Aeneidos libri VI Author:Virgil Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: COMMENTARY BOOK I a. Jilt ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena b. carmen, et egressus silvis vicina cocgi, c. ut yuamvis avido partrent arva colono... more », d. gratum opus agriiolis: at nunc horrentia Afartii [arma virumque cano, etc.). In many manuscripts these four lines are prefixed to the first book of ;he Aeneid. It is certain, however, that they did not form the usual opening in ancient times, for the Romans, who often quoted the first line of a book as its title, refer repeatedly to the Aeneid as thea/va virumque cano ; it seems, therefore, probable that they are the work of some grammarian, who thus attempted to father off his own verses on to Virgil ; though it is possible that Virgil himself may have written them when sending a sample piece of the Aeneid to some friend of his, not intending them, however, to belong to the work proper. a. modulatus : sc. sum. The line refers to the Bucolics. b. egressus silvis : having abandoned Bucolic poetry and gone over to the Georgics. vicina : with arva. c. quamvis avido : 'however greedy," i. e. 'even the greediest.' d. horrentia : with arma, thus connecting these preliminary lines with the real opening lines of the poem. The poet tells in brief his theme I. virum : Aeneas. primus: ' the first' to come to the Lavinian shores. Strictly speaking he was not the first to arrive in Italy ; for Antenor and his companions were already settled in northern Italy. 2. Italian!: the accusative of the ' place whither,' sometimes called the 'accusative of the limit of motion.' In prose a preposition (ad or in) is usually found (except with the names of towns and small islands, which never take a preposition), but in poetry the preposition is usually omitted. Cp. V. 325 ; B. 182 ; A. 258 ; H. 418. Other il...« less