Camilʹla

Virgin queen of the Volscians. Virgil (Æncid, vii. 809) says she was so swift that she could run over a field of corn without bending a single blade, or make her way over the sea without even wetting her feet.

“Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies oʹer the unbending corn and skims along the main.”

Pope: Essay on Criticism, 372–3.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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