[215] With great hesitation I have read ἄρ for “αὖ” of the vulgate, which may have slipped in from 219. “αὖ” cannot introduce a narrative, and if correct is evidence of some dislocation. But it cannot be used as evidence that 215 is the beginning of a genealogy imported bodily from some extraneous source, as has sometimes been done, for it seems clear that wherever it stands it can never have been anything but an introduction; the ascending line can have gone no higher, and πρῶτον shews that it cannot have been one of a series of genealogies of sons of Zeus. On the whole it seems probable that the speech was composed as we now have it, and that the genealogy is the kernel of this ‘Aeneid,’ to which the rest is written up. The wearisome repetitions of ‘let us not waste time on words’ in 200-2, 210-12, 244-58 can only be excused by the existence of some such long digression as 215-41. This does not exclude the possibility of the genealogy being taken from some earlier ‘Hesiodean’ source; but the existence of 219 ff. makes this unlikely.
