:

que pacem per aras: mactant lectas bidentes de more, legi

pitiate by sacrifice, as we have rendered it. As for the criticism of Servius, who says, Diis litatis debuit dicere, non enim sacra sed Deos litamus, id est, placumus: ergo nove dixit-it is groundless; for examples occur where the word is used in the same way. Thus Lucan says: Neque enim tibi summe litavi Jupiter hoc sacrum.

So Propertius has exta litare; and Suetonius, Victimas Diti patri cæsas litavit ; Life of Otho, chap. 8;—or the words will agree even to Servius' own notion; for why may it not be litatis sacris, i. e. per sacra, having propitiated them by sacrifice, viz. the gods whom he had just mentioned?

52. Dum pelago desavit hiems. Many of the commentators explain this passage, as if the meaning should be, Till the rage of winter be overpast: but what shall we then make of the rest of the sentence, et aquosus Orion, quassatæque rates, et non tractabile cœlum? which ought then to be translated, Till Orion bring on storms of rain, till his ships be shattered, and there be no bearing the inclemencies of the weather; which, instead of being arguments for his stay, are most powerful motives to hasten his departure. When the sense of the passage is so plain, it is in vain to urge the common use of the word in other authors. Ruæus quotes another passage in Virgil, where desævit is most certainly to be taken in the same sense as here:

Sic toto Eneas desævit in æquore victor,
Ut semel intepuit mucro. Zn. X. 569.

VOL. II.

-56. Pacemque per aras exquirunt. The expression exquirunt pacem per uras, refers to the way of prying into the entrails of the victim, in order to know the will of the gods; therefore it follows:

pecudumque reclusis

Pectoribus inhians, spirantiu consulit exta. 57. Lectas de more bidentes. The Heathen, as well as Jewish religion, ordained that no victims should be offered to the gods, but such as were sound, perfect in all their parts, and without any blemish: this I take to be the import of de more.

58. Legifera Cereri. Ceres, the daughter of Saturn and Ops, and mother of Proserpine by Jove, found out the use of corn, and taught agriculture in Attica, Italy, and Sicily; upon which account, as Pliny observes, she was rec koned a goddess, ob id Dea judicata. Tie same author tells us, she was the first who fra med laws, though others assign that honour to Rhadamanthus: Hist. Nat. Lib. VII. cap. 56. Dido therefore offers sacrifice to her, as having instituted laws, especially those of marriage, and civilized mankind from their rude insocial state.

58. Phoboque. She offered sacrifice to Pho bus, as the god who presided over futurity, that he might send propitious omens to countenance the intended match.

58. Patrique Lyao. Bacchus is worshipped as the god of mirth and jollity: Adsit lætitiæ Bac

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Before we enter upon the subject of this book, it may be proper to discuss the question concerning the famous anachronism which Virgil is charged with, in making Dido and Æneas contemporary. Bochart is so positive about it, that he says, if it is not one, nothing is certain in history.

Between Eneas and Dido, continues he, according to the lowest computation, are at least 260 years; for none of the ancient chronologers, of any name, set the destruction of Troy at the distance of less than 60 years from the time of Saul; and from the first year of Saul's reign, to the time of Dido's building Byrsa, the fortress of Carthage, are at least 200 years.

He grounds his assertion on the chronicles of the Tyrians, which have always been reckoned very authentic. Sanchoniathon, who comments upon them, lived before the Trojanwar, and is preserved in Philo-Biblius's translation.

But what he lays most stress upon is a passage in Menander of Ephesus, quoted by Josephus in several places of his history, and by Theophilus of Antioch in his third book to Autolychus. In this passage we have a series of kings who reigned at Tyre, from Abibalus down to Pygmalion, Dido's brother, and of the years that each of them reigned, together with an account of the principal transactions of their several reigns. There particular mention is made of Hiram, who succeeded Abibalus, and who is said to have ordered a vast quantity of the cedar of Lebanon to be

cut down for building temples; which shows that he was the same with the Hiram recorded in the Bible, who lived in the time of Solomon. From Hiram to Ithobalus, priest of Astarte, who put Philes to death, and possessed himself of the throne for thirty years, is a succession of seven kings. This Ithobalus he finds to be the same with Ethbaal mentioned in Scripture to have lived in the time of Ahab, who married his daughter Jezebel. This fixes the times of Ithobalus, and consequently of Pygmalion and Dido, who were his grand-children. Pygmalion reigned fifteen years after the death of Ithobalus, and Dido fled into Afric in the seventh year of Pygma lion's reign; that is, according to his computation, when Jehu reigned in Samaria, and the wicked Athalia in Jerusalem. Hence he concludes that Virgil is unquestionably guilty of an anachronism, What he thinks had misled Virgil is, that under the pretext of Dido's having built Byrsa, or rather Bosra, which was the fortress of Carthage, several anthors had given out that she was the founder of Carthage itself; and if so, she must have lived in the time of Æneas, or even before him; for Carthage was built before the destruction of Troy.

Notwithstanding all that this author has to say for himself, the illustrious Sir Isaac Newton, in his chronology, uas cleared Virgil from this charge, and finds Æneas and Dido cons temporary.

He brings the era of the destruction of Troy