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The long account of the 'Games' in Book V., which, from a Roman point of view, might be regarded as a needless excrescence on the poem, is justified by the consideration that they are celebrated in honour of the Manes of Anchises.

The whole of the Sixth Book-the master-piece of Virgil's creative invention-is inspired by the feeling of the greater spiritual life which awaits man beyond the grave. The conceptions and composition of that Book entitle Virgil to take his place with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Plato among the four great religious teachers,--the 'pii vates' who, in transmitting, have illumined the spiritual intuitions of antiquity.

The sense of devout awe is the chief mark of distinction between the 'Inferno' of Virgil and that of Homer, the conception of which is due to the suggestive force of natural curiosity and natural affection. The dead do not appear to Virgil merely as the shadowy inhabitants of an unsubstantial world,―vekúwv ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα,—but as partakers in a more august and righteous dispensation than that under which mortals live. The spirit of Virgil is on this subject more in harmony with that of Aeschylus than of Homer, but his thoughts of the dead are happier and of a less austere majesty than those expressed in the Choëphoroe. The whole humanising and moralising influence of Greek philosophy, and especially of the Platonic teaching, combines in Virgil's representation with the primitive fancies of early times and the popular beliefs and practices transmitted from those times to his own age. But just as he fails to form a consistent conception of the action of the powers of Heaven out of the various beliefs, primitive, artistic, national, and philosophical, which he endeavours to reconcile, so he has failed to produce a consistent picture of the spiritual life out of the various popular,

1 'Besides there was within the palace a marble chapel in memory of her former lord, which she cherished with marvellous reverence, wreathing it with snow-white fillets and festal leaves.' iv. 457-9.

Pascitur, et medium freti pietate per ignem
Cultores multa premimus vestigia pruna'.

The desire to infuse a new power into the religious observance, belief, and life of his countrymen thus appears to have acted as a strong suggestive force to Virgil's imagination. This is apparent in the importance which he attaches to the offices of Priest or Augur, to the dress, ornaments, or procedure of the chief person taking part in prayer or sacrifice, to the ceremonies accompanying every important action, to the sacred associations attaching to particular places. Amid all the changes of the world, Virgil seems to cling to the traditions of the religious and spiritual life,-as Lucretius holds to the belief in the laws of Nature, as the surest ground of human trust. He has no thought of superseding old beliefs or practices by any new

Vana superstitio veterumque ignara deorum2,

but rather strives to reconcile the old faith with the more enlightened convictions and humaner sentiments of men. His religious belief, like his other speculative convictions, was composite and undefined; yet it embraced what was purest and most vital in all the religions of antiquity, and, in its deepest intuitions, it seems to look forward to some aspects of the belief which became dominant in Rome four centuries later.

III.

While the various religious elements in Virgil's nature find ample scope in the representation of the Aeneid, his apathy in regard to active political life is seen in the tameness of his reproduction of that aspect of human affairs. In the Homeric Bovλý and dyopά we recognise not only the germs of the future

1 'Highest of Gods, Apollo, guardian of holy Soracte, in whose worship we are foremost, in whose honour the heaped-up pinewood blazes, while we, thy worshippers, with pious trust, even through the midst of the flame plant our steps deep in the embers.' xi. 785-8. Cp. the Beltane fires which are said to be still kept up among remote Celtic populations, and which seem to be a survival of a primitive Sun-worship.

2 Idle superstition, which knows not the ancient Gods.'

§ 3]

ABSENCE OF POLITICAL MOTIVE

377

political development of the Greeks, but the germs out of which all free political life unfolds itself. To the form of government exhibited in the Aeneid, the words which Tacitus uses of a mixed constitution might be more justly applied,-'it is one more easily praised than realised, or if ever it is realised, it is incapable of permanence '.' And even if the Virgilian idea could be realised in some happy moment of human affairs, it does not contain within itself the capacity of any further development. The difficulties of the problem of government are solved in Virgil by the picture which he draws of passive and loyal submission on the part of nobles and people to a wise, beneficent, and disinterested ruler and legislator 2. The idea of the ruler in the Aeneid is the same as that of the 'Father.' It is under such a rule, exercised from Rome as its centre, that the unchanging future of the world is anticipated—

Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet, imperiumque Pater Romanus habebit 3.

The case of Mezentius does indeed show that Virgil recognised the ultimate right of rebellion when the paternal king passed into the tyrannical oppressor; but such an instance affords no scope for representing the manifestation of political passions and virtues. The free play of conflicting forces in a community has no attraction for Virgil's imagination. He suggests no thought either of the popular liberty realised in the best days of the Roman commonwealth, or of the sagacity and steadfast traditions of the Roman Senate. The only trace of discussion and opposition appears in the debate within the court of Latinus.

1 Ann. iv. 33.

2 It is true, as Gibbon remarks in his Dissertation on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid, that the expression 'dare iura' is only once applied to Aeneas -but it is the regular expression used of a ruler of a settled community, as for instance of Dido. It is applied at the end of the Georgics to Augustus, 'per populos dat iura.'

3 While the house of Aeneas shall dwell by the steadfast rock of the Capitol, and the fatherly sway of a Roman shall endure.' Cp. the application of pater' as an epithet of Aeneas, and Horace's line in reference to Augustus

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Hic ames dici pater atque princeps.

But the antagonism between Drances and Turnus is one of personal rivalry, not of political difference; and the only limit to the sovereignty of Latinus lies in his own weakness of will and in the opposition of his household.

But besides the ideals of popular freedom and senatorian dignity which were realised in the Republic, the Roman mind was impressed by another political ideal, the Majesty of the State.' The one political force that remained unchanged, amid the various changes of the Roman constitution from the time of the kings to the time of the emperors, was the power of the executive. And this power depended not on material force, but on the sentiment with which the magistrate was regarded as the embodiment for the time being of that attribute in the State which commanded the reverence of the people. The greatest political offence which a Roman could commit under the Republic was a violation of the majesty of the Commonwealth;' under the Empire of the majesty of the Emperor.' The sentiment out of which this idea arose was felt by Virgil in all its strength. Thus although the actual government of Latinus is exhibited as a model neither of wisdom nor of strength, it is invested with all the outward semblance of powerful and ancient sovereignty

Tectum augustum, ingens, centum sublime columnis,
Urbe fuit summa, Laurentis regia Pici,

Horrendum silvis et religione parentum.
Hic sceptra accipere et primos attollere fasces
Regibus omen erat; hoc illis curia templum,
Hae sacris sedes epulis; hic, ariete caeso,
Perpetuis soliti patres considere mensis1.

The spectacle of the fall of Troy acquires new grandeur from the representation of Troy, not, as it appears in Homer, as a

1 'A palace, august, vast, propped on one hundred columns, stood in the highest place of the city, the royal abode of Laurentian Picus, inspiring awe from the gloom of woods and old ancestral reverence. Here it was held

auspicious for kings to receive the sceptre and first to lift up the fasces: this temple was their senate-house, this the hall of their sacred banquets; here after sacrifice of a ram the fathers used to take their seats at the long unbroken tables.' vii. 170-6.

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city with many allies, but as the centre of a wide and longestablished empire

Postquam res Asiae Priamique evertere gentem
Inmeritam visum Superis, ceciditque superbum
Ilium et omnis humo fumat Neptunia Troia '.
Urbs antiqua ruit, multos dominata per annos 2.
Haec finis Priami fatorum; hic exitus illum
Sorte tulit, Troiam incensam et prolapsa videntem
Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum
Regnatorem Asiae 3.

The tragic splendour of Dido's death is enhanced by her proud sense of a high destiny fulfilled and of queenly rule exercised over a great people

Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum Fortuna, peregi:
Et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago.
Urbem praeclaram statui, mea moenia vidi1.

Thus although the necessities of his position and his own 'inscitia reipublicae' prevented Virgil, in his representation, from appealing to the generous political emotions of a free people, he was able not only to gratify the pride of empire felt by his countrymen, but to sustain among them the sense of imaginative reverence with which the sovereignty of the State over its individual members deserves to be regarded.

But there is another class of political facts which interest the mind as much as those which arise out of the play of conflicting forces within a free commonwealth,-viz. the relations of independent powers with one another. And of this class of facts both Homer and Virgil make use in their representations. In

1 'After the Powers on high determined to overthrow the empire of Asia and the nation of Priam that deserved no such fate, and proud Ilium fell, and Troy built by Neptune is reduced utterly to ashes.' iii. 1-3.

2 An ancient city, that held empire through many years, is falling in ruins.' ii. 363.

3Such was the final doom of Priam; this the end allotted to him, while he saw Troy on fire and its citadel in ruins,-Troy that formerly held proud sway in Asia over so many peoples and lands.' ii. 554-7.

I have lived, and finished the course that fortune gave me; and now my shade shall pass in majesty beneath the earth; I have founded a famous city, I have seen my own walls arise.' iv. 653-5.

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