Her

her fate upon herself and deserved little sympathy from the reader. Virgil, however, has not done this. Dido, in his story, is a brave and energetic woman, who after the murder of her husband led a number of her Tyrians to found a new town in a distant land. When the shipwrecked Trojans sought her protection, she received them with kindness and hospitality, saying that she herself knew what it was to be an exile from home. loyalty to her dead husband had prevented her from accepting any offers of marriage from native princes, and her love for him, as we afterwards hear, stronger than death, endured to be her comfort and support in the world below. When for a time she was mastered by a passion for Aeneas, it was because two goddesses, usually opposed to each other, combined their powers against her; and her despair and death were the necessary consequences of her passion. Aeneas, on the other hand, fails even in that constancy to his task which is the most marked feature of his character. He remains at Carthage, not because he has definitely abandoned his quest, but because he yields weakly to pleasure and allows things to drift. When he receives Jupiter's order to go away, his one idea is to make his preparations in secret, see as little of Dido as possible, and avoid a scene. In answer to her reproaches for his infidelity he coldly replies that he shall always remember her with pleasure and gratitude, and insults her by asserting that he never regarded the union as permanent. It is impossible to excuse his conduct on the ground that he is now acting

under divine command, for he knew what his duty was when he came to Carthage. Still less can we plead his grief at being compelled to leave her ('with many a moan, his soul shaken by mighty love'), for he tells Dido quite frankly that if he could do as he wished, he would neither stay with her nor go to Italy, but return to Troy. It might seem that Virgil had done all that he could to exalt Dido in our estimation and to lower Aeneas.

It is needless to say that Virgil did not deliberately aim at this result; he merely accepted it with indifference. He wished to surround the fate of Dido with all the pathetic interest that undeserved suffering could give to it, and he was not much concerned if the character of his hero

suffered in consequence. In this he was quite consistent, because Aeneas is not in truth a hero. of romance or even a saint, but a man with a great mission, which it is impious to hinder. Judged thus, Dido is the temptress from whose snares he must be freed, and when he escapes them, we should rejoice even more than when Ulysses, to face hardship and peril, leaves behind the luxurious bondage of Calypso's island. For the future of the world is at stake, and no thought of peace or love or honour itself may weight the scale against the inheritance of a boundless destiny.

THE METRE OF THE Aeneid.

The Hexameter. The Aeneid, like the Eclogues and the Georgics, is written in Hexameters. This metre was used by Homer and other Greek epic poets and, after being adopted by Ennius, was

further developed by Lucretius and Catullus. reached its perfection in the hands of Virgil.

It

The Hexameter verse consists of six metres or feet. Each of the first four feet is either a dactyl (~~~), a long syllable followed by two short, or a spondee (− −), two long syllables. The fifth foot is normally a dactyl; there are no exceptions to this rule in the fourth book. The sixth foot is either a spondee or a trochee (— ~), a long syllable followed by a short one.

The scheme of the Hexameter may be given thus:

One long syllable, marked —, is regarded as equivalent in time to two short syllables, marked . A long syllable is one that contains a long vowel or, though the vowel is short, ends with two consonants. A short syllable is one that contains a short vowel, followed by no consonant or by one only; but when the final syllable of a word contains a short vowel followed by one consonant, it becomes long if the next word begins with a consonant, e. g.

vūlnūs ǎlīt vējnīs ēt | caecō | carpĭtŭr |¦ īgnī | .

Here the last syllable of ălit, though it is naturally short, becomes long, because the following word begins with a consonant, and ět is lengthened in the same way; but the last syllables of vulnus and cărpitur respectively, being naturally short, remain

SO. On the other hand, the last syllable of vēnīs, being naturally long, is independent of the next word. It is important to understand that the addition of a consonant to a short syllable makes the syllable long, but not the vowel. The long mark over the vowel is a convenient way of indicating the length of the whole syllable.

Caesura. If a foot is not contained in one word, we speak of its division as 'caesura' (cutting). Caesura may occur in any foot, though it is very uncommon in the sixth, such endings as că num vis (132) being rarely found; in the third foot it is almost necessary, and when we speak of 'the caesura' of a hexameter, we mean the break thus made in the third foot or, failing that, in the fourth

(a) pōstěră | Phoebēļā || lūs|trābāt | lāmpădě | tērrās. (6) Ānnă rĕ fërt ō | lūce || măgīs dilectă să rōrī.

The caesura in the third foot is marked by the double line. In (a) it follows the first syllable of the foot and in (b) the second. If it follows the first syllable, the caesura is called strong; if the second, it is called weak. Both these forms of caesura are normal, but the strong caesura is much the more common, partly, no doubt, because the only possible division of a spondee is after the first syllable; in the fourth Aeneid the lines with strong caesura in the third foot are in the proportion of about ten to one compared with those that have the weak. If the line has the weak caesura or, much less frequently, no caesura in the third foot, the strong caesura is almost always found in

the fourth. The three following lines are exceptional.

lūnă prě mīt suā dēntque că dentiă | sīdĕră somnōs (81). pēr cōnūbiă | nōstră per inceptos hymenaeōs (316). spārgēns | ūmidă | mēllă să pōrĭfĕ|rūmquè pă¦pāvĕr (486).

Elision. If a word ends with a vowel or with -am, -em, -im, -om, or -um, and the next word begins with a vowel or h, the ending of the first word is elided, that is, it is slurred so much in pronunciation that it is not counted as any part of a foot, e. g.

indulge hospitio causāsque in nectě morändi.

The last vowel of indulge and the last vowel of causasque are omitted in scanning the line.

īd cìně rem aūt māļnīs crēļdīs cūrārě se pūltōs.

Here the last two letters of cinerem are omitted. Final m was scarcely pronounced, and therefore final am was elided as naturally as final a; and for a similar reason a word beginning with h was treated as if it began with a vowel.

Hiatus. Occasionally we find what is called hiatus, i.e. a final vowel is not elided before a vowel at the beginning of the next word. There are two cases in the fourth Aeneid.

quid struit | aūt quā | spē înĭļmīca în | gēntě mŏ|rātŭr

(235).

Here the vowel in spe is not elided. This is sufficiently explained by the pause necessary after spe to disconnect it from inimica, an adjective in the same gender, number and case, which belongs