C. VALERI FLACCI

ARGONAVTICON

fame, after the Caledonian ocean carried your sails,
having previously disdained the Phrygian Iuli referring to the Julian line, i.e., the Romans,
snatch me from the peoples and from the cloud-bearing earth,
holy father Vespasian, and favor the singer, oh venerable one, of ancient things.

other places have it differently, such as Ovid, Metamorphoses II, 424; similar examples, but with the vocative added after an intervening sentence, are v. 215; II, 274; Vergil, Georgics I, 12. maior fama i.e., greater than that of the Argonauts, cf. Bernays, Collected Essays II, 163. aperti pelagi: cf. Pomponius Mela III, 6 for behold, the greatest of princes opens (Britain), which had been closed for so long; Tacitus, Agricola 25 the open secret of his own sea.

8. Concerning the deeds performed by Vespasian in Britain under the emperor Claudius, cf. Suetonius, Vespasian c. 4; Cassius Dio LX, 20, 30; Silius III, 598; Tacitus, Agricola 13. Caledonian ocean is named as in Silius, who uses Caledonian woods for British ones in the poetic fashion; for Vespasian did not advance into Caledonia.

9. The poet dared to say Iuli for Julii as Silius III, 595 did for the sake of the meter, mindful of the fact that the Julian line drew its origin from Iulus. He calls the Romans Iuli who were fighting under the leadership of Julius, just as Vergil and Ovid often use Aeneadae for Trojans or Romans, and he touches upon the expeditions of Caesar into Britain and the disasters he received from storms; cf. Caesar, Commentaries on the Gallic War IV, 29; V, 10; Cassius Dio XXXIX, 52; XL, 2. The glory of the Flavian house is increased by the mention of the Caesarean expedition, which lacked success. The ocean is poetically said to be disdaining as in v. 202; the Araxes disdaining the bridge Vergil, Aeneid VIII, 728; disdaining sea Georgics II, 162; disdaining straits Ovid, Metamorphoses XI, 491; pitying waves Valerius I, 281; the anger of the sea II, 232.

10. snatch me from the peoples; cf. Horace, Odes I, 1, 32. from the cloud-bearing earth; cf. Vergil, Georgics III, 8: the path must be attempted, by which I too may be able to lift myself from the soil; Propertius III, 1, 9: by which (verse) Fame lifts me sublime from the earth. Moreover, emperors are invoked by other poets as gods, so that they may favor the work, cf. Ovid, Fasti I, 6; II, 17; Manilius I, 7 ff.; Germanicus, Phaenomena 2; Lucan I, 63 ff.; Statius, Silvae V, 1, 15; Corippus, Iohannis II, 24.

11. holy father; Ovid, Fasti II, 127 addresses Augustus with these words: holy father of the fatherland; cf. Culex v. 26 and Statius, Silvae V, 1, 167; in Silius VII, 737 oh holy parent are the words with which Minucius greets the dictator Fabius. From this verse on, several examples of the figure now called alliteration are conspicuous, concerning which see Hirschwaelder's critical notes p. 16 and Koestlin in Philologus 39, 241.