TERMINALIA. NOTES ON VIRGIL, GEORGIC I. V. 3. Qui cultus habendo sit pecori is totally mis Eratum, p. 48, line 11, after "If the subject of a proposition is to," read "be defined, the definition must give that part of the❞— sense the subject of the fourth Georgic, though the poet has occasion to mention it incidentally: and the words in the preceding lines, quid faciat, conveniat, cura, cultus, show that the whole exordium is intended to refer to the rural duties of man. The epithet parcis, it must be confessed, is against this, as it must obviously mean frugal, not, as Wagner supposes, scanty, reared with difficulty. We must then regard it as an epitheton ornans, an epithet appropriate to the word, but not to the context, admitting at the same time that it is decidedly a blemish, introduced as it is in a -place where every word used ought to have a peculiar TERMINALIA. NOTES ON VIRGIL, GEORGIC I. 66 V. 3. Qui cultus habendo sit pecori is totally misunderstood by Heyne, who renders it "quæ cura sit pecoris, quod quis habet." Wagner sees the truth when he makes habendo the gerundial dative, though he contradicts himself a little in the rest of his note, first saying that the notion of the dative is quid aptum sit, conveniat," and then proceeding to explain this and other passages as if sit were equivalent to aptus sit. The fact seems to be that the dative here, as in other instances, is nearly tantamount to the accusative with ad," for the purpose of," "with a view to." The usage is found in Lucretius. Book I. v. 25. Te sociam studeo scribundis versibus esse. V. 4. Heyne is clearly right in taking experientia of the bee-keeper, not of the bee. The latter is in no sense the subject of the fourth Georgic, though the poet has occasion to mention it incidentally: and the words in the preceding lines, quid faciat, conveniat, cura, cultus, show that the whole exordium is intended to refer to the rural duties of man. The epithet parcis, it must be confessed, is against this, as it must obviously mean frugal, not, as Wagner supposes, scanty, reared with difficulty. We must then regard it as an epitheton ornans, an epithet appropriate to the word, but not to the context, admitting at the same time that it is decidedly a blemish, introduced as it is in a place where every word used ought to have a peculiar |