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Aiming to bring these old poems to new readers and performers, it seemed wise to employ a small set of critical terms in a systematic way and to signal their role as prompts. Some of them, and especially their verbal roots, receive emphasis initially through use of small capitals to remind readers of their nature as metaphors. Cf. tells the reader to bring together in his or her mind two or more contexts. It stands for the Latin confer, which translates as a command, ‘bring together!’ It combines the prefix con-, meaning ‘with’ or ‘near’ (written also as co-, col-, com-), and the verbal stem fer-, meaning ‘to bring, to bear.’ ‘Cf.’ tells us to bring contexts together and ask how they interrelate, both because of their kinship (generic likeness) and, since kinship is never identity, because of their differences, which prompt further thinking. Relate combines the Latin prefix re-, ‘back, again,’ with the verbal stem lat-, which shares the meaning ‘to bear, to bring, to carry’ with fer-. Thus ‘relate ’ too serves to bring contexts together in the mind to compare and contrast . It is relatively colorless, neutral, unlike more emphatic terms, such as saying that contexts echo among themselves (metaphor by analogy with the physics of sound); or that a context grows from another (biological metaphor); or that contexts develop into or from others (also by analogy with biology); or that contexts map (metaphor by analogy with cartography , often used in cognitive science); or that one steals from another or capitalizes (metaphors by analogy with Wall Street and the street). Compared with such loaded metaphors, ‘relate’ has a cognitive advantage: its lack of emphasis leaves one free to import metaphors one prefers as one reads and to make one’s own commentary, whether in terms of weaving, echoes, theft, or whatever intertextual analogy for thinking comes to mind. Note to the Reader 22 Note to the Reader Sc. tells the reader to read further to get at other meanings. From the Latin scilicet , ‘you are allowed to know,’ it dangles cognitive bait: the lure of a secret, if only one digs beneath the surface to come up with one’s own commentary. Commentary itself joins com-, ‘with,’ and -ment-, ‘mind,’ producing a Latin blend for bringing minds together. The blend prompts one to be resourceful, even imaginative. This last sense does not survive in English ‘commentary’ and ‘commentators’ but lived in the Latin commentum, ‘fabrication, fiction,’ which implies a need to figure meanings out, even make them up, so that one’s interpretations always remain open to conversation and controversy. Versus, meaning ‘turned,’ sc., differently, in theme, signals some generic relation (likeness) but specific, even pointed, difference (‘vs,’ its shortened form, lacks a final period since the first and last letters persist). Difference is also sometimes marked by //, by /, or by ≈. All are meant to get one to compare and contrast, confer and relate, in short, to activate cognition. Context, so basic to this conversation, is itself metaphoric—con-, ‘with, together ,’ and text, ‘woven, a weave’—so that talk and writing about ‘contexts’ suppose that we are thinking with ‘things woven together’ in manifold domains of life and art (cf. nn. 16–18 for ‘weaving’ as a metaphor across cultural domains). Relating contexts to one another shapes Virgil’s book and thus too the present commentary. Reference chains are reported by the notes recursively, ‘running back’ in order from latest to first. Also to facilitate research , the notes are numbered in a single sequence from first to last. Notes 1–53 are footnotes to the prefatory matter, the remainder endnotes for the rest. Prequel also supposes sequencing: it refers in an imaginary frame of time to an event or scene taking place before some other. A modern hybrid, the word combines the Latin prefix pre-, meaning ‘before,’ with the otherwise senseless syllable -quel, broken off from the more familiar ‘sequel,’ which refers to something following in time. Special names for bucolic poems are explained in the User Guide: ‘ecl.’ and ‘ecll.’ stand for ‘eclogue’ and ‘eclogues’; ‘id.’ and ‘idd.’ for ‘idyll’ and ‘idylls,’ bucolic poems by Theocritus, although idd. [8] and [9] are generically like idylls but not by him. Markers serve to frame thematic sets, for example, or , where the letters stand for themes that recur and the capitals stand for generic similarity but specific difference between the first and second themes in a set. Readers, as they invent commentary of their own, may well differ about...

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