[32] Pope’s Works, vol. V. p. 244. 8vo.
[33] Quinctilian, lib. xi. c. 1.
[34] Θεῷ ἀνικήτῳ ἐπιγράψαντες. Though, to complete the farce, it was with the greatest shyness and reluctance, that the humility of these lords of the universe could permit itself to accept the ensigns of deity, as the court-historians of those times are forward to inform us. An affectation, which was thought to sit so well upon them, that we find it afterwards practised, in the absurdest and most impudent manner, by the worst of their successors.
[35] See a learned and accurate dissertation on the subject in Hist. de l’acad. des inscr. &c. tom. i.
[36] Div. Leg. vol. i. B. ii. S. 4.
[37] In these lines,
Mox tamen ardentes accingar dicere pugnas
Caesaris, et nomen famâ tot ferre per annos,
Tithoni primâ quot abest ab origine Caesar.
Which I suspect not to have been from the hand of Virgil. And,
I. On account of some peculiarities in the expression.
1. Accingar is of frequent use in the best authors, to denote a readiness and resolution to do any thing; but as joined with an infinitive mood, accingar dicere, I do not remember to have ever seen it. ’Tis often used by Virgil, but, if the several places be consulted, it will always be found with an accusative and preposition, expressed, or understood, as magicas accingier artes, or with an accusative and dative, as accingere se praedae, or lastly, with an ablative, expressing the instrument, as accingor ferro. La Cerda, in his notes upon the place, seemed sensible of the objection, and therefore wrote, Graeca locutio: the common, but paltry, shift of learned critics, when they determine, at any rate, to support an ancient reading.