[501] ‘Centumque nurus’ perplexes Serv., who proposes five solutions—that a definite number is used hyperbolically for an indefinite—that Priam's fifty sons, being barbarians, would have more than one wife each—that ‘nurus’ merely means women —that it means brides, the daughters-inlaw of some one, but not necessarily of Hecuba—and that ‘centum’ is to be taken with ‘aras,’ though he admits that a single person could hardly be slain over a hundred altars. Later commentators have seen that the number one hundred is made up by adding Priam's fifty daughters to his fifty daughters-in-law. ‘Per aras,’ ‘among the altars,’ referring probably to the manner in which he was put to death, being dragged to the altar, as it were from altar to altar, v. 550.
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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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