[345] For ‘ferat’ Med. originally, Gud. corrected, and two other of Ribbeck's cursives have ‘petat,’ which Burm. rightly regards as an interpretation. The use of ‘ferre’ is illustrated by Forc. s. v., who quotes among other passages Cic. Fam. 1. 7, “In hac ratione quid res, quid causa, quid tempus ferat tu perspicies.” But it is not easy to see from what sense of ‘ferre’ this particular meaning is derived. In these two passages the notion of allowing is perhaps the most natural: in others, where the verb has no object expressed, the notion may be rather that of tendency (as in 2. 34 note), “Troiae sic fata ferebant” (which we might render ‘the fate of Troy was setting that way:’ comp. “ferens ventus”): in some cases again the expression seems to border on the use of ‘ferre’ as i. q. “offerre se,” which we have in 2. 94, “fors si qua tulisset.” In a living language shades of meaning are apt to run into each other, and senses of the same word which were originally distinct become confounded by the mere fact of their association with the same sound, so that dictionaries are often at fault. No other instance is quoted of ‘musso’ with inf.; but Virg., from whom a large proportion of the instances of the word appears to come, uses it twice with an object clause, 12. 657, 718, the sense of inarticulate murmuring passing into that of hesitation. So Enn. A. 347, “Exspectans si mussaret quae denique pausa Pugnandi fieret.”
This text is part of:
John Conington. P. Vergili Maronis opera. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. The works of. Virgil. , with a Commentary by John Conington, M.A. and Henry Nettleship, M.A. London. Whittaker and Co., Ave Maria Lane;. George Bell and Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1876.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.