RE: Vergil, Aeneid IX
So, I finished reading Aeneid book IX today, and I have to say, there were an awful lot of headshots in this book. Four of them, I think, which I have summarized above with the appropriate textual references.
- Tagus, an Italian, is pierced through the head by a spear thrown by Nisus
- the son of Arcens (whose name we don't learn), gets a sling bullet to the head from Mezentius
- Lyceus has his head chopped off by Turnus
- Pandarus has his head sliced in two by the same.
Vergil uses a wonderfully illustrative line for that:
"et mediam ferro gemina inter tempora frontem"
It's a golden line (or silver?) nicely divided, like Pandarus' head, in the middle by "inter."
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