----Moriemur inultæ?
Sed moriamur, ait; sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras.
Servius makes an interrogation at the word sic; thus, sic? Sic juvat ire sub umbras; which Mr Cowley justly censures: but his own judgment may perhaps be questioned; for he would retrench the latter part of the verse, and leave it a hemistick,—Sed moriamur, ait. That Virgil never intended to have left any hemistick, I have proved already in the preface. That this verse was filled up by him with these words, sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras, is very probable, if we consider the weight of them; for this procedure of Dido does not only contain that dira execratio, quæ nullo expiatur carmine,[103] (as Horace observes in his "Canidia,") but, besides that, Virgil, who is full of allusions to history, under another name describes the Decii devoting themselves to death this way, though in a better cause, in order to the destruction of the enemy. The reader, who will take the pains to consult Livy in his accurate description of those Decii thus devoting themselves, will find a great resemblance betwixt these two passages. And it is judiciously observed upon that verse,
Nulla fides populis nec fœdera sunto,
that Virgil uses, in the word sunto, a verbum juris, a form of speaking on solemn and religious occasions. Livy does the like. Note also, that Dido puts herself into the habitus Gabinus, which was the girding herself round with one sleeve of her vest; which is also according to the Roman pontifical, in this dreadful ceremony, as Livy has observed; which is a farther confirmation of this conjecture. So that, upon the whole matter, Dido only doubts whether she should die before she had taken her revenge, which she rather wished; but, considering that this devoting herself was the most certain and infallible way of compassing her vengeance, she thus exclaims:
----Sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras!
Hauriat hunc oculis ignem crudelis ab alto
Dardanus, et nostræ secum ferat omina mortis?
Those flames from far may the false Trojan view;
Those boding omens his base flight pursue!
which translation I take to be according to the sense of Virgil. I should have added a note on that former verse,
Infelix Dido! nunc te fata impia tangunt—
which, in the edition of Heinsius, is thus printed, nunc te facta impia tangunt? The word facta, instead of fata, is reasonably altered; for Virgil says afterwards, she died not by fate, nor by any deserved death, nec fato, meritâ nec morte, peribat, &c. When I translated that passage, I doubted of the sense, and therefore omitted that hemistick, nunc te fata impia tangunt. But Heinsius is mistaken only in making an interrogation-point instead of a period. The words facta impia, I suppose, are genuine; for she had perjured herself in her second marriage, having firmly resolved, as she told her sister in the beginning of this Æneid, never to love again, after the death of her first husband; and had confirmed this resolution by a curse on herself, if she should alter it:
Sed mihi vel tellus, optem, prius ima dehiscat, &c.
Ante, pudor, quam te violem, aut tua jura resolvam.
Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores
Abstulit: ille habeat secum, servetque sepulcro.