 978.

498 'We, who under thy protection have traversed the heaving sea in thy fleet, we shall raise to the stars thy descendants in days to come, and shall give empire to thy city.' iii. 1579.

499 'But that he should be one to rule over Italy the mother of empire, echoing with the roar of war, who should transmit a race from the high line of Troy, and bring the whole world beneath his laws.' iv.

22931.

500 'Thine be the task, O Roman, to sway the nations with thy imperial rule-these shall be thy arts-to impose on men the law of peace, to spare those who yield, and to quell the proud.' vi. 8524.

501 'Strangers shall come as thy sons-in-law, destined by mingling their blood with ours to raise our name to the stars-whose descendants shall see all things, where the Sun beholds either Ocean in his course, overthrown beneath their feet and governed.' vii. 98101.

502 'While the house of Aeneas shall dwell by the Capitol's immoveable rock, and a Roman lord hold empire.' ix. 4489.

503 'Rightly shall all the wars destined to come hereafter subside in peace beneath the line of a.s.saracus.' ix. 6423.

504 'The race that mixed with Ausonian blood shall arise from them, thou shalt see transcend men, nay even G.o.ds in piety; nor shall any people equally pay homage to thee.' xii. 83840.

505 vii. 219, etc.

506 Hor. Od. iii. 5. 9.

507 The Latin name seems rather a.s.sociated with the thought of the other great distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of the Romans, their capacity for law. Cf. Hor. Od. iv. 14. 7, 'Quem legis expertes Latinae,' etc.

Virgil may intend to indicate this peaceful attribute of the Latins, in contradistinction to the warlike energy of the other Italian races, in the line (Aen. vii. 204),-

Sponte sua veterisque dei se more tenentem.

508 'The men in whom even then the Italian land rejoiced as her sons, and their fiery spirit in war.' vii. 6434.

509 iii. 539:-Bellum, O terra hospita, portas.

510 'A hardy stock, we bear our new-born sons to the rivers, and harden them with the chill cold; as boys they ply the chase and give the woods no rest: it is their pastime to rein the steed and aim their arrows from the bow. But our warrior youth, patient in toil and inured to scanty fare, either subdues the soil with the harrow or makes towns shake by their a.s.sault. Each period of life wears away in arms, and with the b.u.t.t end of the spear we goad the steer; nor does the lethargy of age impair our spirit or change our vigour: our h.o.a.ry hairs we press with the helmet, and it is our joy ever to gather fresh booty and to live by foray.' ix. 603613.

511 'The men who dwell in high Praeneste and the tilled land where Gabii wors.h.i.+ps Juno, and the Hernican rocks, sparkling with streams, they whom rich Anagnia and thou, father Amasenus, feedest.' vii. 6825.

512 'They who dwell among the crags of grim Tetrica, and the mount Severus, and Casperia and Foruli and the river of Himella; they who drink of the Tiber and Fabaris, whom cold Nursia sent, and the hosts of Horta and the Latin tribes; and those whom Allia, name of ill omen, divides with its stream flowing between them.' vii. 7137.

513 'They who plough thy glades, Tiberinus, and the hallowed sh.o.r.e of Numicius, and work the Rutulian hills with the ploughshare, and the ridge of Circeii, the fields of which Jove of Anxur is guardian, and Feronia glorying in her green grove-where the black marsh of Satura lies, and where with cold stream through the bottom of the vales Ufens gropes his way and hides himself in the sea.' vii. 797802.

514 This view of Virgil's pride in the qualities of the Italians is not incompatible with the fact to which Mr. Nettles.h.i.+p has drawn attention (Suggestions Introductory to a Study of the Aeneid, pp. 13 et seq.), that Virgil represents their earlier condition as one of turbulent barbarism. Virgil seems to have regarded 'the savage virtue of his race,' although requiring to be tamed by contact with a higher civilisation, as the 'incrementum' out of which the martial virtue and discipline of the later Italians was formed:-

Sit Romana potens Itala virtute propago.

515 'Tears to human sufferings are due, and hearts are touched by the common lot.'

516 'There will come a time as the years glide on, when the house of a.s.saracus will reduce to bondage Phthia and famous Mycenae, and lord it over vanquished Argos.' Aen. i. 2835.

517 'He shall overthrow Argos and the Mycenae of Agamemnon, and the king himself of the line of Aeacus, descendant of the puissant Achilles.'

vi. 83940.

518 'Again he has set before us in Ulysses a profitable example of the power of courage and wisdom.' Ep. i. 2. 17, etc.

519 Annals, ii. 88.

520 It is remarked by Helbig, in his 'Campanische Wandmalerei,' that among the many paintings found at Pompeii dealing with mythological and similar subjects, only one is founded on the incidents of the Aeneid.

521 Cp. Mr. Nettles.h.i.+p's Suggestions, etc., p. 10, and the pa.s.sages from Cicero there quoted.