[692] Lucr. 4.907, “somnus per membra quietem Inriget.” Furius Antias ap. Macrob. Sat. 6. 1, “mitemque rigat per pectora somnum.” The expression seems to be a translation of the Homeric ἐπὶ γλυκὺν ὕπνον ἔχευεν, περὶ δ᾽ ἀμβρόσιος κέχυθ᾽ ὕπνος, but the notions expressed by the two are in all probability quite different; the Homeric image being apparently that of sleep enveloping a man (the reader of Don Quixote will recall Sancho Panza's “Blessings on the man that invented sleep! it folds round a man like a cloak”), while in ‘inrigat’ the conception would seem to be of dew or rain coming down. Comp. the image in 5. 854, where Sleep shakes a bough dripping with the dews of Lethe over the temples of Palinurus, and its imitation in Val. Fl. 4. 15. Whether the dews are the dews of night or of the body in sleep, is not clear. Pers. 5. 56 would prove the latter, if he does not mean satirically to pervert the image.
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John Conington. P. Vergili Maronis opera. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. The works of Virgil, with a Commentary by John Conington, M.A. Late Corpus Professor of Latin in the University of Oxford. London. Whittaker and Co., Ave Maria Lane. 1876.
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