[623] Numina, as we might say ‘the powers:’ more emphatic here than ‘di,’ as it is the exertion of a superhuman power on which we are meant to dwell. The effect of the hemistich here is very grand, and it is not easy to see how Virg. could have improved the line by completing it. At any rate the effective brevity with which he dismisses in a line and a half what an inferior poet would have taken a paragraph to express is a memorable testimony of his judgment. Serv. has a curious note: “Secundum mathesin” (astrology), “post abscessum Veneris dicit apparuisse numina, cuius praesentes radii intervenientes anaereticos” (ἀναιρετικούς, seemingly an astrological term) “temperant.”
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John Conington. P. Vergili Maronis opera. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. The works of Virgil, with a Commentary by John Conington, M.A. Late Corpus Professor of Latin in the University of Oxford. London. Whittaker and Co., Ave Maria Lane. 1876.
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