Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four - These expressions of three and four, so often repeated in this chapter, mean repetition, abundance, and any thing that goes towards excess. Very, very exceedingly; and so it was used among the ancient Greek and Latin poets. See the passionate exclamation of Ulysses, in the storm, Odyss., lib. v., ver. 306: -
, ̔ '
ͅ ͅ, ͅ .
"Thrice happy Greeks! and four times who were slain
In Atreus' cause, upon the Trojan plain."
Which words Virgil translates, and puts in the mouth of his hero in similar circumstances, Aen. 1:93.
Extemplo Aeneae solvuntur frigore membra:
Ingemit; et, duplicis tendens ad sidera palmas,
Talia voce refert: O terque quaterque beatif
Queis ante ora patrum Trojae sub moenibus altis
Contigit oppetere .
"Struck with unusual fright, the Trojan chief
With lifted hands and eyes invokes relief.
And thrice, and four times happy those, he cried,
That under Ilion' s walls before their parents died."
Dryden.
On the words, O terque quaterque , Servius makes this remark, " Hoc est saepias; finitus numerous pro infinito ." "O thrice and four times, that is, very often, a finite number for an infinite." Other poets use the same form of expression. So Seneca in Hippolyt., Act. 2:694.
O ter quaterque prospero fato dati,
Quos hausit, et peremit, et leto dedit
Odium dolusque !
"O thrice and four times happy were the men
Whom hate devoured, and fraud, hard pressing on,
Gave as a prey to death."
And so the ancient oracle quoted by Pausanias Achaic., lib. vii., c. 6: ; "Those men shall be thrice and four times happy."
These quotations are sufficient to show that this form of speech is neither unfrequent nor inelegant, being employed by the most correct writers of antiquity.
Damascus was the capital of Syria.
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