His shall it be a life divine to hold, With heroes mingled and 'mid gods enroll'd; 'Gladly to thee its natal gifts the field, Till'd by no human hand, bright Boy, shall yield; And colocasia and acanthus join. 20 Home their full udders goats, unurged, shall bear; 25 Flowers of all hues shall round thy cradle vie, 30 that her long life's closing strain' may enable her to hymn the deeds' which she foresees. But, though she was destined (it passed current) to be a millenarian, yet having lived seven centuries at the time of Eneas' arrival in Italy, she could not have her wish accomplished. See Penn, ib. pp. 105-107. 17 Under the careful training of his mother Attia, as we read in Cic. De Clar. Orat. 19 Augustus was the son of Julius Cæsar by adoption, though by birth only his grand-nephew. 21 The Sibyl is represented as addressing the subject of the eclogue in his three genethliacal intervals-infancy, youth, and manhood: the first, vv. 21-29, containing allusions more or less limited to his horoscope, and to the ruling influence in his nativity; the second, vv.30-42, reaching from his twelfth to his eighteenth year; and the third, vv. 43-53, extending to the date of the poem. 23, 24 As all these plants are appropriate in the formation of a chaplet or floral crown, they aptly constitute the munuscula, or natal offerings. The baccar, in particular, was esteemed potent against enchantments. See, on them all, Martyn's detailed botanical disquisitions. The acanthus, he says, here meant, is the acacia, an Egyptian tree, from which we obtain the Gum Arabic. With soften'd harvests every plain shall glow, 'When now to vigorous manhood thou art come, 35 40 45 50 32 Soften'd harvests. Martyn very elaborately contends that mollis (as applied here to arista) must mean, not ripe or fertile, but soft and tender-bearded. The triticum of the ancients (see Georg. i. 219, and not. ib.) had a beard like vallum, or a prickly fence, to defend it from the birds. This was to be no longer necessary. 42 That under Achilles is adumbrated Pompey, the opponent of Cæsar, who always publicly asserted his own descent from Æneas, as Rome sustained the poetical character of a new Troy, Penn contends, pp. 327-344. Thus Turnus, the adversary of the Trojan prince, is designated by the alius Latio jam partus Achilles of the sixth Eneid, and Pompey is said by Lucan to draw his supplies from Greece-Proxima vicino vires dat Græcia bello. 52 Scarlet, or crimson, Martyn conceives to represent better the color obtained from the Tyrian fish than purple. On cro 'Flow, happy ages,' to their distaffs cried Th' harmonious Fates; and pour your golden tide.' See on the coming year the world intent: 'O reach so far my long life's closing strain ! 60 65 'Know, then, dear Boy, thy mother by her smile: 70 Enough ten months have given of pain and toil. Know her, dear Boy,-who ne'er such smile has known, Nor board nor bed divine 'tis his to own.' ceo, see his note. We are not, he adds, to infer from the word pascentes, that the flocks were actually to feed on the murex, the croceum lutum, or the sandyx (which he explains to be a composition made of the fictitious sandaracha, or preparation of white lead), but that they should have fleeces as beautiful as if they had been stained by those materials. 56 Those honors: i. e. the succession to the name and honors of his illustrious predecessor.-See Penn, ib. p. 361. 65. 67, 68 On Orpheus and Linus, as coeval with this prophecy, and the worship then more particularly paid to Pan, see Penn, ib. pp. 94-99. 70 On the peculiar propriety of the smile,' as applied to Attia, the mother of Augustus and the niece of Julius Cæsar (through whom alone flowed the traditionary descent of the former from the smiling goddess Venus), see Penn, ib. pp. 363-369. ECLOGUE V.-DAPHNIS. ARGUMENT. THE triumvirs, having resolved to open the A. U. C. 712 with performing divine honors to the memory of Julius Cæsar, the Daphnis (which refers to this deification) must probably have been written about the beginning of the year but, as Brutus and Cassius were still at the head of considerable armies, and Virgil had already smarted under the effects of civil fury, he cautiously veils the name of his hero under that of a Sicilian herdsman. Mopsus laments his death, and Menalcas celebrates his apotheosis. If ever Virgil intended in his Eclogues to introduce him. self, it is probably as the latter. Philips has imitated this poem in his third Pastoral, intitled Albino,' on the death of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Queen Anne. Menalcas. AND why not, Mopsus, since we're met today You skill'd to pipe, and I to trill the lay- 5 Mopsus. The elder you, my friend, Just what you please prescribe, and I obey: Whether, where Zephyrs 'mid the branches play, We court the checquer'd shade; or choose yon cave, Where thinly bunch'd the wild-vine's tendrils wave. Men. None but Amyntas on our hills may try To match your art in sylvan minstrelsy : 10 Mops. And he would strive e'en Phoebus to outvie. Men. Begin, then, Mopsus; if or love's fierce flame By beauteous Phyllis felt, or Alcon's fame, Or Codrus' tuneful strife inspire your reed Begin your kids young Tityrus here will feed. Mops. Rather those numbers let me now rehearse, Which on the beech's rind in measured verse I carved, and sung alternate as I lay : Men. Far as the willow olives pale o'erpass, 15 20 Mops. Hush, shepherd! see, we've gain'd the grot we sought. 25 'The nymphs their Daphnis wail'd, by fate austere No steed or sipp'd the flood, or cropp'd the green: 30 (As the wild hills, and savage woodlands tell), 21 The saliunca is a plant not certainly known at present. It may be the same as the nardus Celtica, French spikenard, or a species of valerian growing abundantly on the mountains between Italy and Germany, and also about Genoa near Savona. This the Tyrolese peasants are said still to call' seliunck;' whence the saliunca of Virgil and Pliny, and the ἁλιονγγια of Dioscorides. 28 Mother: i. e. Venus. Compare Ov. Metam. xv. on the same subject. 36 Servius informs us that Julius Cæsar first brought the solemnities of Bacchus to Rome. This De la Rue, arguing |