[370] Pacem above v. 261. ‘Vittasque resolvit;’ this action of Helenus is apparently to be paralleled by such passages as Tibull. 2. 5. 66, Ov. F. 1. 503, the unbinding of the hair being in keeping with the abnormal physical condition of those who are about to be made subjects of the divine afflatus. Thus we may comp. the Sibyl 6. 48, and even the frantic action of Cassandra Aesch. Ag. 1264 foll. Helenus however seems to have performed the action gravely and deliberately. Serv. has a mystical interpretation to the effect that unbinding the head is supposed to free the mind, and so make it susceptible of divine communications.
This text is part of:
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.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.