NOTES TO BOOK SEVEN
[I.] 'Thou too, Caieta,' that is to say, as well as Misenus and Palinurus, mentioned in the last book. Caieta gave her name to the town and promontory which were on the confines of Latium and Campania.
[II.] 'The coast, where Circe'—Virgil identifies 'the island of Aeaea,' the dwelling-place of Circe in Homer, with the promontory of Circeii in Italy.
[VI.] 'Say, Erato:' Erato was the Muse of Love, and the invocation is not specially appropriate in this place. But the line is an imitation of Apollonius Rhodius iii, 1.
'Ausonia,' a poetical name for Italy. The Ausones were early inhabitants of Campania.
[VII.] Latinus was king of the Latins, a small tribe whose chief town was Laurentum. Faunus a god of the fields and cattle-keepers, was afterwards identified with the Greek Pan. Picus was a prophetic god. We are told by Ovid that he was changed into a woodpecker (picus) by Circe, whose love he had slighted. Saturnus was the old Latin god of sowing, and was later identified with the Greek Kronos, father of Zeus.
[XII.] 'Albunea': apparently refers to a wooded hill with a sulphur spring. Probably it refers to a shrine near some sulphur springs at Altieri, near Laurentum.
'Oenotria': originally the southern part of Lucania and Bruttium, but Virgil uses it poetically for the whole of Italy.
[XIII.] See note on [Book VI. stanzas xvi. and xviii.]
[XVI.] It was not Anchises, but a Harpy who delivered this prophecy. See [Book VIII. stanza xxix.] This, and other slight inconsistencies in the Aeneid are undoubtedly due to the fact that Virgil died before he had revised the poem.
[XVIII.] 'Phrygia's Mother' was Cybele, the Phrygian goddess.
[XXIV.] 'Two-faced Janus.' Janus was an old Latin deity, god of the morning and of gateways. He was represented as 'two-faced,' looking before and behind. There was a double archway in the forum, called Janus, which was closed in times of peace, but opened in time of war. See [stanzas lxxxi., lxxxii.]
[XXVIII.] The Auruncans were a tribe living in Campania.
[XLI.] The Syrtes were two great gulfs on the north coast of Africa. For Scylla and Charybdis, see note on [Book III stanza lv.] The Lapithae were a Thessalian tribe, ruled by Perithous. The Centaurs came to his marriage feast, and at the instigation of Mars, fought with the Lapithae until the latter were defeated. 'Diana's ire' was caused by neglect on the part of king Oeneus of Calydon to sacrifice to her. She sent a wild boar to ravage the country.
[LXIX.] 'Trivia's lake' refers to the little lake of Nemi. A famous temple of Diana stood here, tended by a priest who was a runaway slave. He gained his office by slaying his predecessor and held it only so long as he could escape a similar fate. Cf. [stanza ciii.]
'Velia's fountains,' a lake in the Umbrian hills beyond Reate.
[LXXXVII.] Agylla was the original name of Caere.
[XC.] Homole and Othrys were mountains in Thessaly.
[XCI.] The Anio flows through the hills near Tibur, and joins the Tiber close to 'Antemnae's tower-girt height.' Cf. [stanza lxxxiv.]
Anagnia was the largest town of the Hernici, and Amasenus was a river of Latium.
[XCIII.] All these places were close to each other in Etruria, a few miles north of Rome.
[XCIV.] It is probable that this passage was left unfinished by Virgil. The simile is taken from Homer, and used here in two different ways, the poet evidently postponing his final decision as to which he would adopt, until he revised the poem.
[XCV.] Clausus, according to a legend preserved by Livy, was a Sabine who left his own countrymen and joined the Romans. For this he was rewarded by a gift of land on the Anio. He was regarded as the ancestor of the Claudian family.
[XCVI.] The name of the Allia was ill-omened because it was on the banks of this stream that the Gauls under Brennus inflicted a crushing defeat on the Romans in 390 B.C.
[XCVIII.] The Oscans were one of the old non-Latin tribes of Italy. Some fragments of their language still remain.
[CIII.] The legend was that Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, king of Athens, was loved by his step-mother Phaedra. Hippolytus rejected her love, and she killed herself, leaving a writing accusing him of having tempted her. Theseus in his wrath besought Poseidon to slay his son, and the latter sent a monster from the sea, which terrified the horses of Hippolytus so that they ran away and killed their master. Aesculapius raised him to life, however, and Diana concealed him in the grove of Aricia under the name of Virbius. The Virbius in the text is the son of this Hippolytus, also called Virbius.
[CVI.] Io, the daughter of Inachus, king of Argos, was loved by Jupiter, and turned by him into a white cow in order to escape the jealousy of Juno. The latter, however, set Argus with the hundred eyes to watch her.