animo et spe jam præceperat," Heyne; whose interpretation has been adopted by succeeding commentators. This interpretation is undoubtedly incorrect: for;-1st, The peculiar and proper meaning of opes is not treasures, but opulence, and the strength and power consequent upon opulence; so dives opum, En. 1. 14; Trojanas ut opes, En. 11. 4: Has evertit opes, En. II. 603; Opibus juvabo, En. I. 571. 2dly, The possessive Pygmalionis cannot without great violence be wrested so as to mean hope of possession. 3dly, Supposing the structure to admit of such interpretation, it were unworthy of Virgil, having already employed one sentence in informing us that the ships were seized, and another in informing us that they were loaded with gold, to occupy a third with the statement that the gold sailed. We have only to give to opes its true signification of opulential substance, and to Pygmalionis its proper possessive force, and we have a meaning at once simple and worthy of the author, viz. :—that the strength and substance of Pygmalion was carried away over the sea. That this is the true meaning, is further proved by the very next sentence, dux fœmina facti, as well as by ulta virum, pœnas inimico a fratre recepi, En. Iv. 656. For, what was the deed achieved by a woman? or what was the revenge which Dido had for her murdered husband? or what was the punishment inflicted upon her hostile brother? Not surely the running away with a treasure which belonged to her own husband, and which Pygmalion had never even so much as possessed; but the emasculating Pygmalion's kingdom, by carrying away, (along with the treasure,) men, ships, and munitions of war, in sufficient quantity to found a great city and a rival empire. Thus it is not indifferently or otiose, that Venus informs Eneas (and Virgil his reader) that the opes Pygmalionis sailed the deep, but expressly for the purpose of preparing him for the display of wealth and power (opes) with which he is greeted at Carthage; and thus again, the nodus, which made it necessary for Venus to appear in person, becomes dignior vindice deâ. It may be observed further; 1st, that the term veteres (vers. 358) is almost by itself sufficient to show that the thesauros did not belong either to Sichæus or Pygmalion, but were one of those old hoards, of the existence of which no person living was aware, and which it has been from time immemorial the province of ghosts to reveal; and 2dly, that opes must be interpreted as I have proposed, in order to afford a

plausible pretext for the apprehension expressed (if not felt) by Dido (En. IV. 325), that Pygmalion would follow her, and make war upon Carthage.

V. 368. Taurino tergo.-Viz. cut in such a manner as to form one long and slender thong. For a curious modern illustration of this old story, see Thienemann, Reise in Island, 1820. Zweite Abtheil. Zweiter Abschn., where we are informed by that very close investigator, that the Icelanders are in the habit of cutting up the skin of a particular species of seal in the same manner. "Das Fell dieses Seehundes wird besonders geschätzt. Von jüngern Thieren giebt es sehr gutes Schuhleder; von ältern dient es zu Riemen, zu denen man das Ganze in einzelne Stücke schneidet."

V. 395. Nunc terras ordine longo.-" Li lætantes agmine nunc terras partim e longinquo oculis capere (s. locum ubi considant designare), partim easdem captas jam ex propinquo spectare videntur; (hoc pertinet ad eos qui sunt in primo agmine, illud ad eos qui in extremo); factoque in orbem volatu, cum cantu revertuntur." Wagner (Virg. Br. En.) But, 1st, no instance has been produced, nor I think can be found, in which capere, simply and without adjunct, signifies oculis capere, designare. 2dly, If capere be oculis designare, captas must be oculis designatas; and then what kind of sense does despectare, viz. oculis, terras jam oculis designatas, afford? or how could Venus possibly point out, or Eneas possibly observe, a distinction between the fore part of the flock of birds, despectantes terras oculis, and the hind part, designantes terras oculis? 3dly, It is not probable, nor according to nature, that the fugitive swans should sport stridentibus alis, should wheel about in circles, and sing their song of triumph, before they had reached their place of safety. 4th, The comparison to Eneas's fleet fails in its most important part (portum tenet), all the swans being represented only as arriving at, none as actually in, port.

I therefore understand the swans to be pointed out by Venus at the moment that some of them are in the act of alighting on the ground, while others who have previously alighted, and instantly (according to the well-known manner of swans, geese, and such like birds,) risen again upon the wing, wheel about in the air, and seem to look down upon the place which they have just left, and on which their comrades are in the act of alighting. While Venus still speaks, the last arrivers have also

risen, and they all (illi) sport on whirring wings, wheel round in circles, and sing their jubilee: This immediate return to the air, this sporting about in circles and singing, evincing, not merely their joy, but the small amount of damage they have received from the enemy.

Capere terras; as capere portum, Cæs. B. G. IV. 36; (observe the force and propriety with which Virgil applies to the swans' arrival at their port, the ground, the very term ordinarily used to express a ship's refuging in port); capere Italiam, En. IX. 267; tumulum capit, En. vI. 754; locum capiunt, En. v. 315; and the, if possible, still more exact French parallel prendre terre, to land; with which compare the converse expression of Ovid, Amor. III. 2, 48,- "Nil mihi cum pelago; me mea terra capit."

Videntur, although in the strict construction pertaining equally to capere and despectare, is (according to the style of which Virgil is so fond; see Comment. vers. 416;-and of which see a most remarkable example, En. x. 13,) to be referred in the sense to despectare alone, as if Virgil had said Either alight or seem to look down, for Eneas could see the swans actually alighting, although he could not see them actually looking down, but only seeming as if they looked down.

Jam despectare.-Already (i. e. so soon after their calamity,) are looking down from the air, not without contempt (" Piso vix Tiberio cedere; liberos ejus, ut multum infra despectare."— Tacit. Annal. II. 43, 6. Despectare omnia terrena.-Ammian. XIV. 11.), on the ground, the shelter of which they no longer require.

Reduces, not returning, or on their way back; ("factoque in orbem volatu, çum cantu revertuntur."-Wagner, ubi supra,) but actually returned; (1st,) because such is the ordinary meaning of the term, (Quæ tibi polliceor reduci rebusque secundis, En. IX. 301. Gratatur reduces, En. v. 40); and (2dly,) because the swans cannot well be supposed to celebrate their escape before they have actually arrived in a place of safety.

Aut portum tenet, aut pleno subit ostia velo.—Those swans which, at the moment the flock was first pointed out by Venus, had already alighted, and having risen again upon the wing, were wheeling about in circles in the air, and singing, are the ships already in port; those which were in the act of alighting, the ships entering the harbour.

V. 398. Cantusque dedere.-An eye-and-ear-witness gives

"Seine

the following account of the music of the wild swan: Stimme lässt er (viz. Cycnus musicus) im hohen Fluge ertönen, und ob sie gleich dem Gak-Gak der Gänse ähnelt, so ist sie doch weit voller und reiner, und wenn viele zusammen sich hören lassen, klingt es wie ein Glockenspiel, da die Stimme der ältern und jüngern, oder männlichen und weiblichen Vögel höher oder tiefer ist." Reise in Island, Anno 1820, von Thienemann, (a most intelligent and accurate observer of nature.) Zweite Abtheilung, Zweiter Abschnitt.

V. 403. Divinum vertice odorem.—

θεῖον ὀδμῆς πνεῦμα,

Hippolytus recognising the presence of a divinity by the odour. Eurip. Hippol. 1391.

V. 407. falsis ludis imaginibus.—

"Mock us with his blest sight, then snatch him hence."

Par. Reg. u. 56.

V. 407. Tu quoque. Not tu quoque ludis, but tu quoque crudelis, viz. as well as those other deities who take delight in persecuting me.

V. 416. Ubi templum illi.-These words, as usually rendered, (ubi templum est illi) are mere prose. They become poetic, however, if templum be referred as an additional nominative to calent, so as to agree with that verb in the loose sense in which Virgil delights to connect a second subject or a second object with his verb (see note v. 395), or a second verb with his subject or object. See En. 1. 230, and comment. En. 11. 552.

V. 416.(*) Sabao thure.-" Filii Chus; Saba, Ævila," &c. Genesis x. 7. In quem locum ita S. Hieronymus, "Saba, a quo Sabæi de quibus Virgilius."

V. 423. Pars ducere muros.-If muros be, as hitherto supposed, the walls of the city, Virgil has been guilty of a gross incorrectness in his division of the Tyrians into pars and pars: for:-1st, One and the same pars could not be employed at works so remote from each other as the building of the walls of the city, viz. at the circumference, and the building of the citadel, viz. at the centre. And, 2dly, The first pars would be necessarily mixed up and confused with the second, the works at which both were engaged (viz. ducere muros urbis, et concludere sulco,) being close to and connected with each other. But let us understand muros to be the walls of the citadel, arcis

being suggested after muros by the immediately following arcem, and we render the division perfectly correct and complete; the one pars being employed altogether at the centre about the citadel; and the other altogether towards the circumference, in choosing, and enclosing with a trench, the site for the houses: and this division is the more complete, because the two works are distinct, not only in their situation but in their nature; the one being the erection of a fortress, the other the laying out of a site for peaceful dwellings, and enclosing it, or marking its bounds with a furrow. For proof that citadels, no less than cities, had muri, see Livy, XXIV. 3; xxv. 11; xxv. 25.

V. 431.-Adultos ;-having undergone their transformations, and assumed the perfect or adult insect-form, that of imago. Gentis ;-because "solæ communes gnatos-habent.”. Georg. IV. 153.

V. 444. Caput acris equi.—See a representation on an ancient Roman lamp in the Passerian Collection, of a war-horse's head transfixed with a spear; set down by Passerius (Lucernæ Fictiles, Tom. II. Tab. 27,) as an emblem of the conquest of Carthage.

V. 448. Nixæque ære trabes.—Virgil's principal commentators, while they agree in adopting the vulgar reading of this passage, nexæque ære trabes, differ toto cælo in its interpretation. Heyne (who is followed by Wagner) having justly rejected the usually received meaning ("ære nexæ vulgo sic a cipi videas, ut postium, h. e. trabium, ex ligno, v. c. abiegnarum, vincula et clavi seu unci sint ex ære") as utterly unworthy of the dignity of the description, gives his own interpretation in these words: "nexæque liminibus (adjunctæ et imposita limini) trabes (postes) surgebant (erant ex) ære." Wunderlich, on the other hand, objecting with equal justice to Heyne's gloss, that are cannot be separated from nexa, and that there is a manifest incorrectness in the double construction, area surgebant and surgebant ære, understands nexæ ære, to be equivalent to æreus. But if equivalent to æreus, nexa are had better been omitted, as embarrassing the construction without conveying any meaning not already conveyed by area, the action of which is as full and perfect on trabes as on limina. Besides these separate, there is one general, objection to all the explanations which have been, or, as far as I can see, can be offered of this reading; viz., that they all so limit Virgil's description as to make it the descrip