3.205 There Dardanus was born: See DARDANUS.
3.219 He recalls at once the two lines of our race, two parents: Anchises had previously forgotten the double Trojan ancestry, from Teucer (1) and Dardanus, a native of Italy.
3.258 after Phineus’ doors were locked against them all: Phineus was blinded by the gods for having blinded his own sons. He was harried by HARPIES sent by Jupiter, and the demons snatched away his food and contaminated what was left. He was rescued by two sons of the Northwind, Boreas, the Argonauts Zetes and Calais.
3.262 Styx’s waters: Milton has made the names of the infernal rivers and their Greek etymologies resonate in Paradise Lost:
. . . four infernal rivers that disgorge
Into the burning lake their baleful streams:
Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the river of oblivion rolls
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain. 2.575-86
(See ACHERON, COCYTUS, LETHE, RIVER OF FIRE, and WAILING RIVER.)
3.374 where’s my Hector now?: As Williams reasons (1960, note 3.310-12): “Andromache can hardly believe that Aeneas is really present in person . . . She half believes he is a phantom, come in response to her invocations at Hector’s tomb (303)—why then has he come and not Hector?”
3.384-85 She was the one, / . . . Priam’s virgin daughter: Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, was sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles.
3.389-400 But I, our home in flames . . . : See ANDROMACHE. After Hector’s death and the fall of Troy, she became the slave and concubine of Achilles’ son, Pyrrhus (Neoptolemus). He deserted her in favor of Hermione, a daughter of Helen and one to whom he had been affianced. Hermione was also pursued by Orestes, however, who killed Pyrrhus, his bitter rival for her affections. Andromache, abandoned by Pyrrhus, married Helenus, her fellow captive and a son of Priam with prophetic powers, and together they founded at Buthrotum a miniature town modeled after Troy. See HELENUS and HERMIONE.
3.405 whom in the old days at Troy: As Williams observes (1960, note 3.340), “This is the only half-line in the Aeneid where the sense is incomplete, for it is impossible to regard it as an aposiopesis like Neptune’s quos ego—!” (Aen. 1.135).
3.558-59 Twice they plucked you safe / from the ruins of Troy: Once when Hercules sacked the city, and then again when the Greeks did the same. See Note 2.795-96.
3.644 Hercules’ town: Hercules is the greatest of the Greek heroes; he eventually, after his death, became an immortal god. He was the son of Jupiter and a mortal woman, Alcmena. Jupiter intended that he should lord it over all who dwell around him, but Jupiter’s jealous wife, Juno, contrived to have that destiny conferred on Eurystheus, king of Argos, to whom Hercules was to be subject. At Eurystheus’ command, Hercules performed the famous Twelve Labors: among them was the capture of the three-headed dog, Cerberus, the guardian of the entrance to the Underworld (6.452-54). For Hercules’ adventures on the site of Rome, where he kills the villain Cacus, see CACUS, 8.220-320, and Note 7.770.
3.713 My father Adamastus was poor, and so I sailed to Troy: He would have received money in payment for services as a mercenary.
4.21-22 my first love deceived me . . . / by his death: Sychaeus’ murder deceived Dido in the sense that it unexpectedly disappointed her future hopes.
4.179 Apollo leaving his Lycian haunts: See LYCIA. Apollo presumably leaves his winter residence at Patara in Lycia, when travel becomes feasible, to hold a festival at his birthplace, Delos.
4.219-36 Rumor . . . : The associations surrounding Rumor as sister of Coeus, a Titan, and Enceladus, one of the Giants, are deliberately unpleasant, smacking of anger and vengeance. For Jupiter had destroyed the Giant and the Titan, and Mother Earth “bore one last child, Fama [Rumor],” as Williams explains (1972, Note 4.179) “to be their sister and take vengeance on gods and men with her evil tongue.”
4.285 not for this did she save him twice from Greek attacks: As Williams explains (1972, Note 4.228), “once from Diomedes . . . and once from burning Troy.” See Iliad 5.347-56 and Aeneid 2.729-52.
4.305-6 [Mercury’s] wand . . . that unseals our eyes in death: He seals the eyes of the dead, then opens them when the body is placed on the pyre, perhaps to grant them vision after the dead have been cremated. There is a passage in Pliny’s Historia Naturalis (11.150) that refers to the custom.
4.376-77 the cyclic orgy . . . / and Cithaeron echoes round . . . : The festival was “triennial,” which is to say held every other year, in the ancient system of counting. Mount Cithaeron was the setting for the Bacchae of Euripides.
4.431-32 Grynean Apollo’s oracle . . . / his Lycian lots . . . : Lots here stand for some written version of the oracle’s utterances that would have stated simply “Italy.”
4.641-48 She’d sprinkled water . . . : Dido’s many ritual acts and implements, the water sprinkled, the potent herbs, the bronze sickles, the love-charm ripped from a foal’s brow, the moonlight, the sacred grain, the one foot freed from its sandal, the robes unbound—all are concerned with traditional aspects of magic.
4.710-11 Woman’s a thing / that’s always changing, shifting like the wind: Varium et mutabile semper / femina [4.569-70] is, according to Dryden, “the sharpest satire, in the fewest words, that ever was made on womankind; for both the adjectives are neuter, and animal must be understood, to make them grammar. Virgil does well to put the words into the mouth of Mercury. If a god had not spoken them, neither durst he have written them, nor I translated them [Dryden’s italics]” (Dedication of the Aeneis, 1697). Referred to by Williams, 1972, note 4.569-70.
4.779 Come rising up from my bones, you avenger still unknown: For Hannibal as the avenger whom Dido cannot know and so must leave nameless, see Introduction, pp. 24ff.
4.818-19 So—/ so—: The tradition that the repetition of “so” (Latin sic) represents Dido’s suicidal sword-strokes is as early as Virgil’s fourth-century A.D. commentator, Servius (on line 4.660).
4.868 Proserpina had yet to pluck a golden lock from her head: Proserpina would ordinarily have snipped a lock of hair from the dead as an offering. Her role here is taken by Iris because, as a suicide, Dido’s death was seen as premature.
5.134-318 For the first event, enter / four great ships . . . : A ship-race in which Cloanthus pilots the Scylla to victory, MNESTHEUS pilots the Dragon to second place, GYAS the Chimaera to third, and SERGESTUS the Centaur to fourth and last. See Williams, 1960, Note 5.114-50.
5.325-402 a breathless foot-race now . . . : In which Euryalus finishes first, Helymus second, Diores third, Salius fourth, and Nisus fifth, followed by Patron and Panopes and “many others too, their names now lost / in the dark depths of time” (336-37). See Williams, 1960, Note 5.315-39.
5.400-1 Didymaon’s work / the Greeks had torn from Neptune’s sacred gate: Didymaon is otherwise unknown. The reference may be to an event in the Trojan War.
5.539-98 those who wish / to contend with winging shafts . . . : In the archery contest Acestes places first, Eurytion second, Mnestheus third, and Hippocoön fourth. See Williams, 1960, note 5.485-518.
5.548-50 famous Pandarus, / archer who once . . . : For the Iliadic background of this passage, see PANDARUS (1), Trojan archer who at Troy, under Athena’s orders, “broke that truce [between the Trojans and the Argives], / the first to whip an arrow into the Argive ranks,” and wounded Menelaus. For the event and its consequences, see Iliad 4.99-167.
5.575-76 a potent marvel / destined to shape the future: Though there has been debate about the meaning of the sign, its positive nature and association with Acestes probably is
meant to anticipate the latter’s founding of ACESTA.
5.612 hair bound tight: Since at lines 743-45 Ascanius doffs his helmet, we must assume that there was a change of headgear after the initial moments of the ceremony.
5.655-62 This tradition . . . : The earliest reference we have to the equestrian maneuvers known as “the Game of Troy,” or simply “Troy,” dates from the time of Sulla, which is to say the late second or early first century B.C. As with so many other details in Book 5, the anachronism is deliberate on Virgil’s part. See TROY (3).
5.757 devoted Aeneas ripped the robe: To tear one’s garments is a customary sign of grief in many cultures.
5.894-903 I cared for your Aeneas . . . : To support his point, Neptune refers to two incidents, one at the start of the Aeneid, in the storm off Carthage, which only the king of the sea can calm, and another in Iliad 20.314-86, where Neptune removes Aeneas from mortal combat with Achilles.
5.906 Only one will be lost: Palinurus; see 5.929-72.
5.920 Fair-Isle, Sea-Cave, Spray, and the Waves’ Embrace: Throughout the Aeneid, the translation attempts to render many, but far from all, “significant names” in terms of their Greek or Latin roots. Following the lead of such translators as Arrowsmith, Rouse, and Fitzgerald, this has been the translator’s practice with certain Homeric names—the marine names of the Nereids, for example, in the Iliad (18.43-56, and Note ad loc), and the nautical names of the Phaea cian sea-men in the Odyssey (8.129-39, and Note ad loc). Here in Aeneid 5.920, where Virgil has borrowed a few Homeric names for the Nereids (Iliad 18.45-46), the translator borrows and adapts a few of his own English names in turn. Elsewhere, the names “Fire-Anvil,”“Lightning,” and “Thunder” (8.501) for the Cyclops who forge Aeneas’ shield, and the name “Blaze” for Pallas’ charger (11.103), reflect the same approach. (The translator has refrained, however, from rendering the name of Mezentius’ mount—Rhaebus [10.1021], “Bandy-Legs” in Greek—lest it recall the awkward American champion, Seabiscuit.)
5.964-65 the Sirens’ rocks—/ hard straits once . . . : See SIRENS. Servius connected the Sirens with Capreae, modern Capri, off the southern coast of the Bay of Naples. It is with one of the Sirens, Parthenope standing for Naples itself, that Virgil connects the writing of the Georgics (see Georgics 4.564).
6.53 an enormous cavern pierced by a hundred tunnels: See the detailed discussion, with illustrations, by Austin (1977, Note 6.42-76).
6.89-90 don’t commit your words / to the . . . leaves: A reference to the Sibyl’s typically helter-skelter way of delivering her oracles, which prompts Aeneas’ prayer that she sing those oracles herself, presumably in the interests of clarity and permanence.
6.106 a new Achilles: For the significance of the Sibyl’s expression, see Note 7.434-36, and TURNUS.
6.111 Again a stranger bride: As Williams explains (1972, note 6.93-94), “the first foreign bride was Helen, this one will be Lavinia.” The first was the cause of the Trojan War; the second, the cause of the war in Latium.
6.116 a city built by Greeks: The Sibyl refers, in her riddling way, both to Evander and his Greek roots, and to Pallanteum, his Italian capital (later Rome), and the assistance it can offer Aeneas and his armies. See 8.50-59, and Williams, 1972, Note 6.97.
6.158-59 twice / to sail the Stygian marsh, to see black Tartarus twice: As Williams notes, “instead of the normal once” (1972, note 6.134); or as Circe praises Ulysses for his courage in descending to the Underworld while still alive, “doomed to die twice over—others die just once” (Odyssey 12.24).
6.239-45 the twofold tree, its green / a foil for the breath of gold . . . : See R. A. Brooks under Commager in Suggestions for Further Reading.
6.384-423 Palinurus . . . / fresh from the Libyan run . . . : The discrepancies between Virgil’s accounts of Palinurus’ death, here and at 5.921-72, are discussed by Williams, 1960, Note 5.827f., and in his Introduction to Book 5, pp. xxv-xxviii.
6.395 Apollo’s prophetic cauldron: The cortina was actually the cauldron that stood on top of the tripod, hence a metonymy for Delphi and for Apollo.
6.557-58 Here Tydeus . . . Parthenopaeus . . . / Adrastus’ pallid phantom: The first three ghost-heroes mentioned here, Tydeus, Parthenopaeus, and Adrastus, formed part of the so-called Seven against Thebes. This failed expedition, which was organized by Polynices, son of Oedipus and Jocasta, to retake the throne of Thebes from his brother, Eteocles, was led by Adrastus, who alone survived. Parthenopaeus receives a succinct but moving lament at the conclusion of Statius’ epic Thebaid, which takes the ill-fated adventure as its subject.
6.588 three times with a ringing voice: The triple cry raised as a funeral rite, presumably a farewell to the dead; three times presumably to make sure the dead hear the cry.
6.615-16 Ulysses . . . / Aeolus’ crafty heir: Ulysses is here called Aeolides, which is to say grandson of AEOLUS (1), a caustic reference to the story that Ulysses had been fathered by Sisyphus, son of Aeolus, on Anticleia before her marriage to Laertes.
6.877 bright souls, future heirs of our name and our renown: For the figures in Anchises’ pageant, see Introduction, pp. 25-33.
6.879 that youth who leans on a tipless spear of honor: Silvius Aeneas; see Introduction, p. 29.
6.900-1 [Jupiter] marks him out / with his own bolts of honor: The most likely sign that would associate Romulus with Jupiter is the lightning bolt, which he presumably carried in his hand. The spolia opima, weapons taken from an enemy chieftain and dedicated to Jupiter—a tradition begun by Romulus, have also been suggested.
6.942 the fasces he reclaims: For “fasces,” see Introduction, p. 30.
6.1035-36 shows them out now / through the Ivory Gate: For the distinction between the Gate of Ivory and the Gate of Horn as passageways for our dreams, see 6.1029-33, and Introduction, p. 32.
7.127-28 eating / our platters now: The reference goes back to 3.295-310, where, however, the prophecy is uttered by the Harpy Celaeno, not Anchises.
7.176-77 an olive branch of Pallas / wound in wool: The olive branch, traditional symbol of peace, is here wreathed with woolen bands, as Aeneas makes his supplication.
7.260 the four cool zones of earth: Ilioneus considers the earth as divided into five zones. The central torrid zone is flanked by the remaining four, two temperate, adjacent to it, and two cold, at the extremes.
7.327 the mixed breed that crafty Circe bred: Circe was able to mate the immortal horses of her father, the Sun, with mortal stock to create a mixed breed.
7.358-59 for what foul crimes did Calydon and the Lapiths / merit so much pain? Calydon was ravaged by a boar sent by Diana to destroy the countryside, because its king, Oeneus, had slighted her. It was finally killed by Meleager. The Lapiths, among whom Ixion and Pirithous are to be numbered, were at the latter’s wedding set to fighting the Centaurs by Mars, because he was not invited to the feast. At Aeneid 6.694 they are among the sinners perpetually punished in Tartarus.
7.375-77 wedding torch . . . funeral torch . . . : Hecuba dreamed, before giving birth to Paris, that she was pregnant with a burning torch. Juno sees Aeneas as a second Paris, snatching Lavinia as the latter did Helen, to become himself a bane to Troy as the city is reborn.
7.434-36 Turnus too: track down the roots . . . : His Greek roots, delineated here, together with his Iliadic ferocity, support the Sibyl’s designation of him, at 6.106, as “a new Achilles.”
7.770 hero of Tiryns: Hercules was born in Tiryns, in the Argolid, and his mother, Alcmena, was the daughter of the king of Tiryns.
7.850 a supple thong for swifter hurling: Horsfall on 7.731 says that the throwing-strap was “to impart rotatory motion.”
7.884-908 Virbius, striking son of Hippolytus . . . : Hippolytus, son of Theseus and Hippolyte, was torn apart by his horses at his father’s command, for his supposed involvement with his stepmother, Phaedra. He was restored to life by Aesculapius, with the help of Diana. He settled in Aricia, a town in Latium east of Rome where there was a grove and tem
ple sacred to Diana, on the edge of modern Lago di Nemi.
8.54-57 On these shores Arcadians sprung from Pallas . . . : Evander, descendant of PALLAS (2), king of Arcadia in the western Peloponnese, was driven into exile for killing his father. With his Arcadian followers he settled in the Tiber valley, founding Pallanteum on the future site of Rome.
8.84 you great horned king of the rivers of the West: Rivers are often depicted with the face and horns of a bull, emblematic of its roar and, more generally, power. See 8.852.
8.315 The Greatest Altar: The Ara Maxima was dedicated to Hercules Invictus, the Unconquered, to whom an annual sacrifice was offered on August 12. It was located in the Forum Boarium on the banks of the Tiber. Its remains may lie beneath the present Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.
8.346 Centaurs born of the clouds: Ixion attempted to rape Hera, but Zeus substituted for her a cloud, resulting in the first Centaur; see CENTAURS and IXION.
8.426-30 Hercules in his triumph stooped to enter here . . . : As Gransden remarks (note 8.364-65), “On this celebrated sentiment Dryden observed ‘I am lost in the admiration of it. I contemn the world when I think of it, and myself when I translate it.’”
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