Aeneid - Book VIII

AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

 

AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

vatis fatidicae, cecinit quae prima futuros
Aeneadas magnos et nobile Pallanteum (340-1)

Just an adjective, or futuros esse? Maclennan translates "who was the first to foretell that the sons of Aeneas would be great."

And I'm not sure what Conington/Nettleship mean with "Futuros not to be taken with magnos and nobile. The two things which Carmentis predicted as in the future were the mighty family of Aeneas and the glorious Pallanteum."
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Just an adjective, or futuros esse?
Hard to tell.
And I'm not sure what Conington/Nettleship mean with "Futuros not to be taken with magnos and nobile. The two things which Carmentis predicted as in the future were the mighty family of Aeneas and the glorious Pallanteum."
Presumably they mean that the sentence means that the mighty family of Aeneas and the glorious Pallanteum would exist in the future, rather than that they would be mighty and glorious in the future.
 

AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

Ah, so "there would be/exist" vs. "would be great". Unfortunately, doesn't look like any other commentary addresses it.
 

AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

insula Sicanium iuxta latus Aeoliamque
erigitur Liparen fumantibus ardua saxis,
quam subter specus et Cyclopum exesa caminis
antra Aetnaea tonant (416-9)

Definitely worth considering:

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And I never thought I'd see the words "hyena's anus" in an Aeneid commentary.

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AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

Strange to say this when there's another one in this very book (334-5). Unless I'm misunderstanding him here.

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AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

Small mistake: that first "Evander" should be "Latinus".

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AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

Finished Maclennan's commentary. It's pretty good overall. He also did volumes for 1, 4, and 6, so I may end up checking out those eventually.

I also picked up O'Hara's commentary for 8. Hopefully there's not too much overlap with Page.
 

AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

O'Hara's commentary has been decent so far. I like that he (seemingly) isn't relying too much on Page and includes more recent references, but sometimes he lists far too many of them. If this is meant to be a volume for undergraduates (or even high schoolers), they're unlikely to track down many of these books/articles. So it works a lot better when he actually includes quotations from the sources like here:

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Dantius

Homo Sapiens

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
in orbe lacteo
Yeah, I get that there are often space-saving requirements in printed commentaries, but presenting the key quotes is much nicer than the (often overwhelming) lists of articles to read at the end of a lemma.
 

AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

__________________________nunc viribus usus,
nunc manibus rapidis, omni nunc arte magistra. (441-2)

Adjective or noun here (or as Tarrant put it, attributive or predicative)? Most take it as a noun, so omnis ars is the magistra for the Cyclopes. But Fratantuono and Smith say it's an adjective, so the ars is Vulcan's.

The other use that's cited is from 12 (426-7), where everyone takes it as a noun:

non haec humanis opibus, non arte magistra
proveniunt, neque te, Aenea, mea dextera servat
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
I don't know the context of these lines but when reading them in isolation, at any rate, my instinct was to take magistra as a noun (predicative).
 

AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

It probably won't change much, but the context is Vulcan ordering the Cyclopes to stop working on everything else and to start working on arms for Aeneas.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
OK. In that context I guess I see how a case could be made for a poetic use of magistra as an adjective meaning "of your master". I wouldn't have come up with that idea myself, but who knows.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
If it had just been the two words arte magistra I'm not sure Vergil could even have hoped to be understood in any other way than the usual one for such a construction (viz. with magistra being predicative). But maybe the presence of omni makes a difference?
 

AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

Not sure about omni. I think another issue of confusion is some commentators are taking the attributive use to have the meaning of "mastercraft". Like in Page's note:

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And I forgot to mention Servius' note:
ambitiosius quam si 'magistri' diceret: et rem personae in artem transtulit, ut si dicas 'opus est peritia medicinae', non 'medici'.
But it looks like Servius and F&S are alone in that interpretation.

These are the adjectival uses that L&S list. They also consider the use here in 8 as a noun.

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AoM

sic semper tyrannis

  • Civis Illustris

Actius haec cernens arcum intendebat Apollo
desuper; omnis eo terrore Aegyptus et Indi,
omnis Arabs, omnes vertebant terga Sabaei. (704-6)

"Every Egyptian" or "All Egypt"? F&S say the former, Maclennan the latter. I just assumed the former since the other three were also the inhabitants.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
That seems intuitive and it's actually how I took it at first when I read the line without paying much attention, but then I realized the problem: Aegyptus means "Egypt"; "Egyptian" is Aegyptius. I guess there's a slim chance that we have a here an adjective Aegyptus, a, um unattested elsewhere, but how likely is that?
 
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