[16] We have already had ‘nare’ and one of its compounds used of flying, 4. 245, G. 4. 59. But Virg. may have been thinking of Lucr. 3.591, “Quam prolapsa foras enaret in aeris auras,” of the soul quitting the body. ‘Gelidas ad Arctos’ has perplexed the commentators: but Wagn. after Hand. Turs. 1, p. 82, seems right in explaining it as meaning no more than that Daedalus flew northward, which would be the case whether we think of his rising from the ground, or of the position of Cumae as north of Crete.
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.