Brought up in the barbarous ages before the resurrection of the Muses, Brother Hilary has not been initiated into the wisdom of the ancients; nevertheless, the poetry of the Mantuan has, like a subtle torch, shed some gleams of light into his understanding.
“Brother Marbodius,” he asked me, “do those verses that you utter with swelling breast and sparkling eyes — do they belong to that great ‘AEneid’ from which morning or evening your glances are never withheld?”
I answered that I was reading in Virgil how the son of Anchises perceived Dido like a moon behind the foliage. 5
5 The text runs
. . . qualem primo qui surgere mense
Aut videt aut vidisse putat per nubila lunam.
Brother Marbodius, by a strange misunderstanding, substitutes an entirely different image for the one created by t
