[556] This line presents great difficulty. The natural way of understanding would seem to be that all have their hair bound (comp. 4. 148, “Fronde premit crinem”） with a wreath of stripped leaves (‘tonsa corona’ for ‘corona tonsae frondis;’ comp. v. 774, G. 3. 21 note). But how is this to be reconciled with their wearing helmets (v. 673)? Wreaths were sometimes put over the helmet, as appears from 7. 751, “Fronde super galeam et felici comptus oliva,” which would agree with ‘tonsa’ here, that being probably a sign that oliveleaves are meant (v. 774 &c.). But in that case the hair must be confined by the helmet, not by the wreath. Cerda proves from Ov. Her. 13. 39, Fast. 3. 2 that ‘premi’ would naturally be said of the pressure of a helmet (comp. also 9. 612, “Canitiem galea premimus”), as ‘solvi’ of its removal; but this will not help us here, unless we are to suppose that Virg. is thinking of wreath and helmet both, while only mentioning the former. Peerlkamp apparently considers the wreath to be under the helmet, to which Forb. answers, that in that case the helmet would not fit. But it seems possible that there might be a wreath worn just below the helmet, so as not to interfere with it— a variety of the custom mentioned 7. 751. And in this interpretation I incline to acquiesce, till a better shall have been proposed. Henry, following Gesner in his Thesaurus, thinks the meaning is that the hair of the boys was cut round, as was that of the Roman boys (a custom expressed by ‘in morem,’ according to Virg.'s usual habit of ascribing Roman usages to the Trojans). He compares the words used by St. Jerome in translating and commenting on Ezekiel 44. 20, where the poll of the Jewish priests is spoken of (a mode of wearing the hair which he believes to have been as nearly as possible the same as that in use among the Roman boys), “comas ad pressum tondere,” the use of ‘premere’ for pruning or lopping leaves (G. 1. 157 &c.), and that of ‘corona’ in modern Italian for pollarding a tree. But these parallelisms are by no means equal in value to those adduced in support of the other interpretation: and moreover the passage, so interpreted, would be inconsistent with 10. 137, where we are expressly told that Ascanius' hair was not cropped, but only confined by a gold band. ‘In morem,’ which he thinks cannot refer to any peculiarity of the game, this being its first exhibition, need merely mean ‘according to rule,’ implying that all observed the fashion, established as it was then for the first time. Ladewig, understanding the words of a garland round the helmet, connects ‘in morem tonsa.’
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.