We have here an interlude between Juppiter's speech to Mercury and Mercury's speech to Aeneas relaying Juppiter's command. The first question that comes to mind for me is simply why we have these lines in the first place - why do we need a six line description of Mercury getting ready followed by a fourteen line description of his flight from the heavens down to Carthage (including six lines about Atlas, who I don't think ever appears again in the story)? All that is really necessary to make the plot flow smoothly is to say that he obeys the command of Juppiter (l. 238), takes off from Olympus (l. 245, more or less), and soon sees Aeneas at Carthage (picking up at line 259). The first explanation that comes to mind, for me, is that Vergil wanted to create some space between two speeches that will necessarily be fairly similar (since Mercury will more or less be repeating Juppiter's speech). I'm not sure if that is a sufficient explanation though - does anyone have other ideas?
A couple small, but possibly interesting notes: there is an awful lot of alliteration with the letter p in lines 238-9: ...patris magni parere parabat/ imperio: et primum pedibus... Could all these ps give a sense of Mercury's quickness? Perhaps even mimicking the beating of his winged sandals and hat (ok, that might be stretching it, I admit)?
There is also a lot of alliteration with s in 240-1; could that be mimicking the gusts of wind that carry him on his way?
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to me the long description of mercury's preparation and flight shows how much activity jupiter can create just by giving a command. it contrasts how jupiter just had to sit there and say "go" and mercury jumped up and flew around etc etc to follow jupiter's orders. it's like in the disney version of hercules were hades always just gets mad and yells and the two little demons are the ones running around. the scene emphasizes jupiter's omnipotence by showing mercury as having to work and be active.
That's a great point - I think it's certainly one of the main elements at work here. Any other ideas,perhaps particularly having to do with the somewhat lengthy description of Atlas - could Vergil just be showing off his mythological knowledge/poetic ability, or is something more significant going on?
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