Chapter 127
“Such sweetness permeated her voice as she said this, so entrancing was the sound upon the listening air that you would have believed the Sirens’ harmonies were floating in the breeze.”
Many scholars have drawn attention to the ethereal beauty of this passage. Probably the finest parallel is to be found in Horace’s ode to Calliope. After the invocation to the muse he thinks he hears her playing:
“Hark! Or is this but frenzy’s pleasing dream?
Through groves I seem to stray
Of consecrated bay,
Where voices mingle with the babbling stream,
And whispering breezes play.”
Sir Theodore Martin’s version.
Another exquisite and illuminating passage occurs in Catullus, 51, given in Marchena’s fourth note.