Non haec humanis opibus

In reading Book XII of the Aeneid the other night, I came across these lines (427-8):

Non haec humanis opibus, non arte magistra
Proveniunt, neque te, Aenea, mea dextera servat

300px Iapyx removing arrowhead from Aeneasand I thought: wouldn’t those be great words (through to proveniunt) for a formula to be used by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in their declarations of miracles of physical healing? Better yet, all of the words could be used in a formula to which the doctor, who was supervising the terminally ill patient who then miraculously recovered, must assent, substituting the name of his patient in place of Aeneas’. Unusual scansions of names would of course be allowed, metri causa!

(The context of the lines is Aeneas’ miraculously recovery from wounds under the ministration of Iapyx, a doctor with the Trojan army, whose medicines, however, were supercharged by some additions made by Venus, Aeneas’ mother.)

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