[427] In limine primo, alluding to the Roman custom of burying new-born infants “in suggrundis,” under the eaves of the house, as has been pointed out by a writer in the Saturday Review, Sept. 25, 1858, art. on Gladstone's Homeric Studies. Here of course it is the threshold of Orcus that is spoken of. Wakef., whom Ribbeck follows, ingeniously punctuated after ‘flentes,’ connecting ‘in limine primo’ with ‘vitae,’ which he separated from ‘exsortis’—an arrangement supported by Lucan 2. 106, quoted by Cerda, “nec primo in limine vitae Infantis miseri nascentia rumpere fata,” but on the whole repudiated by the present passage, even independently of the reviewer's illustration. Plato deals very summarily with these infants in the vision of Er, Rep. 10, p. 615 c, τῶν δὲ εὐθὺς γενομένων [ἀποθανόντων] καὶ ὀλίγον χρόνον βιούντων πέρι ἄλλα ἔλεγεν οὐκ ἄξια μνήμης.
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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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