[43] Aditus and ‘ostia’ seem rightly explained by Henry as a sort of Virgilian hendiadys, ‘aditus per centum lata ostia.’ But it is not easy to understand what these entrances were. On the whole the consistency of the description seems to require that we should understand them to be the entrances of the adytum, opening into the temple (comp. 3. 92, where the ‘adytum’ is opened similarly at the giving of the response): but a hundred doors communicating from one side of the temple to a cavern beyond form a picture which is not readily grasped. Meanwhile the general tenor of the narrative is well illustrated by a graphic description of a worshipper at Delphi approaching the ‘adytum’ in the Oxford ‘Arnold Prize Essay’ for 1859, by my friend Mr. Bowen of Balliol College. I quote it in an Appendix to this book, as it is too long for a note.
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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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