[513] Quaeruntur, like “quaeritur” G. 4. 300, are looked after and obtained. “Marsis quaesitae montibus herbae” 7. 758. The plants were to be poison-plants (E. 8. 95), cropped by moonlight with brazen shears. Macrob. Sat. 5. 19 thinks that Virg. got the latter notion from a tragedy of Sophocles, the Ριζοτόμοι, now lost, where Medea cuts plants with a brazen sickle, χαλκέοισιν δρεπάνοις, and pours the juice into a brazen vessel, χαλκέοισι κάδοις: but he quotes a passage from the second book of a work by Carminius on Italy, which shows that the use of brazen things in sacrifices was an old Italian custom, “Prius itaque et Tuscos aeneo vomere uti, cum conderentur urbes, solitos in Tageticis eorum sacris invenio, et in Sabinis ex aere cultros quibus sacerdotes tonderentur.” Comp. Pers. 2. 59.
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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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