In Aeneid 1.387-9 Venus begins her third address to Aeneas with instruction for him to betake himself to the palace of Dido. In 389, she says:
Perge modo atque hinc te reginae ad limina perfer.
The use of elision is very effective here to evoke the movement necessitated by her command. First, the connection of modo, atque, and hinc, and then that between reginae and ad. Four out of the line’s first seven words are elided, finally bringing the reader to the threshold (limina) of Dido’s palace.
The pressing character of the command is furthered by Vergil’s bracketing of the line with two disyllabic imperatives, both beginning with “p” (perge, perfer) and sharing the same prefix (per-). There is perhaps an etymological play, as well. Pergo is a compound of per and rego, the latter of which is picked up later in the line by reginae: “direct your way to the house of the regal one.” Ok, that’s pretty bad, but perhaps that gets something of the effect across.
Would Virgil’s contemporaries have associated ‘pergo’ with ‘per’ and ‘rego’? I doubt it. It’s like the English word ‘invalid’ (stress on the first syllable) meaning ‘sick person’. How many native English speakers today see any connection with ‘in-‘ and ‘valid’?
I’m not sure how Vergil’s contemporaries could *not* have ‘associated “pergo” with “per” and “rego”‘ since that’s what it is. It seems to me that the only way to miss the connection is to focus too closely on English — both the English translations and the usual sorts of verbal echoes encountered in English poetry and rhetoric, which are less often etymological and more often overtly sound-based. But even if we ignore the fact that Vergil was writing learned poetry for a sophisticated audience, and was certainly playing with etymology as well as sound, a Roman could not have helped but think of ‘rego, regere, rexi, rectum’ when he heard or read a compound such as ‘pergo, pergere, perrexi, perrectum’ or ‘surgo, surgere, surrexi, surrectum.’ The connection is clearer in his mind than that between ‘invalid’ and ‘valid’ may be in the minds of many on the street, but that wouldn’t stop an English poet from expecting more from his better readers.
EDIT:
I should also add that ‘pergo’ and ‘reginae’ begin their respective cola (‘Perge modo atque hinc te’ = hemiepes, ‘reginae ad limina perfer’ = paroemiac). This is important structurally, and poets often connect words in such positions. I wrote a bit about this kind of interplay with metrical structure back in 2010.
Dennis–thanks for the additional note on structure, which I hadn’t noticed. Hope you’re well–Eric