[795]
The meaning of course is ‘beyond
Garamantes and Indians and beyond the
territory of Atlas;’ but Anchises seems to
point to the land as if he saw it in vision.
The land seems to be that spoken of less
hyperbolically 4. 480 foll., where v. 797
has already occurred, that of Ethiopia,
though here Virg. seems to be speaking of
the whole country, there only of the western
extremity of it. ‘Extra sidera,’ like
‘extra anni solisque vias,’ refers to the
Zodiac, called by Arat. Phaen. 321, ἠελίοιο
κέλευθος. Serv. comp. Lucan 3. 253, where
the image is characteristically amplified:
“Aethiopumque solum, quod non premeretur
ab ulla
Signiferi regione poli, nisi poplite lapso
Ultima curvati procederet ungula tauri.
”
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.
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