Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/366

 33:27. Cassandra. Daughter of Priam and Hecuba. Priestess of Apollo. When she offended Apollo, he could not take back the prophetic power which he had given her, but he decreed that her prophecies should never be believed.

34:17. Hector. Of this passage Fénelon wrote, "Can one read this passage without being moved?" Châteaubriand called the scene "a kind of epitome of Virgil's genius."

35:9. Vesta. So Æneas is to be apostle to the heathen. Even the early Christians reverenced the vestal sisters, prototype of church sisterhoods. The institution known as the Vestal Virgins was the purest element of the Roman religion; even emperors intrusted their last wills to their sacred keeping as the most inviolable of safeguards. Their convent has recently been excavated near the Roman Forum.

38:36. Nereus. A sea-god, father of the Nereids.

40:3. Andromache. Daughter of King Eëtion, wife of Hector, the eldest son of Priam and the most famous warrior of the Trojans, finally slain by Achilles and dragged around the walls of Troy.

40:17. Pyrrhus. Son of Achilles. Also called Neoptolemus. After fighting in the Trojan war, he founded a kingdom in Epirus.

41:17. Hecuba. Chief wife of Priam. She really was the mother of nineteen children. Poetic license treats her as the queen mother of all Priam's fifty daughters-in-law and fifty daughters, and finally includes them all under the term daughters-in-law.

43:13. Creusa. Wife of Æneas and mother of Ascanius or Iulus.