[438] Ingentem pugnam with ‘cernimus.’ Aeneas says the struggle was so extensive and deadly, that you would thin there were none left to fight in the rest of Troy, none to be killed. This accounts for ‘cetera,’—‘all the other conflicts that were going on in the town,’ ‘all the rest of the war then waging.’ Virg. has evidently imitated Od. 8. 519, where in the minstrel's song about the capture of Troy it is said that the fiercest struggle went on at the house of Deiphobus, κεῖθι δὴ αἰνότατον πόλεμον φάτο τολμήσαντα. Burm. comp. Stat. Theb. 3. 122, “ceu nulla prius lalamenta nec atri Manassent imbres, sic ore miserrimus uno Exoritur fragor,” which shows that ‘sic,’ v. 440, is meant to answer to ‘ceu’ here. Virg. in fact writes loosely, at first apparently intending to confine the comparison indicated by ‘ceu’ to ‘ingentem pugnam,’ and then going on to draw it out in the lines that follow as if ‘ingentem pugnam’ had not preceded.
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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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