In a recent contribution to this journal, D. Kovacs addresses the following passage from the fourth Eclogue (cited here from the OCT of Mynors):Footnote ¹

Kovacs takes it for granted that the meaning of l. 54 should correspond to the Loeb translation, ‘and inspiration enough to hymn your deeds!’. Starting from this assumption, he rejects the reading spiritus, arguing that a genitive is required (with a postponed et); the possible solution he suggests is pectoris, used metaphorically in the sense of ‘poetical ability’. That seems a clever conjecture, restoring excellent style. Nevertheless, we have to assume that spiritus replaced pectoris as a gloss, but I cannot see any reason why somebody would have wanted to explain obscurum per obscurius: other words (such as ingenium) would have been far more appropriate. On the other hand, Virgil most likely chose the word spiritus, whose basic meaning is not ‘inspiration’ but ‘breath’, in order to amplify line 53 (uita).

Nevertheless, I agree with Kovacs about the awkwardness of the syntax, which has not yet been adequately explained. According to Coleman,Footnote ² ‘the assimilation of the relative (sc. tantus with spiritus) to the neuter sat suggests that the personal construction has here been influenced by the impersonal’.

In my opinion, this explanation leads to confusion: in an ‘impersonal construction’ (cf. Ecl. 10.70 haec sat erit, diuae, uestrum cecinisse poetam) the subject of sat erit should be quantum dicere, which does not make good sense. On the contrary, tua dicere facta is simply equivalent to ad tua dicenda facta: the Greek construction of adjectives like ἱκανός may here have encouraged the infinitive, a tendency shown by Virgil elsewhere.Footnote ³

Therefore, quantum should be understood as the subject of sat erit, which implies two possibilities: 1) quantum is just a third element after pars ultima uitae and spiritus and line 54 means ‘breath, and enough (of it) to hymn your deeds’; 2) quantum sat erit etc. is a neuter parenthesis and line 54 means ‘and breath, as much as will be sufficient to hymn your deeds’ (cf. Columella, Rust. 12.59.2 nuces <iu>glandes purgatas, quantum satis uidebitur, interito).

The first possibility has already been ruled out by Kovacs, who could find ‘no evidence that Roman poets or prose writers ever said “X, and so much of it as to do Y”’.Footnote ⁴

The second possibility, which was supported by some scholars in the past,Footnote ⁵ does not satisfy stylistically. A postponed et can hardly follow a pause which introduces a parenthetical remark: that is, spiritus et, quantum sat erit tua dicere facta is not acceptable word order for et spiritus, quantum etc.

What is needed here is not a parenthesis but an epexegetical relative clause to modify and pin down spiritus, just like an adjective. In this case, we can have a secondary clause after postponed et, as it completes the sense of the primary clause (cf. Prop. 2.1.63 Mysus et Haemonia iuuenis qua cuspide uulnus | senserat, hac ipsa cuspide sensit opem). Therefore, I am inclined to think that a good solution could be changing quantum to quantus, so that lines 53–4 will mean: ‘may the latest years of a long life remain to me, and poetic inspiration great enough to hymn your deeds’. That corresponds exactly to what is stated by Servius (who does not directly quote quantum as a lemma): utinam possim frui uita longissima et habere tantum spiritum, quantus possit sufficere ad tuae uirtutis commemorationem. Compare Verg. Aen. 10.772 oculis spatium emensus quantum satis hastae; Liv. 25.33.4 nec atrox uisum facinus … et merces quanta uel pro bello satis esset dabatur ne bellum gererent.

Kovacs has already proposed this alteration (315 n. 1), but he argues that ‘the sense we intuit is not “a great enough spirit to” but “sufficient spirit to”’.Footnote ⁶ On the contrary, I think the focus here is not on the amount of inspiration (could anybody measure it?), but on its greatness.

As an example, consider the very beginning of Eclogue 4, Sicelides Musae, paulo maiora canamus: Virgil begs the Muses of Sicily to help him make the woods ‘worthy of a consul's ear’; indeed, the epithet magnus is very frequent in the poem (1, 5, 12, 22, 36, 48, 49). Compare also Horace's description of Pindar's style, Carm. 4.2.7–8 (feruet inmensusque ruit profundo | Pindarus ore) and his recusatio (33–4 concines maiore poeta plectro | Caesarem).

Thus, the poet's main aim is to praise the child's deeds, and his wish for greater inspiration to recount them properly is simply a complimentary way to glorify their excellence.

Indeed, this is the positive reversal of the Homeric cliché of the ten mouths (Il. 2.488–90; cf. Verg. G. 2.42–4; Aen. 6.625–7), where the poet, apart from the number of mouths, points out the quality of voice and breast, that is, inspiration (φωνὴ δ’ ἄρρηκτος, χάλκεον δέ μοι ἦτορ ἐνείη). That allows Virgil to go on with the hyperbole in what follows, non me carminibus uincet nec Thracius Orpheus, nec Linus: if his wish to possess such a huge inspiration is made real, nobody will be able to equal his verse. Cf. Sen. Suas. 1.15.3 nemo illorum potuit tanto spiritu dicere quanto Pedo. We find the same emphasis in Verg. Aen. 1.752 quantus Achilles (‘how strong Achilles was’, cf. Verg. Ecl. 4.36 magnus … Achilles).

The homoeoteleuton spiritus et quantus is unproblematic, as it involves a metrically short vowel;Footnote ⁷ as for the succession of two words ending with -us in Virgil, there are at least three other certain instances in the first half of a line: G. 3.113 primus Ericthonius; Aen. 3.667 primus et Ascanius; 10.459 uiribus imparibus. Moreover, the corruption of quantus before sat, brought about by the simplification of double s, could easily have led to quantum.

I do not think anyone else had ever proposed the conjecture quantus before Kovacs suggested it: given that it was not approved by Kovacs himself, I found it slightly problematic to report it in the critical apparatus of my Bucolica edition;Footnote ⁸ but, as R.G.M. Nisbet showed,Footnote ⁹ this is how conjectures are often made, and, after all, whatever works is good enough.