この文脈では、「Ascraeumque cano Romana per oppida carmen.」は、前の行の「sanctos ausus recludere fontis」に続くウェルギリウス自身の詩への言及となっています。つまり、「私は古代の栄光と芸術に挑戦し、聖なる泉を開くことに踏み切り、そしてローマの町々を通ってAscraeumの詩を歌います。」という意味になります。ここでのAscraeumは、ウェルギリウス自身が詠い上げる農耕詩の主題である、農民の生活や自然界についての詩的表現を含む地方の風景や文化の象徴的な場所と解釈されます。
【私】：こんばんは。キケローの「一めぐりの年」についての記述なんだけど、以下の英文を訳してくれるかな？How long is the Great Year here ? Cicero with the help of Macrobius provides the answer. The elder Africanus declares that he hardly dares to say how many generations of men are contained in it; for, as once the sun appeared to men to be eclipsed and to be extinguished, when the soul of Romulus passed into the heavenly regions, and when the sun again shall have been eclipsed at the same point and in the same season, then one can consider that the year has been completed by the fact that all the planets (signa) and the stars (stellae) have been recalled to their original position. But not yet one-twentieth part of this year has been made to turn. Macrobius calculates the time elapsed between the death of Romulus and Scipio’s dream at 573 years, since Scipio triumphed over Carthage in Rome’s 607th year, from which figure we must subtract 32 years for the duration of the reign of Romulus and 2 years for the interval between the vision and the victory.3 If we accept this reckoning and multiply 573 ordinary years by l/2 0 th of the Great Year, we shall reach the result of 11,460 common years for the minimal duration of the Great Year. But, since Cicero has insisted that one-twentieth of the Great Year not yet has elapsed (22. 24), of course its length must be longer. Macrobius anticipates this assertion by accepting on the authority of anonymous natural philosophers an estimate of the period for the Mundane Year (as he calls it)4 at 15,000 of our years.
【私】：ありがとう。じゃあ、以下の文の意味はわかる？Cicero, Hortensius, fr. 81 (Grilli) = Servius, Commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid, i.269, p. 99, 16-20 (Thilo) tria sunt genera annorum : aut enim lunaris annus est xxx dierum, aut solstitialis xii mensium, aut secundum Tullium magnus qui tenet xiidccccliiii annos ut in Hortensio : “Horum annorum quos in fastis habemus magnus xiidccccliiii amplectitur”. There are three sorts of years : either it is the lunar year of 30 days, or the solstitial (sc. year) of 12 months, or, according to Tullius, the great (sc. year) which has 12 954 years, as in the Hortensius : ‘The great (sc. year) embraces 12 954 of the years which are in our calendars’.
