[706, 707] Ruhkopf is, I think, right in regarding, as Gossrau and Henry have done, these lines as parenthetical, to explain the nature of the power given by Pallas to Nautes. The tense of ‘dabat’ and the clauses ‘vel quae,’ &c. are so plainly general that it would be far less tolerable to force them into any other sense than to submit to the harshness of an anacoluthon in ‘Isque’ v. 708, taking up the sentence unfinished in vv. 704, 705. Henry well expands the meaning: “Pallas was in the habit of answering him as to both of the great classes into which all future events were divisible, not only as to those fixed and immutable events which were decreed by the fates, that class of events to which for instance Aeneas' arrival in Italy and establishment of a great empire there belonged, but as to those, if I may so say, uncertain and precarious events which were produced by the special intervention of offended deities, that class of events of which the storm in the First Book and all Aeneas' subsequent misfortunes afford examples.” For this division of events he (after Gossrau) comp. Claudian, De Bello Getico v. 171 (speaking of the irruption of the barbarians into Thrace), “seu fata vocabant, Seu gravis ira deum, seriem meditata ruinis.” There is still however an unexplained difficulty about the expression. The sense would seem to require that we should supply some antecedent for ‘quae’ from the sentence itself, ‘responsa dabat (de iis), vel quae,’ &c., or regard ‘quae’ as acc. pl. of ‘quis.’ But I believe Virg. meant ‘quae’ to be connected with ‘responsa,’ speaking of the responses as portended by the wrath of heaven or demanded by the order of fate, to show how completely the responses represented and were identified with the events. The events or responses are said to be portended by the wrath of the gods, whereas we should rather expect to hear that the wrath of the gods was itself portended by supernatural appearances: but though ‘portendere’ seems generally to bear the latter meaning, the substantive ‘portentum’ is quite in accordance with the former. ‘Responsum dare’ occurs elsewhere, as in E. 1. 44, of a god giving forth a response to those who consulted him, but there can be no reason why it should not be used also of suggesting a response to another which he is to give forth. Ribbeck reads ‘hac’ after Dietsch, from one of his cursives. ‘Ordo’ of the fates 3. 376. ‘Poscere’ of the fates 4. 614., 7. 272., 8. 12, 477.
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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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