Explain stylistic features Virgil uses to evoke a sense of emotion in Aeneid Book 9, lines 375-400.

Virgil makes use of caesauras and diaeresis throughout this section of the passage - these unnatural breaks in the line within the poem help to empahasis the sudden quickness of the many questions scattered throughout. Thus the rapidity of his lines evoke within the reader a sense of danger as well as as of desperation in the latter section of this passage when Nisus loses Euryalus and asks quid facet? Additionally he utilises a seemingly random change in subject by intorducing Alba Longa in line 387 to divert the reader's attention from that fact that NIsus is about to split from his lover Euryalus; the use of imagery adds further emphasis on the hieghtened sense of emotion in this section through the choice of silentibus to emphasise just how lost Euryalus is. The repetition of quid ... qua in line 399, coupled with the tricolon of frantic, short questions, are effectively used by Virgil to express the desperate love, as well as helplessness, Nisus feels for Euryalus in the moment of the latter's capture 

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Answered by Khrishan K. Latin tutor

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