memorem: transferred epithet: it was Juno that never forgot (Knapp) “relentless,” that forgets not (Frieze).ĥ : multa quoque et bello passus: “and having suffered much besides in war” (Bennett). alto: altum is regularly used as a noun ( = altum mare) (Comstock).Ĥ : superum: for superorum, “of the gods above” equivalent here to “divine,” referring to vi, and meaning especially Juno (Frieze) ( AG 49d). terris, alto: ablatives of the place where, without a preposition, which is poetic (F-B) ( AG 429.4). ille: the pronoun is in a kind of apposition with qui (G-K). Italiam.Lavinia: form a good illustration of one of Vergil’s favorite devices-transition from the general to the specific the gradual narrowing down of the thing referred to (Carter).ģ : multum: Here an adverb, limiting iactatus (Bennett). Lavinia is sometimes scanned as four syllables (6.764, 7.72), sometimes as three, the i being pronounced as y (see 6.33 quīn prōtinus omnia) ( AG 603c, N). Lavinia: i.e., the western coast of Italy, where is the town of Lavinium, assumed to be named for Lavinia, the Italian bride of Aeneas (G-K). fato: belongs to both profugus and venit (F-B). But adherence to this quantity would have made the word impossible to use in the dactylic hexameter (Bennett). In prose, as Quintilian expressly assures us, this I is short.
Note that the initial I of Italia is here used as long. In prose a preposition ( ad or in) would be required (F-B) ( AG 428g). The meaning is not that Aeneas was the first of a series of Trojans who settled in Italy, but merely that he marks the first beginning of the Roman race (Bennett).Ģ : Italiam: acc. primus: “first,” not here in the sense of “the first who,” but “at the first,” “in the beginning” (Frieze). Throughout the Aeneid Vergil sets his Roman theme in tension with the heroic world of Homer Aeneas has to leave the one world and enter the other (Williams). ġ : arma virumque: the first word, indicating war as the subject matter of the poem, challenges comparison with the Iliad the second challenges comparison with the Odyssey. And so we know immediately that this is a story about war, arma, and that it will have one main character, virumque we know that the author is going to have a presence.
As is expected in the genre of epic, the first few lines of the poem reveal the outlines of the plot and its significance.
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