The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 38

174 'Yet there will remain some vestiges of the ancient sin, which will induce men to tempt the sea in ships.'

175 'No more sincere souls has the earth ever borne, nor any to whom there is a more devoted friend than I.'

176 'I then had my home in sweet Parthenope, happy in the pursuits of an inglorious idleness.'

177 'You sing, beneath the pine-woods of the shaded Galaesus, Thyrsis and Daphnis on your well-worn reeds.'

178 Cf. supra, p. 69.

179 'Nam plerumque a stomacho et a faucibus ac dolore capitis laborabat, sanguinem etiam saepe rejecit.' Cf. what Sainte-Beuve says of Bayle: 'Il lui etait utile meme d'avoir cette sante frele, ennemi de la bonne chere, ne sollicitant jamais aux distractions.'

180 Cp. Journal of Philology, Part III. Article on the twenty-ninth poem of Catullus.

181 The German historians of Roman literature are more just in their judgment of Virgil's character than of his genius. Thus W. S.

Teuffel puts aside these scandals with the brusque and contemptuous remark-'Der Klatsch bei Donatus uber sein Verhaltniss zu seinen Lieblingssklaven Alexander und Kebes, so wie zu Plotia Hieria, einer amica des L. Varius, beurtheilte nach sich selbst das was ihm an Vergil unbegreiflich war.'

182 'He was gentle here on earth, and is gentle there.' Aristoph. Frogs, 82.

183 Cf. Reifferscheid, p. 67.

184 'Whatsoever it shall be, every fortune must be mastered by bearing it.'

'Learn, my son, from me to bear yourself like a man and to strive earnestly, from others learn to be fortunate.'

185 Compare the lines of Coleridge on hearing 'The Prelude' read aloud by Wordsworth:-

'An Orphic song indeed, A song divine of high and pa.s.sionate thoughts To their own music chanted.'

186 'I, the idle singer of a pastoral song, who in the boldness of youth made thee, O t.i.tyrus, beneath the shade of the spreading beech, my theme.'

187 The lines of Propertius-

Tu canis umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin harundinibus,

might suggest the inference that the seventh was composed at the time when Virgil was residing in the neighbourhood of Tarentum. But, at the time when Propertius wrote, Virgil was engaged in the composition of the Aeneid, not of the Eclogues. The present 'canis'

seems rather to mean that Virgil, while engaged with his Aeneid, was still conning over his old Eclogues. Yet he must have strayed 'subter pineta Galaesi' some time before the composition of the last Georgic. It has been remarked by Mr. Munro that the 'memini' in the line

Namque sub Oebaliae memini me turribus arcis

looks like the memory of a somewhat distant past. Could the villa of Siron have been in the neighbourhood of Tarentum? (a question originally suggested by Mr. Munro); may it have pa.s.sed by gift or inheritance into the possession of Virgil, and was he in later life in the habit of going to it from time to time? or was the distance too great from Mantua for him to have transferred his family thither?

188 'This taught me "the fair Alexis was loved by Corydon," this too taught me "whose is the flock? is it the flock of Meliboeus?"'

189 viii. 56. 12.

190 Ep. ad Att. i. 12.

191 Dr. Kennedy refers to no less than seventeen parallel pa.s.sages from Theocritus, many of them being almost literal translations from the Greek poet.

192 'Look, the steers are drawing home the uplifted ploughs.'

193 'O that it would but please you to dwell with me among the "homely slighted" fields and lowly cottages, and to shoot the deer.'

194 'The G.o.ds too were dwellers in the woods, and Dardanian Paris. Leave Pallas to abide in the towers which she has built; let our chief delight be in the woods.'

195 Dr. Kennedy refers to twenty-seven parallels from Theocritus.

196 'Pollio loves my song, though it is but a shepherd's song.' 'Pollio himself too is a poet.'

197 'Who hates not Bavius may he be charmed with thy songs, O Maevius!'

198 'Menalcas Vergilius hic intelligitur, qui obitum fratris sui Flacci deflet, vel, ut alii volunt, interfectionem Caesaris.' Comment. in Verg. Serviani (H. A. Lion, 1826).

199 See Conington's Introduction to this Eclogue.

200 'No beast either tasted the river or touched a blade of gra.s.s.'

201 Compare M. Benoist's note on the pa.s.sage.

202 'Proximis diebus equorum greges, quos in traiciendo Rubicone flumine consecrarat ac vagos et sine custode dimiserat, comperit pertinacissime pabulo abstinere ubertimque flere.' Sueton. lib. i.

c. 81.

203 'As to Bacchus and to Ceres so to thee shall the husbandmen annually make their vows; thou too wilt call on them for their fulfilment.'

204 'The star beneath which the harvest-fields should be glad in their corn-crops, and the grapes should gather a richer colour on the sunny hill-sides.'

205 'Graft your pears, Daphnis: your fruits will be plucked by those who come after you.'

206 Kennedy.

207 'Here the green Mincio fringes its bank with delicate reeds, and swarms of bees are buzzing from the sacred oak.'

208 'This I remember, and that Thyrsis was beaten in the contest: from that time Corydon is all in all with us.'

209 Cf.

Ergo _tua_ rura manebunt- Ille _meas_ errare boves- Multa _meis_ exiret victima saeptis.

210 Candidior postquam tondenti barba cadebat- Fortunate senex.

211 See Kennedy's note on the pa.s.sage.

212 'Though all your land is choked with barren stones or covered with marsh and sedge.'-P.

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

214 M. Benoist.

215 'Shall some unfeeling soldier become the master of these fields, so carefully tilled, some rude stranger own these harvest-fields? see to what misery fellow-countrymen have been brought by civil strife!'