[402] Subnixa muro, supported by its wall, like “solio subnixa” 1. 506. Henry thinks a compliment is intended to the strength of the little Bruttian town, which made a gallant resistance in the second Punic War, Livy 23. 30. ‘Philoctetae’ with ‘Petelia.’ The spelling ‘Petelia’ is found in Med. and supported by coins: but ‘Petilia,’ the orthography of Pal., Gud., &c., has also some confirmation from inscriptions. Turnebus derives the name from “petilus,” a word apparently signifying thin or shrunk, occurring in fragments of Plautus and Lucilius (see Forc.): and Henry, who connects this dubious adjective with the French “petit,” thinks we have here an instance of a practice not uncommon with Virg. (see on 1. 298), of adding to the name of a place an epithet explanatory of its meaning.
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.