[239] The meaning of ‘fatis contraria fata rependens’ is clearly, ‘compensating or repaying destiny (of the destruction of Troy) with destiny’ (of reaching Italy). “Rependere et compensare leve damnum delibatae honestatis maiore alia honestate,” Gell. 1. 3. ‘Contraria’ expresses the opposition between destiny and destiny as in 7. 293, “fatis contraria nostris Fata Phrygum.” Strictly then the epithet would agree with ‘fatis,’ as the latter of the two correlatives, but by a poetical variety it is joined with ‘fata,’ the former.
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. Late Corpus Professor of Latin in the University of Oxford. London. Whittaker and Co., Ave Maria Lane. 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.