Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Mountain Man
Vergil, Aeneid 11.567-569 (H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G.P. Goold):
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No cities received him to their homes or walls, nor in his wild mood would he himself have yielded to them: among shepherds and on the lonely mountains he passed his days.T.E. Page ad loc.: John Buchan, "An Individualist," Scholar Gipsies (London: John Lane, 1896), pp. 157-169 (at 160-161):
non illum tectis ullae, non moenibus urbes
accepere (neque ipse manus feritate dedisset),
pastorum et solis exegit montibus aevum.
[T]he tramp whistled lackadaisically. "It's all a question of nature. Some men—well, some, you know, are born to be good citizens. Others lack the domestic virtues. How does the thing go?Brunck excised et in line 569: see his 1785 edition of Vergil's works, pp. 379 and 438.
'Non illum tectis ullae, non moenibus urbes
Accepere, neque ipse manus feritate dedisset,
Pastorum et solis exegit montibus aevum.'
"Brunck emends the passage, but the words are good as they are. In them you have my character and watchword."