the marriage of Antonius with Octavia, and the union of Octavianus with Scribonia had taken place not long before. [The most ancient commentators, if we may judge by the notes in Macrobius (S. 3. 7. 1.) Servius, and the Berne scholia, were not agreed whether the poem was to be referred to Octavianus, or to one or other of Pollio's sons.] One of these, called Saloninus from his father's capture of Salona in Dalmatia, died in his infancy, while the other, C. Asinius Gallus, who is said to have spoken of himself to Asconius Pedianus as the person meant, lived to be discussed by Augustus as his possible successor (Tac. A. 1. 13), and finally fell a victim to the jealousy of Tiberius (ib. 6. 23). Octavianus' marriage issued in the birth of Julia: Octavia's child, if it was ever born, was the child not of Antonius, but of Marcellus, her former husband, by whom she was pregnant at the time of her second marriage. Any of these births, so far as we can see, may have appeared at the time to a courtly or enthusiastic poet a sufficient centre round which to group the hopes already assumed to be rising in men's minds, and though the next three years may have made a difference in this respect, the poem would still continue to be in its general features the embodiment of a feeling not yet extinguished, and as such might well be published along with the other Eclogues. The peace of Brundisium itself was not so much the cause of this enthusiasm as the occasion of its manifestation—the partial satisfaction of a yearning which had long been felt, not merely the transient awakening of desires hitherto dormant. How far such hopes may have been connected with the expectation of a Messiah opens a wide question. The coincidence between Virgil's language and that of the Old Testament prophets is sufficiently striking: but it may be doubted whether Virgil uses any image to which a classical parallel cannot be found.

The allusions to the prophecies of the Sibyl and to the doctrine of the Annus Magnus will be found explained in their places. Some features of the poem, which seem to deserve attention, are noticed in the note on v. 18.

SICELIDES Musae, paulo maiora canamus.
Non omnis arbusta iuvant humilesque myricae ;
Si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae.
Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas;

1-3.] 'My rural song must now rise into a higher region.'

1.] Sicelides Musae,' Muses of Theocritus. See Introduction to the Eclogues, p. 7, note 3.

2.] Tamarisks form part of Theocr.'s scenery (1. 13., 5. 101). Here they are emblems of the lower strain of rural poetry, the species of which 'silvae' symbolizes the genus. They were moreover sacred to Apollo, who was called μupíkalos and pupíkivos, being represented with a branch of one in his hand, so that they are naturally associated with poetry here as in 6. 10., 10. 13.

3.] Silvas: comp. 1. 2. 'If my theme is still to be the country, let it rise to a dignity of which a consul need not be ashamed.' A consul like Pollio need not be ashamed of the rural glories of the golden age, 3. 89, note.

4-17.] 'The golden age is returning. A glorious child is born. Thy consulship, Pollio, will usher him into life, and inaugurate a period of peace, when the world will obey a godlike king.'

4.] Cumaei carminis,' the Sibylline verses, the Sibyl of Cumae being the most famous. The original Sibylline books having been destroyed in the burning of the Capitol in Sulla's time, the senate ordered a collection of Sibylline verses to be made in the various towns of Italy and Greece. After a critical examination about a thousand lines were retained as genuine, and preserved with the same formality as the lost volumes. Varro however tells us (Dionys. Halic. Antiq. R. 4. 62) that some spurious ones were introduced, which might be detected by their acrostich character; and this test was employed by Cicero (De Div. 2. 54) to disprove a

Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
Iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;

professedly Sibylline prediction brought
forward by those who wished to make
Cesar king. Later we find that forgeries
of the kind had become common, private
persons pretending to have oracles in
their possession, and the matter was
accordingly twice publicly investigated
under Augustus (Suet. Aug. 31), and
under Tiberius (Tac. A. 6. 12). Of the
precise oracle to which Virg. refers
nothing seems to be known. But we
know that the Sibylline books recognized
the division of time into secles of 110
years (comp. Hor. Carm. Saec. 5 foll., 21
foll., and the supposed oracle preserved by
Zosimus 2. 5, and quoted by Mr. Macleane
on Hor. 1. c.): and we may well believe
with Mr. Greswell (Origines Kalendariae
Italicae, vol. ii.) that the Etruscan doctrine
of the decursus of secles was embodied in
Sibylline prophecy. The Etruscan course
was one of ten secles (Censorinus, De Die
Natali, c. 17); and four years before
Pollio's consulship, according to a curious
story preserved by Serv. on E. 9. 47,
Vulcatius, a haruspex, explained the
comet which appeared the year of Cæsar's
death as an indication that the ninth
secle was ending and the tenth beginning.
On the present passage Serv. says,
"Cumaei; Sibyllini, quae Cumana fuit,
et saecula per metalla divisit; dixit etiam
quis quo saeculo imperaret, et solem
ultimum, i.e. decimum voluit" (comp.
id, on v. 10). The emperor Constantine,
in his oration to the clergy, preserved
by Eusebius, quotes an acrostich oracle,
which, though an evident forgery by a
Christian, imposed on many both before
and after his time. Augustine, who cites
a Latin version of it (De Civitate Dei, 18.
23), curiously enough, in his Exposition
of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans,
authenticates it by this line of Virg., but
for which he would have been unwilling
to believe that the Sibyl prophesied of
Christ. An elaborate edition of this and
the other Sibylline oracles has been
published, with a Latin translation and
notes, by M. Alexandre (Paris, 1851-7).
Mr. Merivale believes these oracles to be
the representatives of others of an earlier
date, which spoke language borrowed
from Jewish prophecy, and so finds no
difficulty in accounting for the phraseo-
logy employed by Virg. (Hist. vol. iii. p.
232). The other explanation of 'Cum-

5

acum carmen' as the poem of Hesiod, whose father came from Cume in Aeolis, breaks down, as Hesiod's theory of the four (or rather five) ages is not a theory of cycles, and the last age he mentions is the worst or iron age, in which he represents himself as living, though in an obscure passage (Works and Days, 180) he apparently holds out a hope that it too may be destroyed. Cumaei' is restored by Wagn. and Forb., being found in Gud. and two of Ribbeck's cursives here, and supported by Med. in A. 3. 441., 6. 98. Forb. remarks that the old name was Kuun, whence Kuuatos, the later Kovua or Cumae,' the adjective of which is 'Cumanus.'

5.] The reference is to the doctrine of the annus magnus,' or 'Platonicus,' a vast period variously estimated at 2,489, 3,000, 7,777, 12,954, 15,000, and 18,000 years, to be completed whenever all the heavenly bodies should occupy the same places in which they were at the beginning of the world. In each of these periods it was supposed that the cycle of mundaue and human history repeated itself. Like the ordinary year, the annus magnus' was divided into three hundred and sixtyfive days, twelve months, and four seasons, the latter being identified by some with the four ages of mankind, while others, such as Aristotle, connected the winter with the deluge, the summer with the final conflagration. See Voss's commentary, from which the above note, like much of that on the preceding verse, is taken, and compare Macrobius, Somn. Scip. 2. 11, and Censorinus, De Die Natali, c. 18. Whether this doctrine was actually connected with the Etruscan theory of secles, as Mr. Greswell (vol. ii. p. 628) appears to assume, or whether the connexion is merely due to Virg.'s fondness for mixing up pieces of heterogeneous learning, is not easy to say. In any case the meaning would seem to be that when the tenth or last secle is over, the cycle is to be repeated. Ab integro,'" columnam efficere ab integro," Cic. Verr. 2. 1. 56. We also find 'ex integro' and 'de integro,' like de novo.' The lengthening of integro,' though not usual, is found Luer. 1.827, and elsewhere.

6.] Heyne places a semicolon after Virgo.' Wagn. strikes it out and adds this note: Redit et Virgo, redeunt

66.6

Iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto.
Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
Desinet ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,
Casta fave Lucina: tuus iam regnat Apollo.
Teque adeo decus hoc aevi, te Consule, inibit,
Pollio, et incipient magni procedere menses;
Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri,
Inrita perpetua solvent formidine terras.
Ille deum vitam accipiet divisque videbit

Saturnia regna' is the same thing as 'et Virgo et Saturnia regna redeunt.' For it is to be observed that the repetition of a noun or verb is sometimes equivalent to a repetition of the copula: A. 7. 327,Odit et ipse pater Pluton, odere sorores Tartarcae monstrum;' 8. 91, 'Labitur uncta vadis abies: mirantur et undae, Miratur nemus insuetum fulgentia longe Scuta virum;' 11. 169, Quin ego non alio digner te funere, Palla, Quam pius Aeneas, et quam magni Phryges, et quam Tyrrhenique duces, Tyrrhenum exercitus omnis;' 12. 548, Totae adeo conversae acies, omnesque Latini, Omnes Dardanidae.' The preposition is repeated in the same way A. 10. 313, huic gladio perque aerea suta, Per tunicam squalentem auro, latus haurit apertum.'" 'Virgo,' Justice, who left the earth in the iron age. G. 2. 474.

7.] Nova progenies,' a new and better race of men. "Gens aurea," v. 9. With 'caelo demittitur comp. G. 2. 385, "Necnon Ausonii Troia gens missa coloni."

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10

15

10.] If any reliance is to be placed on Serv.'s statement referred to on v. 4, that the Sibylline prophecy made the last of the ten ages the age of the sun, it is doubtless he that is spoken of here as Apollo. The secle of the Sun is going on; and when that is over, the new cycle will succeed. Whether any further historical reference is supposed Apollo as the reputed father of Octavianus, for instance, must depend on the opinion held as to the hero of the Eclogue. See Introduction. Tuus,' because Lucina and Diana (Eilithyia and Artemis) were identified.

to

11.] Tuque adeo' are not unfrequently found together, as in G. 1. 24; Ennius, Medea, fr. 14, "Iuppiter, tuque adeo, summe sol, qui omnis res inspicis ; adeo' here, as in other places giving a rhetorical prominence to the word after which it is used. See G. 2. 323, A. 3. 203. Decus hoc aevi,' this glorious age. Lucr. 2. 15, "Qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis Degitur hoc aevi quodcumque est." Comp. also "monstrum mulieris," Plaut. Poen. 1. 2. 64, and deσnóτov σTúyos, Aesch. Choeph. 770. 'Inibit,' commence, as in "anno ineunte," "ineunte actate."

12.] Magni menses,' the periods into which the 'magnus annus' was divided. See on v. 5.

8.] Nascenti-fave,' smile on or speed his birth. It is difficult to say whether quo' is to be taken as the ablative of the agent (who shall put an end to the race of iron and restore the age of gold'), or as an ablative absolute or ablative of circumstance, like 'te Consule'-' under whom the age of iron shall end,' &c. 'Primum,' at last; comp. 1. 45. 'Ferrea:' we do not know the details of the tenfold metallic division (if such a division existed), and so cannot tell whether the iron age occupied the last place in it, or whether it is simply borrowed from the Hesiodic ages. If the former is true, Virg. is involved in a difficulty, as he must mean Apollo to preside over a good period, not over an exceptionally bad one. Juv. 13. 28 speaks of his nona aetas 15.] Ille,' the 'puer' of v. 8. ['Acciworse than the age of iron, and having no piet' may mean 'shall be initiated into,' metallic distinction.

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as

13.] 'Te duce,' under your auspices as consul, giving the year its name. 'Sceleris,' not general, like 'fraudis,' v. 31, but referring to the guilt of civil bloodshed. Keightley refers to Hor. 1 Od. 2. 29, “Cui dabit partis scelus expiandi Iuppiter?” and Epod. 7. 1, “ Quo, quo scelesti ruitis?" So pacatum orbem' v. 17.

6

14.] 'Iurita,' in its strict sense, by their abolition.

on the analogy of ‘accipere sacra.'-H. N.]

Permixtos heroas et ipse videbitur illis, Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem. At tibi prima, puer, nullo munuscula cultu Errantis hederas passim cum baccare tellus Mixtaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho. Ipsae lacte domum referent distenta capellae Ubera, nec magnos metuent armenta leones. Ipsa tibi blandos fundent cunabula flores. Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneni

Occidet; Assyrium volgo nascetur amomum.
At simul heroum laudes et facta parentis
Iam legere et quae sit poteris cognoscere virtus,
Molli paulatim flavescet campus arista,
Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva,
Et durae quercus sudabunt roscida mella.
Pauca tamen suberunt priscae vestigia fraudis,
Quae temptare Thetim ratibus, quae cingere muris
Oppida, quae iubeant telluri infindere sulcos.
Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae vehat Argo