[659] Dido kisses the couch like Medea Apoll. R. 4. 26. See on 2. 490. The imitation in Prop. 2. 9. 1, “Sic igitur prima moriere aetate, Properti? Sed morere,” seems to show that we had better place a question after ‘inultae.’ ‘Inultae’ gains a force from ‘ulta virum.’ Having boasted of revenge, she would naturally feel the grief of being obliged to forego it.
[660]
Dryden's lines are a good comment
on Virg.:
‘And must I die? she said,
And unrevenged? 'tis doubly to be dead;
Yet e'en this death with pleasure I receive:
On any terms, 'tis better than to live.
’
[661] Hauriat, as we might say, let him drink his fill. Comp. 12. 945. ‘Hunc,’ not, which I light now, but which will be lighted when I am dead. See on 5. 4.
[662] Dardanus contemptuous: comp. 12. 14. ‘Omina:’ “bene infausta omina imprecatur ei qui ad novi regni auspicia properat.” Serv. Med. gives ‘secum nostrae.’
[663-692] ‘The alarm is given: it spreads through the city: her sister hears it and rushes to the spot, exclaiming vehemently against the cruel deceit, while she tries to staunch the wound: Dido struggles between death and life.’
[663] “Media inter talia verba” 12. 318. Some MSS. give ‘mediam,’ supposed to be the reading of Apronianus, which Brunck adopts, connecting it with ‘ferro conlapsam.’ ‘Ferro’ = ‘in ferrum,’ ‘ferro conlapsam’ being probably a translation of such expressions as “πεπτῶτα περὶ ξίφει” (Soph. Aj. 828), “φασγάνῳ περιπτυχής” (ib. 899). Henry's ‘collapsed in consequence of the sword-wound’ is less likely.
[664] Comites, her attendants, who were about the pile, but doubtless did not approach near it, as her sister or her nurse might have done. Serv. says, “Non induxit occidentem se, sed ostendit occisam: et hoc tragico (tragicorum?) fecit exemplo, apud quos non videtur quemadmodum fit caedes, sed facta narratur.”
[665] Spargere is so frequently used of sprinkling with blood that it can hardly bear any other sense in a context like this, so that we do not need Henry's ingenious vindication of Serv.'s other interpretation “morte resolutas,” hands thrown apart in death. ‘It,’ from the ‘comites.’ With the passage generally Cerda comp. 2. 486 foll.
[666] “Fama concutit urbem et per eam bacchatur.” Fame is personified as above vv. 173, 298.
[668] Tecta would seem to refer to other houses, not to the palace: but the point is very doubtful; comp. 12. 607. The house itself is said ‘fremere,’ as it is said ‘ululare’ 2. 488. ‘Fremere’ of grief 6. 175. “Plangore magno” Lucr. 5.972, comp. by Forb. Wund. takes the word here strictly of beating the breast; but a comparison of 2. 487 will show that this can scarcely be pressed. Pal. and a few others have ‘clangoribus.’
[669] The cry in the streets is as if the city were being sacked. The simile, as Macrob. Sat. 4. 6 observes, is from Hom. Il. 22. 410, where it is said of the lamentation for Hector τῷ δὲ μάλιστ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔην ἐναλίγκιον, ὡς εἰ ἅπασα Ἵλιος ὀφρυόεσσα πυρὶ σμύχοιτο κατ᾽ ἄκρης. ‘Ruat’ of a sacked city 2. 363. There is a significance in the words ‘if Carthage should one day fall’ in the mouth of a Roman. Pal. originally had ‘ruit . . . . volvuntur.’
[670] Antiqua probably as distinguished from ‘nova Carthago’ (1. 366 &c.). The spelling ‘Tyrus’ is found in many MSS.
[671] Culmina = “tecta,” as in 5. 459. which accounts for its use with a genitive here, not of the thing which has a summit, Gossrau has a good note on the practice of placing prepositions after their cases, observing that it is usually found in the case of substantives, first, before an adj., as in “fronde super viridi” E. 1. 81; secondly, before a gen., as here; thirdly, before a second substantive similarly governed, as in “saxa per et scopulos” G. 3. 276; further that it is more common in the case of dissyllabic than in that of monosyllabic prepositions, and after a pronoun, like ‘qui’ or ‘hic’ than after a substantive.
[673] Repeated 12. 871 and (substantially) 11. 86.
[675] Hoc illud 3. 558. ‘Was this the thing you had in view?’ Forb. cites “fraude et insidiis petere” from Livy 40. 55.
[677] See above vv. 284, 371. The question in effect is how shall she best express her sense of her desertion. With ‘comitemne sprevisti’ Forb. comp. 9. 199.
[678] Comitem sprevisti moriens is not equivalent to what follows. Anna first asks why Dido would not be attended on by her in death, then says that she ought to have died with Dido. Wagn. rightly understands ‘vocasses’ as = “vocare debebas,” “utinam me vocasses,” comp. 8. 643., 10. 854., 11. 162 foll. The explanation of the construction would seem to be that there is a suppressed protasis: ‘if I had had my will, you would have invited me to share your fate.’
[679] Ferro modal or instrum. abl., probably however belonging to ‘tulisset’ only in the first clause, so that it nearly = “ferri dolor.” ‘Tulisset:’ 2. 554, 600., 5. 356. With the general expression comp. Soph. Trach. 719, καίτοι δέδοκται, κεῖνος εἰ σφαλήσεται, Ταύτῃ σὺν ὁρμῇ κἀμὲ συνθανεῖν ἅμα.
[680] Struxi: ‘rogum,’ which is too prominent in her mind to need to be formally expressed. ‘Vocavi voce,’ called aloud, 6. 247., 12. 638. We do not hear above that Anna did this, but it may well be assumed; and as we have seen on v. 497, the same thing is attributed to different actors, probably for the sake of poetical variety. It matters little whether we point this and the following line interrogatively, or with Ribbeck affirmatively.
[681] Comp. 2. 644 note. ‘Crudelis’ not of Dido, but of Anna herself, who taxes her own cruelty for the mischief in which she had unwittingly been an accomplice. So Sil. 13. 656, comp. by Wagn., “Nam cur Ulla fuere adeo, quibus a te saevus abessem, Momenta?”
[682] Pierius found ‘exstinxi’ in almost all old copies; but ‘exstinxti’ is the reading of fragm. Vat., Pal., perhaps Med. and others, besides being supported by Probus and Diomedes, and is much to be preferred intrinsically. As Heyne remarks, if the first person had been used, the sentence should have ended at ‘soror,’ as the rest would thus become frigid and rhetorical. ‘Te meque’ is also the reading of fragm. Vat., Pal., Med., &c., others having ‘me teque.’ ‘Te’ is clearly the natural word to follow ‘exstinxti,’ at least in a context like the present, however true it may be, as Burm. urges, that the Romans made the speaker mention himself before others. ‘Populum’ used loosely of the multitude as distinguished from the magnates. “Aenean acciri omnes, populusque patresque, Exposcunt” 9. 192.
[683] I have restored the old pointing, as against the later editors who read ‘Date, volnera lymphis abluam.’ Wagn. may be right in adducing instances in Greek like Il. 6. 340, ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε νῦν ἐπίμεινον, Ἀρήϊα τεύχεα δύω, ib. 23. 71, θάπτε με ὅττι τάχιστα, πύλας Ἀΐδαο περήσω, to show that there is a connexion between the imperative and the first person of the subjunctive, as he certainly is in quoting as parallel Anchises' words, 6. 883 (note), “manibus date lilia plenis . . . spargam . . . adcumulem . . . fungar;” but the last passage might have shown him that it is not necessary to such a connexion that ‘date’ should stand alone, unless we should there adopt, which he has not done, Gossrau's most improbable punctuation. On the contrary, a comparison of the two passages makes it, I think, highly probable that the first part of the sentence here would answer to “manibus date lilia plenis;” while ‘date volnera lymphis’ is a rhetorical inversion quite in Virg.'s manner, like “dare classibus austros” 3. 61, the water being represented as craving for the wounds which it is to wash.
[684] Super may either be physical, ‘rising over the mouth,’ like “faucibus exsuperat gravis halitus” Pers. 3. 89, or in the sense of ‘remaining,’ i.q. ‘superstes,’ as in 3. 489 above. Gossrau rightly remarks that Anna's wish to preserve the last spark of life in her sister is not to be confounded, as it has been by the commentators from Serv. downwards, with the custom of receiving in one's mouth the last breath of a dying person (Cic. Verr. 2. 5. 45, “Matres . . . . nihil aliud orabant nisi ut filiorum postremum spiritum ore excipere liceret”); but the two things are so far analogous that one may be used to illustrate the other. Meantime he cites a very apposite passage from Ov. M. 12. 424, “Inpositaque manu volnus fovet, oraque ad ora Admovet, atque animae fugienti obsistere temptat.” Perhaps v. 686 refers to this attempt on Anna's part.
[685] Evaserat 2. 458 note.
[689]
Stridet, the reading before
Heins., is in two of Ribbeck's cursives.
The reference is to the hissing and gurgling
noise of the spouting blood. The
editors comp. Ov. M. 4. 120:
“Ut iacuit resupinus humi, cruor emicat
alte,
Non aliter quam cum vitiato fistula
plumbo
Scinditur, et tenuis stridente foramine
longe
Eiaculatur aquas, atque ictibus aera
rumpit.
”
[690] Innixa was read before Heins.
[691] Perhaps from Apoll. R. 3. 654, ‘Oculis errantibus’ is illustrated by Val. Fl. 6. 277, “extremus cum lumina corripit error,” to which Forb. refers. Stat. 5 Silv. 1. 170 has “oculisque novissimus error,” imitating Val. Fl.
[692] Henry says, “The ancients (incorrectly, I think) believed the light to be the last object beheld by the dying person.” Forb. compares Enn. A. inc. 15, “Semianimesque micant oculi lucemque requirunt;” Henry, Stat. 5 Silv. 1. 174, “nec sole supremo Lumina, sed dulci mavult satiare marito,” a thought repeated Theb. 8. 649. Comp. also A. 10. 782. With ‘ingemuitque reperta’ comp. Pers. 3. 38, “Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta,” where however the construction apparently is not quite the same. Some MSS. have ‘repertam.’
[693-705] ‘Juno sends down Iris to cut the thread of life, and Dido dies.’
