[340] A solitary instance in Virg. of a hemistich where the sense is incomplete. The copyists of the inferior MSS. have attempted to supply the deficiency in different ways—“peperit fumante Creusa” “obsessa est enixa Creusa,” “natum fumante reliqui.” Later critics, as Heyne Gossrau, and Ladewing, have fancied that the passage has been interpolated. Wagn. and Forb. complain that, as the text stands, Andromache makes no mention of Creusa, whom she could not know to be lost, and accordingly adopt, as does Ribbeck, ‘quae’ for ‘quem’ from the ‘Menagianus alter,’ separating ‘et vescitur aura’ from ‘superatne.’ (Ribbeck cites Med. for ‘quae:’ but a friend who consulted the MS. for me assures me that it distinctly reads ‘quem.’) They account for ‘amissae’ v. 341 by supposing that Aeneas gives some sign which shows that his wife is no more— an expedient which would scarcely be natural in an ancient drama, but is ridiculous in an epic. (Ribbeck supposes a lacuna.) The words of the next line clearly show that Andromache—how, we know not, but may imagine for ourselves— was aware of Creusa's fate. They are not such as would occur to her on the moment of hearing a piece of news like this: they are precisely what might be spoken under other circumstances by a mother possessed with the image of her own lost boy, and wondering whether the separation had really entailed a breach in their love of each other. On the whole, there seems no good reason to doubt that we have the passage as Virg. left it. If we cannot complete the hemistich satisfactorily, we may console ourselves with thinking that be could not either.
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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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