Quos ego
Quos ego (Latin, literally 'Whom I') are the words, in Virgil's Aeneid (I, 135), uttered by Neptune, the Roman god of the Sea, in threat to the disobedient and rebellious winds. Virgil's phrase is an example of the figure of speech called aposiopesis.
Neptune is angry with the winds, whom Juno released to start a storm and harass the Trojan hero and protagonist Aeneas. Neptune berates the winds for causing a storm without his approval, but breaks himself off mid-threat:
Iam caelum terramque meō sine nūmine, ventī,
miscēre et tantās audētis tollere mōlēs?
quōs ego— sed mōtōs praestat compōnere flūctūs.
Now, winds, you dare to embroil the sky and the earth without my approval,
and raise up such a mass?
You whom I— But it is better to settle the agitated waves.
Cultural references
Gustave Flaubert likens a teacher's rebuke of misbehaving students to "the Quos ego" in the opening scene of Madame Bovary.
Depictions in art of Neptune threatening the winds include the engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi and paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and Simone Cantarini.
References
- Webster's Online Dictionary
- Madame Bovary
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- The Avenger (1962)
- Eneide (1971–2)
- Eneyida (1991)
- Historia Brittonum (c. 828 history of Britain)
- Roman d'Enéas (1160 poem)
- Dido, Queen of Carthage (c. 1593 play)
- Amelia (1751 novel)
- The Dunciad (1729 poem)
- Eneida (1798 mock epic)
- Lavinia (2008 novel)
- Didone (1641 Cavalli)
- Achille et Polyxène (1687 Lully/Collasse)
- Dido and Aeneas (1688 Purcell)
- Didon (1693 Desmarets)
- Didone abbandonata (1724 libretto Metastasio)
- Didone abbandonata (1724 Sarro)
- Didone abbandonata (1724 Albinoni)
- Didone abbandonata (1726 Vinci)
- Didone abbandonata (1762 Sarti)
- Didon (1783 Piccinni)
- Dido, Queen of Carthage (1792 Storace)
- Les Troyens (1858 Berlioz)
- Laocoön and His Sons (25 BC)
- Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius (1619)
- The Dream of Aeneas (1660–65)
- Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia (1689)
- Dido building Carthage (1815)
- The Golden Bough (1834)
- "And Then There Was Silence"
- Gates of Fire
- Brutus of Troy
- Eneados
- The Golden Bough
- Parallels between Virgil's Aeneid and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
- Political commentary of the Aeneid
- Sulpicius Apollinaris
- Trojan Horse