tempted to suspect that the whole narrative of the boat-race is filled
with pragmatic allusions. If the characters of his epic must be connected
with well-known Roman families, it is at least interesting that the
connections are indicated in the fifth book and not in the passages where
the names first meet the reader. Does it not appear that the body of the
book was composed long before the rest, and then left at the poet's death
not quite furbished to the fastidious taste of a later day?

Finally, I would suggest that the strange and still unexplained[8] omen
of Acestes' burning arrow in 11. 520 ff. probably refers to some event of
importance to Segesta in the same year, 46 B.C. We are told by the author
of the _Bellum Africanum_ that Caesar mustered his troops for the African
campaign at Lilybaeum in the winter of 47. We are not told that while
there he ascended the mountain, offered sacrifices to Venus Erycina, and
ordered his statue to be placed in her temple, or that he gave favors to
the people of Segesta who had the care of that temple. But he probably
did something of that kind, for as he had already vowed his temple to
Venus Genetrix he could hardly have remained eight days at Lilybaeum so
near the shrine of Aeneas' Venus without some act of filial devotion. If
Vergil wrote any part of the fifth book in or soon after 46 this would
seem to be the solution of the obscure passage in question.

[Footnote 8: See however DeWitt, _The Arrow of Acestes, Am. Jour. Phil_.
1920, 369.]

It is of importance then in the study of the _Aeneid_ to keep in mind
the fact that the plot was probably shaped and many episodes blocked out
while Vergil was young and Julius Caesar still the dominant figure in
Rome. Many scenes besides those in the fifth book may find a new meaning
in this suggestion. Does it not explain why so many traits in Dido's