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That Martial considered it a boy's book appropriate for vacation hours between school tasks is apparent from the inscription: Accipe facundi Culicem, studiose, Maronis, Ne nucibus positis, Arma virumque legas. Hist.
Taking down the volume, he opened it at the beginning of the first book, and began reading aloud, dividing the lines into feet: "Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit. "Wouldn't want to say how long it's been since I last set eyes on that.
Arma virumque shall resound; And Horace wreathe his rhymes afresh; You'll rediscover Laura's lover; Meet Gretchen in the flesh. Oh, could I find for the first time The Churchyard Elegy again! Retaste the sweets of new-found Keats; Read Byron now as then! Make haste to wander these old roads, O envied little parvenue; For all things trite shall leap alight And bloom again for you!
I laughed at the idea; Jack Dobson, whom I had fought time and time again at school until I could lick him as easily as I could look at him; Jack Dobson, a jolly enough lad, who fought cheerily even when he knew a sound thrashing was in store for him, but all his brains were good for was to stumble through Arma virumque cano, and then whisper, "Noll, you can fire a gun and shoot a man, but how can you sing 'em?"
Lying there in the fragrant verdure, blue eyes skyward or slanting sideways to watch his face, she listened, answered, questioned, or responded by turns; until their voices grew lazy and the light reaction from things serious awakened the gaiety always latent when they were together. "Proceed," she smiled; "Arma virumque a noble theme, Captain Selwyn. Sing on!"
The desire for revenge had been too long cherished to be given up at a single warning, however awful, or however strongly appealing to the deepest implanted superstitions. "Arma, virumque cano qui Primus."
There were a great many hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for it was in the cause of our early history. The history of Greece and Rome was stuff compared to this. And we had many boys in our school who could imitate the Indian war whoop enough better than they could scan arma, virumque cano.
His face would grow more serious as I scanned my Virgil in a faltering voice, and as he descanted on a passage my eye would wander out over the green trees and fields to the glistening water. What cared I for "Arma virumque" at such a time?
Epic Poets, in order that their mode of composition may accord with the elevation of their subject, represent themselves as singing from the inspiration of the Muse, 'Anna virumque cano; but this is a fiction, in modern times, of slight value: the Iliad or the Paradise Lost would gain little in our estimation by being chanted.
The Epic of Rome, abandoned at the death of Caesar, unthinkable during the civil wars which followed, appealed for a hearing now that Rome was saved and the empire restored. Vergil's youthful enthusiasm for Rome, which had sprung from a critical reading of her past career, seemed fully justified; he began at once his Arma virumque.
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