These are great matters: but Virgil is also as careless, as Homer is careful, of minor proprieties. For instance, he describes the Italian smiths engaged in preparing suits of armour upon the invasion of Æneas. Some, he says, make breastplates of brass; and he continues,
Aut leves ocreas lento ducunt argento[933].
Here, we presume, his purpose was to represent the hammering process by a heavy spondaic line—in evident imitation of Homer, who has done it still more completely in the
θώρηκας ῥήξειν δηΐων ἀμφὶ στήθεσσιν[934].
But Homer always gains his metrical objects without injuring the sense; Virgil, on the contrary, has committed an error, by representing silver (a most rare and valuable metal, especially in the Trojan times) as used in large masses for making armour; and a grosser solecism, by representing the greaves as made of far finer material than the breastplates. Perhaps he was helped into this error by a careless reminiscence, that Homer had in some way connected silver with the greaves. This is not, however, in armour as generally used, but in the case of some of the greatest chiefs, including Paris, whose dandyism, we know, extended particularly to his arms. Nor are even his greaves made of, or even plated with, silver, but only the clasps of them:
κνημῖδας μὲν πρῶτα περὶ κνήμῃσιν ἔθηκεν
καλὰς, ἀργυρέοισιν ἐπισφυρίοις ἀραρυίας[935].
Virgil is careful enough as to geography, when he deals with countries under the eye of his hearers. But he can scarcely be excused for inverting the Homeric order of the mountains piled up by the giants. Homer places Mount Pelion on Ossa, and Ossa on Olympus:
Ὄσσαν ἐπ’ Οὐλύμπῳ μέμασαν θέμεν, αὐτὰρ ἐπ’ Ὄσσῃ
Πήλιον εἰνοσίφυλλον[936].