[740] Supplicia expendunt 11. 258, where there is a similar use of ‘poenae’ with a gen. of the offence. ‘Panduntur’ is explained of crucifixion by Cerda, whom Henry follows, perhaps rightly. He shows that κρέμασθαι and ‘suspendi’ were specially used in that sense (comp. St. Paul's application of κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου Gal. 3. 13 to crucifixion, the primary reference of the words being different, as is remarked by Ellicott in loco), and argues that ‘panduntur’ points the same way. But it signifies little what was the precise image Virg. had before his mind, the real point being that the spirit is hung up in such a way as to secure its purification by air. Serv. refers to the ‘oscilla’ in the festival of Bacchus (G. 2. 389 note, where the parallel is mentioned by anticipation): but Gossrau remarks that no one but Serv. seems to have connected these with purification, and that other traditional notices of them explain them differently. “Ventos inanis” 10. 82. Henry ingeniously makes ‘inanes’ here the nom., supposing the meaning to be that the winds blow through the unsubstantial forms of the spirits: there would however be something awkward in the predicative epithet here, when we have already to connect ‘suspensae’ closely with ‘panduntur;’ and it is possible that the same meaning may be intended by the application of the epithet to the winds, which being thin and unsubstantial, are conceived of as the more penetrating. Notices of this threefold purification are cited by Cerda from Martianus Capella and St. Augustin: but it is not clear that they, any more than Serv., had any further authority for the custom than the present passage of Virg.
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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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