When I first read Vergil’s The Aeneid as a kid in translation the first lines got stuck in my mind:
Yo soy aquel que en otro tiempo modulé mi canto con la grácil flauta y, habiendo salido de las selvas, obligué a los vecinos campos a que obedecieran al cultivador…
…which has nothing to do with arma uirunque cano. What is it that I remember?
Anticipated thanks.
Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena
Carmen et egressus silvis vicina coegi
Ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono,
Gratum opus agricolis: at nunc horrentia Martis.
These four spurious lines are prefixed to arma virumque cano in some manuscripts. See any commentary on Aeneid I for details. Here is Conington’s old commentary online at Perseus:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0050:book=1:card=1
Thank you, Didymus, it was very kind of you to add that link.
I better correct my Latin before Jeff sees it… I knew it was arma !