Lines 676-677.-The combination of deus, fata, and fortuna, may be paralleled in viii. 572 ff.: see Aeneas at the Site of Rome," p. 97. Turnus wants to express his sense of doom that cannot be escaped. Lines 684 ff.: "ac veluti montis saxum de vertice praeceps This follows Il. xiii. 136 ff. closely, but it is unlikely that Virgil had never himself seen a rock avalanche. Sir Archibald Geikie, in his charming book "The Love of Nature among the Romans" (pp. 288 ff.), remarks on the want of appreciation of mountain scenery in Virgil's poems, and suggests that he knew his mountains only from a distance. But he certainly knew the foothills of the Alps, and the ruins of the mountains that came down upon them;1 and if so, it is hardly possible that he should have missed the "mons improbus" in reality which he knew so well in Homer. The descent of huge boulders must have been a familiar sight in Italy. 1 See, e.g., Georg. iii. 253 ff., of boulders torn down by mountain torrents. Mr. Mackail has some valuable remarks on this point, amply illustrated from the poems, in Journal of Roman Studies, vol. iii., 1913, p. 7. Sir A. Geikie tells us that he noticed a wall-painting The word improbus, like the ȧvaidys of Homer, Lines 701 ff.: "Quantus Athos aut quantus Eryx aut ipse corusci Coruscis is used of woods in i. 164, and is usually 1 Cp. Julius Obsequens 59, ed. Jahn: after an earth- by waving of branches: see Henry, index, p. 10, where 464 should be 164 in the reference to book i. But as used here of ilex woods, so common in Italy, I think we may assume that it is meant to express the two colours of the leaves, white below and grey above, which produce this coruscatio in any breeze. I have just been able to verify this in my own garden, where I planted an ilex long ago. "Pater Appenninus nivali vertice gaudens is almost certainly the central peak of the Apennines, as Mr. Mackail suggested in the Journal of Roman Studies for 1913, p. 9-the prominent horn of the Gran Sasso d'Italia, as it is now called. It is nearly 10,000 feet above the sea, and stands out prominently in a peak or horn above the general level of the range. The following extract from Miss Macdonell's "In the Abruzzi "1 will help the reader of Virgil to understand the importance of this great peak: All round is a vast plain, walled to the south by Velino and Puzzello, to the east and south by Sirente. It ends far away to the north at Aquila in the jagged range of the Gran Sasso, its horn clear-cut and blue-blue in the dazzling air. Great meadows, thick with mountain flowers, stretch on to Rocca di Cambio and to Fontecchio. In one of them a troop of ponies is scampering wild and free. The sun sinks behind Monte d'Ocre. Keen winds blow. Here in the highlands the summer nights are austere; and the stars come out like 1 P. 212. steely gems. On the road asses and mules, shapeless under their loads of scented hay that stretch from marge to marge, move on their slow way home. The driver stops his song, and sends them off at a heavy trot. The clatter of hoofs in your ears, and the falling night about you, an old tale becomes a reality of yesterday, the tale of the Angevin riding fast and furious along this road through the starlight, the looming horn of Monte Corno his guide,1 on to Aquila to test the faith of the Aquilesi. Was it his, or Conradin's? And following on his returning footsteps come the men and women of Aquila, a wild, disordered band, on foot, on muleback, laden with stores, filled with a sudden fury of help to the Angevin, and of hate to the unknown gallant young grandson of the founder of the greatness of their city." The word pater as thus applied to a mountain centre is not found elsewhere, so far as I know. Mr. Page says that it marks veneration and affection, and I think he is right. But there is also the geographical idea of pre-eminence, as in pater Tiberinus";2 and the application of fatherhood to rivers and mountains seems appropriate in a people who developed the patriarchal system more completely than any other. 1 Monte Corno is the name of the highest peak of the Gran Sasso. 2 Georg. iv. 369, where there is perhaps a reference to the head-springs of the river. Pater Amasenus," Aen. vii. 685; "pater Inachus," on the shield of Turnus, ib. 792. Lines 725-727: "Iuppiter ipse duas aequato examine lances sustinet et fata imponit diversa duorum, quem damnet labor et quo vergat pondere letum." Cp. Il. xxii. 209 ff.: Καὶ τότε δὴ χρύσεια πατὴρ ἐτίταινε τάλαντα, ἐν δ ̓ ἐτίθει δύο κῆρε τανηλεγέος θανάτοιο, τὴν μὲν ̓Αχιλλῆος, τὴν δ ̓ Εκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο, ἕλκε δε μέσσα λαβών· ῥέπε δ ̓ Εκτορος αἴσιμον ἦμαρ. Jupiter weighs the two combatants in the balance -or weighs their fata, which in Virgilian language is very much the same thing. Miss Matthaei1 truly says that this, as an imitation of Homer (Il. xxii. 209 ff.), need not have too much stress laid on it 1 Classical Quarterly for 1917, p. 18; Aeneas at the Site of Rome," pp. 123 ff. As Mr. Page says, the reader is apt to get as weary of the Fates as Turnus himself (see his note on ix. 130 ff.). But he would get less weary of them if he would learn to discriminate more certainly between fata (or fatum) in a cosmical or metaphysical sense, and fata when it is simply used either poetically or rhetorically. Here (xii. 726) it is used poetically, coming from Homer; a good example of the rhetorical use of the word is ix. 135 ff.: "Sat fatis Venerique datum, tetigere quod arva Servius naturally understood this: "hoc falsum est quod dicit Turnus: sed in arte rhetorica tunc nobis conceditur uti mendacio, cum redarguere nullus potest." It is worth noting how comparatively good Servius is on such passages: they understood rhetoric in his day. |