ARGONAUTICON BOOK I.

Having dared to follow the middle paths and to break through the courses stirred up between the ridges, at last it settled in the flame-bearing Olympus.
tripod Phoebus, advise me, if the cortina sacred cauldron/tripod of the Sibyl of Cumae stands in my chaste home as a witness, if the laurel greens on a worthy brow. And you, oh you, to whom the greater fame of the open sea

3\. sequi i.e., to seek, as in V, 481; Vergil, Aeneid IV, 361, 381, XII, 893; Ovid, Heroides 7, 10; Silius Italicus I, 141. cursus rumpere is to effect a course by breaking it, Silius VII, 568: and he broke his course into battle; r. aditus Vergil, Aeneid II, 494; more often iter (Valerius III, 241), viam r.

4. Regarding the Argo being received among the stars by Minerva, cf. Hyginus, Fabulae 14 end; Astronomica II, 37; Manilius I, 402 ff., V, 13; Cicero, Aratea 126 ff.; Germanicus, Phaenomena 344 ff. with commentary; Avienus, Phaenomena 456 ff.; Valerius touches on the matter in I, 305 and V, 295; see furthermore Eratosthenes, Catasterismi p. 174 and commentary on Aratus v. 342. Olympus is the heaven, which we call the Firmament, as in II, 38, 66; V, 413; Vergil, Eclogues VI, 86; Ovid, Metamorphoses VI, 487; Lucan II, 398; Silius XI, 267, XII, 665; Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus 1907 (star-bearing); Panegyric on Piso 209; Avienus, Phaenomena 78, 111 (flame-bearing); Prognostica 538. flammifer i.e., bearing stars: Lucan V, 402 flame-bearing night; Statius, Silvae I, 2, 119 flame-bearing seats; flammae are said for stars in Ovid, Fasti V, 165; Tristia IV, 3, 15; Lucan IX, 494.

5. Phoebus is invoked in this place because Valerius was one of the fifteen-men (the quindecimviri), who had the care of performing sacred rites according to the Greek custom following the precepts of the Sibylline books; among the gods who were worshipped by this rite, Apollo was prominent, whose prophetess is the Cumaean Sibyl, cf. Preller, Roman Mythology 3rd ed., p. 146 ff. mone placed thus absolutely in Vergil, Aeneid VII, 41: You, goddess, advise the prophetess; Ovid, Fasti III, 261, V, 447; cf. Valerius VI, 34. cortina is the badge of the quindecimviri, which is commemorated by Servius on Aeneid III, 332 and is seen on coins in Cohen I² Aug. 347 seq.; Nero 311 seq.; cf. Marquardt, Roman Antiquities VI, 359. From this place in Valerius, it appears that the quindecimviri kept this cortina in their home; it is called witness of the Cumaean prophetess, i.e., a partner in the Sibyl’s prophecies, as in II, 255 temples witnessing to Bacchus, which have parts of the worship of Bacchus; II, 410 sacred rites witnessing to the saved father, which played a part in saving the father; cf. Tibullus I, 8, 3 fiber witnessing to the gods.

6. digna refers back to fronte; also the laurel is a badge of the quindecimviri, about which cf. Eckhel, On the Doctrine of Coins VI, 316.

7. tuque o is spoken a bit unusually without adding the vocative, for