[869] Sellar, Virgil, p. 371.
[870] Sainte-Beuve, Étude sur Virgile, p. 68.
[871] Horace, Epode 16, where, however, he is not
quite so much in earnest as in Odes iii. 6. Sallust,
prefaces to Jugurtha and Catiline: these do not ring
quite true.
[872] Georg. iv. 511 foll.
[873] Georg. iii. 440 foll. The famous lines (498
foll.) about the horse smitten with pestilence will
occur to every one.
[874] Aen. vi. 309.
[875] Op. cit. p. 231. He cites Georg. i. 107 and
187 foll.
[876] Sellar, Virgil, p. 232.
[877] Georg. iv. 221 foll.
[878] Georg. ii. 493.
[879] Prof. Hardie recently asked me an explanation of
the double altar that we meet with more than once in
Virgil in connection with funeral rites: e.g., Ecl.
5. 66; Aen. iii. 305; v. 77 foll. Servius tries to
explain this, but clearly did not understand it. Of
course I could offer no satisfactory solution. Yet we
are both certain that there is a satisfactory one if we
could only get at it.
[880] Much has been written about the part of the Fates
in the Aeneid and their relation to Jupiter. See
Heinze, Vergils epische Technik, p. 286 foll.; Glover,
Studies in Virgil, 202 and 277 foll. I may be allowed
to refer also to my Social Life at Rome in the Age of
Cicero, p. 342 foll.
[881] Aen. i. 257 foll., vi. 756 foll., viii. 615
foll.
[882] Suggestions preliminary to a Study of the
Aeneid, p. 36.
[883] It is not likely to strike us unless we read the
whole Aeneid through, without distracting our minds
with other reading, and this few of us do. I did it some
ten years ago; before that the development of character
had not dawned on me fully. I later on found it shortly
but clearly set forth in Heinze's Vergils epische
Technik, p. 266 foll.; and this caused me to read the
poem through once more, with the result that I became
confirmed in my view, and read a paper on the subject
to the Oxford Philological Society, which I have in part
embodied in this lecture.
[884] This is dwelt on in Social Life at Rome in the
Age of Cicero, p. 124 foll.
[885] De Republica, vi. 15.
[886] It may be as well to note here that the actual
representation of God in the Aeneid is its weakest
point. It was an epic poem, and could not dispense with
the Homeric machinery: hence Jupiter is practically the
representative of the Stoic all-pervading deity, with
the Fates behind him. But it is not unlikely that Virgil
may thus have actually helped to make the way clear for
a nobler monotheistic idea by damaging Jupiter in the
course of this treatment; see Social Life at Rome in
the Age of Cicero, p. 341 foll.
[887] On the Homeric Aeneas there are some good remarks
in Boissier's Nouvelles Promenades
archaeologiques (Horace et Virgile), p. 130
foll. Of all the Homeric heroes he seems to come
nearest, though but slightly sketched, to the Roman
ideal of heroism.
[888] Heinze, Vergils epische Technik, p. 17.
[889] I should be disposed to consider this passage as
decisive of the point, but that it immediately follows
upon the doubtful lines 567-588, in which Aeneas is
tempted in his mad fury to slay Helen; and if those
lines are not Virgil's, we have not sufficient
explanation of the rebuke which Venus here administers
to her son. On the other hand, if they were really
Virgil's, and omitted (as Servius declares) by the
original editors Tucca and Varius, we should have a
convincing proof that the poet meant his hero, in these
terrible scenes, to come so short of the true Roman
heroic type as to be capable of slaying a woman in cold
blood, and while a suppliant at an altar of the gods.
Into this much-disputed question I must not go farther,
except to note that while Heinze is absolutely confident
that Virgil never wrote these lines, the editor of the
new Oxford text of Virgil is equally certain that he
did. My opinion is of no value on such a point; but I am
disposed to agree with Mr. Hirtzel that "versus valde
Vergilianos, ab optimis codicibus omissos, iniuria
obleverunt Tucca et Varius." They are certainly in
keeping with the picture of Aeneas' impotentia which
is generally suggested in Book ii. If it should be
argued that this impotentia, i.e. want of
self-control, is only put into the mouth of Aeneas in
order to heighten the effect of his stirring narrative,
it will be well to remember the remonstrances of Venus,
which make such a hypothesis impossible.
[890] Op. cit. p. 231.
[891] Vergils epische Technik, p. 113 foll.
[892] The original story was, that unable to escape from
an enforced marriage with Iarbas, she killed herself to
mark her unflinching faithfulness to her first husband
Sicharbas. Servius quotes Varro as stating that it was
not Dido, but Anna who committed suicide for love of
Aeneas (on Aen. iv. 682); and as Varro died before the
Aeneid was begun, this may be taken as proving that
Virgil's version of the love-story was not his own
invention. But it is quite possible that Servius here
only means that Varro's version differed in this point
from that which the poet soon afterwards adopted; it may
be that the story in the poem is thus practically his
own.
[893] Op. cit. p. 116.
[894] Ancient Lives of Vergil, Clarendon Press, 1879.
[895] The critics have, I think, been weaker in dealing
with the fifth book than with any of the others. Prof.
Tyrrell is too violent in his contempt for it to admit
of quotation here. Heinze has some good and acute
remarks on Virgil's motive in placing the book where it
is, but seems to me to miss the real importance of it
(op. cit. 140 foll.). Even Boissier, whose delightful
account of the scenery of Eryx should be read by every
one who would appreciate this book (op. cit. p. 232),
goes so far as to say that it is the one book with which
we feel we might easily dispense so far as the story is
concerned.
[896] Roman Festivals, p. 307.
[897] Op. cit. p. 270.
[898] Commentary on Dante's Divina Commedia, pp. 615
foll. I am indebted for this reference to Stewart's
Myths of Plato, p. 367.
[899] Nettleship remarked most truly that there is no
better way of appreciating the heroic Aeneas of these
last books than by studying carefully the early part of
the eleventh.