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Septima Aestas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Kenneth Quinn
Kenneth Quinn
Affiliation:
University of Otago
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Extract

Yet an interval of upwards of a year, apparently, separates the two occasions; already by 4. 193–4 t n e winter is well advanced; at 5. 46 Aeneas tells his men that exactly a year has elapsed since Anchises' death—the last event (3. 714: hie labor extremus) narrated in Book 3. Dido's words, therefore, and those of the false Beroe are commonly held to be irreconcilable.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , May 1967 , pp. 128 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1967

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References

1 See, for example, Williams, R. D., Aeneidos Liber Quintus (1960), xxviii–xxx.Google Scholar

1 Professor R. G. Austin has suggested to me that the repetition of the words septima aestas may be another instance of the way in which Virgil's mind reverted to certain sorts of formulae in recurring situations. See on this habit of Virgil's mind Austin, R. G., Aeneidos Liber Secundus (1964) on line 314.Google Scholar

2 The narrative of Book 2 also points to the summer. The winter is out of the question because Virgil makes the Greeks sail away for the stratagem of the horse and then return: according to ancient navigational practice this would have been impossible in winter. It seems likely he imagined the departure of the Greeks as taking place in the spring—a natural time for a new turn of events. The fall of Troy can then be imagined as taking place in early summer and the departure into exile at the beginning of the following summer (3.8: uix prima inceperat aestas—prima is not of course an ordinal here), i.e. just one year later. Whether Troy actually fell in the summer is another matter: tradition was sufficiently vague to allow Virgil to choose a season that suited his convenience. The speculations of commentators on the question of when Troy was supposed to have fallen (e.g., Heyne, , Excursus II ad Librum IIIGoogle Scholar; cf. Mackail, , p. 90, Williams on 3. 8) are beside the point.Google Scholar