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1 “Ardentem frigidus Aetnam insiluit.” Hor. Ars 465 "In cold blood, deliberately." Horace, by playing on the words “ardentum frigidus”, would show that he did not believe the story, and told it as one of the traditions, which poets may use without being obliged to vouch the truth of them. The pleasantry continues, when he says, it is murder to hinder a poet from killing himself; a maxim, which could not be said seriously.
2 “An triste bidental” Hor. Ars 471. What crime must that man have committed whom the gods in vengeance have possessed with a madness of writing verses? Bidental was a place struck with lightning, which the aruspices purified and consecrated with a sacrifice of a sheep, bidental. It was an act of sacrilege ever to remove the bounds of it, movere bidental.
3 In concluding the annotations on the Art of Poetry, I must beg to recommend to the reader's notice my translation of Aristotle's Poetics, with a collection of notes, as the two treatises contribute to each other's illustration in the fullest extent.
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