[430] Qualis apes exercet labor, ‘like the busy labour of bees.’ ‘Aestate nova:’ comp. G. 4. 52, note. ‘In the first bright days of summer,’ when the hive, awakened from its winter torpor, is busiest and most like a young colony. These lines are repeated with slight variations from G. 4. 162—169; a reference to which passage proves that the divisions here introduced by ‘cum’ imply, not different times, but different parties, and so are parallel to the different occupations of the Carthaginians. The variations are ‘liquentia’ for ‘purissima,’ and ‘dulci’ for ‘liquido;’ the first necessitated the second, and was natural in a passage where bees and honey are not the main subject celebrated, but only an illustration.
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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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