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An Acrostic in Vergil (Aeneid 7. 601–4)?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

D. P. Fowler
D. P. Fowler
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Oxford
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Extract

In any competition for monuments of wasted labour the collection of accidental acrostics in Latin poets published by I. Hilberg would stand a good chance of a prize. But amongst his examples of ‘neckische Spiele des Zufalls’ (269) is one I am gullible enough to believe may be more significant. In Aeneid 7. 601–15 Vergil describes the custom of opening the gates of war in a long anacoluthic sentence, the first four lines of which run:

Mos erat Hesperio in Latio, quern protinus urbes

Albanae coluere sacrum, nunc maxima rerum

Roma colit, cum prima movent in proelia Mortem,

Sive Getis inferre manu lacrimabile bellum…

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , January 1983 , pp. 298
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1983

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References

1 ‘1st die IliasLatina von einem Italicus verfasst oder einem Italicus gewidmet?’ WS 21 (1899), 264–305Google Scholar; 22 (1900), 317–8.

2 Pease on Cic. de div. 2. 111, Vogt, E., ‘Das Akrostichon in der griechischen Literatur’, AA 13 (1966), 80–97 and the literature cited p. 80 n. 1Google Scholar.