[46] This line is repeated from 3. 393 with only the substitution of ‘hic’ for ‘is.’ It is wanting in Med. and Pal., and in Gud. originally, and is omitted by Ribbeck, but it is apparently found in the rest of his cursives, as well as in Rom. Internal evidence seems in favour of omitting it, as being really embarrassing to the context, not, as Heyne and Wagn. think, indispensable to it. It is one thing to interpret the omen as showing the place where Lavinium is to be built, another to explain the white sow of Alba, the thirty pigs of the thirty years. Helenus confines himself to the first: the Tiber, according to the common text, passes from one to the other so as rather to confuse the two. It seems better to suppose that he simply speaks from the latter point of view, ‘ex quo’ being explained as ‘ex quo prodigio’ with Ribbeck. This is confirmed by Serv., who interprets “ex qua ratiocinatione,” and makes no remark on the line before us. We may note that Aeneas takes no notice of the place on waking, either in his address to the river or when he sees the sow. The line then should at least be bracketed, if not struck from the text. It is a further objection to the genuineness of this line that ‘hic’ must be taken with great latitude, Lavinium being twelve Roman miles from the Tiber: and this, which would be nothing where the country was the thing indicated, as in the prophecy of Helenus, seems harsh when Aeneas has found the country, and the thing to be indicated is the particular site of his town. Nor is it likely perhaps that Virg. should have inserted the line so soon after v. 39, to which it bears some resemblance. Heyne suggests that the passage may have run ‘Concessere deum. Nunc qua ratione quod instat’ &c., all between being an interpolation, which is very unlikely, since in vv. 81 foll. there is no reference to Helenus or the occurrence of the omen, and it would hardly occur without introduction or explanation.
