Book 4, lines 259-278

Well, I've had all weekend to catch up, and here I am at 1 AM Sunday night, and I'm just getting to the blog.  Plus, I've still got to grade quizzes so that we can have a quiz in class on Monday (so if any of you have this on RSS reader or just felt like checking it at 7:30 AM Monday morning, get studying!).  So don't be shocked when this ends up a little shorter than normal.

Anyway, I'm going to take a slightly different tack with this entry and focus pretty minutely on one example.  Specifically, I want to compare lines 264 (the last line before Mercury's speech to Aeneas) and 278 (two lines after the speech, when Mercury vanishes):

264: fecerat, et tenui telas discreverat auro.

278: et procul in tenuem ex oculis evanuit auram.

When one is reading through, the parallel between these two lines is reasonably hard to catch.  Stick them next to each other, though, and it's remarkable.  In both lines, a form of tenuis occurs after the first syllable of the second foot of the line; in both lines it agrees with the last word in the line, which in both cases begins with aur-.  The parallel is too great for this to be coincidence; it must be on purpose.  The question, then, is why Vergil did it?  Is he merely doing some clever punning?  Is this wordplay meant to bookend the speech in some way, somehow making it more significant?  Does it perhaps suggest that the attraction of Dido and her rich gifts (symbolized by the fine workmanship of the 'thin gold') has been dispelled by the miraculous disappearance of Mercury 'into thin air?'  Other ideas?

Along these lines, often it takes multiple readings for us to catch things like this; if you find something you find interesting as we go along, please feel free to post it as a comment here or in the most recent post.  I will try to repost these as entries (with appropriate credit, of course) so that they are easy to find for general discussion.