There was a discussion-thread a while back on Aen. 2.255
tacitae per amica silentia lunae.
There is a curious little discussion of this in Borges' essay, "A Note on
(toward) Bernard Shaw" (in the collection entitled Labyrinths (New
Directions 1964) pp. 213-6). I pass it along for anyone who is interested:
"A book is more than a verbal structure or a series of verbal structures;
it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it
imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves on his
memory. The dialogue is infinite; the words amica silentia lunae now mean
the intimate, silent, and shining moon, and in the Aeneid they meant the
interlunar period, the darkness which allowed the Greeks to enter the
stronghold of Troy."
Borges adds in a footnote after this:
"Thus Milton and Dante interpreted them, to judge by certain passages which
seem to be imitative. In the Commedia (Inf. I.60; V.28) we have d'ogni
luce muto and dove il sol tace to signify dark places; in the Samson
Agonistes (86-89):
The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."
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