Aeneid (Conington 1866)/Notes
NOTES.
Page 12.
'To bright possession in the sky.'
A hint has here been taken from Symmons's version of the preceding speech, where 'cæli quibus annuis arcem' is rendered (I quote from memory)
'To whom thy nod has given
A bright reversion in the courts of heaven.'
Page 31.
'But I, I cannot brook with ease
Junonian hospitalities.'
'Junonian hospitalities prepare
Such apt occasion that I dread a snare'
Wordsworth (in Philological Museum).
Page 97.
'With outstretched hands he gropes.'
'And with his outstretched arms around him groped.'
Addison.
Page 130.
'See here, yourself and me foredone.'
'O sister, sister, thou hast all foredone.'
C. R. Kennedy.
Page 139.
'Hug close the shore, nor fear its crush.'
Here and in other parts of the paragraph 'shore' is used, like 'littus' in the original, not for the coast, but for the side of the rock which formed the goal.
Page 141.
'Beneath them vanishes the ground.'
This is another Virgilian licence, the ground ('solum') being put for the water under the ship.
Page 143.
'Inwoven there the 'princely boy.'
Page 157.
'And gaze delighted, as they trace
A parent's mien in each fair face.'
'The shouting crowds admire their charms, and trace
Their parents' lines in every lovely face.' Pitt.
Not long before, Pitt has a line 'Around their brows a vivid wreath they wore.' So it appears in all the editions that I have consulted; but I can scarcely doubt that 'vivid' should be 'virid,' though the latter word is more after the manner of Spenser or Milton than of eighteenth century poetry.
Page 185.
'Foul Penury, and Fears that kill.'
'The fear that kills,
And hope that is unwilling to be fed.'
Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence.
Page 195.
'His ears cut off.'
I find too late that I have written 'ears' inadvertently for 'hands.'
Page 250.
'Or those whom fair Abella sees
Down-looking through her apple-trees.'
'And where Abella sees
From her high towers the harvest of her trees.'
Dryden
Page 280 foll.
In translating the description of the shield, I have endeavoured to bear in mind, what I believe to be of great importance to the interpretation of the passage, that the various events of Roman history are represented, not in the precise way in which they are likely to have happened historically, but in the form supposed to be best adapted to tell the story to the eye. So the epithets do not characterise the persons or things as they are in themselves, but as they appear on the shield: e.g., the Gauls' hair is called golden because it is actually of gold.
Page 297.
'No after day
This hour's fair promise shall betray.'
'All, all my life, replies the youth, shall aim,
Like this one hour, at everlasting fame.' Pitt
Page 300.
'The maddening fever of the steel.'
I hope it will not be supposed that I mean 'fever of the steel' as a version of 'cupidine ferri.' There is another suspicion of the kind which I feel almost ashamed to rebut, in p. 359, where, though 'encumbered and unstrung' is I trust a tolerable equivalent for 'inutilis inque ligatus,' 'inligatus' is not intended to be represented by 'unstrung.'
Page 304.
'Then, pierced to death, asleep he fell
On the dead breast he loved so well.'
'Then, quiet, on his bleeding bosom fell,
Content in death to be revenged so well.' Dryden.
Page 311.
'What God, what madness brings you here
To taste of our Italian cheer?'
'What noble Lucumo comes next
To taste our Roman cheer?' Macaulay's Lays.
Page 320.
'Nor quit the leaguered town.'
As Virgil repeatedly speaks of the Trojan camp as 'urbs,' I have ventured here to call it a town.
Page 343.
'Like knot in sturdy wood.'
Virgil's allusion in the word 'nodum' is probably rather to a knot which needs untying than to a knot in wood; but it was necessary to give some metaphor which might be equivalent to his, and the resistance made by a knot in wood to the blade of an axe naturally suggested itself.
Page 407.
'Latium has other maids unwed,
And worthy of a royal bed.'
'Yet more, three daughters in his court are bred,
And each well worthy of a royal bed.'
Pope's Homer, Iliad, book ix.
Page 408.
'The arbitrament of fight to dare.'
'Singly to dare the arbitrement of fight.'
Symmons's Æneid, book xi. 562.
Page 425.
'And earth with trampling throbs and thrills.'
The words 'throbs and thrills' are taken from a poem by a friend to whose criticism this work owes much.
Page 438.
'And bucklers clashed with brazen din
The overture of fight begin.'
'The overture of tyranny's begun' is the younger Symmons's version of Æsch. Ag. 1354, φροιμιάζονται γὰρ Τυραννίδος σημεῖα πράσσοντες πόλει.
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