times gives utterance to thoughts which recall the grave and steadfast attributes which the Romans reverenced under the title of 'Iuppiter Stator,' Stat sua cuique dies; breve et inreparabile tempus Hoc virtutis opus'. Neptune comes forth to calm the storm raised by Aeolus not with the earth-shaking might with which he passed from the heights of Samothrace to Aegae, nor in the radiant splendour in which he sped over the waves towards the ships of the Achaeans, but with the calm and calming aspect made familiar in the plastic art of a later time— alto Prospiciens summa placidum caput extulit unda2. Apollo is introduced taking part in the battle of Actium with something of the proud bearing which the greatest of his statues perpetuates Actius, haec cernens, arcum intendebat Apollo And as an augury of this late help afforded to his de- Dis genite, et geniture deos: iure omnia bella Sympathy with the pure and heroic nature and the untimely death of Camilla introduces Diana to tell her early story and to express pity for her fate. Mars appears only once aiding his own people against the foreign enemy1. Mercury and Iris perform the customary part of messengers between heaven and earth. The Italian mythology contributes some of the few beings endowed with human personality which it produced. The creation of Egeria, of the Nymph Marica, and of the goddess Juturna was 1 Aen. x. 467-9. 2 Cf. Weidner's Commentary on the First Two Books of the Aeneid. due to the same sentiment, associated with lakes, rivers, and brooks, which gave birth to the Naiads and River-gods of Greek mythology. Of these Juturna alone, as the sister of the Italian hero of the poem, bears any part in the action; and as appearing in that personal human shape in which Greek imagination embodied its conception of deity but from which Latin reverence for the most part shrank, she is represented as enjoying that doubtful title to distinction which made the innumerable heroines of the Greek mythology a 'theme of song to men' Extemplo Turni sic est adfata sororem, Diva deam, stagnis quae fluminibusque sonoris Of the other powers of the Italian mythology Faunus is introduced 2 in accordance with the national conception of an undefined invisible agency guiding the conduct of men by means of omens and oracles. And in accordance with the euhemerism which suited the prosaic bent of the Latin mind, the native deities Saturnus, Janus, and Picus appear as a line of kings, who lived and reigned in Latium before assuming their place in the ranks of the gods. The ordinary modes in which the divine personages of Virgil's story take part in the action are suggested by incidents in the Homeric poems or Hymns, and, apparently in some instances, by the parts assigned to them in the dramas of Euripides. Thus the office performed by Venus in telling the story of Dido previous to the landing of Aeneas on the shores of Africa, and by Diana in telling the romantic incidents of Camilla's childhood, may have been suggested by the prologues to the Hippolytus, the Bacchae, and the Alcestis. But other manifestations of supernatural agency, and those not the least impressive, are due to Virgil's own invention, and are inspired by 1 Aen. xii. 138-41. This passage, with its monotonous and rhyming endings —sororem —sonoris —honorem,—is probably one of those which Virgil would have altered had he lived to give the 'limae labor' to his work. 2 vii. 81, etc. that sense of awe with which the thought of the invisible world affects his imagination. Thus Juvenal, when contrasting the comfort which enabled Virgil to do justice to his genius with the poverty of the poets of his own. time, selects as an instance of his imaginative power the passage in the Seventh Book of the Aeneid which describes the terror inspired by Allecto. And certainly the whole description of the appearance of the Fury on earth, from the time when she enters the palace of Latinus till she disappears among the woods which add to the gloom of the black torrent of Amsanctus, is full of energy. So too is the brief description of Juno completing the work of her agent-one of many passages of which the solemn effect is enhanced by the use of the language of Ennius— Tum regina deum caelo delapsa morantis Impulit ipsa manu portas, et cardine verso Another passage in which the appearance of the Olympian deities produces the impression of awe and sublimity is that in which Venus reveals herself to her son in her divine proportions confessa deam, qualisque videri Caelicolis et quanta solet and, by removing the mist intervening between his mortal sight and the reality of things, displays the forms of Neptune, Juno, Jove himself, and Pallas engaged in the overthrow of Troy, Apparent dirae facies inimicaque Troiae But there are traces in the Aeneid of another religious belief and practice more primitive and more widely spread than the worship of the Olympian gods, or of the impersonal abstractions of Italian theology. The religious fancies which originally united each city, each tribe, and each family into one community, had been transmitted in popular beliefs and in ceremonial observances from a 1 vii. 620-2. 2 Cp. Coulanges, La Cité Antique. time long antecedent to the establishment of the Olympian dynasty of gods. This new and brighter creation of the imagination did not banish the secret awe inspired by the older spiritual conceptions. Invisible Powers were supposed to haunt certain places, to protect each city with their unseen presence or under some visible symbol, and to make their abode at each family hearth uniting all the kindred of the house in a common worship. These survivals of primitive thought appear in many striking passages in the Aeneid. The idea of a secret indwelling Power, identified with the continued existence and fortunes of cities, imparts sublimity to that passage in Book VIII. in which the Roman feeling of the sanctity of the Capitol obtains its grandest expression— Iam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestis Dira loci; iam tum silvam saxumque tremebant. This belief imparts dignity to what from a merely human point of view seems grotesque rather than sublime, the reception by the Trojans of the 'fatalis machina feta armis' within their walls. The fatal error is committed under the conviction that the protection enjoyed under the old Palladium would be renewed under this new symbol. The construction of the unwieldy mass is attributed to Calchas, acting from the motive expressed in the lines Ne recipi portis aut duci in moenia possit, This same belief of the dependence of cities on their indwelling deities pervades the whole description of the destruction of Troy. Thus the despair produced by the first discovery of the presence of the enemy within the town obtains utterance in the words— Excessere omnis adytis arisque relictis viii. 349-54. 2 ii. 187-8. 3 ii. 351-2. When Panthus the priest of Apollo appears on the scene, it is said of him— Sacra manu victosque deos parvumque nepotem Ipse trahit1. A kind of mystic glory from the companionship of these 'defeated gods,' for whom he was seeking a new local habitation, invests the adventurous wanderings of Aeneas. The preservation and re-establishment of these gods is the pledge of the revival, under a new form and in a strange land, of the ancient empire of Troy, and of her ultimate triumph over her enemy. But still more ancient than the belief in local deities indwelling in the sites of cities was the worship of the dead, the belief in their reappearance on earth, and of their continued interest in human affairs. It is in Virgil, a poet of the most enlightened period of antiquity, that we find the clearest indications of the earliest form of this belief and of the ceremonies to which it first gave birth Inferimus tepido spumantia cymbia lacte, Sanguinis et sacri pateras, animamque sepulchro The doctrine of the continued existence of the dead, the most ancient and the most enduring of all supernatural beliefs, affects Virgil through the strength both of his human affection and of his religious awe. Both of these feelings are wonderfully blended in that passage in which the ghost of Hector appears to Aeneas, and entrusts to him the sacred emblems and gods of the doomed city. How deep on the one hand is the feeling of old affection mingled with awful solemnity which inspires the address of Aeneas to his ancient comrade 1 ii. 320-1. O lux Dardaniae! spes o fidissima Teucrum ! Quae tantae tenuere morae? quibus Hector ab oris Foedavit voltus, aut cur haec volnera cerno3? 2 Aen. iii. 66-8. The passage is referred to by M. Coulanges in one of the early chapters of La Cité Antique.' 3 ii. 281-6. |