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Virgil in his third Georgic, after a fine description of the horse, begins to illustrate it with examples thus:

Talis Amyclaei domitus Pollucis habenis

Cyllarus (vv. 89-90).

The reader will notice that here we have Pollux in a rôle not usually assigned to him. Horace tells us:

Castor gaudet equis, ovo prognatus eodem

Pugnis (Sat. 2. 1. 26),

following Homer’s:

Κάστορά θ’ ἱππόδαμον καὶ πὺξ ἀγαθὸν Πολυδεύκεα (Il. 3. 237).

Servius’s note is: Atqui Castor equorum domitor fuit. Sed fratrem pro fratre posuit poetica licentia, ut quas illi Philomela dapes pro Progne, item revocato a sanguine Teucri pro Dardani; aut certe ideo Pollucem pro Castore posuit, quia ambo licenter et Polluces et Castores vocantur; nam et ludi et templum et stellae Castorum nominantur. The last argument might account for the use of Castor for Pollux, it hardly accounts for that of Pollux for Castor; while his fratrem pro fratre reminds me of the question of our boyhood, ‘Who killed Cain?’

But we have a way in English of expressing briefly a series of four or five by the first and last. Murray tells me: ‘First and last: all, “one and all”.’ Is this also Latin idiom? Horace writes:

Primosque et extremos metendo

Stravit humum sine clade victor. (Od. 4. 14. 31-2.)

In the verses:

album mutor in alitem

Superne, nascunturque leves

Per digitos humerosque plumae (Od. 2. 20. 10-12)

in: digitos humerosque Horace gives a series of four by the first and last; and again in:

Caementis licet occupes

Tyrrhenum omne tuis et mare Ponticum (Od. 3. 24. 3-4)

he indicates the whole system of the Mediterranean seas by its eastern and western extremes. So Catullus in:

Unam Septimius misellus Acmen

Mavult quam Syrias Britanniasque (45. 21-2)

signifies in like fashion all the provinces of the Empire. We saw in the last chapter how Horace indicated a pair by one of its members. Here we have two pairs indicated by the first and last of their members.

Let us set down the pairs in order, beginning with the horses, as the passage is about horses. Of the two horses, Cyllarus and Xanthus, Cyllarus is the horse of Castor. Valerius Flaccus tells us:

Vectorem pavidae Castor dum quaereret Helles

Passus Amyclaea pinguescere Cyllaron herba (1. 425-6).

So we must order the pairs: Cyllarus—Xanthus—Castor—Pollux. Virgil here uses Cyllarus for the pair Cyllarus—Xanthus, and Pollux for the pair Castor—Pollux, but the secret of this figure was lost by Servius’s day, and has not been recovered till now. Acron’s note to: hunc equis illum superare pugnis nobilem (Od. 1. 12. 26) is: amatorem equorum Castorem dicit ut est Virg.: talis Amyclaei domitus Pollucis habenis Cyllarus. The only way we can account for his use of this verse to prove that Castor, not Pollux, was the amator equorum is to assume that Acron felt that all his readers, like himself, would at once see that Pollucis was here used by metonymy for Castoris.

Let us turn to Servius’s Procne—Philomela example:

Aut ut mutatos Terei narraverit artus,

Quas illi Philomela dapes, quae dona pararit,

Quo cursu deserta petiverit, et quibus ante

Infelix sua tecta super volitaverit alis. (Buc. 6. 78-81.)

Servius’s note is: Philomela dapes: atqui hoc Procne fecit; sed aut abutitur nomine, aut illi imputat propter quam factum est. But in his note to v.78 we read: Omnes in aves mutati sunt: Tereus in upupam, Itys in fassam, Procne in hirundinem, Philomela in lusciniam. Take his order of the dramatis personae; Virgil names them here by the first and last, but lest we might not understand that Philomela here is for Procne—Philomela, he appends two descriptions, one of the nightingale’s dwelling: quo cursu deserta petiverit (poetic for: quo volatu silvas petiverit) and: quibus ante ... alis for that of the swallow. With this specimen of Virgil’s art we may compare his description of Romulus in the sixth Aeneid:

Viden ut geminae stant vertice cristae? (v. 779)

to which Servius’s note is: omnino in omnibus hoc egit Romulus, ut cum fratre regnare videretur, ne se reum parricidii indicaret: unde omnia duplicia habuit, quasi cum fratre communia.

Unde omnia duplicia habuit. Nowhere does this seem truer of Virgil, or more striking than in the example I follow Servius in citing:

Quid loquar aut Scyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est

Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris

Dulichias vexasse rates et gurgite in alto

Ah! timidos nautas canibus lacerasse marinis? (Buc. 6. 74-77.)

Here we have the exploits of Scylla, the daughter of Phorcus, apparently attributed to Scylla, the daughter of Nisus. We can again construct the figure: Scylla—Scylla—Phorci—Nisi, but it differs from the last example in that none of the description given fits Scylla Nisi. It looks to me like a very strong case of ἀπροσδόκητον; we can hardly assume a blunder on the part of Virgil, who had already set forth at great length in the Ciris the crime of the daughter of Nisus, and in Geo. 1. 406-9, repeats the last four verses of that poem. What he seems to mean is that Silenus told the tale of both Scyllas, but he specifies only the doings of the Scylla whose story he had not already told. But Propertius (4.4. 39-40) confuses the two Scyllas, as Virgil seems to do here.

Easier to deal with is Servius’s question (ad Aen. 1. 235), why Virgil always calls Dido Sidonia Dido, though she was from Tyre, not Sidon, and has no direct connexion with Sidon. Of course there was the indirect connexion, in that Tyre came from Sidon; it was settled by the Sidonians. This we could state in our fourfold form: Sidonia—Tyros—Tyria—Dido; by using the more remote epithet got by this figure Virgil calls forth in his reader’s mind the origin both of Dido and of Tyre; and this is evidently one of the constant aims of poetic diction. The aim of prose is to state with all possible clearness and elegance the fact you wish to narrate, that of poetry to call forth in your narration by suggestion all the facts associated with the fact in question; and hence the use of a figure like hypallage.

To turn now to the remaining example cited by Servius, where Virgil seems to have gone wrong in his mythology:

Certe hinc Romanos olim volventibus annis,

Hinc fore ductores revocato a sanguine Teucri,

Qui mare, qui terras omni dicione tenerent,

Pollicitus. (Aen. 1. 234-7.)

Servius’s note is: Teucrum pro Dardano posuit: Dardanus enim de Italia profectus est, Teucer de Creta: quia solent poetae nomina de vicinis provinciis vel personis usurpare. But Italia and Creta are hardly neighbouring states like Tyre and Sidon; and one is rather led to think of the confusion between Teucer and Dardanus in the mind of Anchises, that led to the settlement of the Aeneadae in Crete. But our fourfold arrangement gives Romani—Cretenses—Dardanus—Teucer; and Virgil’s use of Romani and Teucer here may be another use of this figure. But Servius’s note to revocato here leads further: dicendo revocato, ostendit Italiam, unde Dardanus fuerat. But by naming Teucer instead of Dardanus he straightway contradicts this; for how can the descendants of Teucer be called back to a country from which Teucer did not come? May not Virgil intend us to take re- in another sense?

Brugmann relates red-, the older form, to vret, which contains vr, a reduced form of the root ver that is found in vermis ‘the wriggler’, and in verto. Re- has primarily to do with turning back or repeating an action. But it is often used to emphasize a notion of iteration already expressed in the verb as in renovo, constantly in use for novo, ‘I renew’. So in:

Sic pater Aeneas intentis omnibus unus

Fata renarrabat divum cursusque docebat (Aen. 3. 716-17)

renarrabat is simply: dictis iterata narrabat. In:

Vergilium finibus Atticis reddas incolumem precor (Od. 1. 3. 6-7)

Virgil is not returning to Attica, but Attica is his proper and purposed destination. Most interesting here is recipere, the correlative of reddere, which is in use throughout Latin letters from Plautus down, not only for ‘to take back’, but also for ‘to take as one’s own’. It is well distinguished from accipio in: (Peneus) accipit amnem Horcum, nec recipit, sed olei modo super natantem brevi spatio portatum abdicat, poenales aquas dirisque genitas argenteis suis misceri recusans (Plin. 4. 8 (15). 31). So in: Dissolve frigus ligna super foco large reponens (Hor. Od. 1. 9. 6-7), reponens seems to convey the idea that the hearth in winter is the proper place for the firewood; just as the right place for a book which I take down from my friend’s shelves is the place from which I took it.

In Aen. 1. 235, then, Virgil by substituting Teucri for Dardani indicates to his thoughtful reader that revocato is not to be taken here in its usual sense of ‘called back’, for Teucer had never been in Italy. The word revocato suggests to the reader that Dardanus the founder of the city of Troy was from Italy, and so it was natural that on the fall of Troy the Trojans should return to Italy, their old home. He reads on, and is surprised to find Teucer, and not Dardanus, connected with revocato; and his surprise at this serves to impress more strongly on his mind the idea which Virgil tries to convey throughout the Aeneid, that this return to Italy is a right and due recall, a recall by the gods. We have here one of the many cases, which call for a fuller treatment than they have yet received, where Virgil joins to an obvious meaning a second and less obvious, but one often marked by greater majesty and sublimity. He often uses the figure I have illustrated in this chapter for this purpose, and when I show that this expression of two related pairs by one member of each, as well as the more general expression of four objects by two, the first and last named, is not confined to proper names, but is often used with common nouns and adjectives, as well as verbs, I hope to convince my reader that we have here a figure that was readily comprehended by Virgil’s readers in his day, but the secret of which was lost by the fifth century, the period of Servius, Acron, and Porphyrio. We find examples of it in English; in Bishop Bickersteth’s well-known hymn, at the beginning of the last stanza:

See the feast of love is spread;

Drink the wine and break the bread.

while bread and wine give us a symmetrical pair, this is not true of break and drink, which are short for: break and eat, fill and drink; a use of two for four. For this alternate ellipsis in two connected pairs, a figure not named till now, I would suggest the name of Antallage, a term closely related to the names of the allied figures of Enallage and Hypallage, and not hitherto in use for grammar to my knowledge.

There seems another example of this figure in the Aeneid not mentioned by Servius in this connexion, where Virgil seems to contradict not merely current tradition, but the account he has himself given a little before. Hyginus notes (Gell. 10. 16. 12-13) that, though Virgil had named Theseus among those who had descended to the shades and returned to earth (qui ad inferos adissent et redissent), and had said:

Quid Thesea magnum,

Quid memorem Alciden? Et mi genus ab love summo est (Aen. 6. 122-3),

yet afterwards he inserts in his poem:

Sedet aeternumque sedebit

Infelix Theseus. (Aen. 6. 617-18.)

‘How is it possible’, asks Hyginus, ‘that he should sit forever in the shades, whom Virgil has already named with those who have descended thither and again escaped thence? especially when such is the tradition about Theseus, and if Hercules himself plucked him from the rock and led him forth to the upper air?’ His question calls for a franker and better answer than it has yet received from commentators whether ancient or modern. Servius thinks that, though Hercules did deliver Theseus, still: eum ita abstraxit, ut illic corporis eius relinqueret partem (ad v. 617). Sidgwick thinks that in v.122 Virgil represents Theseus as freed by Hercules, but that in v.618 he has adopted a variant account. Most of our editors, like Conington, follow Heyne, who apparently fails to catch Hyginus’s meaning, and adopts Servius’s treatment of v.122, where he speaks of Theseus as a durum exemplum, passed over quickly by Aeneas as not having ascended like Castor, Pollux, and Hercules; to render this more probable, he is for dividing magnum from Thesea and joining it with the following Alciden. But Conington rightly refuses to make this division, and compares Thesea magnum with Cissea durum (Aen. 10. 317). It seems to me that in: quid Thesea magnum, quid memorem Alciden? we have an easy poetic distribution for: quid memorem Thesea magnum? quid memorem Alciden magnum?, and that Servius’s attempted evasion of the difficulty involves a departure from the plain sense of the passage.

No doubt Virgil had in mind two versions of the legend: that implied in Homer (Od. 11. 630 ff.), where we are told that, if Ulysses had remained longer in Hades, he would have further seen men of the foretime, Theseus and Pirithous, renowned children of the gods; and that given us by Apollodorus (2.5. 12), and followed by Horace (Od. 4. 7. 27), where Hercules succeeds in rescuing Theseus, but fails to reach Pirithous. The latter is the account commonly received in Virgil’s day, and plainly accepted by him in v.122, though in v.618 he seems at first sight to follow Homer. A century or so after we find that Plutarch does not take Theseus to Hades with Pirithous; in return for Pirithous’s help in his abduction of Helen from Sparta he joins his friend in attempting to carry off Kore, the daughter of Aïdoneus and Persephone, sovereigns of the Molossi (Th. 31). In this attempt Pirithous was gobbled up (ἠφάνισε) by the king’s dog, Cerberus, but Theseus escaped to be pushed off the rocks of Scyros by Lycomedes a little later (Th. 35). But though dead, he had not forgotten his beloved Athens; and in the charge and rout of Marathon, he returned to sustain his Athenians—an older Angel of Mons.

But did Virgil really show himself guilty of so flagrant a contradiction of himself in this second account, where to the cursory reader he seems to turn back to Homer’s story? Let us examine more closely the passage from which Hyginus cited the apparent contradiction:

Saxum ingens volvunt alii, radiisque rotarum

Districti pendent; sedet aeternumque sedebit

Infelix Theseus, Phlegyasque miserrimus omnes

Admonet et magna testatur voce per umbras:

‘Discite iustitiam moniti et non temnere divos.’ (Aen. 6. 616-20).

We have seen how Virgil seems to use Pollux for Castor (Geo. 3. 89), Philomela for Procne (Buc. 6. 79), Teucer for Dardanus (Aen. 1. 235); how he really uses Scylla Nisi for Scylla Phorci (Buc. 6. 74), and Sidonia for Tyria as the standing epithet of Dido. May he not be using Theseus here for Pirithous? But in all the cases enumerated two pairs were involved, of which the first and last terms alone were expressed; here Theseus and Pirithous are plainly involved, but where is our second pair? Very close to the rock of Theseus here Virgil has set the wheel of Ixion; and according to the usual tradition Phlegyas was Ixion’s father, and Pirithous Ixion’s son. Both were whelmed in Tartarus, Ixion for his attempted rape of Juno, Phlegyas for burning the shrine of Apollo at Delphi in revenge for Apollo’s seduction of his daughter Coronis. Most appropriate to both seems the second clause of Phlegyas’s discourse: et non temnere divos. But where does Virgil get the first clause: discite iustitiam? Heyne cites Pindar (Pyth. 2. 39 ff.): ‘They say that Ixion under injunctions from the gods proclaims this to mortals, as he is rolled on his winged wheel: Him that doeth good service draw near and recompense with fair reward.’ So that while the second part of Phlegyas’s speech here seems as appropriate to Ixion as to his father, the first clause is given by Pindar to Ixion, and transferred by Virgil to Phlegyas. The magna voce has occasioned surprise, and our editors compare with it the vox exigua proper to the shades (v.493); but torments, like actions, speak louder than words, and magna voce is clearly a metaphor. Virgil, in his anxiety to give his reader the clue to his meaning, is not content with bringing the wheel of Ixion as close as he can to the rock of Theseus; looking back you will see that the last pair of proper names before the verses we have cited are those of the missing pair, Ixiona Pirithoumque (v.601). We seem, then, to be following Virgil’s express indications in taking Theseus Phlegyasque as short for Theseus et Pirithous, Ixion Phlegyasque. While Phlegyas is for Ixion Phlegyasque, an example of synecdoche, Theseus is used for Pirithous, an example of metonymy, both of which figures arise out of the use of one for a pair. So in Cyllarus (Geo. 3. 90) we have synedoche; the steeds are of like merit.