wunder · LibraryPart 18
Read in the Wunder reader — freel. 396--Aut capere aut captas iam despectare videntur. Henry seems unquestionably right in explaining captas despectare of the swans rising and hovering over the place where they had settled, this action being more fully expressed in the next two lines. The parallelism between ll. 396 and 400 exists, but it is inverted, capere corresponding to subit, captas despectare to tenet.
l. 427--lata theatris with the balance of MS. authority.
l. 550--Arvaque after Med. and Pal.; armaque Con.
l. 636--Munera laetitiamque die ('ut multi legunt,' says Serv.), though it has little MS. authority, has been adopted because it is strongly probable on internal grounds, as giving a basis for the other two readings, dei and dii.
l. 722--The long-since-unstirred spirit.
And weep afresh love's long-since-cancell'd woe. SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet XXX.
l. 726--dependent lychni laquearibus aureis. Serv. on viii. 25, summique ferit laquearia tecti, says 'multi lacuaria legunt. nam lacus dicuntur: unde est . . . lacunar. non enim a laqueis dicitur.' As Prof. Nettleship has pointed out, this seems to indicate that there are two words, laquear from laqueus, meaning chain or network, and lacuar or lacunar from lacus, meaning sunk work.
BOOK SECOND
l. 30--Classibus hic locus. Ad equites referre debemus.--Serv. Cf. also vii. 716.
l. 76--Omitted with the best MSS.
l. 234--moenia pandimus urbis. Moenia cetera urbis tecta vel aedes accipiendum.--Serv. This is the sense which the word generally has in Virgil: it is often used in contrast with muri, or as a synonym of urbs; and in most cases city is its nearest English equivalent.
l. 381--caerula colla tumentem. Caerulum est viride cum nigro.--Serv. on vii. 198. Cf. iii. 208, where it is used of the colour of the sea after a storm.
l. 616--nimbo effulgens. est fulgidum lumen quo deorum capita cinguntur. sic etiam pingi solet.--Serv. Cf. xii. 416.
BOOK THIRD
l. 127--freta concita terris with all the best MSS.; consita Con.
l. 152--qua se Plena per insertas fundebat Luna fenestras. The usual explanation, which makes insertas an epithet transferred by a sort of hypallage from Luna to fenestras, is extremely violent, and makes the word little more than a repetition of se fundebat. Servius mentions two other interpretations; non seratas, quasi inseratas, and clatratas; the last has been adopted in the translation.
In the passage of Lucretius (ii. 114) which Virgil has imitated here,
Contemplator enim cum solis lumina . . . Inserti fundunt radii per opaca domorum,
it is possible that clatris may be the lost word.
l. 684--
Contra iussa monent Heleni, Scyllam atque Charybdim Inter, utramque viam leti discrimine parvo Ni teneant cursus.
In this difficult passage it is probably best to take cursus as the subject to teneant (cursus teneant, id est agantur.--Serv. Cf. also l. 454 above, quamvis vi cursus in altum Vela vocet), viam being either the direct object of teneant, or in loose apposition to Scyllam atque Charybdim.
l. 708--tempestatibus actis with Rom. and Pal.; actus Con. after Med.
BOOK FOURTH
Totus hic liber . . . in consiliis et subtilitatibus est. nam paene comicus stilus est. nec mirum, ubi de amore tractatur.--Serv.
l. 273--Omitted with the best MSS.
l. 528--Omitted with the best MSS.
BOOK FIFTH
The Aeneid of Virgil · The Wunder Library — complete classics, free to read, with narration.