136 THE BIEDS OF TIEGIL, 



habits of birds. It is a famous passage in the sixth Aeneid, 



where Aeneas has embarked with Charon to cross the Styx, and 



the ghosts collect upon the bank to beg for passage to the other 



side ; they gather in numbers, 



Quam multa in silvia autumni frigore primo 

 Lapsa cadunt folia, ant ad teiTam gurgite ab alto 

 Quam multae glomerantnr aves, ubi frigidus annus, 

 Trans pontum fugat, et terris immittit apricis.^ 



This passage is a very embarrassing one, and is not suf&- 

 ciently cleared up by the commentators. The wellTknown 

 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 (gn/rgite 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 ? 



Either we must have recourse to the impossible hypothesis 

 that the poet was writing of what he did not understand, 



' 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.' 



