[162] It seems best to take ‘vastae rupes’ as the line of cliffs, and ‘scopuli’ as the peaks at its extremities. ‘Gemini’ implies likeness; comp. 3. 535, “gemino demittunt bracchia muro Turriti scopuli.” Silius (4. 2) seems to have taken ‘minantur in caelum’ as “minantur caelo,” threaten the sky, not threaten those below,—the difference between ‘towering’ and ‘beetling.’ Other passages in Virg. (2. 242, 628., 8. 668) would rather support ‘beetling:’ in this case the words would be equivalent to “surgunt minanter in caelum.” Such too would be the analogy of ‘mineo,’ which occurs in Lucr. 6.562: “Ad caelumque magis quanto sunt edita quaeque, Inclinata minent in eandem prodita partem,” where however Lachm. reads “meant,” Munro, “tument.” That the two words are radically the same, cannot be doubted, whether the moral or the physical was the primary sense of ‘minor.’ Wagn. comp. Od. 12. 73, οἱ δὲ δύω σκόπελοι, ὁ μὲν οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἱκάνει Ὀξείῃ κορυφῇ.
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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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