V. 196. Heros dividit, &c.-Heros belongs to dividit, not to dederat, because, first, if it belong to dederat, the long series of verbs, videat, prospicit, constitit, corripuit, sternit, miscet, absistit, fundat, æquet, petit, partitur, dividit, mulcet, being left wholly without a nominative, the attention is directed rather to the acts themselves than to the actor; which cannot be supposed to have been the intention of the poet, the actor being no less a person than the hero of the poem. 2dly, Dederat, inasmuch as it is joined by the conjunction to onerarat, shares its nominative, bonus Acestes, and has no occasion for any other. 3dly, In the accurate language of Virgil, (see En. II. 552,) heros applied to dederat, in addition to its other nominative, would imply that there was something peculiarly heroic in Acestes giving the wine, which yet was not the fact. 4thly, It would have been rather derogatory to the hero of his poem, if Virgil had thus unnecessarily applied the term heros to so very unimportant and secondary a personage as Acestes, at the very moment when he was leaving Eneas without any appellative, or even so much as a bare mention of his name. 5thly, Heros placed just before the last of the long series of verbs descriptive of the acts of Eneas, draws back the attention, and places it on the hero of the poem even more powerfully than if it had been placed at the beginning of the series. 6thly, and principally, because it is Virgil's wont thus to draw back the attention to the subject of his sentence, either by the proper name itself, or a new appellative placed towards the close of the sentence and immediately before the verb. See Comment. on Inscia Dido, verse 718.

V. 214. Fusique per herbam.-Fusi, not scattered, but laid

Claud. Epith. Pall. et Celerinæ, vers. 1.

See also Claudian, ibid. vers. 35. There is no distributive power in the sentence except what is feebly possessed by the word per. Compare Fundat humi, verse 193.

V. 223. Quum Jupiter, &c.-For Spenser's imitation of this passage, and of Mercury's descent from heaven, see his Mother Hubbard's Tale, vers. 1225, and seq. The whole of the interview between Jupiter and Venus has been also copied and greatly amplified by Camoens, Lusiad. II. 33.

V. 225. Sic vertice cæli.-Sic, i. e. sic despiciens. Compare (Evang. sec. Johan. IV. 6,) "Jesus ergo fatigatus ex itinere sedebat sic (i. e. sic fatigatus) supra fontem."

V. 225*. Vertice cæli.—The highest part, or arx, of heaven; where (viz. because the palace of the earthly king was always seated on the arx of the city, see En. II. 760; 2 Samuel, v. 9,) the poets, necessarily taking their notions of heavenly, from the corresponding earthly objects, placed the palace of the gods. See Comment. En. 1. 250.

V. 228. Tristior et lacrymis oculos suffusa nitentes.-Scarcely less beautiful are the words in which Dante causes Virgil's shade to describe the weeping regard of Beatrice:

Gli occhi lucenti lagrimando volse.

Infern. II. 116.

"Restat ut hoc monea

V. 244. Fontem superare Timavi.mus, fontem Timavi h. 1. pro ipso Timavo dici." Heyne, Exc. 7, ad En. 1. But if fontem Timavi signify ipsum (viz. fluvium) Timavum, unde must be equivalent to ex quo fluvio Timavo; and how it is possible to render ex quo fluvio Timavo it mare proruptum, et pel. pr. ar. son., so that it shall not be downright nonsense, I cannot perceive. Unde-it. "Hinc ille it." Heyne, ibid. But ille must refer either to fontem Timavi, or Timavi; if to the former, the sentence fontem superare Timavi unde ille (viz. fons Timavi) it, is nonsense, whether Fons Timavi be understood in its simple and literal meaning, or, with Heyne, as equivalent to fluvius Timavus; if to the latter, the structure contradicts the Latin idiom, which requires the pronoun to be supplied from the whole, not from a portion of the preceding subject, and in conformity with which, it is impossible to doubt that Virgil (if he had intended to express that the fluvius Timavus issued from the fountain,) would have written fontem superare unde Timavus it, as Georg. IV. 368, Caput unde altus primum se erumpit Enipeus.

Mare proruptum-" ad maris speciem, magnos fluctus vol

very same

ventis." Heyne, ibid. But, 1st, mare proruptum were a most extravagant metaphor to apply to a river admitted by Heyne himself to have been no more than one thousand yards long. 2dly, To repeat (unnecessarily, too) in pelago the same metaphor which he had used in mare proruptum in the line, were altogether repugnant to the good taste and the practice of Virgil. 3dly, If this interpretation be correct, pelago premit arva sonanti is little more than a mere tautology of it mare proruptum. All these difficulties, or, to speak more correctly, all these absurdities, may be got rid of, by entirely throwing away the interpretations of the commentators, and translating the sentence according to the plain and natural construction, and the literal meaning of the words. Fontem superare Timavi, unde, (viz. ex quo fonte Timavi) mare proruptum it, (viz. se prorumpit; compare Georg. IV. 368,) et pel. pr. arv. son. Or, in plain prose:-the sea communicates subterraneously with, and bursts out through, the fountain of Timavus, making a roaring noise, and deluging the fields, (pelago) with the salt water. Understanding the passage thus, we not only give to fontem Timavi, and mare proruptum, their plain and literal meaning, and to the verb it the nominative, with which Virgil (as if to prevent all possibility of mistake) has placed it in immediate juxta-position, but obtain an explanation why Antenor is said to have passed not the river, but the fountain Timavus, viz., because it was not the river which was the remarkable object, but the fountain, out of which the sea used (probably in certain states only of the wind and tide) to burst with a roaring noise. I cannot comprehend how so acute a scholar as Heyne should not only have been aware of a subterranean communication between the sea and the fountain of Timavus, (see his Exc. 7, ad En. 1.) but have actually described (ibid.) the bursting out of the sea through the fountain, and yet not have perceived that this very bursting out of the sea through the fountain, was the one essential thing which Virgil wished to place before the reader. I may add, that the observation of the fact of the salt or sea water issuing from the fountain, and flowing down the course of the river, so as apparently to supply a source to the sea itself, affords a much more probable origin of the ancient term μntip daλárty, and its modern translation, La madre del mare, applied by the inhabitants to the fons Timavi, than any supposed resemblance to a sea, which its

breadth, rapidity, or roaring noise, may have conferred on the river Timavus.

The preceding interpretation, deduced from the actual words and grammatical construction, is abundantly confirmed by the ocular testimony of Cluverius. "Ceterum de natura septem fontium (Timavi viz.) ita tradentem supra audivimus Strabonem ; Πηγὰς ἔχει ζ πότιμε ὕδατος: Πολύβιος δ ̓ εἴρηκε πλὴν μιᾶς τὰς ἄλλας ἁλμύρα ὕδατος.

Utrumque verum est diversi temporis respectu ; quippe quum omnis hic tractus inter mare et Frigidum amnem unum perpetuumque sit saxum, ['Hohle Kalkfelsen, die die schönsten und wunderbarsten Grotten bilden :" Schlözer, (who was on the spot in the year 1777,) Briefwechesel 11. Theil. p. 340, Göttingen, 1778,] innumeris passim altissimisque antris perforatum, cuniculi quidam a colle saxeo, qui septem Timavi fontibus imminet, ad proximi maris vada pertingunt, per quos incrementum patitur atque decrementum Timavus ex adfluxu refluxuque ejusdem maris; ita ut lenis sine ullo majore strepitu atque mansuetus dulcibus suis aquis per complures fauces defluat amnis ubi mare subsedit ac procul recessit; quam primum vero idem mare æstu suo intumuit, tanto cum impetu prædictis cuniculis infertur fontibusque Timavi permiscetur, ut ingenti cum fragore ac veluti mugitu saxei montis per complura illa spatiosa ora prorumpat, jamque alveo Timavi contineri nequeat, sed adjacentia prata, per quæ ad ostium tendit amnis, longe lateque sæpius inundet, pelagique in speciem plane contegat..........Hinc magnum appellavit Timavum Virgilius in Eclog. VIII... Hinc item æquoreum dixit amnem Ausonius, in carmine de claris urbibus," "æquoreo non plenior amne Ti.Tantâ copiâ quum fontibus Timavi permisceatur mare, horum omnium aquas salsedine suâ inficit, impotabilesque reddit, excepto uno quem omnium maximum apud ipsum. divi Johannis delubrum erumpere dixi. Hæc quum ipse egomet

mavus.'

.........

2 If it be alleged that Ausonius may possibly have used the word æquoreus in the sense of resembling the sea in copiousness, not in saltness, I beg to say that I am not aware that æquoreus has ever been used in the former sense, while, on the contrary, its use in the latter is placed beyond doubt by that passage in the Pharsalia, Lib. VIII.

where Lucan, speaking of the sea water used to extinguish Pompey's funeral pyre, says,

Resolutaque nondum
Ossa satis, nervis et inustis plena
medullis,
Æquoreâ restinguit aquâ.

J. H.

coram probe expertus sim, audacter eos redarguere liceat, qui dulceis perpetuo permanere omnibus fontibus aquas etiam mari cum maxime æstuante, docent."—Ital. Antiq. 1. 20.

V. 244. Fontem...ora.-Fontem, the spring or source; ora, the mouths which give issue to it, and through which occasionally (see preceding comment) the sea itself also bursts. These ora are (as described by Schlözer, ubi supra, from actual observation,) holes in the limestone rock which forms the substratum of this whole district of Carniola, "Da nun hier die See immer zunimmt, so findet der ganze Timavus beinahe keinen Abfluss mehr, und das Wasser fängt schon gleich bei seiner Entstehung an zu stehen, zumal in trocknen Zeiten, wo nur die untern Löcher der Felsen Wasser geben. Es sind der Löcher mehr als sieben...... Einige haben eine ungeheure Tiefe, andre nicht." No word could have been better chosen than ora to express accurately, and at the same time poetically, these Löcher or holes in the rock.

Claudian's "Stagna Timavi" are, as I think is sufficiently shown by the adjoined numerantur (“ Phrygii numerantur stagna Timavi,” Paneg. de tertio consulat. Honorii), neither more nor less than Virgil's ora Timavi, and Schlözer's Löcher; holes full of water, and, according to circumstances, overflowing more or less.

From the former part of Schlözer's observation, it seems not improbable that the Fons Timavi, already so much changed, and no longer (as I collect from the silence of observers since the time of Cluverius, or at least since that of Kircher,) communicating subterraneously with the sea, will, in the lapse of a few more centuries, have altogether ceased to exist.

For an account of the respective positions and names of the seven ora Timavi, as they existed in the year 1689, see Valvasor; Ehre des Herzogthum's Krain, Fol. Laybach 1689, b. II. c. 66, and b. IV. c. 44.

V. 245. Vasto cum murmure montis pelago sonanti.— Two noises are here accurately distinguished: (a) the ground murmur, or sound of the water rushing under the rocks and through their ora or apertures, (a sound exactly corresponding to, and expressed by, the self-same words as that of the winds roaring about the claustra of the Eolian hall, vers. 55,) and (b) the resounding of the waves of the flood with which the eruption of the sea through the ora had covered the cultivated fields.