Mercury himself, though employed on a quite contrary errand, yet
owns it a marriage by an innuendo--pulchramque uxorius urbem
extruis. He calls AEneas not only a husband, but upbraids him for
being a fond husband, as the word uxorius implies. Now mark a
little, if your lordship pleases, why Virgil is so much concerned to
make this marriage (for he seems to be the father of the bride
himself, and to give her to the bridegroom); it was to make way for
the divorce which he intended afterwards, for he was a finer
flatterer than Ovid, and I more than conjecture that he had in his
eye the divorce which not long before had passed betwixt the emperor
and Scribonia. He drew this dimple in the cheek of AEneas to prove
Augustus of the same family by so remarkable a feature in the same
place. Thus, as we say in our home-spun English proverb, he killed
two birds with one stone--pleased the emperor by giving him the
resemblance of his ancestor, and gave him such a resemblance as was
not scandalous in that age (for to leave one wife and take another
was but a matter of gallantry at that time of day among the Romans).
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