114/122 Mantua was Virgil's birthplace. Hence probably the insertion of this tradition as to its origin. Mincius, mentioned in the next stanza, is a Lombard river, the Mincio, and flows out from Lake Benacus (Lago di Garda). Sirius, the dog-star, whose rising was supposed to coincide with the hot weather, is always spoken of as bringing pestilence and trouble. The connection between Sirius and the hot weather was one of the conventions of poetry which the Augustan writers had borrowed from the Greeks. |