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NEARLY everyone reads these lines from the Georgics of Virgi ii. 246 f. in this way: At sapor indicium faciet manifestus et ora Tristia temptantum sensu torquebit amaro. But the taste will tell its tale full plainly, and with its bitter flavour will distort the testers' poured mouths. Hyginus, however, on my word no obscure grammarian, in the Commentaries Fr. 4, p. 528, Fun. which he wrote on Virgil, declares and insists that it was not this that Virgil left, but what he himself found in a copy which had come from the home and family of the poet: et ora Tristia temptantum sensus torquebit amaror, But the bitterness of the sensation will distort the testers' soured mouths. and this reading has commended itself, not to Hyginus alone, but also to some other learned men, because it seems absurd to say the taste will distort with its bitter sensation. Since, they say, taste itself is a sensation, it cannot have another sensation in itself, but it is exactly as if one should say, 'the sensation will distort with a bitter sensation.' Moreover, when I had read Hyginus' note to Favorinus, and the strangeness and harshness of the phrase sensu torquebit amaro at once had displeased him, he said with a laugh: I am ready to swear by Jupiter and the stone, This much discussed oath is best taken as equivalent to per lovem et lapidem; see Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 231; Nettleship, Essays, p. 35, and others. The locus classicus on the process is Polybius, iii. 25; of. Plutarch, Sulla, 10. which is considered the most sacred of oaths, that Virgil never wrote that, but I believe that Hyginus is right. For Virgil was not the first to coin that word arbitrarily, but he found it in the poems of Lucretius and made use of it, not disdaining to follow the authority of a poet who excelled in talent and power of expression. The passage, from the fourth book of Lucretius, reads as follows: iv. 221 f. dilutaque contra Cum tuimur misceri absinthia, tangit amaror. When we look on at the mixing of a decoction of wormwood in our presence, its bitterness affects us. And in fact we see that Virgil imitated, not only single words of Lucretius, but often almost whole lines and passages.
