The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 48

566 'Apollo of Actium, marking this, was bending his bow from above.'

567 'Speed well, O boy, in thy young valour; such is the way to the stars, thou child of the G.o.ds and sire of G.o.ds to be: rightly shall all the wars that are destined to be, cease under the sway of the line of a.s.saracus: nor is Troy wide enough to hold thee.' Aen. ix.

6414.

568 ix. 717.

569 'Forthwith she thus addressed the sister of Turnus, she a G.o.ddess, her a G.o.ddess of the meres and sounding rivers; such the hallowed office that Jove, high king of Heaven, bestowed on her as the price of her love.' Aen. xii. 13841. This pa.s.sage, with its monotonous and rhyming endings-sororem-sonoris-honorem,-is probably one of those which Virgil would have altered had he lived to give the 'limae labor' to his work.

570 vii. 81, etc.

571 'Then the queen of the G.o.ds gliding from Heaven, with her own hand pushed the lingering gates, and, as the hinge moved, she, with the might of Saturn's daughter, bursts open the iron-fastened doors of War.' vii. 6202.

572 'In her true semblance as a G.o.ddess, in form and size as she is wont to appear to the dwellers in Heaven.'

573 'The awful forms become visible and the mighty majesty of the G.o.ds hostile to Troy.'

574 Cp. De Coulanges, La Cite Antique.

575 'Even then the dread solemnity of the spot awed the frightened peasants: even then they trembled before the wood and rock. This grove, he says, this hill with leafy summit, some G.o.d-what G.o.d we know not-inhabits: the Arcadians believe that they have beheld even Jove himself, when oft-times he shook the blackening aegis in his right hand, and summoned the storm clouds.' viii. 34954.

576 'That it may not be able to be received within the gates or drawn within the walls, nor to guard the people beneath its ancient sanct.i.ty.' ii. 1878.

577 'Quitting shrines and altars, all the G.o.ds by whom this empire stood fast, have departed.' ii. 3512.

578 'With his own hand he bears the sacred emblems and the defeated G.o.ds and drags his little grandson.' ii. 3201.

579 'We bear bowls foaming with warm milk, and saucers of sacred blood, and lay his spirit to rest in the tomb, and call him for the last time with a loud voice.' Aen. iii. 668. The pa.s.sage is referred to by M. de Coulanges in one of the early chapters of 'La Cite Antique.'

580 'O light of the Dardan land, most trusted hope of the Trojans, why hast thou tarried so long? from what sh.o.r.es, Hector, dost thou, the object of much longing, come? how, after many deaths of thy kinsmen, after manifold shocks to the city and to those who dwell within it, do we, in our utter weariness, behold thee? what cruel cause hath marred thy calm aspect, or why do I behold these wounds?' ii. 2816.

581 'He makes no reply, nor detains me by answer to my idle questions, but with a deep groan from the bottom of his breast, "Ah fly," he says, "G.o.ddess-born, and wrest thyself away from these flames: the enemy holds the walls; Troy falls in ruins from its lofty summit; enough has been granted to my country and to Priam; could Pergama have been defended by any single hand even by this it should have been defended. Troy commits to thee her sacred emblems and household G.o.ds: take them as companions of thy destinies, seek a fortress for them, which thou shalt raise of mighty size after thy wide wanderings over the deep are over."'

582 'At a time when Andromache, in a grove in front of the city by the stream of Simoeis-not the true Simoeis-happened to be bringing the yearly offering of food, a melancholy gift to the dead, and to be calling his Manes to the tomb of Hector-the empty mound of green turf which she had hallowed with the two altars, which gave food for her tears.' iii. 3015.

583 'Besides there was within the palace a marble chapel in memory of her former lord, which she cherished with marvellous reverence, wreathing it with snow-white fillets and festal leaves.' iv. 4579.

584 'The Manes send unreal dreams to the world above.'

585 'Where her former husband Sychaeus sympathises with all her sorrows and loves her with a love equal to her own.'

586 Cp. 'Un Poete Theologien,' in the Revue des Deux Mondes.

587 Cf. Aen. v. 236:-

Vobis laetus ego hoc candentem in litore taurum Const.i.tuam ante aras, voti reus, extaque salsos Porriciam in fluctus, et vina liquentia fundam.

viii. 273:-

Quare agite, O iuvenes! tantarum in munere laudum Cingite fronde comas et pocula porgite dextris.

588 Created out of his ships.

589 'Nay when thy fleet, after crossing the seas, shall have come to anchor, and, after raising altars, thou shalt pay thy vows upon the sh.o.r.e, then veil thy head with a purple robe, lest, while the consecrated fires are burning in the worship of the G.o.ds, the face of some enemy may meet thee, and confound the omens.' iii. 4037.

590 'Highest of G.o.ds, Apollo, guardian of holy Soracte, in whose worship we are foremost, in whose honour the heaped-up pinewood blazes, while we, thy worshippers, with pious trust, even through the midst of the flame plant our steps deep in the embers.' xi. 7858. Cp. the Beltane fires which are said to be still kept up among remote Celtic populations, and which seem to be a survival of a primitive Sun-worship.

591 'Idle superst.i.tion, which knows not the ancient G.o.ds.'

592 Ann. iv. 33.

593 It is true, as Gibbon remarks in his Dissertation on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid, that the expression 'dare iura' is only once applied to Aeneas-but it is the regular expression used of a ruler of a settled community, as for instance of Dido. It is applied at the end of the Georgics to Augustus, 'per populos dat iura.'

594 'While the house of Aeneas shall dwell by the steadfast rock of the Capitol, and the fatherly sway of a Roman shall endure.' Cp. the application of 'pater' as an epithet of Aeneas, and Horace's line in reference to Augustus-

Hic ames dici pater atque princeps.

595 'A palace, august, vast, propped on one hundred columns, stood in the highest place of the city, the royal abode of Laurentian Picus, inspiring awe from the gloom of woods and old ancestral reverence., Here it was held auspicious for kings to receive the sceptre and first to lift up the fasces: this temple was their senate-house, this the hall of their sacred banquets; here after sacrifice of a ram the fathers used to take their seats at the long unbroken tables.' vii. 1706.

596 'After the Powers on high determined to overthrow the empire of Asia and the nation of Priam that deserved no such fate, and proud Ilium fell, and Troy built by Neptune is reduced utterly to ashes.' iii.

13.

597 'An ancient city, that held empire through many years, is falling in ruins.' ii. 363.

598 'Such was the final doom of Priam; this the end allotted to him, while he saw Troy on fire and its citadel in ruins,-Troy that formerly held proud sway in Asia over so many peoples and lands.'

ii. 5547.

599 'I have lived, and finished the course that fortune gave me; and now my shade shall pa.s.s in majesty beneath the earth; I have founded a famous city, I have seen my own walls arise.' iv. 6535.

600 The Peloponnesian war, which united the Dorian and oligarchical States of Greece under the lead of Sparta against Athens and her allies, admits, as is indicated by Thucydides in his Introduction, of the best parallel to the Trojan war, as represented by Homer.

601 'In rough guise, armed with javelins and wearing the skin of a Libyan bear.'

602 'And seated him on a couch of leaves and the skin of a Libyan bear.'

603 'Here others lay the broad foundations for theatres, and hew out from the rocks huge columns, the high ornaments of a future stage.'

i. 4279.

604 'Bronze was the threshold with its rising steps, bronze-bound the posts, of bronze the doors with their grating hinges.' i. 4489.

605 'And marvels at the skill of the artists working together and the toil with which their works are done, he sees the whole series of the battles fought at Troy and the war whose fame was already noised through all the world.' i. 4557.

606 'Burning lamps hang from the roof of fretted gold, and torches with their blaze banish the night.'

607 'Youth of surpa.s.sing spirit, the higher thou risest in thy towering courage, the more fit is it that I take earnest counsel and weigh anxiously every chance.' xii. 1921.

608 'The care thou hast for my sake, I pray thee, Sire, for my sake to lay aside, and allow me to hazard my life for the prize of honour. I too,' etc.

609 'Thou too, O Turnus, would'st now be standing a huge trunk with thy arms upon thee, were but thy age equal to his and the strength derived from years the same.' xi. 1734.