252 The Birds of Virgil. 



Quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus, 

 Trans pontum fugat, et terris immittit apricis. 1 



This passage is a very embarrassing one, and is 

 not sufficiently cleared up by the commentators. 

 The well-known lines which they quote from 

 Homer (Iliad, iii. 3 foil.), though they may have 

 suggested, are very far from explaining it. The 

 ghosts are praying piteously for passage, and hold 

 out their hands in entreaty, "with strong desire 

 for the further shore : " and they are compared to 

 birds driven on by cold weather, and seeking 

 entrance to warmer lands. Ghosts and birds are 

 alike uneasy ; they long for relief in a home that 

 is now their natural one. So far so good. But 

 the birds are arriving from the sea (gurgite ab 

 alto] in the autumn, and this must be a northern 

 sea, and the coast on which they collect must be 

 the threshold of a more genial climate. Where 

 could Virgil have seen birds collecting on the 

 shore from the North, on their way to the South ? 



1 Aen. vi. 309. "Multitudinous as leaves fall dropping in 

 the forests at autumn's earliest frost, or birds swarm landward 

 from the deep gulf, when the chill of the year routs them over 

 seas and drives them to sunny lands." 



