In a recent contribution to this journal, D. Kovacs addresses the following passage from the fourth Eclogue (cited here from the OCT of Mynors):
o mihi tum longae maneat pars ultima uitae,
spiritus et quantum sat erit tua dicere facta!
Kovacs takes it for granted that the meaning of l. 54 should correspond to the Loeb translation, ‘and inspiration enough to hymn your deeds!’. Starting from this assumption, he rejects the reading
spiritus, arguing that a genitive is required (with a postponed
et); the possible solution he suggests is
pectoris, used metaphorically in the sense of ‘poetical ability’. That seems a clever conjecture, restoring excellent style. Nevertheless, we have to assume that
spiritus replaced
pectoris as a gloss, but I cannot see any reason why somebody would have wanted to explain
obscurum per obscurius: other words (such as
ingenium) would have been far more appropriate. On the other hand, Virgil most likely chose the word
spiritus, whose basic meaning is not ‘inspiration’ but ‘breath’, in order to amplify line 53 (
uita).