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Some Neglected Points in the Fourth Eclogue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
To add without good reason to the already enormous literature surrounding the most fascinating and puzzling of all Vergil's works ought, nowadays, to be regarded as an offence against learning. My excuse for this article is that even the latest work on the subject, Ed. Norden's charming monograph, Die Geburt des Kindes (Teubner, Leipzig, 1924), appears to me wrong on one important point, inadequate on another.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1924
References
page 114 note 1 Dux, like princeps, can mean either α leader or the (supreme) leader of a people. For the former sense, cf. Aen. II. 261Google Scholar, Tisandrus Sthcnelusque duces, for the latter, Aen. IV. 124 dux Troianus (sc. Aeneas).
page 114 note 2 Vv. 18–25, 26–36, 37–45. The rest of the poem is divided thus by Norden, with whom no one is likely to differ seriously: 1–3 (invocation), 4–10, 11–17; then, after the central sections, 46–52, 53–59, 60–63. As often in the Eclogues, we have a quasi-strophic effect, groups of approximately equal length balancing one another in size, position, and content.
page 115 note 1 While not looking for sober history in Hesiod, I cannot but see here a reminiscence of the impression produced upon the population of Greece by the coming of the Achaian civilization, 2with all its tumultuous and destructive glories, at about the time of the transition from the Bronze to the Iron age.
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