to himself or his reader

• Virgil draws attention to his role as poet in his comment on Nisus and Euryalus
• 'fortune has favoured you both! if there is any power in my poetry, the day will never come when time will erase you from the memory of man...' (bk 9)
• on several occasions, he shares with his reader, info that points out irony or builds up tension
• he tells us of Turnus taking Pallas' sword-belt in bk 10
• when Turnus is failing, and Virgil wants his readers to feel the despair of the young warrior, he uses the first person (bk 12)
• sometimes the intervention is by way of a general aside: 'priests as we know, are ignorant' (bk 4) or 'Who can deceive a lover?' (bk 4) he asks in relation to Dido