The Geneva quotation from Romans 13 made me smile. It fits so well!
It also turns out to be a useful example of why it's good to have ready access to the Geneva.
The KJV (1611) has: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day;"
The Clementine Vulgate (1592) has: "Nox praecessit, dies autem appropinquavit. Abiiciamus ergo opera tenebrarum, et induamur arma lucis. Sicut in die honeste ambulemus;"
Neither suggests a causal relationship between the "armor of light" and the "walking as in the day" in the way the Geneva does. (" . . . armour of light, So that wee walke . . .") It gives the light symbolism a more literally illuminative flavor.
>>> David Wilson-Okamura <[log in to unmask]> 05/30/08 4:36 PM >>>
David Lohnes wrote:
> I don't know anything about it, but a commentary on Virgil comes to mind as a possibility, at least as far as Spenser is concerned. Could some annotator have mentioned luminescence as the reason Aeneas needed his sword in the underworld?
The most widely available commentator, in the twelfth century no less
than the sixteenth, was Servius...who has nothing to say on this point.
Hannibal's armor of light seems promising... According to Geneva 1586,
this signifies "honest maners and godly."
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Dr. David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
English Department Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
East Carolina University Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude Fauchet
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