In regard to the Aequians, it would almost seem, as if they had formed one compact state, although each of the several towns could, by itself, do little or nothing; scarcely one of them is deserving of notice. If we possessed the ancient commentaries on the Aeneid, we should know a great deal more about the ethnography and chorography of those parts. Virgil speaks of Nersae as one of the principal towns of the Aequians: _et te montosae misere in proelia Nersae_;[35] editors have unwarrantably changed this into _Nursae_, and referred it to Nursia, which is an Umbrian town in the Apennines beyond the Sabines, to which the Aequians never penetrated. People will not own, that there are things of which they know nothing. The books of Servius unfortunately have come down to us only in a wretched abridgment: if we examine the first two books, of which we have the original, we cannot but feel respect for Servius as a great grammarian. In like manner, the name of mount Vesulus—in the illustration of the boar inhabiting the marshes of the valley of Laurentum and the heights of Vesulus—has been senselessly referred to a hill near the sources of the Padus.[36] The hill must have been in the neighbourhood of Laurentum, in a district which Virgil knew very well, and which must afterwards have lost its name. I can well imagine what kind of a place Vesulus may have been, but it was most assuredly not a glacier of the Alps. This is one specimen of the perverse manner in which Virgil has been commented upon; an able commentary on the Aeneid, not too diffuse, has yet to be written; in regard to the Eclogues and the Georgics, Voss has done everything that can be desired. The Aequians extended as far as lake Fucinus. When in the middle of the fifth century the Romans subdued them, they destroyed nearly fifty of their places, and forced the franchise upon them. Afterwards they obtained favourable terms and fair treatment, but the first shock of the war was terrible.