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 Aeneas at the site of Rome: 
 
 3 1924 026 572 754 
 
AENEAS AT THE SITE OF ROME 
 
By W. WARDE fowler ^ $ ^ 
 Virgil's Gathering of the Clans. Being 
 
 Observations on Aeneid VII., 601-817. With Text and 
 Parallel Translation. Crown 8vo., cloth, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
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 OXFORD : B. H. BLACKWELL 
 
 NEW YORK : LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
AENEAS 
 AT THE SITE OF ROME 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE EIGHTH BOOK 
 OF THE AENEID 
 
 BY 
 
 W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A., LL.D. Edin. 
 
 " We live by hope 
 And by desire; we see by the glad light 
 And breathe the sweet air of futurity, 
 And so we live, or else we have no life." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 OXFORD 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET 
 
 NEW YORK: LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 
 MCMXVa 
 
Co 
 
 MY EVER HELPFUL FRIEND 
 
 R. S. CONWAY 
 
 " Amicus certus in te incerta ceraitur."— Ennius- 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 All through the eighth Aeneid we seem, like 
 Aeneas, tob e breathi ngj' the_SHe§t=aiE=flliuturity,|^ 
 and this gives the book a distinctive freshness 
 among its fellows. It seems fit reading for us to-day. 
 Before the war the air we breathed was somewhat 
 stagnant; it was not fragrant with the thought of 
 better things, great things, to come, of old faults 
 and faihngs overcome and put away, of a coming 
 reign, far distant perhaps, but coming, of truth, 
 beauty, and goodness. But now, after all that has 
 been done and suffered in the last three years, we 
 may breathe " the sweet air of futurity " with enjoy- 
 ment and trust. In these three years we have had 
 as many escapes as those of Rome depicted on the 
 Shield of Aeneas, yet the good sense and courage of 
 our people have survived them all. I should like 
 to think that any educator using this book may find 
 some help in it for the Ufting up of the hearts of his 
 pupils to look forward with good sense and courage 
 to the many perils yet to be overcome. 
 
 W. W. F. 
 Jidy 2, 1917. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PACES 
 
 Introductory Note - i-6 
 
 Text of Aeneid VIII - - 7-31 
 
 Observations - - 32-129 
 
 IX 
 
AENEAS AT THE SITE OF 
 ROME 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 This book is not, I suppose, a favourite with most 
 readers of Virgil. It has not the splendid drive of 
 the second, fourth, and sixth books, each of which 
 tells a great story, and goes straight through with 
 it; its plan can hardly be expressed in two or three 
 words, like the plans of those great poems. To- 
 gether with the seventh book, it serves as quiet 
 preparation for the war and bloodshed that is 
 coming. The poet seems to wish to put off this 
 bloodshed as long as possible; beyond doubt it was 
 the least congenial part of his work. As I read now 
 throiigh the last six books, I find much interest in 
 the discovery of constant efforts on the part of the 
 poet to escape his fate — the necessity of describing 
 Homeric battles. 
 
 The eighth book consists, not of a single story, 
 but of a succession of scenes somewhat in the manner 
 of a Waverley novel. The interview between Aeneas 
 and the river-god; the voyage up the Tiber to the 
 site of Rome: the reception by Evander and the 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 story of Cacus: the walk through the Rome that 
 was to be: the start for Agylla, with the forebodings 
 about young Pallas: the scene between Vtilcan and 
 Venus: the forging of the shield — these are all 
 somewhat loosely strung together, though for a 
 lover of Virgil they make up a varied and delightful 
 whole. And our poet knew how to give a quiet 
 book a grand ending; for the Shield, though (as I 
 think) in part unfinished, leaves the modern reader 
 satisfied, and must have left the Roman reader en- 
 tranced. It strengthens the sense of futurity that 
 pervades the whole book, and which has induced 
 me to steal from their context the lines of Words- 
 worth which are printed on the title-page. 
 
 These scenes and pictures teem with local allu- 
 sions and delicate Roman touches; no book of the 
 Aeneid is so full of them. Th is is, i n fact, the most 
 
 Rornan of all the books. The Roman imagination, 
 such as it~waS~(a:nd~thefie"was probably more of it 
 than we fancy), would respond warmly to the 
 idealisation of the greatest of Italian rivers, to the 
 legend of Cacus, to the picture of the seven hUls 
 before Rome was there. Still more heartily would 
 it respond to the tender relation of father and son 
 so strongly brought out here in Evander and his 
 beautiful stripling Pallas, destined to die, as we can 
 guess, even if we know nothing of what is coming. 
 The relation of host and guest {hospitiutn), and of 
 military guardian and ward (contubernium) , are also 
 to be found here, as we shall see. Nor is religion 
 wanting; the spirit of it breathes about the site of 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Rome, as in the memorable lines (351 jf.) where the 
 great cult of the Capitol is dimly foreseen among 
 the mists of old Itahan religio. 
 
 Another advantage that this book has for most 
 readers is that the divine machinery, the Homeric 
 use of the gods in the story, is less evident and 
 wearisome here than in most of the others. The 
 Tiber-god does not, I think, distress us, as the 
 Olympian deities so often do; he is a local influence, 
 a spirit of the country, a legitimate impersonation 
 of geographical facts. The interview of Venus and 
 Vulcan is here the only piece of typical divine 
 machinery; and it is kept well under control, and 
 is almost overshadowed by the magnificent descrip- 
 tion of the Cyclopes at work. 
 
 It is not, indeed, in divine figures, but in human 
 ones, that Virgil is here rejoicing. Evander and 
 Pallas are real human beings with true and tender 
 souls. Aeneas himself seems to me more human, 
 if less heroic, in this book than elsewhere; the 
 Roman surroundings are acting on the poet. There 
 are tender touches, too, of humble life such as 
 Virgil knew and loved. The late Dr. Verrall 
 noticed this, in a valuable bit of writing kindly sent 
 to me by Professor Conway.^ The good prince 
 Evander, waked by the swallows under his thatch 
 (viii. 455), and walking, with his dogs for guards, 
 to debate policy with his early-risen guest, is more 
 to Virgil, is touched with more love, than all those 
 wonders and splendours of Cyclopian art with 
 1 The National Home-Reading Union, No. 65, pp. 24 j^f. 
 
 3 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 which the simple scene is so vividly contrasted. 
 Even Vulcan himself comes in . for this homely 
 treatment. " Very early, right after the middle 
 watch of the night, does he quit his bed, even at 
 that hour ' when a woman awakens the slumbering 
 ashes of her fire, a woman on whom lies the burden 
 to live by her distaff and spinning of thread; of 
 night-time she makes work- time; and plies her 
 maids with the long, long task till dawn, that she 
 may be able to keep her honour for her spouse and 
 to rear her little children.' From Homer still, 
 from Apollonius Rhodius, and one knows not 
 from whom beSide, come hints, materials, helps 
 for this simile, which is not a simile at all, in the 
 common sense of the term. But neither Homer, 
 nor any known author before Virgil, nor perhaps 
 any since, would have put it here, or could have 
 touched it to so tender an issue." 
 
 Dr. Glover, in his volume on Virgil, calls Aeneas 
 the most solitary figure in literature, and com- 
 pares him to Marcus Aurelius, the solitary and 
 conscientious imperial sage. There is some truth 
 in this, and the comparison is at least an interesting 
 one. He means, I think, that Aeneas finds htt le 
 social joy in lifej_his_^ioughts,.and--anxiet 
 i nursecrin-ht»-0Wn breast . His fidus Achates is a 
 somewhat shadowy figure; he is far from being for 
 Aeneas what Horatio is for Hamlet; he is the ab- 
 straction of comradeship. This lonehness of mind, 
 setting in more especially after the death of his 
 father, explains, by contrast, Aeneas' passionate love 
 
 4 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 for Dido. Then for a brief interval of sunshine his 
 heart Ues open, but is doomed to close once more, 
 never again to be stirred by a woman's love. Like 
 the later Roman gentleman, he was affectionate, 
 even tender-hearted, towards his son, and other 
 boys like Pallas and Lausus, but romance has left 
 him for ever. Yet in this eighth book he is less 
 lonely than elsewhere; he is never alone, after the 
 first few Hnes of it, either in body or mind. He_is_a_ 
 human being fuU of hope, and co nscious of asgr gat 
 iuLliie. in Lvctfi d o r he ■ftnds'Someone to revere,^ 
 Pallas someone to love. The atmosphere of Rome 
 isjxound_Win,_and-tiia-SBieiaqpi^pb^icaIly^ 
 
 ,_hisjieing; he is not, like Marcus Aurelius, a lonely 
 figure with no future before him. The last line of 
 the book forbids us the comparison ; Aeneas is to hve 
 
 ^Qt-ev-er4n-4fee-glQrious_destinyof his descencSnts. 
 The place of this book among the otEefiTs^best 
 understood if we think of the condition of the 
 Mediterranean world when the Aeneid was being 
 written. Augustus had soldered together the two 
 halves of that world by his victory at Actium, after 
 some years in which disruption threatened to be 
 permanent; the centre point, the pivot on which the 
 whole system moved, was Italy, with Rome as its 
 heart and brain, the seat of its life and power. 
 Italy had been reached in the sixth book, and in 
 the seventh its various peoples had been mustered 
 to oppose -tfae-~6tra ug er wLo ^eafiae bjTthe^mirjof 
 
 ^n yiUHr- an'g "''^the,, de crees " of Fate to fescujl-the 
 country_fapnLjchaQS_ and barbarism; but so far 
 
 5 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Aeneas had not touched Roman soil. It must 
 have given the poet some trouble to devise a plan 
 which should bring him to Rome, show him the 
 scenes of Rome's future life, and forecast for him 
 the perilous history of his descendants. He had 
 to think not only of the proud Roman himself, but 
 of a world of Graeco-Roman critics and readers: 
 he had to remember Augustus, the saviour of the. 
 Empire, and the ideas that were in his mind for 
 seciuing its prosperity. 
 
 The plan adopted seems to me to be wonderfully 
 happy and complete. Aeneas was to find his way 
 to Rome by Rome's own river; then to be the 
 guest of the first founder of a city on the site of 
 Rome, Evander the Greek, with a name of good 
 omen. Admitted at once to a Graeco-Roman cult 
 at the famous ara maxima of Hercules, he enters 
 into hospitium with his host, and into the tenderest 
 friendship with him and his son. Marching out to 
 meet the enemy, with Evander's son at his side, he 
 bears on his shoulder a magic shield, on which are 
 pictured the critical moments of the greater city 
 that was to be, ending with that happiest of all 
 scenes for the Roman of Virgil's day, the great naval 
 battle of Actium, the most momentous, perhaps, of 
 all the battles of the world. 
 
 The plan was unquestionably a happy one; 
 whether it was executed happily each reader must 
 decide for himself. Among the observations that 
 follow, there may be two or three which will help 
 him to a favourable conclusion. 
 
 6 
 
p. VERGILI MARONIS 
 AENEIDOS 
 
 LIBER VIII 
 
 Vt belli signum Laurenti Turnus ab arce 
 extidit et rauco strepuerunt cornua cantu, 
 utque acris concussit equos utque impulit arma, 
 extemplo turbati animi, simul omne tumultu 
 coniurat trepido Latium saevitque iuventus 5 
 
 effera. ductores primi Messapus et Vfens 
 contemptorque deum Mezentius undique cogunt 
 auxilia et latos vastant cultoribus agros. 
 mittitur et magni Venulus Diomedis ad urbem 
 qui petat auxilium, et Latio consistere Teucros, 10 
 advectum Aenean classi victosque penatis 
 inferre et fatis regem se dicere posci, 
 edoceat, multasque viro se adiungere gentis 
 Dardanio et late Latio increbrescere nomen: 
 quid struat his coeptis, quem, si fortuna sequatur, 15 
 eventum pugnae cupiat, manifestius ipsi 
 quam Turno regi aut regi apparere Latino. 
 
 Talia per Latium. quae Laomedontius heros 
 cuncta videns magno curarum fluctuat aestu, 
 atque animum nunc hue celerem nunc dividit illuc 20 
 in partisque rapit varias perque omnia versat, 
 
 7 B 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen aenis 
 sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine lunae 
 omnia pervolitat late loca, iamque sub auras 
 erigitur summique ferit laquearia tecti. 25 
 
 nox erat et terras animalia fessa per omnis 
 alituum pecudumque genus sopor altus habebat, 
 cum pater in ripa gelidique sub aetheris axe 
 Aeneas, tristi turbatus pectora bello, 
 procubuit seramque dedit per membra quietem. 30 
 huic deus ipse loci fluvio Tiberinus amoeno 
 populeas inter senior se attoUere frondes 
 visus (eum tenuis glauco velabat amictu 
 carbasus, et crinis umbrosa tegebat harundo), 
 tum sic adf ari et curas his demere dictis : 35 
 
 ' O sate gente deum, Troianam ex hostibus urbem 
 qui revehis nobis aeternaque Pergama servas, 
 exspectate solo Laurenti arvisque Latinis, 
 hie tibi certa domus, certi (ne absiste) penates; 
 neu beUi terrere minis; tumor omnis et irae 40 
 
 concessere deum. 
 
 iamque tibi, ne vana putes haec fingere somnum, 
 litoreis ingens inventa sub ilicibus sus 
 triginta capitum fetus enixa iacebit, 
 alba, solo recubans, albi circum ubera nati. 45 
 
 [hie locus urbis erit, requies ea certa laborum,j 
 ex quo ter denis urbem redeuntibus annis 
 Ascanius clari condet cognominis Albam. 
 baud incerta cano. nunc qua ratione quod instat 
 expedias victor, paucis (adverte) docebo. 50 
 
 Arcades his oris, genus a Pallante profectum, 
 qui regem Euandrum comites, qui signa secuti, 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 delegere locum et posuere in montibus urbem 
 Pallantis proavi de nomine Pallanteum. w^*^ , 
 
 hi bellum adsidue ducunt cum gente Latina ; 55 
 hos castris adhibe socios et foedera iunge. 
 ipse ego te ripis et recto flumine ducam, 
 adversum remis superes subvectus ut amnem. 
 surge age, nate dea, primisque cadentibus astris 
 lunoni fer rite preces, iramque minasque 60 
 
 supplicibus supera votis. mihi victor honorem 
 persolves. ego sum pleno quem flumine cernis 
 stringentem ripas et pinguia culta secantem, 
 caeruleus Thybris, caelo gratissimus amnis. 
 hie mihi magna domus, celsis caput urbibus, exit.' 65 
 
 Dixit, deinde lacu fluvius se condidit alto 
 ima pet ens; nox Aenean somnusque reliquit. 
 surgit et aetherii spectans orientia solis 
 lumina rite cavis undam de flumine palmis 
 sustinet ac talis effundit ad aethera voces : 70 
 
 ' nymphae, Laurentes nymphae, genus amnibus 
 
 unde est, 
 tuque, o Thybri tuo genitor cum flumine sancto, 
 accipite Aenean et tandem arcete periclis. 
 quo te cumque lacus miserantem incommoda nostra 
 fonte tenet, quocumque solo pulcherrimus exis, 75 
 semper honore meo, semper celebrabere donis, 
 comiger Hesperidum fluvius regnator aquarum. 
 adsis o tantum et propius tua numina firmes.' 
 sic memorat, geminasque legit de classe biremis 
 remigioque aptat, socios simul instruit armis. 80 
 
 Ecce autem subitum atque oculis mirabile mon- 
 strum, 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Candida per silvam cum fetu concolor albo 
 procubuit viridique in litore conspicitur sus: 
 quam pius Aeneas tibi enim, tibi, maxima luno, 
 mactat sacra ferens et cum grege sistit ad aram. 85 
 Thybris ea fluvium, quam longa est, nocte tume- 
 
 ntem 
 leniit, et tacita refluens ita substitit unda, 
 mitis ut in morem stagni placidaeque paludis 
 sterneret aequor aquis, remo ut luctamen abesset. 
 ergo iter inceptum celerant. rumore secundo 90 
 labitur uncta vadis abies, mirantur et undae, 
 miratur nemus insuetum fulgentia longe 
 scuta virum fluvio pictasque innare carinas, 
 olli remigio noctemque diemque fatigant 
 et longos superant flexus, variisque teguntur 95 
 
 arboribus, viridisque secant placido aequore silvas. 
 sol medium caeli conscenderat igneus orbem 
 cum muros arcemque procul ac rara domorum 
 tecta vident, quae nunc Romana potentia caelo 
 aequavit, turn res inopes Euandrus habebat. 100 
 ocius advertunt proras urbique propinquant. 
 
 Forte die soUemnem illo rex Areas honorem 
 Amphitryoniadae magno divisque ferebat 
 ante urbem in luco. Pallas huic filius una, 
 una omnes iuvenum primi pauperque senatus 105 
 tura dabant, tepidusque cruor fumabat ad aras. 
 ut celsas videre rates atque inter opacum 
 adlabi nemus et tacitis incumbere remis, 
 terrentur visu subito cunctique relictis 
 consurgunt mensis. audax quos rumpere Pallas 
 sacra vetat raptoque volat telo obvius ipse, iii 
 
 10 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 et procul e tumulo : ' iuvenes, quae causa subegit 
 ignotas temptare vias ? quo tenditis ?' inquit. 
 ' qui genus ? unde domo ? pacemne hue fertis an 
 
 arma ?' 
 turn pater Aeneas puppi sic fatur ab alta 115 
 
 paciferaeque manu ramum praetendit olivae: 
 ' Troiugenas ac tela vides inimica Latinis, 
 quos iUi bello profugos egere superbo. 
 Euandrum petimus. ferte haec et dicite lectos 
 Dardaniae venisse duces socia arma rogantis.' 120 
 obstipuit tanto percussus nomine Pallas: 
 ' egredere o quicumque es/ ait ' coramque parent em 
 adioquere ac nostris succede penatibus hospes.' 
 excepitque manu dextramque amplexus inhaesit. 
 progressi subeunt luco fluviumque relinquunt. 125 
 
 Turn regem Aeneas dictis adf atur amicis : 
 ' optime Graiugenum, cui me Fortuna precari 
 et vitta comptos voluit praetendere ramos, 
 non equidem extimui Danaum quod ductor et Areas 
 quodque a stirpe fores geminis coniunctus Atridis; 
 sed mea me virtus et sancta oracula divum 131 
 
 cognatique patres, tua terris didita fama, 
 coniunxere tibi et fatis egere volentem. 
 Dardanus, Iliacae primus pater urbis et auctor, 
 Electra, ut Grai perhibent, Atlantide cretus, 135 
 
 advehitur Teucros; Electram maximus Atlas 
 edidit, aetherios umero qui sustinet orbis. 
 vobis Mercurius pater est, quem Candida Maia 
 Cyllenae gelido conceptum vertice fudit; 
 at Maiam, auditis si quicquam credimus, Atlas, 140 
 idem Atlas generat caeli qui sidera tollit. 
 
 II 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 sic genus amborum scindit se sanguine ab uno. 
 his fretus non legates neque prima per artem 
 temptamenta tui pepigi; me, me ipse meumque 
 obieci caput et supplex ad limina veni. 145 
 
 gens eadem, quae te, crudeli Daunia bello 
 insequitur; nos si pellant nihil afore credunt 
 quin omnem Hesperiam penitus sua sub iuga 
 
 mittant, 
 et mare quod supra teneant quodque adluit infra, 
 accipe daque fidem. sunt nobis fortia beUo 150 
 
 pectora, sunt animi et rebus spectata iuventus.' 
 
 Dixerat Aeneas, ille os oculosque loquentis 
 iamdudum et totum lustrabat lumine corpus, 
 turn sic pauca refert : ' ut te, f ortissime Teucrum, 
 accipio agnoscoque libens ! ut verba parentis 155 
 et vocem Anchisae magni vultumque recordor ! 
 nam memini Hesionae visentem regna sororis 
 Laomedontiaden Priamum Salamina petentem 
 protinus Arcadiae gelidos invisere finis, 
 tum mihi prima genas vestibat flore iuventas, 160 
 mirabarque duces Teucros, mirabar et ipsum 
 Laomedontiaden; sed cunctis altior ibat 
 Anchises. mihi mens iuvenali ardebat amore 
 compellare virum et dextrae coniungere dextram; 
 accessi et cupidus Phenei sub moenia duxi. 165 
 
 ille mihi insignem pharetram Lyciasque sagittas 
 discedens chlamydemque auro dedit intertextam, 
 frenaque bina meus quae nunc habet aurea Pallas, 
 ergo et quam petitis iuncta est mihi foedere dextra, 
 et lux cum primum terris se crastina reddet, 170 
 auxilio laetos dimittam opibusque iuvabo. 
 
 12 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 interea sacra haec, quando hue venistis amici, 
 annua, quae differre nefas, celebrate faventes 
 nobiscum, et iam nunc sociorum adsuescite mensis.' 
 Haec ubi dicta, dapes iubet et sublata reponi 175 
 pocula gramineoque viros locat ipse sedili, 
 praecipuumque toro et villosi pelle leonis 
 accipit Aenean solioque invitat acerno. 
 turn lecti iuvenes certatim araeque sacerdos 179 
 viscera tosta ferunt taurorum, onerantque canistris 
 dona laboratae Cereris, Bacchumque ministrant. 
 vescitur Aeneas simul et Troiana inventus 
 perpetui tergo bovis et lustralibus extis. 
 
 Postquam exempta fames et amor compressus 
 edendi, 
 rex Euandrus ait: ' non haec soUemnia nobis, 185 
 has ex more dapes, hanc tanti numinis aram 
 vana superstitio veterumque ignara deorum 
 imposuit: saevis, hospes Troiane, periclis 
 servati facimus meritosque novamus honores. 
 iam primum saxis suspensam hanc aspice rupem, 
 disiectae procul ut moles desertaque montis 191 
 
 Stat domus et scopuli ingentem traxere ruinam. 
 hie spelunca fuit vasto summota recessu, 
 semihominis Caci facies quam dira tenebat, 
 sohs inaccessam radiis; semperque recenti 195 
 
 caede tepebat humus, foribusque adfixa superbis 
 ora virum tristi pendebant pallida tabo. 
 huie monstro Volcanus erat pater : illius atros 
 ore vomens ignis magna se mole ferebat. 
 attulit et nobis aliquando optantibus aetas 200 
 
 auxUium adventumque dei. nam maximus ultor 
 
 13 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 tergemini nece Geryonae spoliisque superbus 
 Alcides aderat taurosque hac victor agebat 
 ingentis, vallemque boves amnemque tenebant. 
 at furis Caci mens effera, ne quid inausum 205 
 
 aut intractatum scelerisve dolive fuisset, 
 quattuor a stabulis praestanti corpore tauros 
 avertit, totidem forma superante iuvencas. 
 atque hos, ne qua forent pedibus vestigia rectis, 
 Cauda in speluncam tractos versisque viarum 210 
 indiciis raptos saxo occultabat opaco. 
 quaerenti nulla ad speluncam signa ferebant. 
 interea, cum iam stabulis saturata moveret 
 Amphitryoniades armenta abitumque pararet, 
 discessu mugire boves atque omne querelis 215 
 
 impleri nemus et coUes clamore relinqui. 
 reddidit una boum vocem vastoque sub antro 
 mugiit et Caci spem custodita fefellit. 
 hie vero Alcidae furiis exarserat atro 
 felle dolor, rapit arma manu nodisque gravatum 
 robur, et aerii cursu petit ardua montis. 221 
 
 tum primum nostri Cacum videre timentem 
 turbatumque oculi; fugit ilicet ocior euro 
 speluncamque petit, pedibus timor addidit alas, 
 ut sese inclusit ruptisque immane catenis 225 
 
 deiecit saxum, ferro quod et arte paterna 
 pendebat, fultosque emuniit obice postis, 
 ecce furens animis aderat Tirynthius omnemque 
 accessum lustrans hue ora ferebat et illuc, 
 dentibus infrendens. ter totum fervidus ira 230 
 lustrat Aventini montem, ter saxea temptat 
 limina nequiquam, ter fessus valle resedit. 
 
 14 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 stabat acuta silex praecisis undique saxis 
 speluncae dorso insurgens, altissima visu, 
 dirarum nidis domus opportuna volucrum. 235 
 
 hanc, ut prona iugo laevum incumbebat ad amnem, 
 dexter in adversum nitens concussit et imis 
 avulsam solvit radicibus, inde repente 
 impulit ; impulsu quo maximus intonat aether, 
 dissultant ripae refluitque exterritus amnis. 240 
 
 at specus et Caci detecta apparuit ingens 
 regia, et umbrosae penitus patuere cavernae, 
 non secus ac si qua penitus vi terra dehiscens 
 infernas reseret sedes et regna recludat 
 pallida, dis invisa, superque immane barathrum 
 cernatur, trepident immisso lumine Manes. 246 
 ergo insperata deprensum luce repente 
 inclusumque cavo saxo atque insueta rudentem 
 desuper Alcides telis premit, omniaque arma 
 advocat et ramis vastisque molaribus instat. 250 
 iUe autem, neque enim fuga iam super ulla pericli, 
 faucibus ingentem fumum (mirabile dictu) 
 evomit involvitque domum caligine caeca 
 prospectum eripiens oculis, glomeratque sub antro 
 fumiferam noctem commixtis igne tenebris. 255 
 non tulit Alcides animis, seque ipse per ignem 
 praecipiti iecit saltu, qua plurimus undam 
 fumus agit nebulaque ingens specus aestuat atra. 
 hie Cacum in tenebris incendia vana vomentem 
 corripit in nodum complexus, et angit inhaerens 
 elisos oculos et siccum sanguine guttur. 261 
 
 panditur extemplo foribus domus atra revulsis 
 abstractaeque boves abiurataeque rapinae 
 
 15 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 caelo ostenduntur, pedibusque informe cadaver 
 protrahitur. nequeunt expleri corda tuendo 265 
 terribilis oculos, vultum villosaque saetis 
 pectora semiferi atque exstinctos faucibus ignis, 
 ex illo celebratus honos laetique minores 
 servavere diem, primusque Potitius auctor 
 et domus Herculei custos Pinaria sacri. 270 
 
 hanc aram luco statuit, quae maxima semper 
 dicetur nobis et erit quae maxima semper, 
 quare agite, o iuvenes, tantarum in munere laudum 
 cingite fronde comas et pocula porgite dextris, 
 communemque vocate deum et date vina volentes.' 
 dixerat, Herculea bicolor cum populus umbra 276 
 velavitque comas foliisque innexa pependit, 
 et sacer implevit dextram scyphus. ocius omnes 
 in mensam laeti libant divosque precantur. 
 
 Devexo interea propior fit Vesper Olympo. 280 
 iamque sacerdotes primusque Potitius ibant 
 pellibus in morem cincti, flammasque ferebant. 
 instaurant epulas et mensae grata secundae 
 dona ferunt cumulantque oneratis lancibus aras. 
 turn Salii ad cantus incensa altaria circum 285 
 
 populeis adsunt evincti tempora ramis, 
 hie iuvenum chorus, ille senum, qui carmine laudes 
 Herculeas et facta ferunt : ut prima novercae 
 monstra manu geminosque premens eUserit anguis, 
 ut bello egregias idem disiecerit urbes, 290 
 
 Troiamque Oechaliamque, ut duros mille labores 
 rege sub Eurystheo fatis lunonis iniquae 
 pertulerit. ' tu nubigenas, invicte, bimembris, 
 Hylaeumque Pholumque, manu, tu Cresia mactas 
 
 16 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 prodigia et vastum Nemeae sub rupe leonem. 295 
 te Stygii tremuere lacus, te ianitor Orci 
 ossa super recubans antro semesa cruento; 
 nee te ullae facies, non terruit ipse Typhoeus 
 arduus arma tenens; non te rationis egentem 
 Lernaeus turba capitum circumstetit anguis. 300 
 salve, vera lovis proles, decus addite divis, 
 et nos et tua dexter adi pede sacra secundc' 
 talia carminibus celebrant; super omnia Caci 
 speluncam adiciunt spirantemque ignibus ipsum. 
 consonat omne nemus strepitu coUesque resultant. 
 
 Exim se cuncti divinis rebus ad urbem 306 
 
 perfectis referunt. ibat rex obsitus aevo, 
 et comitem Aenean iuxta natumque tenebat 
 ingrediens varioque viam sermone levabat. 
 miratur facilisque oculos fert omnia circum 310 
 Aeneas, capitiu'que locis et singula laetus 
 exquiritque auditque virum monimenta priorum. 
 tum rex Euandrus Romanae conditor arcis: 
 ' haec nemora indigenae Fauni Nymphaeque tene- 
 
 bant 
 gensque virum truncis et duro robore nata, 315 
 
 quis neque mos neque cultus erat, nee iungere 
 
 tauros 
 aut componere opes norant aut parcere parte, 
 sed rami atque asper victu venatus alebat. 
 primus ab aetherio venit Saturnus Olympo 
 arma lovis fugiens et regnis exsul ademptis. 320 
 is genus indocile ac dispersum montibus altis 
 composuit legesque dedit, Latiumque vocari 
 maluit, his quoniam latuisset tutus in oris. 
 
 17 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 aurea quae perhibent illo sub rege fuere 
 saecula : sic placida populos in pace regebat, 325 
 
 deterior donee paulatim ac decolor aetas 
 et belli rabies et amor successit habendi. 
 turn manus Ausonia et gentes venere Sicanae, 
 saepius et nomen posuit Saturnia tellus; 
 turn reges asperque immani corpore Thybris, 330 
 a quo post Itali fluvium cognomine Thybrim 
 diximus; amisit verum vetus Albula nomen. 
 me pulsum patria pelagique extrema sequentem 
 Fortuna omnipotens et ineluctabile fatum 
 his posuere locis, matrisque egere tremenda 335 
 Carmentis Nymphae monita et deus auctor Apollo.' 
 Vix ea dicta, dehinc progressus monstrat et aram 
 et Carmentalem Romani nomine portam 
 quam memorant, Nymphae priscum Carmentis 
 
 honorem, 
 vatis fatidicae, cecinit quae prima futuros 340 
 
 Aeneadas magnos et nobile Pallanteum. 
 hinc lucum ingentem, quem Romulus acer asylum 
 rettulit, et gelida monstrat sub rupe Lupercal 
 Parrhasio dictum Panos de more Lycaei. 
 nee non et sacri monstrat nemus Argileti 345 
 
 testaturque locum et letum docet hospitis Argi. 
 hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit 
 aurea nunc, olim silvestribus horrida dumis. 
 iam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestis 
 dira loci, iam tum silvam saxumque tremebant. 350 
 ' hoc nemus, hunc ' inquit ' frondoso vertice collem 
 (quis deus incertum est) habitat deus; Arcades 
 ipsum 
 
 18 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 credunt se vidisse lovem, cum saepe nigrantem 
 aegida concuteret dextra nimbosque cieret. 
 haec duo praeterea disiectis oppida muris, 355 
 
 reliquias veterumque vides monimenta virorum. 
 hanc lanus pater, hanc Saturnus condidit arcem; 
 laniculum huic, illi fuerat Saturnia nomen.' 
 talibus inter se dictis ad tecta subibant 
 pauperis Euandri, passimque armenta videbant 
 Romanoque foro et lautis mugire Carinis. 361 
 
 ut ventum ad sedes, ' haec ' inquit ' limina victor 
 Alcides subiit, haec ilium regia cepit. 
 aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignum 
 finge dec, rebusque veni non asper egenis.' 365 
 
 dixit, et angusti subter fastigia tecti 
 ingentem Aenean duxit stratisque locavit 
 effultum f oliis et peUe Libystidis ursae : 
 nox ruit et fuscis tellurem amplectitur alls. 
 
 At Venus haud animo nequiquam exterrita mater 
 Laurentumque minis et duro mota tumultu 371 
 Volcanum adloquitur, thalamoque haec coniugis 
 
 aureo 
 incipit et dictis divinum aspirat amorem: 
 ' dum beUo Argolici vastabant Pergama reges 
 debita casurasque inimicis ignibus arces, 375 
 
 non ullum auxilium miseris, non arma rogavi 
 artis opisque tuae, nee te, carissime coniunx, 
 incassumve tuos volui exercere labores, 
 quamvis et Priami deberem plurima natis, 
 et durum Aeneae flevissem saepe laborem. , 380 
 nunc lovis imperiis Rutulorum constitit oris : 
 ergo eadem supplex venio et sanctum mihi numen 
 
 19 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 arma rogo, genetrix nato. te filia Nerei, 
 te potuit lacrimis Tithonia flectere coniunx. 
 aspice qui coeant populi, quae moenia clausis 385 
 ferrum acuant portis in me excidiumque meorum.' 
 dixerat et niveis hinc atque hinc diva lacertis 
 cunctantem amplexu molli fovet. ille repente 
 accepit solitam flammam, notusque medullas 
 intravit calor et labefacta per ossa cucurrit, 390 
 non secus atque olim tonitru cum rupta corusco 
 ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos. 
 sensit laeta dolis et formae conscia coniunx. 
 tum pater aeterno fatur devinctus amore: 
 ' quid causas petis ex alto ? fiducia cessit 395 
 
 quo tibi, diva, mei ? similis si cura fuisset, 
 tum quoque fas nobis Teucros armare fuisset; 
 nee pater omnipotens Troiam nee fata vetabant 
 stare decemque alios Priamum superesse per annos. 
 et nunc, si bellare paras atque haec tibi mens est, 
 quidquid in arte mea possum promittere curae, 401 
 quod fieri ferro liquidove potest electro, 
 quantum ignes animaeque valent, absiste precando 
 viribus indubitare tuis.' ea verba locutus 
 optatos dedit amplexus placidumque petivit 405 
 coniugis infusus gremio per membra soporem. 
 
 Inde ubi prima quies medio iam noctis abactae 
 curricxilo expulerat somnum, cum femina primum, 
 cui tolerare colo vitam tenuique Minerva 
 impositum, cinerem et sopitos suscitat ignis 410 
 noctem addens operi, famulasque ad lumina longo 
 exercet penso, castum ut servare cubile 
 coniugis et possit parvos educere natos: 
 
 20 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 haud secus ignipotens nee tempore segnior illo 
 mollibus e stratis opera ad fabrilia surgit. 415 
 
 insula Sicanium iuxta latus Aeoliamque 
 erigitur Liparen fumantibus ardua saxis, 
 quam subter specus et Cyclopum exesa caminis 
 antra Aetnaea tonant, validique incudibus ictus 
 auditi referunt gemitus, striduntque cavernis 420 
 stricturae Chalybum et fornacibus ignis anhelat, 
 Volcani domus et Volcania nomine tellus. 
 hoc tunc ignipotens caelo descendit ab alto. 
 
 Ferrum exercebant vasto Cyclopes in antro, 
 Brontesque Steropesque et nudus membra Pyra- 
 cmon. 425 
 
 his inf ormatum manibus iam parte polita 
 fulmen erat, toto genitor quae plurima caelo 
 deicit in terras, pars imperfecta manebat. 
 tris imbris torti radios, tris nubis aquosae 
 addiderant, rutuli tris ignis et alitis Austri. 430 
 
 fulgores nunc terrificos sonitumque metumque 
 miscebant operi flammisque sequacibus iras. 
 parte alia Marti currumque rotasque volucris 
 instabant, quibus ille viros, quibus excitat urbes; 
 aegidaque horriferam, turbatae Palladis arma, 435 
 certatim squamis serpentum auroque polibant 
 conexosque anguis ipsamque in pectore divae 
 Gorgona desecto vertentem lumina collo. 
 ' tollite cuncta ' inquit ' coeptosque auferte labores, 
 Aetnaei Cyclopes, et hue advertite mentem: 440 
 arma acri facienda viro. nunc viribus usus, 
 nunc manibus rapidis, omni nunc arte magistra. 
 praecipitate moras.' nee plura effatus, at illi 
 
 21 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 ocius incubuere omnes pariterque laborem 
 
 sortiti. fluit aes rivis aurique metallum 445 
 
 vulnificusque chalybs vasta fornace liquescit. 
 
 ingentem clipeum informant, unum omnia contra 
 
 tela Latinorum, septenosque orbibus orbis 
 
 impediunt. alii ventosis foUibus auras 
 
 accipiunt redduntque, alii stridentia tingunt 450 
 
 aera lacu. gemit impositis incudibus antrum. 
 
 illi inter sese multa vi bracchia toUunt 
 
 in numerum versantque tenaci forcipe massam. 
 
 Haec pater Aeoliis properat dum Lemnius oris, 
 Euandrum ex humili tecto lux suscitat alma 455 
 et matutini volucrum sub culmine cantus. 
 consurgit senior tunicaque inducitur artus 
 et Tyrrhena pedum circumdat vincula plantis. 
 tum lateri atque umeris Tegeaeum subligat ensem 
 demissa ab laeva pantherae terga retorquens. 460 
 nee non et gemini custodes limine ab alto 
 praecedunt gressumque canes comitantur erilem. 
 hospitis Aeneae sedem et secreta petebat 
 sermonum memor et promissi muneris heros. 
 nee minus Aeneas se matutinus agebat. 465 
 
 filius huic Pallas, illi comes ibat Achates, 
 congressi iungunt dextras mediisque residunt 
 aedibus et licito tandem sermone fruuntur. 
 rex prior haec : 
 
 ' maxime Teucrorum ductor, quo sospite numquam 
 res equidem Troiae victas aut regna fatebor, 471 
 nobis ad belli auxilium pro nomine tanto 
 exiguae vires; hinc Tusco claudimur amni, 
 hinc Rutulus premit et murum circumsonat armis. 
 
 22 
 
^ Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 sed tibi ego ingentis populos opulentaque regnis 475 
 iungere castra paro, quam fors inopina salutem 
 ostentat. fatis hue te poscentibus adfers. 
 baud procul bine saxo incolitur fundata vetusto 
 ■urbis Agyllinae sedes, ubi Lydia quondam 
 gens, bello praeclara, iugis insedit Etruscis. 480 
 banc multos florentem annos rex deinde superbo 
 imperio et saevis tenuit Mezentius armis. 
 quid memorem infandas caedes, quid facta tyranni 
 effera ? di capiti ipsius generique reservent ! 
 morta quin etiam iungebat corpora vivis 485 
 
 componens manibusque manus atque oribus ora, 
 tormenti genus, et sanie taboque fluentis 
 complexu in misero longa sic morte necabat. 
 at fessi tandem cives infanda furentem 
 armati circumsistunt ipsumque domumque, 490 
 obtruncant socios, ignem ad fastigia iactant. 
 ille inter caedem Rutulorum elapsus in agros 
 confugere et Turni defendier hospitis armis. 
 ergo omnis furiis surrexit Etruria iustis, 494 
 
 regem ad supplicium praesenti Marte reposcunt. 
 his ego te, Aenea, ductorem milibus addam. 
 toto namque fremunt condensae Htore puppes 
 signaque ferre iubent, retinet longaevus haruspex 
 fata canens: ' o Maeoniae delecta inventus, 
 fios veterum virtusque virum, quos iustus in hostem 
 fert dolor et merita accendit Mezentius ira, 501 
 nulli fas Italo tantam subiungere gentem: 
 externos optate duces.' tum Etrusca resedit 
 hoc acies campo monitis exterrita divum. 
 ipse oratores ad me regnique coronam 505 
 
 23 c 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 cum sceptro misit mandatque insignia Tarcho, 
 succedam castris Tyrrhenaque regna capessam. 
 sed mihi tarda gelu saeclisque effeta senectus 
 invidet imperium seraeque ad fortia vires. 
 natum exhortarer, ni mixtus matre Sabella 510 
 
 hinc partem patriae traheret. tu, cuius et annis 
 at generi fata indulgent, quem numina poscunt, 
 ingredere, o Teucrum atque Italum fortissime 
 
 ductor. 
 hunc tibi praeterea, spes et solacia nostri, 
 Pallanta adiungam; sub te tolerare magistro 515 
 militiam et grave Martis opus, tua cernere facta 
 adsuescat, primis et te miretur ab annis. 
 Arcadas huic equites bis centum, robora pubis 
 lecta dabo, totidemque suo tibi munere Pallas.' 
 
 Vix ea fatus erat, defixique ora tenebant 520 
 
 Aeneas Anchisiades et fidus Achates, 
 multaque dura suo tristi cum corde putabant, 
 ni signum caelo Cytherea dedisset aperto. 
 namque improvise vibratus ab aethere fulgor 
 cum sonitu venit et ruere omnia visa repente, 525 
 Tyrrhenusque tubae mugire per aethera clangor, 
 suspiciunt, iterum atque iterum fragor increpat 
 
 ingens. 
 arma inter nubem caeli in regione serena 
 per sudum rutilare vident et pulsa tonare. 
 obstipuere animis alii, sed Troius heros 530 
 
 agnovit sonitum et divae promissa parentis, 
 tum memorat : ' ne vero, hospes, ne quaere prof ecto 
 quem casum portenta ferant: ego poscor. Olympo 
 hoc signum cecinit missuram diva creatrix, 
 
 24 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 si bellum ingrueret, Volcaniaque arma per auras 
 laturam auxilio. 536 
 
 heu quantae miseris caedes Laurentibus instant ! 
 quas poenas mihi, Turne, dabis ! quam multa sub 
 
 undas 
 scuta virum galeasque et fortia corpora volves, 
 Thybri pater ! poscant acies et foedera rumpant.' 
 
 Haec ubi dicta dedit, solio se tollit ab alto 541 
 et primum Herculeis sopitas ignibus aras 
 excitat, hesternumque larem parvosque penatis 
 laetus adit; mactat lectas de more bidentis 
 Euandrus pariter, pariter Troiana iuventus. 545 
 post bine ad navis graditur sociosque revisit, 
 quorum de numero qm sese in bella sequantur 
 praestantis virtute legit; pars cetera prona 
 fertur aqua segnisque secundo defluit amni, 
 nuntia ventura Ascanio rerumque patrisque. 550 
 dantiur equi Teucris Tyrrhena petentibus arva; 
 ducunt exsortem Aeneae, quem fulva leonis 
 pellis obit totum praefulgens unguibus aureis. 
 
 Fama volat parvam subito vulgata per urbem 
 ocius ire equites Tyrrheni ad limina regis. 555 
 
 vota metu duplicant matres, propiusque periclo 
 it timor et maior Martis iam apparet imago, 
 tum pater Euandrus dextram complexus euntis 
 haeret inexpletus lacrimans ac talia f atm: : 
 ' o mihi praeteritos referat si luppiter annos, 560 
 qualis eram cum primam aciem Praeneste sub ipsa 
 stravi scutorumque incendi victor acervos 
 et regem hac Erulum dextra sub Tartara misi, 
 nascenti cui tris animas Feronia mater 564 
 
 25 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 (horrendum dictu) dederat, terna arma movenda 
 (ter leto sternendus erat ; cui turn tamen omnis 
 abstulit haec animas dextra et totidem exuit armis) : 
 non ego nunc dulci amplexu divellerer usquam, 
 nate, tuo, neque finitimo Mezentius umquam 
 huic capiti insultans tot ferro saeva dedisset 570 
 funera, tam multis viduasset civibus urbem. 
 at vos, o superi, et divum tu maxima rector 
 luppiter, Arcadii, quaeso, miserescite regis 
 et patrias audite preces : si numina vestra 
 incolumem Pallanta mihi, si fata reservant, 575 
 si visurus eum vivo et venturus in unum : 
 vitam oro, patior quemvis durare laborem. 
 sin aliquem infandum casum, Fortuna, minaris, 
 nunc, nunc liceat crudelem abrumpere vitam, 
 dum curae ambiguae, dum spes incerta futuri, 580 
 dum te, care puer, mea sola et sera voluptas, 
 complexu teneo, gravior neu nuntius auris 
 vulneret.' haec genitor digressu dicta supremo 
 fundebat: famuli conlapsum in tecta ferebant. 
 
 lamque adeo exierat portis equitatus apertis 585 
 Aeneas inter primos et fidus Achates, 
 inde alii Troiae proceres, ipse agmine Pallas 
 in medio chlamyde et pictis conspectus in armis, 
 qualis ubi Oceani perfusus Lucifer unda, 
 quem Venus ante alios astrorum diligit ignis, 590 
 extulit OS sacrum caelo tenebrasque resolvit. 
 stant pavidae in muris matres oculisque sequuntur 
 pulveream nubem et fulgentis aere catervas. 
 oUi per dumos, qua proxima meta viarum, 
 armati tendunt; it clamor, et agmine facto 595 
 
 26 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 quadripedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula 
 
 campum. 
 est ingens gelidum lucus prope Caeritis amnem, 
 religione patrum late sacer ; undique colles 
 inclusere cavi et nigra nemus abiete cingunt. 
 Silvano fama est veteres sacrasse Pelasgos, 600 
 arvorum pecorisque deo, lucumque diemque, 
 qui primi finis aliquando habuere Latinos. 
 baud procul hinc Tarcbo et Tyrrheni tuta tenebant 
 castra locis, celsoque omnis de colle videri 
 iam poterat legio et latis tendebat in arvis. 605 
 hue pater Aeneas et bello lecta iuventus 
 succedunt, fessique et equos et corpora curant. 
 At Venus aetherios inter dea Candida nimbos 
 dona f erens aderat ; natumque in valle reducta 
 ut proctd egelido secretum flumine vidit, 610 
 
 talibus adfata est dictis seque obtulit ultro: 
 ' en perfecta mei promissa coniugis arte 
 munera: ne mox aut Laurentis, nate, superbos 
 aut acrem dubites in proelia poscere Turnum.' 
 dixit, et amplexus nati Cytherea petivit, 615 
 
 arma sub adversa posuit radiantia quercu. 
 ille deae donis et tanto laetus honore 
 expleri nequit atque oculos per singula volvit, 
 miraturque interque manus et bracchia versat 
 terribilem cristis galeam flammasque vomentem, 
 fatiferumque ensem, loricam ex aere rigentem, 621 
 sanguineam, ingentem, qualis cum caerula nubes 
 solis inardescit radiis longeque refulget; 
 turn levis ocreas electro auroque recocto, 
 hastamque et clipei non enarrabile textum. 625 
 
 27 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 illic res Italas Romanorumque triumphos 
 haud vatum ignarus venturique inscius aevi 
 fecerat ignipotens, illic genus omne futurae 
 stirpis ab Ascanio pugnataque in ordine bella. 
 fecerat et viridi fetam Mavortis in antro 630 
 
 procubuisse lupam, geminos huic ubera circum 
 ludere pendentis pueros et lambere matrem 
 impavidos, illam tereti cervice reflexa 
 mulcere alternos et corpora fingere lingua, 
 nee procul hinc Romam et raptas sine more Sabinas 
 consessu caveae, magnis Circensibus actis, 636 
 
 addiderat, subitoque novum consurgere bellum 
 Romulidis Tatioque seni Curibusque severis. 
 post idem inter se posito certamine reges 
 armati lovis ante aram paterasque tenentes 640 
 stabant et caesa iungebant foedera porca. 
 haud procul inde citae Mettum in diversa quadrigae 
 distulerant (at tu dictis, Albane, maneres !), 
 raptabatque viri mendacis viscera Tullus 
 per silvam, et sparsi rorabant sanguine vepres. 645 
 nee non Tarquinium eiectum Porsenna iubebat 
 accipere ingentique urbem obsidione premebat : 
 Aeneadae in ferrum pro libertate ruebant. 
 illirai indignanti similem similemque minanti 
 aspiceres, pontem auderat quia vellere Codes 650 
 et fluvium vinclis innaret Cloelia ruptis. 
 in summo custos Tarpeiae Manlius arcis 
 stabat pro templo et Capitolia celsa tenebat, 
 Romuleoque recens horrebat regia culmo. 
 atque hie auratis volitans argenteus anser 655 
 
 porticibus Gallos in limine adesse canebat ; 
 
 28 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Galli per dumos aderant arcemque tenebant 
 defensi tenebris et dono noctis opacae: 
 aurea caesaries ollis atque aurea vestis, 
 virgatis lucent sagulis, turn lactea colla 660 
 
 auro innectuntur, duo quisque Alpina coruscant 
 gaesa manu, scutis protect! corpora longis. 
 hie exsultantis Salios nudosque Lupercos 
 lanigerosque apices et lapsa ancilia caelo 
 extuderat, castae ducebant sacra per urbem 665 
 pilentis matres in mollibus. hinc procul addit 
 Tartareas etiam sedes, alta ostia Ditis, 
 et scelerum poenas, et te, Catilina, minaci 
 pendentem scopulo Furiarumque ora tremeptem, 
 secretosque pios, his dantem im-a Catonem. 670 
 haec inter tumidi late maris ibat imago 
 aiurea, sed fluctu spumabant caerula cano, 
 et circum argento clari delphines in orbem 
 aequora verrebant caudis aestumque secabant. 
 in medio classis aeratas, Actia bella, 675 
 
 cernere erat, totumque instructo Marte videres 
 fervere Leucaten auroque effulgere fluctus. 
 hinc augustus agens Italos in proelia Caesar 
 cum patribus populoque, penatibus et magnis dis, 
 stans celsa in puppi, geminas cui tempora flammas 
 laeta vomunt patriumque aperitur vertice sidus. 681 
 parte alia ventis et dis Agrippa secundis 
 arduus agmen agens : cui, belli insigne superbum, 
 tempora navali fulgent rostrata corona, 
 hinc ope barbarica variisque Antonius armis, 685 
 victor ab Aurorae populis et litore rubro, 
 Aegyptum virisqup Orientis et ultima secum 
 
 29 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Bactra vehit, sequiturque (nefas) Aegyptia coniunx. 
 una omnes ruere ac totum spumare reductis 
 convulsum remis rostrisque tridentibus aequor. 690 
 alta petunt ; pelago credas innare revulsas 
 Cycladas aut mentis concurrere montibus altos, 
 tanta mole viri turritis puppibus instant, 
 stuppea flamma manu telisque volatile ferrum 
 spargitur, arva nova Neptunia caede rubescunt. 
 regina in mediis patrio vocat agmina sistro, 696 
 
 necdum etiam geminos a tergo respicit anguis. 
 omnigenumque deum monstra et latrator Anubis 
 contra Neptunum et Venerem contraque Minervam 
 tela tenent. saevit medio in certamine Mavors 700 
 caelatus ferro, tristesque ex aethere Dirae, 
 et scissa gaudens vadit Discordia palla, 
 quam cum sanguineo sequitur Bellona flagello. 
 Actius haec cernens arcum intendebat Apollo 
 desuper : omnis eo terrore Aegyptus et Indi, 705 
 
 omnis Arabs, omnes vertebant terga Sabaei. 
 ipsa videbatur ventis regina vocatis 
 vela dare et laxos iam iamque immittere funis, 
 illam inter caedes pallentem morte futura 
 fecerat ignipotens undis et lapyge ferri, 710 
 
 contra autem magno maerentem corpore Nilum 
 pandentemque sinus et tota veste vocantem 
 caeruleum in gremium latebrosaque flumina victos. 
 at Caesar, triplici invectus Romana triumpho 
 moenia, dis Italis votum immortale sacrabat, 715 
 maxima ter centum totam delubra per urbem. 
 laetitia ludisque viae plausuque fremebant ; 
 omnibus in templis matrum chorus, omnibus arae; 
 
 30 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 ante aras terrain caesi stravere iuvenci. 
 ipse sedens niveo candentis limine Phoebi 720 
 
 dona recognoscit populorum aptatque superbis 
 postibus; incedunt victae longo ordine gentes, 
 quam variae Unguis, habitu tarn vestis et armis. 
 hie Nomadum genus et discinctos Mulciber Afros, 
 hie Lelegas Ccirasque sagittiferosque Gelonos 725 
 finxerat; Euphrates ibat iam mollior undis, 
 extremique hominum Morini, Rhenusque bicornis, 
 indomitique Dahae, et pontem indignatus Araxes. 
 
 Talia per clipeum Volcani, dona parentis, 
 miratur rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet 730 
 
 attollens umero famamque et fata nepotum. 
 
 31 
 
Lines 1-5: 
 
 " Ut belli signum Laurent! Turnus ab arce 
 extulit at rauco strepuerunt cornua cantu, 
 utque acris concussit equos utque impulit arma, 
 extemplo turbati animi, simul omne tumultu 
 coniurat trepido Latium saevitque iuventus 
 efiera." 
 
 The third of these lines has been the subject of 
 much discussion. Dr. Henry says: "The entire 
 force and excellence of the passage perishes if we 
 understand, with Servius,^ the equos and arma of 
 Turnus' own horses and arms." Henry puts us on 
 the right track, but his language is, as often, too 
 strong and dogmatic. If he means that the picture 
 in Virgil's mind is not that of an ordinary human 
 Turnus whipping his steeds and clashing his spear 
 and shield, he is right; the tumultus is much too 
 great and general to be the result of such a Turnus 
 getting into his chariot and making a noise. But he 
 evidently means more ; and I feel sure that a Roman 
 could not have understood the words " concussit 
 equos " and " impulit arma " in an abstract sense 
 
 ' Servius' notion that there is an allusion to the stirring 
 of the ancilia by the Consul before a war (Mars vigila) 
 seems to me unnecessary. 
 
 32 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 as meaning simply war and the " commotion of 
 men, arms, and horses." Equi and arma were 
 definite things for the Roman mind and must be so 
 for ours. 
 
 The passages cited by Dr. Henry from Ovid, 
 Lucan, and Statins, seem to me of Uttle force, and 
 I take this opportunity of expressing my feeling 
 that these quotations from later poets, while often 
 interesting in themselves, should always be accepted 
 with caution in explaining Virgil. A Virgilian 
 phrase loses much of its living force when taken up 
 and imitated in the Silver Age. The process is the 
 exact opposite of the relation of Virgil and Ennius; 
 Virgil increases the lustre of Ennius, Lucan and the 
 rest diminish the lustre of Virgil, or even obscure 
 his meaning. It is far better to make Virgil his 
 own interpreter, as, indeed, Henry usually does; 
 but here he has forgotten a really enlightening 
 passage in the twelfth book. I must quote this 
 passage in full; it seems to me to show exactly how 
 Virgil thought of Turnus in these later books: 
 
 " Turnus ut Aenean cedentem ex agmine vidit 
 turbatosque duces, subita spe fervidus ardet; 
 poscit equos atque arma simul, saltuque superbus 
 emicat in currum at manibus molitur habenas. 
 multa virum volitans dat fortia corpora leto, 
 seminecis volvit multos aut agmina curru 
 proterit aut raptas fugientibus ingerit hastas. 
 qualis apud gelidi cum flumina concitus Hebri 
 sanguineus Mavors clipeo increpat atque furentis 
 bella movens immittit equos, illi aequore aperto 
 ante Notos Zephyrumque volant, gemit ultima pulsu 
 
 33 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Thraca pedum circumque atrae Formidinis ora 
 Irae Insidiaeque, dei comitatus, aguntur; 
 talis equos alacer media inter proelia Turnus 
 fumantis sudore quatit, miserabile caesis 
 hostibus insultans; spargit rapida ungula rores 
 sanguineos mixtaque cruor calcatur harena." 
 
 (xii. 323-340.) 
 
 Let US remember that we left Turnus at the very 
 end of the seventh book, moving in the region of 
 the supernatural. His helmet was a supernatural 
 one; it carried a Chimaera that breathed out flame 
 like Etna, flame that grew fiercer and more grisly 
 as the wearer plunged deeper into the fight.^ So, 
 too, in the passage just quoted he is hke the god of 
 war himself, and the urging of the horses and the 
 clashing of arms are idealised by the comparison. 
 I beheve that Virgil is thinking of him in the same 
 way in the passage we are considering. Turnus is 
 idealised; he is for the time at least a superman, 
 and his helmet, horses, and arms, are all idealised 
 too. 
 
 Turnus, we must remember, is descended from 
 an Italian deity, Pilumnus, and has a sister who is 
 divine; Juno addresses her as dea : " Extemplo 
 Turni sic est adfata sororem diva deam " (book xii. 
 138). In these later books the light in which the 
 characters are seen is not quite that of ordinary 
 human nature; in this Virgil follows Homer {e.g., 
 Iliad, xiii. 298 ff.). War seems to demand it, and 
 our own Poet has apparently felt the need: 
 
 1 " Gathering of the Clans," p. 82. 
 34 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 " O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend 
 The brightest heaven of invention, 
 A kingdom for a stage, princes to act. 
 And monarchs to behold the swelling scene. 
 Then should the warlike Harry, like himself. 
 Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels. 
 Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire, 
 Crouch for employment." 
 
 (Prologue to " Henry V.") 
 
 Line 12. — I postpone all discussion of Virgil's 
 use of the words fatum and fortuna till we come to 
 the last line of this book. 
 
 Lines 22 ff. : 
 
 " sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen aenis 
 sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine lunae 
 omnia pervolitat late loca, iamque sub auras 
 erigitur summique ferit laquearia tecti." 
 
 It is worth while to think this simile well over, 
 and compare it with its original in Apollonius Rho- 
 dius, iii. 756 ff. : 
 
 TTVKva. Se ot KpaStT] crrrfOktav evTOcrOev Wviev, 
 
 r/eXLOv COS Tis re So/iots evnrdXXeTat alyXrj, 
 
 vSaroi i^avioicra, t5 Stj veov ije XejSrjTi 
 
 »)« TTov kv yavXti Ke^vrai ' ij S' tvda /cat evOa 
 
 '■j>KeiT] (Trpo<fiaXiyyi TLvaxrcmai aLfro'Ovcra. 
 
 5s Se Kal kv (TTr)6e(TCTi Keap eAeAtfcro Kovprjs. 
 
 I note the following points. First, the flickering 
 light is compared by Apollonius to the palpitations 
 of the heart, by Virgil to the agitated wavering of 
 the mind; and anyone who has experienced both 
 
 35 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 these troubles will have little difficulty in deciding 
 which is the best comparison. In the inferior poet 
 the simile is to me almost unpleasant ; in Virgil it is 
 absolutely true and telling. Secondly, in spite of 
 the beauty of the Greek, the craft of words is 
 inferior in Apollonius; it is like Swinburne's verse 
 compared with Milton — too subtle and verbose. 
 Thirdly, what a world of difference is there, in its 
 appeal to humanity, between the woman of the 
 magic myth, and the leader of the hosts of Fate, 
 stiU for a moment hesitating ! He hardly ever hesi- 
 tates again; but at this moment the simile exactly 
 represents the fluctuations of an anxious mind in 
 solitude and at night, when you have no power to 
 control the flash of thought, to fix the mind on any 
 given point.^ Note that Aeneas is still up and 
 watching ; but at last he lies down to rest, and then 
 the river-god comes to him. 
 
 " Sole repercussum," the reading of all MSS., is 
 undoubtedly what Virgil wrote, and if German 
 editors like to blame him for it they are welcome 
 to do so; but when they propose to read repercusso 
 they only show their own want of VirgiUan feeling. 
 As Henry says, " It would not be Virgil's thought 
 or picture if there were not a difficulty somewhere 
 in the expression." I entirely agree with him that 
 " imagine lunae " is simply equivalent to " luna," 
 and answers to " sole " without any complication. 
 
 1 I find that what I have written about this simile is in 
 complete disagreement with the late Professor Tyrrell, 
 " Latin Poetry," pp. 141 ff. 
 
 36 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Lines 31 to 80. — I have explained my view of 
 these lines in an article in the Classical Review for 
 December, 1916, the leading points in which I here 
 reproduce. 
 
 I believe that Virgil had a more scientific idea of 
 the Tiber than we usually credit him with. I 
 believe that he had in his mind the whole basin 
 of the Tiber, and not only the main stream which 
 bears that name. This would be not unnatural in 
 a man who had passed his early years in the greatest 
 river-system in Italy, and not on the main stream 
 of the Padus, but on or near a powerful affluent. 
 In those days, too, he had read Lucretius, where he 
 found a rational account of a water-system not so 
 very far from the truth as we know it ; ^ an account 
 which neglected the vulgar idea of a river, and 
 touched on the physical relation of land and water 
 in a way that would be sure to attract an inquiring 
 mind hke Virgil's.^ Lucretius tries to answer the 
 question how the balance of water in a river-basin 
 
 1 Lucr., V. 261; cp. vi, 608 Lat. Virgil's interest in the 
 first of these passages is strongly suggested by his expres- 
 sion " caput urbibus " in line 65, formed on Lucretius' 
 " caput amnibus." 
 
 2 V. 264 : 
 
 " sad primum quicquid aquai 
 tollitur in summaque fit ut nil umor abundet, 
 partim quod validi verrentes aequora venti 
 diminuunt radiisque retexens aetherius sol, 
 partim quod subter per terras diditur omnes. 
 percolatur enim virus, retroque remanat 
 materies umoris, et ad caput amnibus omnis 
 convenit," etc. 
 
 37 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 is preserved; and the interesting point in his answer 
 is that the water gets back again from the sea to 
 the springs. Apparently he thought that it goes 
 back underground; .he had an idea of an under- 
 ground system of channels and reservoirs, which 
 dimly answers to what we know as the permeation 
 of rocks by rain-water and the formation of springs. 
 Such an underground system may have been 
 originally suggested to Greek inquirers by the dis- 
 appearance of streams in the limestone districts of 
 Greece. If one river had secret chambers within 
 the earth into which it could suddenly retire, why 
 not others ? What limit could there be of such 
 chambers ? Greek fancy seized on the idea, and 
 created the pretty myth of the identity of the 
 River Alpheius and the Sicilian Arethusa, and 
 others of the kind, of which Strabo has an elaborate 
 account and criticism in his sixth book (p. 271). 
 
 Now, Virgil knew well this idea of an underground 
 water-system, and has used it with great effect in 
 his fourth Georgic {363 ff.). Aristaeus is admitted 
 to its marvels in a miraculous way, and we, too, are 
 treated to a magnificent scene, the water-chambers 
 of the world: 
 
 " iamque domum mirans genetricis et umida regna 
 speluncisque lacus clauses lucosque sonantis 
 ibat, et ingenti motu stupefactus aquarum, 
 omnia sub magna labentia flumina terra 
 spectabat diversa locis, Phasimque Lycumque, 
 et caput unde altus primum se erumpit Enipeus, 
 unde pater Tiberinus et unde Aniena fluenta. ..." 
 
 38 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 In the eighth book this grand scene recurs to his 
 mind; Tiberinus (hne 66) vanishes into an under- 
 ground reservoir {lacus) ima petens : and then 
 Aeneas addresses him, not knowing where in all 
 his water-system he may be, from his many springs 
 to his mouth: 
 
 " quo te cunque lacus miserantem incommoda nostra 
 fonte tenet, quocunque solo pulcherrimus exis, 
 semper honore meo, semper celebrabere donis," etc. 
 
 All this water-system is his abode, his domus, as 
 in the fourth Georgic the umida regna were the 
 abode of Cyrene. His domus is the whole basin of 
 the Tiber; and I am convinced that this is the real 
 meaning of the word in line 65, which has given the 
 commentators so much trouble: " Hie mihi magna 
 domus, celsis caput urbibus, exit " (Here the great 
 water-system in which I dwell has its outlet to the 
 sea). We must not separate too sharply the deity 
 from the river; he was the river, and could quite well 
 speak of his watery habitation as having its door- 
 way at the spot where he appears to Aeneas. Look 
 again at hnes 74, 75: 
 
 " quo te cunque lacus miserantem incommoda nostra 
 fonte tenet, quocunque solo pulcherrimus exis." 
 
 Here in my view, exis^ has exactly the same 
 meaning as in 65: " Wherever a reservoir beneath 
 
 ^ Exire can, of course, be used of the mouth of a river ; 
 the Nile " in maris exit aquas " (Ov. " Amores," ii. 13, 
 10). It is used also of an overflow, as in the fine simile 
 in Aen. ii. 496. The river flows out at its source, or when 
 
 39 D 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 the earth holds a spring for thy supply: at what- 
 ever spot thou, now in the full beauty of a glorious 
 river, hast thy outlet to the sea, I will ever do thee 
 honour and give thee sacrificial offerings." 
 
 But there is yet a difficulty. How can the basin 
 of the Tiber be described as " celsis caput urbibus "? 
 These three words, in my view, are in apposition to 
 domus and amplify it, as both Virgilian rhythm and 
 manner demand. I hope we may also agree that 
 there is no direct allusion here to Rome, of which 
 there is as yet no thought; the river-god's prophecy 
 does not proceed beyond the foundation of Alba. 
 " Magna domus " cannot be at the same time the 
 house of the river-god and the future city of Rome. 
 And yet, if we take domus as the water-system 
 which is at the same time the god and the god's 
 habitation, as the sky was at the same time Jupiter 
 and Jupiter's dwelling, it is at first sight hard to 
 see how it can also be thought of as celsis caput 
 urbibus. 
 
 It is hardly enough to recall the relation of the 
 cities of this region to its many streams; yet it is 
 helpful to do so. The word celsis reminds us of the 
 lines in the second Georgic,i lines which their poet 
 must often have dwelt on with satisfaction: 
 
 it floods, or when it leaves its channel for the sea. Ostium 
 is the place of outlet, the doorway of the house of the river- 
 deity; exilus, like exire, is used for the actual debouchment, 
 as in Festus (p. 214, Lindsay): " Ostiam;[urbem ad exitum 
 Tiberis in mare fluentis." 
 1 Georg., ii. 155 ff. 
 
 40 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 " adde tot egregias urbes operumque laborem, 
 tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis, 
 fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros." 
 
 It is true enough that these cities found their help 
 and protection in the rivers; but to explain the 
 word caput in line 65 we must range a little further. 
 
 What did caput mean for a Roman ? Certainly 
 not mainly the human or any other head. It had 
 a wide and varied meaning, and perhaps the best 
 way to see this at a glance is to consider what is 
 meant by capite deminutus} If a free man " loses 
 his head," he loses his life and power as a citizen; 
 and this expression may well have been centuries 
 older than the city-state of Rome. These two 
 words, " life " and " power," do indeed very well 
 express the Roman idea of caput. If you wanted to 
 damage a man by cursing him, you directed your 
 curses at his head, as the citadel of his life and 
 power. " Caput belli " (Liv. xxvi. 7) is the city 
 that gives life and power to a confederacy at war. 
 In Lucretius " caput amnibus " is the head or 
 power of water, which, continually renewed within 
 or beneath the earth, gives life and power to the 
 water-system of the world.^ So we, too, speak of a 
 head of water; and Mr. Belloc has lately taken to 
 writing of a " head of shell " — i.e., a reservoir giving 
 an army its Ufe and power. PUny uses the word 
 of the Pontus, noting the opinion of some geo- 
 
 ' Festus, p. 61, Lindsay. 
 
 2 A friend reminds nae ol Lucr. v. 293, where " lucis 
 caput " is a spring or fount of light. 
 
 41 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 graphers that it acts as a reservoir for the whole 
 Mediterranean (Nat. Hist., iv. 93). 
 
 Now, if Virgil had been in the habit of writing as 
 the ordinary human being would expect him to, he 
 would no doubt have written "caput amnibus"; 
 even Bentley, though no ordinary human being, 
 plagued by the difficulty of the line, proposed 
 " Tuscis caput amnibus " as the true reading. But 
 Virgil was not wont to write as one would expect 
 him to, and here he wished to do something better 
 than state a geographical fact. The Italy that he 
 had in his mind was an Italy enno bled by the wor ks 
 ^of^nan; helsTtonfeing^ thoseegregiae urbes as 
 existing at the time of Aeneas, before Rome was; 
 and by one of his bold strokes of language he lifts 
 the meaning out of the region of mere geography 
 into the higher poetical plane of human life and 
 achievement. The great water palace of the river- 
 god is what gives life and power to the cities; for 
 if the Tiber and its tributaries had not been there, 
 the cities would be wanting too. 
 
 Lines 68 ff. : 
 
 " Surgit et aetherii spectans orientia Solis 
 lumina, rite cavis undam de flumine palmis 
 sustinet ac talis effundit ad aethera voces:" 
 
 Aeneas takes running or living water from the 
 river in the palms of his hands, and lifts them to- 
 wards heaven, before praying to the Nymphs and 
 the Tiber. It is possible that the water is here 
 the material of sacrifice, for prayer without sacri- 
 
 42 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 fice was almost unknown in the Roman religion,^ 
 and the objects of prayer are here deities of water. 
 It does not seem possible, however, to explain the 
 ritual with certainty ; but we may compare the pretty 
 story of Claudia, the suspected vestal virgin, who 
 boldly helped to haul the ship ashore that was bring- 
 ing Cybele to Rome. She rushed forward, filled the 
 palms of her hands with water, thrice dashed it 
 about her head and then thrice raised her hands in 
 prayer (cp. Aen. ix. 22 ff.). Then she prayed to 
 the goddess, and no harm came to her. The learned 
 Dr. Eitrem quotes this story from Ovid in his work 
 on " Opferritus und Voropfer der Griechen und 
 Romer," but I fear that not much is gained by it 
 in explaining Virgil's account.^ 
 
 Lines 81 ff. : 
 
 " Ecce autem subitum atque oculis mirabile monstrum, 
 Candida per silvas cum fetu concolor albo 
 procubuit viridique in litore conspicitur sus : 
 quam pius Aeneas, tibi enim, tibi maxima luno, 
 mactat sacra ferens et cum grege sistit ad aram." 
 
 The pecuhar stress here laid on the duty of 
 prayer to Juno is fully explained by book iii. 
 435/.: 
 
 1 " Religious Experience of the Roman People," p. 181. 
 
 2 P. 90. Ov., Fasti, iv. 315. I see, however, that on 
 p. Ill he says that Virgil's ritual has nothing to do with 
 Ovid's; he thinks that in the former water was the thing 
 offered, and compares Serv., Eel. vii. 21 (sacrifice to the 
 Camenae of water and milk). So, perhaps, in Aen. ix. 22. 
 
 43 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 " unum illud tibi, nate dea, proque omnibus unum 
 praedicam et repetens iterumque iterumque monebo, 
 lunonis magnae primum prece numen adora, 
 lunoni cane vota libens dominamque potentem 
 supplicibus supera donis : sic denique victor 
 Trinacria finis Italos mittere relicta." 
 
 In both passages the words magna and maxima 
 are not cult-titles, but only indicate her great 
 powers. Great indeed they were, but not irresis- 
 tible, for she could only delay the Fates, not alter 
 them.i But even delay might be for Aeneas a 
 personal failure and a disappointment; so he is to 
 be constantly attacking her with prayer and sacri- 
 fice. He must lose no chance, and here was a 
 victim handy, and one of good omen.^ 
 
 This idea of the duty of trying to appease a 
 hostile deity is not without interest. The usual 
 prayer and sacrifice was addressed to deities who 
 had been established in the city under a covenant 
 (pax) with its inhabitants. The local gods of foreign 
 communities could only be brought over to Rome 
 by the process of evocatio, as was Juno of Veii, or 
 the deities of Carthage in the third Punic war.^ 
 But the Juno of the Aeneid is not a local deity, and 
 the idea of persistent prayer to her is not strictly 
 Roman. 
 
 " Mactat sacra ferens et cum grege sistit ad 
 
 1 See Miss Matthaei in CI. Quarterly, 191 7, p. 15. 
 
 2 For the sow as victim of Juno (on Kalends only), see 
 Macrob., i. 15, 19. 
 
 3 See my "Rel. Exp.," p. 206. 
 
 44 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 aram." There is no need to explain these words 
 as a v(7Tepov irpoTepov. Mactare does not neces- 
 sarily mean to slay a victim, though in later Roman 
 history it often does mean this. Like immolare, it 
 originally referred to some part of the rite in which 
 the material of sacrifice, not necessarily, by any 
 means, an animal, was hallowed for acceptance by 
 a deity.^ " He consecrates the sow for the honour 
 of the deity, carrying the sacred apparatus in his 
 hand, and brings her with her progeny to the altar." 
 Those who believe that Virgil had some know- 
 ledge of the Jewish Scriptures^ may allow themselves 
 to think here of Abraham's ram, and in the next 
 few lines, where Tiber stays his current for the 
 benefit of the invaders, the crossing of the Jordan 
 will not unnaturally occur to them. 
 
 Lines 86 ff. : 
 
 " Thybris ea fluvium, quam longa est, nocte tumentem 
 leniit, et tacita refluens ita substitit unda, 
 mitis ut in morem stagni placidaeque paludis 
 stemeret aequor aquis, remo ut luctamen abesset. 
 ergo iter inceptum celerant rumor e secundo. 
 labitur uncta vadis abies, uiirantur et undae, 
 miratur nemus insuetum fulgentia longe 
 scuta virum flluvio pictasque innare carinas, 
 olli remigio noctemque diemque fatigant, 
 et longos superant flexus, variisque teguntur 
 arboribus, viridisque secant placido aequore silvas. 
 sol medium caeli conscenderat igneus orbem 
 
 1 See "Rel. Exp.," pp. 182 ff., and Marquardt, " Staats- 
 verwaltung," iii. 180, note g. 
 
 2 See Virgil's Messianic Eclogue, pp. 104 ff. 
 
 45 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 cum muros arcemque procul ac rara domorum 
 tecta vident, quae nunc Romana potentia coelo 
 aequavit, turn res inopes Euandrus habebat. 
 ocius advertunt proras urbique propinquant." 
 
 This charming picture should need no comment; 
 but, unluckily, it contains two lines which have 
 been so much discussed that I cannot pass them 
 over here. I advise every student to learn the 
 whole passage by heart; if he lets Virgil's lines 
 become in this way a part of his mental being, he 
 will probably come to a right conclusion about 
 them. The first of these lines is 90. I have re- 
 stored the old punctuation of it; in the Oxford text 
 a full-stop is placed after the word celerant} After 
 considering all that has been written about it and 
 all the parallel passages quoted, I have come to the 
 conclusion that rumore secundo stands to the pre- 
 ceding words exactly as clamore secundo stands to 
 the preceding words in the simile of the cranes in 
 X. 266.^ Just as the cranes go with a good heart 
 southwards, cheering themselves with their cries, 
 so the rowers start on their course with quickened 
 pace, cheering themselves with the musical sounds 
 used all over the world by boatmen and sailors.^ 
 The cheerfulness is the result of the discovery that 
 
 >• Heyne was the first to make the alteration; Dr. 
 Henry follows him. 
 
 ^ "fugiuntquenotos clamore secundo." From Iliad, iii. 4, 
 where the cranes are plainly flying from wintry storms. 
 
 3 E.g., in Borneo; see " The Pagan Tribes of Borneo," 
 vol. i., p. 132. 
 
 46 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 the river is not opposing them ; hence the Une begins 
 with "Ergo." It is the men who are cheerful, not the 
 boats, as Henry seems to suggest when he takes 
 the words rumore secundo of the ripphng noise made 
 as the boats cut through the water. 
 
 The other doubtful line is 96, which some editors, 
 from Servius downwards, have wished to refer to 
 the shadows of trees in the water. In my opinion 
 Henry has demolished this view once for all. To 
 what he says, I may add that the shadows of trees 
 in water are not distinctly green, but rather dark or 
 even black; and also that, apart from its muddiness 
 and its width, the Tiber is too swift a stream to 
 reflect trees clearly. Twice it has happened to me 
 to find tree shadows reflected with such marvellous 
 clearness that I was able to examine with my glass 
 the shadow of a bird which was actually in the top 
 of a tall tree; in each case the water was absStutely 
 still. What the words really mean to me is simply 
 the picture of the boats gliding through the quiet 
 water which divided the woods on each bank. 
 
 This happy voyage brought them, at noon of the 
 day following their start by night, to a point whence 
 they could see the site of Rome and Evander's 
 scanty settlement. This point is just below the 
 Aventine, where the marmorata is marked in any 
 map of Rome; but they would not land here, for 
 the Aventine stood between them and the settle- 
 ment. Putting on a spurt, they made for the lower 
 ground beyond the hiU, which seemed likely to be 
 their natural landing-place (" Ocius advertunt pro- 
 
 47 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 ras urbique propinquant "). This was what in 
 Roman days was known as the navalia, the usual 
 landing-place, adjoining the Forum boarium and 
 close to the Circus maximus. Here, too, was the 
 ara maxima of the Hercules cult, where Evander's 
 son Pallas was at that moment sacrificing. He 
 saw the boats approach; the rowers now resting on 
 their oars, as they glided at an " easy " to the shore 
 (" tacitis incumbere remis," line io8). This " easy " 
 is a necessity of the situation, as anyone will see 
 at once who will contemplate for a few minutes a 
 good map of the site of Rome, showing the course of 
 the Tiber, for otherwise the boats must run into the 
 bank; yet the commentators, one and all, so far as 
 I know, take " incumbere remis " as meaning (as 
 of course it often does mean) that they bent on 
 their oars in the act of pulling. Mr. Mackail, who 
 understands rowing, and knows the geography, 
 stands alone in translating " resting on their silent 
 oars," and in a letter to me remarks that " incum- 
 bere " is used in exactly this way just below in the 
 story of Cacus, where the big tower-like rock " prona 
 iugo laevum incumbebat ad amnem " (236). 
 
 The sense of the words, and the picture they call 
 up, will be just the same whether we read " tacitis " 
 with Servius and a minority of manuscriptal autho- 
 rity, or " tacitos " with the great MSS. M, P and 
 R. But the Oxford editor has adopted the former 
 reading, and I have no doubt he is right. The 
 boats glide on under the impetus of their last strokes, 
 but the oars are silent and at rest. 
 
 48 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 Lines 103 ff. : 
 
 " Forte die sollemnem illo rex Areas honorem 
 Amphitryoniadae magno divisque ferebat 
 ante urbem in luco." 
 
 What divi are these ? I think they are such 
 spirits as may be in the lucus — spirits, perhaps, 
 unknown and unnamed; just as below (Hne 352) he 
 writes of an unknown deus inhabiting the nemus on 
 the Capitoline hill. Virgil is reflecting the Roman 
 religious instinct to cover the whole ground in 
 sacrifice and prayer, in case any numen should have 
 reason to complain of neglect. Cp. 279, and iii. 19, 
 where the divi are coupled with Venus. Note that 
 there is no real distinction in Virgil between deus 
 and divus. One might imagine that deus was more 
 a real deity than divus, since the deified Caesars were 
 called divi, not dei; but in xii. 138 Juno is called 
 diva and Juturna dea, and of these two Juno was 
 of course the most truly a goddess. Varro, in a 
 fragment of the De Ling. Lat. (ed. Miiller, p. 265), 
 wrote: " Ita respondeant cur dicant deos, cum 
 omnes antiqui dixerint divos." From a comment 
 of Servius on v. 45, I gather that neither Varro nor 
 the scholars of his day had any sure notion of a 
 difference of meaning in the two words. 
 
 Lines 105, 106: 
 
 " Una omnes iuvenum primi pauperque senatus 
 tura dabant, tepidusque cruor fumabat ad aras." 
 
 The people in general offer incense as a preliminary 
 purification, as in the ritual of the ludi saculares, 
 
 49 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 just after Virgil's death, suffimenta were distributed 
 to the people for the same purpose (Rel. Exp., 441). 
 Only magistrates and priests could actually sacri- 
 fice or pray. By tura Virgil probably means herbs 
 culled in the neighbourhood, and used as oriental 
 incense was in later days. Pliny tells of a herha 
 Sabina, which " brathy appellata a Graecis . . . 
 a multis in sufhtu pro ture adsumitur." ^ 
 
 The mention of cnwr in 106 is interesting, since 
 the blood of victims is hardly ever alluded to in 
 connexion with Roman sacrifice proper. If men- 
 tioned by poets or historians, it is always either in 
 rural Italy, as in Horace twice (Od., iii. 22, iv. 11, 
 7), or in barbarous countries, as in Ovid, " ex 
 Ponto," iii. 2, 54. The latest investigator of 
 " Opferritus " can produce no evidence of its use 
 in ritual that is strictly Roman.^ 
 
 Lines 127 ff. — This speech of Aeneas may seem 
 to some of us rather comical, with its cheap mytho- 
 logy and genealogical nonsense. But it is not really 
 nonsense in its relation to the whole poem, in which 
 it is inserted with a definite intention. In order to 
 understand why it is there, we must be clear why 
 it was desirable in Virgil's time to claim a common 
 origin for Greek and Trojan, such as now at last 
 we are ourselves beginning to discover, though with 
 an archaeological proof instead of a mythical one. 
 " The Dardanians who founded the Troy of the 
 Mycenaean age were — and this is hardly questioned 
 
 ^ Quoted by Eitrem, op. cit., p. 210. (Plin. xxiv. 102.) 
 * Eitrem, " Opferritus und Voropfer," p. 435. 
 
 50 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 now — a branch of the Phrygian stock, who were 
 themselves sharers in the great thrust of the nations 
 from the north. The Phrygian language was 
 closely akin to the Greek, and the two nations had 
 doubtless come down together, or nearly at the 
 same time, from the Danube Valley." ^ 
 
 It is necessary to insist on the fact, howev er 
 obvious it rnay^ be to those who know , that in 
 VJTgit nlme the Empire was almost as much G reek 
 as it was Roman. Augustus had reunited the Greek 
 -a nd Roiua iTel Snents, the east and the west, which^ 
 ""Iot a time had b een su ndergdundgr si nister Egyp- 
 tian mhuen cen^v ery educated Ro man was bilin- 
 gual, and Greece ~was ^fais intellectual, and also his~ 
 spir i lual7"Emie. The7eUgion of the age was mainly 
 Greek in forms of thought, though the Roman forms 
 of worship lived on. An excellent way of realising 
 the mixture is to study the ritual of the secular 
 games of the year 17 b.c, and the hymn written by 
 Horace for that occasion; both ritual and hymn 
 declare the undoubted fact that the religion of the 
 Romans was henceforward to be even in outward 
 expression a Romano-Hellenic one, answering to 
 the cosmopolitan character of the whole vast 
 Empire ("Rel. Exp.," 443). 
 
 Now, Aeneas was not a Roman, and to make the 
 hero of the^ ji^neid anrl tTTe_ axiceater" of- Augustus a 
 Gd:£ek7wouid-liejii-Qre.thanjt he Ro mans j)f that day: 
 jyguldeasily put up with. But the situation might 
 
 1 Leaf, " Homer and History,"" p. 72. " Sic genus 
 amborum scindit se sanguine ab uno." 
 
 51 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 be saved by inventing for him a common descent 
 
 Professor Nettleship has admirably explained the 
 whole history of the belief of the Romans about 
 their descent from Aeneas and their relation to the 
 Greeks (" Vergil," pp. 50, 51). When the Greeks 
 first came to know anything at all of Rome, they 
 claimed her as Greek. That was in the fourth 
 century B.C.; but when in the third century, from 
 Pyrrhus onward, Greeks became the enemies of 
 Rome, it was the legend of Aeneas and the Trojan 
 descent that became popular at Rome. " Pyrrhus 
 regarded himself as the descendant of AchiUes; the 
 Romans answered by claiming descent from the 
 ancient and inveterate enemies of Greece. . . . The 
 anti-Grecian interest dominant with the Romans at 
 this time seized upon a religious symbol (the Pen- 
 ates) which was soon made the centre of a developed 
 legend; and the story of the foundation of Rome, 
 not through the instrumentality of Trojan cap- 
 tives, but by the first of the surviving Trojan 
 princes, Aeneas, had assumed full shape by the end 
 of the third century B.C., and formed part of the 
 Roman history of Fabius Pictor. . . . Henceforth 
 they cherished the Trojan legend as a matter of 
 public policy, and professed, indeed, to be guided 
 by it in their dealings with the East." There may 
 even be, as Nettleship suggests, a Trojan reason 
 for the arrival of the religion of Mithras at Rome in 
 later days. But this is a doubtful point. 
 But in the second century B.C. there grew up a 
 
 52 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 fresh enthusiasm for everything Greek, against 
 which reaction was hopeless. In the last century 
 B.C. we find a tendency to represent the Trojans as 
 Hellenes, and in Virgil's own time the Greek his- 
 torian Dionysius gave this tendency very definite 
 utterance.^ Thus, this speech of Aeneas exactly 
 represents the ideas of the age by giving the speaker 
 a substantial claim to be where he was, an invader 
 of Italy. This claim is a double one. The first 
 part of it, in lines 131-134, appeals to the oracles, 
 the common descent, the fame of Evander, and the 
 virtus of Aeneas. The second part is in 147-150; 
 the enemy, uncivilised and cruel, will conquer all 
 Italy, unless Trojans and Greeks agree on an alli- 
 ance, such as ma y bring_ civilisation to__the„,rude_ 
 Itahan~thbe s. Thus all arguments combine to 
 suggest an immediate friendly understanding be- 
 tween Aeneas and Evander. This is why Aeneas 
 comes himself, instead of sending legati: " me, me ipse 
 meumque obieci caput et supplex ad limina veni." 
 In him is represented the common descent of the 
 peoples that are destined to rescue Italy from bar- 
 barism, and secure for her a great career in the world. 
 
 Lines 172 ff. : 
 
 " interea sacra haec, quando hue venistis amici, 
 annua, quae difierre nefas, celebrate faventes 
 nobiscum, et iam nunc sociorum adsuescite mensis." 
 
 In keeping with the object of Aeneas in his speech, 
 as I explained it above, Virgil here introduces what 
 
 1 Dion. Hal., i. 58. 
 53 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 was in reality a Greek worship; for, in spite of many 
 attempts, no one has yet proved the existence of 
 an ItaUan Hercules. This worship came from 
 Greek cities in Campania by way of Tusculum: its 
 ritual was Greek; the practice of giving tithes, with 
 which it was associated, was apparently not Italian. 
 Perhaps it would be better to call it a Mediterra- 
 nean cult, as indeed it was, and in which respect it 
 well suited Virgil's need.^ It was also convenient 
 that the great altar of Hercules, famous throughout 
 Roman history, should have been close to the spot 
 where Aeneas landed from his boats.^ 
 
 I may also notice here that in the story that 
 follows, a story told as brilliantly as any story in 
 literature, it is highly probable that Virgil was not 
 using, as has often been supposed, a Latin form of 
 the famous myth of Hercules and the stolen cattle, 
 but taking an old Italian deity of fire, Cacus by 
 name, and endowing him with the attributes of the 
 volcanic deity Typhoeus, borrowed from Homer 
 and Hesiod.^ This idea of Cacus as a fire-monster is 
 
 1 An extremely useful monograph on " The Myth of 
 Hercules at Rome," by John Garrett Winter, University 
 of Michigan (the Macmillan Company, New York), may be 
 referred to for a careful examination of the abstruse 
 subject, with sane conclusions. 
 
 2 " Roman Festivals," pp. T9zff- 
 
 3 This seems to me to be proved satisfactorily by 
 Winter, op. cit., pp. 231 ff. On p. 258 is a reasonable 
 account of the connexion of the Cacus myth with the 
 ara maxima : 
 
 " Reduced to its outUnes, Livy's version tells of a purely 
 
 54 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 peculiar to Virgil, and comes almost beyond doubt 
 from Typhoeus, whom Virgil must have been think- 
 ing of at the time, since he mentions him in line 298. 
 He clothes the obscure Roman Cacus with the attri- 
 butes of the Greek Typhoeus, thereby connecting 
 Rome with Campania and Sicily, Vesuvius and 
 Etna. As the region about Rome was actually 
 and traditionally volcanic, it was not impossible for 
 him to caU upon his readers to imagine the Aven- 
 tine as a volcanic hUl. 
 
 In line 173 Virgil uses the language of later 
 Rome, a Rome of settled institutions, such as priests 
 and annual worships. He might be poetically 
 justified in this, but the invitation to foreigners to 
 share in these is a bold innovation, only justified by 
 the desire to emphasise the alliance of Greek and 
 Trojan, and to cUnch the argument of Aeneas, just 
 uttered, that Greeks and Trojans were really one 
 race. The presence of strangers at religious rites 
 
 Greek god who comes to the Tiber side and institutes 
 sacrifices at the ara maxima, initiating into the ritual the 
 Potitii and Pinarii. These sacrifices were known to differ 
 from the usual Roman sacrifices in that they were said to 
 be performed Graeco riiu. At this point the myth must 
 have ended in its earliest form. A later generation sought 
 a reason for the sacrifice, and found it in the recovery of 
 the cattle that were a fam.iliar and indispensable feature 
 of the Geryon myth. These cattle must have been stolen, 
 and Cacus, originally a disparate deity, was given the role 
 of the thief. The myth of Hercules and the myth of 
 Cacus were thus originally two wholly distinct myths, 
 fused by the Romans themselves in later times." 
 
 55 E 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 in ancient Italy was considered dangerous and ill- 
 omened.^ 
 
 Lines 182, 183: 
 " Vescitur Aeneas simul at Troiana iuventus 
 Perpetuo tergo bovis et lustralibus extis." 
 
 The exta were those parts of the body of the 
 victim which were examined for omens, and then 
 placed on the altar [exta porricere) ; and these parts, 
 in the ritus Romanus, were certainly not eaten 
 either by priest or worshipper. But we know that 
 the cult of Hercules at the ara maxima was not 
 " ritu Romano," but " ritu Graeco " (" Roman 
 Festivals," 194); and, as the Greeks had no such 
 scruple, Virgil is quite justified in writing after the 
 Homeric fashion. That by exta he means the parts 
 placed on the altar seems clear from Livy's account 
 (i. 7), with which may be compared Varro, Ling. 
 Lat., vi. 54 (a passage unluckily somewhat mutilated). 
 
 What Virgil meant by lustralibus I do not feel 
 sure. Evidently Servius did not know; but his 
 note is useful as showing that he understood the 
 word exta as I understand it in this context. But 
 whatever its technical meaning, if it had one, lus- 
 tralibus may be taken as indicating that the exta 
 were holy, as having been on the altar. 
 
 There is an article in the Archiv fiir Religions- 
 wissenschafi for 1909, pp. 461 ff., which reviews 
 the practice of primitive peoples in regard to sac- 
 rificial meals. 
 
 1 See " Rel. Exp.," pp. 32 ff. 
 56 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Lines 185 ff.: 
 
 "rex Euandrus ait; 'non haec sollemnia nobis, 
 has ex more dapes, hanc tanti numinis aram 
 vana superstitio veterumque ignara deorum 
 imposuit: saevis, hospes Troiane, periciis 
 servati facimus meritosque novamus honores." 
 
 These lines seem a little odd in the mouth of 
 Evander, who was himself a settler in Italy from a 
 foreign land. But Virgil makes him speak like a 
 Roman of later times, expressing the strong Roman 
 feeling against deities not belonging to the spot, 
 unless they were especially invited by the State, 
 as were Juno of Veil, and Cybele in the second Punic 
 war. The curious word superstitio is here explained 
 by Virgil in his usual manner by the words veterum 
 ignara deorum, which imply rather contempt and 
 neglect than simple ignorance. It seems here to 
 mean a standing over or passing over, and may be 
 paralleled with an occasional use of the word super- 
 sedeo, as, for example, in Suetonius (Aug., 93), 
 where Augustus " in peragranda Aegypto paulo 
 defiectere ad visendum Apin supersedit " {i.e., 
 omitted). 1 
 
 Secondly, there is here no doubt an allusion to 
 Augustus' distrust of new foreign worships, especially 
 that of Isis, which had been showing itself while the 
 Aeneid was being written; he tolerated old foreign 
 cults, " ceteras contemptui habuit " (Suet. Aug., 
 
 ^ For superstitio, see Mayor's ed. of Cic, da Nat Deorum, 
 vol. ii. 184. But I do not think that Mayor's conclusion 
 is convincing. See " Rel. Exp.," 345 and 355, 
 
 57 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 93). The same feeling is also emphasised in the 
 Shield (lines 696 ff.). Here it may be as well to 
 remember that, in the secular games of 17 B.C., 
 though half the ritual is not Roman, there was no 
 vana superstitio ; there were no Greek deities but 
 the good old ones, long inhabitants of the city. So, 
 too, with the cult of the ara maxima : it was not 
 superstitio, for it had filtered through Italian and 
 Latin cities, and established itself within the sacred 
 boundary of the city. And line 188 seems to 
 suggest that it was the result of the fulfilment of 
 a vow, like so many other Roman worships.^ 
 
 Lines 190-272: The Story of Cacus. — ^Virgil has 
 hardly had his due from the critics as a teller of 
 stories. Sellar, who had a chilling habit of com- 
 paring him with Homer, gives him some credit for 
 powers of narration,^ but does not mention this 
 story, nor does Heinze in his " Epische Technik." 
 I am inclined to think that the art is so perfect as to 
 conceal itself from the critic no less than from the 
 ordinary reader. What shall we say of Pastor 
 Aristaeus, of the sack of Troy, of Nisus and Eurya- 
 lus, of the death of Camilla ? These stories are full 
 of concentrated energy, of swift motion, of tender 
 feehng, of intense human interest ; and that of Cacus, 
 though it naturally has less of the last two qualities 
 than the rest, is among the best-told stories of the 
 
 1 " Meritos novamus honores " is the language of a 
 voti reus. ("Rel. Exp.," pp. 202 ff.) For the advent of 
 Hercules to Rome, ib. 230. 
 
 2 P. 359 (cd. 3). 
 
 58 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 marvellous that literature can show. It reminds me 
 of Wandering Willie's Tale in Redgauntlet, of which 
 a friend of mine used to say that it was the best 
 short story ever told; and its insertion in the whole 
 epic is even more skilfully contrived than is Scott's 
 story in his novel. It was a favourite with the 
 Romans, or Livy, Propertius, and Ovid/ besides 
 Virgil, would hardly have taken the trouble to tell 
 it in their several ways; the ara maxima, the Forum 
 boarium, the Aventine, could not be mentioned in 
 Roman narrative without some allusion to one or 
 other form of the far-famed story of Hercules and 
 the oxen. Virgil braced himself to the effort, and 
 began by a stroke which lifts him far above the level 
 of the other story-tellers. He makes Evander tell 
 the story, not as a legend, hut as a thing that actually 
 happened in his own time, to commemorate which 
 the great altar had been erected. " It attests a 
 rescue from a superhuman destructive monster, 
 who robbed and slew our men and cattle. It 
 chanced that the great Hercules, himself a super- 
 human wonder-worker, came this way, that Cacus 
 robbed him too, and paid the penalty with his life." 
 The telhng of this story only takes aboitt seventy 
 lines, of which not one is either weak or superfluous. 
 It runs swiftly to its climax — and a terrible climax 
 it is: the revelation of the monster's lair, the last 
 struggle with the fire-spouting fiend — and ends 
 quickly, as all good stories shoiild. When it is 
 done, Evander calls on his audience to join in cele- 
 1 Liv., i. 7: Ov., Fasti, i. 543 #.; Prop. iv. 9. 
 
 59 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 brating the glories of Hercules and in singing his 
 praises: " Consonat omne nemus strepitu collesque 
 resultant." 
 
 Lines 233 ff. : 
 
 " stabat acuta silex praecisis undique saxis 
 speluncae dorso insurgens, altissima visu, 
 dirarum nidis domus opportuna volucrum. 
 banc, ut prona iugo laevum incumbebat ad amnem, 
 dexter in adversum nitens concussit et imis 
 avulsam solvit radicibus, inde repente 
 impulit; impulsu quo maximus intonat aether, 
 dissultant ripae refluitque exterritus amnis." 
 
 What was the picture in Virgil's mind when he 
 wrote these lines ? Dr. Henry seems to me to have 
 entirely misapprehended it; but the question which 
 he begins by asking is an essential one, and I will 
 begin by answering it myself. The river, Virgil 
 says, was on the left. On the left of what ? Right 
 and left, used of inanimate objects, must be relative 
 to some human being ; that human being may be an 
 imaginary person looking up or down the stream, 
 or it may be an actual person — e.g., I myself on the 
 Thames Embankment, or Hercules in the story 
 looking up or down the Tiber. I have no doubt 
 whatever that in these lines it was an actual person 
 — i.e., Hercules — and that as the river was on his 
 left, he was looking upstream. He was looking, in 
 fact, towards his own cattle and the settlement of 
 Evander, rather than turning his back upon these 
 essential things. 
 
 Now, in these lines Hercules hurls into the river 
 60 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 (though Henry denies that it fell into the river at 
 all)^ a tower of rock which leaned towards or over 
 that river on the left. On the left means on the 
 left of Hercules, because he is the only person pic- 
 tured as in action at the moment. Hercules must, 
 then, have been looking up the river, with the big 
 rock between himself and it, he being on the right 
 of the rock, and the river on the left. Thus, coming 
 from the right of it (" dexter "), he pushed it in 
 the opposite direction {" in adversum nitens ") — 
 i.e., towards the river — and, after a mighty struggle 
 with it, hurled it over the precipice. 
 
 Where does Virgil imagine this rock to have been, 
 and the cave which it guarded ? His own language 
 convinces me that it was on the steep side of the 
 hill where it falls to the river; and this seems to 
 have been the traditional site of the cave. Solinus* 
 in the third century A.D., a good authority, identi- 
 fied it with the Salinae, which, as we know, were 
 under the steep cliff of the Aventine at its northern 
 corner, where the Porta Trigemina stood in his- 
 torical times.^ This statement of Solinus makes me 
 
 ^ Dr. Henry here seems to me to be obsessed by his own 
 critical powers; he finds himself, naturally, in opposition 
 to received interpretations (here Servius, Heyne, Forbiger, 
 Conington). And he supports his view by quotations 
 from Ovid, Silius, and Claudian, which (as I have said 
 before) rather hinder than help us in discovering the 
 picture in Virgil's mind. 
 
 * Solinus, i. 8. 
 
 3 Hiilsen- Jordan, Romische Topographie, III. 172, 
 note 51. 
 
 61 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 fairly confident that the picture in Virgil's mind is 
 that I have described. The cave was on the steep 
 side of the Aventine, looking down on the river, 
 and quite near to what was later the Forum boarium, 
 on the site of which Hercules was pasturing his oxen. 
 This would account in the story for the ease with 
 which Cacus contrived to filch the four oxen without 
 detection — perhaps, too, for the tenancy of the big 
 rock by dirae volucres, which, as Virgil would know, 
 would be likely to build their nests on the river side 
 of the hiU, as the safer and more profitable one. 
 
 Line 240: 
 " Dissultant ripae, refluitque exterritus amnis." 
 
 This is only a strong way of describing what 
 actually happens when you hurl a big stone into a 
 small stream ; the wash of the water drives the banks 
 back — i.e., what was bank before is flooded, and 
 the new banks are much farther apart. At the 
 same time the stone hinders the downflowing water, 
 and for the moment forces it backwards. The 
 effort of imagination lies in the relative size of rock 
 and river. 
 
 Lines 241 ff. : 
 
 " At specus et Caci detecta apparuit ingens 
 regia, et umbrosae penitus patuere cavernae, 
 non secus ac si qua penitus vi terra dehiscens 
 infernas reseret sedes et regna recludat 
 pallida, dis invisa, superque immane barathrum 
 cematur, trepident immisso lumine Manes." 
 62 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 On these fine lines Conington remarks that they 
 are imitated from Homer (Iliad, xx. 6i). I mention 
 this to show how easy it is to slip into the way of 
 making Virgil imitate Homer, or some other poet, 
 simply because he takes a hint from them. Here 
 are Homer's lines: 
 
 TravTii 8' ecrcretovTO :roSes TroAiwtSaKos "ISrys 
 Kol Kopv<j)al, Tpwoiv re iroXis koi viyes 'AxaiQv. 
 eSSeicrev S' vrrevepOev ava^ Ivepiov 'Ai'Scoveiis, 
 SeCcras S' €k Opovov aXro /cai taj^e, [xij ot vTrepOev 
 yaiav avapprq^cie IIo<retSa(ov kvotTixOiav, 
 oiKia Se 9vr]T0Lcn Kot d.6avaT0i(Ti <f>aveiT] 
 tTfiepSaXe' eipiaevra, ra re crTvyeovcri deol Trep. 
 
 Here you may say that there is a hint given and 
 taken — viz., the idea that a great shock may reveal 
 the infernal regions. But there the debt to Homer 
 ends, for the Greek and Roman infernal regions are 
 by no means aUke, and Virgil here abides by the 
 Roman. There no king reigned, for Orcus, often 
 supposed to be such a king, was only an old Italian 
 name for Hades, used in later times to represent 
 the Greek Plutus. The spirits of the dead. Manes, 
 let us remember, dwelt dimly and almost imper- 
 sonally below,^ and on three days of the year might 
 come up and roam about. The opening of the 
 cavern roof seems to me to be compared to the 
 opening of the mundus — unless, indeed, we are to 
 suppose that Virgil did not know of the mundus, 
 
 1 See Wissowa, R.K., 310; " Rel. Exp.," 85 and 386; and 
 for the idea of the mundus J.R.S., vol. ii. 25 ff., article 
 on " Mundus patet." 
 
 63 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 which is unlikely. The Hades of book vi. is, of 
 course, quite different. 
 
 Dr. VerraU remarks that this passage, unlike 
 Homer's, is mysterious and religiously suggestive. 
 " The picture of hell opened, when attached to the 
 person and worship of Hercules, the conqueror of 
 death, the man made God, acquires the possibility 
 and suggestion of a human significance. We can 
 hardly help thinking of ' the spirits in prison ' ; 
 and, indeed, there can be little doubt that Virgil 
 is here working on the lines of some actual belief, 
 one of these mysteries with which mature paganism 
 then teemed."^ I agree; but I think that the origin 
 of the belief on which he is working was that of the 
 mundus. 
 
 ^ Lines 271, 272: 
 
 " Hanc aram luco statuit, quae maxima semper 
 dicetur nobis, et erit quae maxima semper." 
 
 The scene as Virgil imagined it was close to the 
 riverside, where poplars were growing on the bank, 
 and within was a nemus (see line 305), where there 
 was a natural or artificial clearing (lucus) in the 
 marshy woodland. The poplars, with their foliage of 
 two colours (bicolor), of white and green,^ supplied 
 the sacred garlands. This tree must have been the 
 
 1 In National Home-Reading Union, No. 68, p. 25 , 
 Dr. Verrall's language about Hercules is perhaps too 
 strong; but it may find support in lines 301, 302, and 
 362-365. 
 
 * The two colours are well shown in the plate of Populus 
 alba in Sowerby's " British Botany." 
 
 64 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 white poplar, which is not uncommon in England, 
 and may frequently be noticed showing the white 
 under-surface of its leaves during windy weather in 
 summer. (See Johns' " Forest Trees of Great 
 Britain," vol. i. p. 357.) But why this tree was 
 sacred to Hercules no one seems to know. 
 
 In the charming scene of sacrifice and song that 
 follows, the student of Roman religion would wish 
 to know whether Virgil is going upon facts of ritual 
 or indulging his own invention. I will therefore go 
 to some extent into his details, which, so far as I 
 can judge, are strictly Roman, or old Graeco- 
 Roman. 
 
 y^" Devexo interea propior fit Vesper Olympo. 
 iamque sacerdotes primusque Potitius ibant 
 pellibus in rnorem cincti, flammasque ferebant. 
 instaurant epulas at mensae grata secundae 
 dona ferunt cumulantque oneratis lancibus aras. 
 turn Salii ad cantus incensa altaria circum 
 populeis adsunt evincti tempora ramis, 
 hie iuvenum chorus, ille senum, qui carmina laudes 
 Herculeas et facta ferunt. ..." 
 
 fsf let us notice that this is an evening sacri- 
 'fice; that is proved by the first line quoted above, 
 and by the torches (flammas). On the other hand, 
 the rite that was going on when Aeneas arrived was 
 a noontide one, and was followed by a meal, as is 
 made plain by lines 97-106. The interval was filled 
 up by Evander's story of Cacus; and one reason 
 for the insertion of this story may have been a 
 desire to conform to old Roman practice in separa- 
 
 65 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 ting the two chief parts of the day's religious work. 
 For if we examine the ritual of the Arval Brethren, 
 which Augustus was reorganising while Virgil was 
 devoting himself to the Aeneid, we find a clear 
 analogy with the order of the day described here. 
 In the Arval rites there was a sacred meal at noon, 
 and later on, after a rest, the priests went on to the 
 altar for the chief sacrifice, which must have taken 
 place towards evening, and was followed by the 
 singing of the famous Arval hymn, and by another 
 meal. As a rule, in Roman rites the sacrifice and 
 meal took place in the morning, and the exta, after 
 being cooked, were laid on the altar in the after- 
 noon.^ 
 
 I think that in the rite Virgil is describing the 
 sacrifice of oxen was at noon, and the exta, or such 
 parts of them as had not been eaten, were laid on 
 the altar towards evening. This must be the mean- 
 ing of the words " cumulant oneratis lancibus aras," 
 and so Servius explains them. At the same time 
 the other offerings were renewed^ and another meal 
 partaken of. When the priests have done their 
 work, clad in skins according to the most ancient 
 
 1 Henzen, Acta Fratr. Arv. pp. 26 and 28 ff.; "Rel. 
 Exp.," 181 and 435 #. 
 
 ^ " Instaurant epulas et mensae grata secundae dona 
 ferunt." Mensa is here the sacred table found in all cults. 
 as well as the altar; the latter was used only for animal 
 sacrifice, the former for fruits, etc. (Marq., 165). Mensa 
 secunda here is not " a second meal," but like placabilis 
 ara, of good omen for the worshipper. So at least it 
 seems to me. 
 
 66 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 fashion, retained in historical times only at the 
 Lupercalia, the Salii appear and sing as they dance 
 round the altar. They are in two divisions of old 
 and young, a fact for which Virgil is the only 
 authority;! but he would not be likely to invent it, 
 and it is quite in keeping with Roman practice. 
 
 On the whole, then, there is nothing in Virgil's 
 picture to confhct with well-established Roman 
 custom. True, Macrobius^ makes one of his learned 
 prosers accuse Virgil of two errors: of bringing in 
 the use of poplar for garlands, and of introducing 
 the Salii, who properly belonged to the worship of 
 Mars. But then he makes another learned person 
 defend Virgil, and the defence is quite complete. 
 No doubt, he says, the bay is used in the worship of 
 Hercules, but that is quite a recent innovation, 
 introduced since the bay-tree was planted on the 
 Aventine hard by; before that it was the poplar 
 which Hercules loved, and which Virgil seems Iri 
 imagine growing on the bank of the river. Secondly, 
 he tells us that Sahi took part in the worship of 
 Hercules at Tibur, a fact which is confirmed by the 
 evidence of inscriptions.^ Whether the Roman 
 Sahi ever danced and sang round the ara maxima, 
 
 1 Diomedes said so in the fifth century a.d., but he 
 may have learnt it from Virgil. 
 
 2 Sat. iii. i2,-i ff. 
 
 3 Wissowa, R.K., 555, note 2. Macrobius quotes a 
 book on the Salii of the Hercules cult at Tibur by one 
 Octavius Hersennius; also Ant. Gnipho, the tutor of 
 Julius Caesar (iii. 12, j ff.)- 
 
 67 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 as Virgil describes, must remain doubtful; but he 
 can be convicted of nothing worse than bringing 
 them from Tibur to Rome with a view to picturesque 
 effect, and to find a place for the hymn that follows. 
 The hymn itself was, of course, simply Greek in its 
 subject-matter, but here again Virgil is right, if we 
 accept the conclusion of recent scholars that there 
 was no genuine Italian Hercules, and that the god 
 of the great altar had found his way thither from 
 Greek cities of Sicily and Campania. 
 
 Lines 314 ff. : Virgil's idea of the ancient history 
 of Latium. — ^Though Evander is here speaking of the 
 site of Rome only, the ideas he expresses apply to 
 Latium and Italy generally. They are worth a Uttle 
 attention, for they probably represent common Latin 
 tradition and certain views of Roman scholars. 
 
 The earliest life, he thinks, was that of the Fauni, 
 and of wild men sprung from trees; whether he 
 means that these two classes were identical is not 
 perfectly clear. Lucretius shows the common 
 belief well,i and Virgil was no doubt thinking of him. 
 Virgil's idea seems to be that these primitive men 
 dwelt on the hill-tops, not practising agriculture, 
 but getting their food either by hunting or by 
 gathering the fruit of the trees among which they 
 lived. Such forest peoples are at the present day 
 the Yeddahs of Ceylon, who, like these primitive 
 Italians, know no law and no civilisation. 
 
 Then Saturnus, deity of agriculture, whom Virgil 
 
 1 iv. 580^ ; V. gzsff. 
 68 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 naturally ide ntifies with JKronos^ Jbrought this wild 
 .Toliraown^^m their hilltops tojthe_pb.in of^atium, 
 and taugKfthem agricuHufef a Golden Age followed, 
 which in time gave way to degeneracy, " et belli 
 rabies et amor successit habendi." 
 
 Next came a period of immigration, in which 
 successive invaders gave new names to the land 
 Who were these invaders ? Names do not count 
 for much, but he mentions Ausonians and Sicanians. 
 Lastly came Greeks, with Evander himself as leader. 
 The Etruscans are not mentioned, for at that time 
 they had not reached either Rome or Latium. 
 
 Now let us compare this account with the most 
 recent views of archaeologists — e.g., Peet and 
 Modestow, representing many others. The earliest 
 inhabitants of Italy of whom we know anything 
 were, as in Europe generally, palaeolithic men, who 
 lived apparently in much the same state as Virgil's 
 indigenae. Were there any survivors of these, or 
 any traces of their memory in historical times ? 
 A great part of Italy was still wild woodland even 
 in Virgil's time, and I am inclined to think that the 
 popular traditions that gathered round the name 
 Faunus indicate a possible survival into historical 
 times of a few of such primitive folk.^ 
 
 Then came the long age of neolithic men, a pastoral 
 people living on the hills, but descending into plains 
 
 1 See " Roman Festivals," p. 264; Mannhardt, " Antike 
 Wald und Feldkulte," ii;^ ff.; Ridgeway, "Early Age of 
 Greece," i. 173 #.; Lawson, " Modern Greek Folklore and 
 Ancient Greek Religion," p. 244. 
 
 69 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 such as that of Latium, and there probably begin- 
 ning agriculture. 
 
 It is here, I think, that we must put Virgil's 
 Golden Age, which seems to belong to the later 
 period of the indigenous peoples, before the migra- 
 tions began. I may just throw out the suggestion 
 that this charming myth of a Golden Age repre- 
 sents ideally the earliest experiments in agriculture 
 of a still pastoral people, in virgin soils teeming 
 with productive power, which afterwards became 
 weakened by a natural process of decay.^ 
 
 Then comes the period of immigration. Of the 
 Ausones we know nothing, but the Sicani whom 
 Virgil mentions are among the traditional immi- 
 grants accepted by many good archaeologists. 
 Modestow makes them a branch of the Ligures,^ 
 themselves a neolithic people, passing under different 
 names as they moved from the north-west into the 
 peninsula. These are by many believed to form the 
 basis of the Latin population. Then followed the 
 people from the terremare of Northern Italy, who 
 formed at least the upper stratum of the Italic 
 peoples of historical times; and lastly came the 
 mysterious Etruscans. 
 
 1 Ovid, Met., i. 109 ff. (of the Golden Age) : 
 
 " Mox etiam fruges tellus inarata ferebat 
 Nee renovatus ager gravidis canebat aristis." 
 
 Nee renovatus — without a season of rest. Cp. Tacitus' 
 account of German agriculture in his day {" Germania," 
 26). 
 
 2 " Introduction a I'Histoire Romaine," pp. iz-j ff. 
 
 70 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 What strikes us here is the clear and broad divi- 
 sion between the periods of indigenae and immi- 
 grants both in Virgil and in the archaeologists, 
 though the latter, as might be expected, are not 
 agreed about its details. 
 
 Line 334. — To " Fortuna omnipotens et ineluc- ,^ 
 tabile fatum," as the force which brought Evander 
 to Latium, he adds the prophecies of Carmenta^ and 
 Apollo. Such an overwhelming force of fate may 
 seem rather unnecessary in the case of Evander; 
 but in his destiny is included that of Aeneas, for 
 with Evander begins the history of Rome at Rome. 
 The Greek and Trojan founders are now to walk 
 round the site of Rome together, and Virgil wishes 
 t^-JBspire-^s jreader w ith the sense of the "power of 
 ^estiny_as he procee3s! 
 
 Lines 337^. : The Walk through the Site of Rome.^ 
 — It was a great stroke of the poet to bring Aeneas 
 up the Tiber, for he knew that by the river alone he 
 could land him exactly where, almost at a glance, 
 he could see every essential feature of the site, 
 every spot most hallowed by antiquity in the mind 
 
 * Carmenta is here spoken of as the mother of Evander, 
 which is starthng. She must have come with him from 
 Arcadia, the home of rural Nymphs, and have settled in 
 Rome, where she died. Dionys., i. 31 ; Strabo, p. 230 
 (where she appears as Nikostrate). Plutarch (Romulus, 
 21) calls her wife of Evander, but everywhere else — e.g., 
 Quaest. Rom., 56 — mother. 
 
 2 The following paragraph is slightly altered from my 
 " Social Life at Rome," pp. 2ff. 
 
 71 F 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 of a Roman of Virgil's day. " The walk that 
 follows comprised the whole site of the heart and 
 life of the city as it was to be, all that lay under the 
 steep sides of the three almost isolated hills — ^the 
 Capitoline, Palatine, and Aventine. The poet knew 
 that he need not extend it to the other so-called 
 hills, which come down as spurs from the plain 
 of the Campagna — Quirinal, Esquiline, Caelian. 
 Densely populated as those were in his own days, 
 they were not essential organs of social and poli- 
 tical life; the pulse of Rome was to be felt beating 
 most strongly in the space between them and the 
 river, where, too, the oldest and most cherished 
 associations of the Roman people, mythical and 
 historical, were fixed." Where exactly Virgil 
 imagined Evander's settlement to have been is 
 not quite clear to me; perhaps it was not quite 
 clear to him, nor was it worth while to trouble his 
 readers about it. The only certain point, as we 
 shall see, is that Evander himself dwelt in the very 
 heart of the Rome that was to be, and just where 
 Augustus had taken up his abode in Virgil's own 
 time, on the north-west edge of the Palatine, where 
 it sloped to the Sacred Way leading down to the 
 Forum Romanum. 
 
 When they first set out on this walk, Evander, 
 who is represented by Livy as an old man of culture 
 and knowledge,^ talks, as we have seen, about the 
 ancient history of the site, and of Latium, and their 
 progress was slow. But now they turn to look 
 
 I i. 7- 
 72 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 at the altar of his mother Carmenta, where after- 
 wards was the famous gate which bore her name.^ 
 This was close to the river, and, standing here and 
 looking away from it, they would see up the valley, 
 between the Palatine and Capitoline hills, into the 
 hollow which afterwards became the Forum, and 
 beyond it to the Argiletum. Evander first points 
 out the slopes of the Capitoline covered with dense 
 wood, where Romulus afterwards placed his sanc- 
 tuary for refugees ;2 and then, on the steep side of 
 the Palatine, the Lupercal where the she-wolf was 
 to nurse the twins. Straight ahead was the wooded 
 dell bringing a little stream down into the Forum, 
 and known in historical times as the Argiletum. 
 
 Next, Aeneas was led forward to the foot of the 
 Capitol, then covered with trees and brushwood. 
 Here the poet makes a fine stroke which must have 
 delighted the Romans of his own day. We know 
 not, said Evanior, what deity inhabits this wood; 
 we know that there is one, my anxious people feel 
 
 ' " Roman Festivals," pp. 290 j5f. 
 
 ^ Virgil knew better than to attempt an allusion to the 
 temple of " Veiovis inter duos lucos," with which the 
 asylum was popularly associated (" Roman Festivals," 
 122); he covers the whole Capitoline hill with a wood, and 
 leaves it to his reader to fix the " asylum " where he will. 
 Why does he call Romulus acer ? The reader of Livy's 
 account of Romulus will easily see why; he was represented 
 in the legend as a determined man of action, bent on 
 turning his neighbours to account in laying a sure founda- 
 tion for his new city. See, too, the third and fourth 
 chapters of the comparison of Theseus and Romulus in 
 Plutarch's Lives. Cp. 441, of Aeneas. 
 
 73 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 the consciousness of it,^ and some of my Greeks 
 from Arcadia believe that they have here beheld 
 their own Zeus, as they knew him amid cloud and 
 storm in their own mountains. Truly a noble fore- 
 cast of the greatest of Roman worships ! Here, too, 
 the learned king tells of an ancient settlement 
 founded by Saturnus on the hill-top, and couples 
 with it another on the hill beyond the Tiber which 
 bore the name of Janus, and bears it to this 
 day. 
 
 Now Evander leads his guest to his own dwelling, 
 and there can be no doubt where this was. A 
 single datum makes this quite clear. It was at a 
 point where the cattle of Evander could not only 
 be heard, but seen, as they pastured both in the 
 Forum and on the Carinae. The position of the 
 Carinae has now been placed beyond doubt; it is 
 the name for the crest and steep slope of the Esqui- 
 line which faces, at a distance of about 300 yards, 
 the north-west side of the Palatine and the summa 
 sacra via just beneath it, where the Arch of Titus 
 now stands. Evander and his guest could not have 
 seen the herds on the Carinae until they reached 
 this point; but here they would be able to see the 
 cattle in both places, as Virgil says in line 360.^ 
 
 Here they were just at the entrance to Evander's 
 home, which we must imagine to have been on the 
 
 1 For the meaning of religio, see " Rel. Exp.," index s.v. 
 
 2 " Talibus inter se dictis ad tecta subibant 
 
 pauperis Evandri, passimque armenta videbant 
 Romanoque foro et lautis mugire Carinis." 
 
 74 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 edge of the Palatine immediately above them/ and 
 certainly not on the site of the later Regia, which, 
 was down below, close to the Temple of Vesta, a 
 point from which the herds on the Carinae could 
 certainly not be seen. Evander calls his dwelling 
 sedes, and only uses Regia to point the contrast 
 between Hercules the mighty and the humble 
 reception he submitted to so gladly.^ " This was 
 all he got in the way of a king's dwelling." If the 
 reader who has not been in Rome will study Lan- 
 ciani's walk through the Sacra Via,^ keeping a 
 careful eye on the map which accompanies it, he 
 will easily realise the situation of Evander's home. 
 To do so is important, for it explains what I believe 
 to be a clear intention of the poet which the com- 
 mentators have never noticed. 
 
 This was almost the exact spot where stood the 
 abode of Augustus, of which Suetonius* tells us 
 that it was comparatively modest and unpretend- 
 ing. He lived at first close to the Forum, but after 
 his return to Rome in 29 B.C., on the Palatine. 
 Now, we know, from Ovid's account of the arrival 
 
 ^ " Talibus inter se dictis ad tecta subibant;" i.e., they 
 talked in this way as they went along uphill to Evander's 
 dwelling. The idea of a walk uphill is suggested by 
 subibant, and made certain for a Roman by the mention 
 of the cattle on the Carinae. Cp. ix. 9; " sceptra Palatini 
 sedemque petit Evandri." 
 
 ^ " ut ventum ad sedes, 'haec' inquit, ' Umina victor 
 Alcides subiit, haec ilium regia cepit.' " 
 
 3 " Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome," pp. 
 190 #. * Aug., 72. 
 
 75 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 of his book in Rome, that this was the very first 
 building to meet the traveller when he had left the 
 summa sacra via and the Temple of Jupiter Stator 
 to enter the Palatine; after the temple of Vesta and 
 the Regia have been passed, 
 
 " Inde petens dextram, porta est, ait, ista Palati, 
 Hie Stator, hoc primutQ condita Roma loco est. 
 Singula dum miror, video fulgentibus armis 
 Conspicuos postes tectaque digna deo."* 
 
 These two last lines allude to the house, aedes, as he 
 himself called it, of Augustus, which it was Ovid's 
 cue to magnify, and which had doubtless become 
 grander during the thirty years or more that divided 
 the eighth book of the Aeneid from the third book 
 of the Tristia. But Suetonius insists that the 
 house was never really magnificent or in any way 
 conspicuous,^ and this falls in entirely with the 
 general policy and practice of Augustus as head of 
 the State. Before leaving Ovid, let us notice that 
 he marks this as the site of the earliest Rome; and 
 " tecta digna deo " suggests that he may have been 
 thinking of the very passage of Virgil that we are 
 discussing. 
 
 Now let us look at the famous passage that imme- 
 diately follows in Virgil, of which Dryden wrote 
 that he was lost in admiration of it;^ "I contemn 
 
 " Tristia, iii. i. 25 ff.; Hiilsen-Jordan, Rom. Topogr., 
 iii. 74. 
 
 2 " Postea in Palatio, sed nihilominus aedibus modicis 
 Hortensianis, et neque laxitate neque cultu conspicuis." 
 
 3 Quoted by Conington in his note. 
 
 76 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 the world when I think of it, and myself when I 
 translate it ": 
 
 " Aude, hospes, contemnere opes, et te quoque dignum 
 Finge deo, rebusque veni non asper egenis." 
 
 What he means to say is this: " Hercules once 
 came here to help us, even a son of Jupiter, and did 
 not despise this humble abode. Do thou bravely 
 follow his example. His divinity needed no out- 
 ward show; so reckon thyself like him, as worthy of 
 divinity, and be capable of despising vulgar wealth." 
 <;7*Iow we see what Virgil is really thinking of while 
 he lets his fancy roam back to the imaginary days 
 of Evander. These noble words were as applicable, 
 when they were written, to Augustus as to Aeneas."^ 
 
 Deo is best taken, as Servius and Heyne took it, 
 as meaning divinity in the abstract, not that of any 
 particular god. Hercules it cannot be, for he was 
 not fully deus when he arrived at Rome, and the 
 te quoque puts him in the same position as Aeneas. 
 Dr. Henry dogmatically condemned the view I 
 accept, and suggested Jupiter as the deus alluded to. 
 Line 301, which he did not quote, might have given 
 him some support; but I have a strong feeling that 
 deus is here, as so often in the poetry of the time, 
 divinity in the abstract.^ 
 
 Lines 366 ff. : 
 
 " dixit, et angusti subter fastigia tecti 
 ingentem Aenean duxit stratisque locavit 
 effultum foliis." 
 
 1 So e.g. in Hor., Od., i. 3, 21, i. 34, 15; " Roman Ideas 
 of Deity," p. 150. 
 
 77 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Was Aeneas lodged in the same house as his host, 
 or in another hard by ? If we look on to line 461, 
 we find that it was not in the same house; for 
 Evander with his dogs leaves his own threshold to 
 visit his guest in his sedes et seer eta. This seems to 
 be natural enough, for we cannot suppose Evander's 
 house to contain guest-rooms, and we must imagine, 
 as surely Virgil did, small dwellings like the hut of 
 Romulus, with only one story. Mr. Page, however, 
 remarks that, as Aeneas was in the same house, the 
 statement that Evander goes from the threshold to 
 meet him must be a slip. Not at all; lines 366 j^. 
 by no means necessarily imply that Aeneas had been 
 taken to a spare room in Evander's house. The 
 dwelling of Romulus was standing on the Palatine 
 in Virgil's time, and he must have been thinking of 
 it; it was a mere hut with a roof of thatch or reeds,^ 
 and could not possibly suggest spare bedrooms.^ 
 
 1 In Ovid, Fasti, iii. 183, Mars tells the poet that 
 
 " Quae fuerit nostri, si quaeris, regia nati, 
 Aspice de canna straminibusque domum " 
 
 — i.e., the hut was of wattles with a straw roof. Dionysius 
 also had seen it in Augustus' time (i. 79). Cp. Hiilsen- 
 Jordan, iii. 39, Burn, " Rome and the Campagna," p. 156. 
 Apparently it resembled in shape the hut-urns now 
 famiUar to archaeologists. 
 
 ^ Someone may ask what is meant by " mediis aedibus " 
 in 467: does not that show that one house only was in 
 Virgil's mind ? I do not think so. The whole passage 
 (454-468) has a largeness about it which forbids me to 
 think of chambers in a small hut-dwelling. I prefer to 
 see the two friends meeting in the open air, as would be 
 
 7% 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Lines 419 ff. : 
 
 " validique incudibus ictus 
 auditi referunt gemitus, striduntque cavernis 
 stricturae chalybum et fornacibus ignis anhelat." 
 
 I write chalybum with a small c, as in 446, " vul- 
 nificus chalybs vasta fornace liquescit." I believe, 
 though I own I cannot prove it, that in each line 
 chalybs means a pig of iron, the first form taken by 
 the metal in the process of manufacture. Servius 
 so understood it: " chalybum posuit stricturas pro 
 ferri massis." 
 
 But what does he mean by stricturae chalybum ? 
 One thing, I think, is pretty clear — that strictura 
 and fornax are two parts of the machinery of the 
 forge (or possibly the same part ?). Fornax was a 
 well-known term for an oven or furnace, but no 
 one, ancient or modern, has been able to tell us for 
 certain what strictura was. Writers later than 
 Virgil are plainly in doubt about the word; Nonius^ 
 simply guesses, quoting this line only, that it must 
 mean a spark or sparks. Pliny's account'' of iron- 
 founding is unsatisfactory, and he leaves us quite 
 in doubt as to strictura. It is better to try the 
 pre-Virgilian authors; and we may get something 
 from each of the two surviving passages in which 
 
 natural in the Italian climate, and then returning to the 
 house of Evander, and sitting just within the doorway. 
 It was, of course, summer time, as we know from the fact 
 that the trees were green and the poplar leaves were out. 
 1 P. 26, Onions. * xxxiv. 143. 
 
 79 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 the word occurs. Lucilius^ has " crebrae ut scin- 
 tillae in stricturis, quod genus olim ferventi ferro. 
 ..." This suggests the emission of sparks during 
 some part of the mahufacturing process, and 
 answers fairly well to the stridunt of 420. Varro 
 helps us still more ; he is quoted by Servius on Aen. 
 X. 174: " Nasci illic [i.e., in the island of Elba] 
 ferrum, sed in stricturam non posse cogi nisi trans- 
 vectum in Populoniam." This must mean that the 
 ore of Elba could not be made into pig-iron there, 
 but had to be brought over to the mainland to be 
 manufactured at Populonia. Cogi in stricturam may 
 mean constraining the ore into the form of pigs 
 (the oblong lumps ready for further forging), by 
 means of moulds or runs. In an interesting paper 
 in the Treasury for May, 1917, called " The Sussex 
 Pig," which gives an account of the ancient 
 Sussex forges, I read that " before the mouth of 
 the furnace lay the sand-beds in which the molten 
 metal was run to be cast into shape as pigs." The 
 word strictura itself suggests constraint — i.e., the 
 forcing or squeezing of the metal into certain chan- 
 nels or runnels, as in 445, " fluit aes rivis." Stringo 
 is no doubt a difficult word, and bears a variety of 
 meanings which it is not easy to trace to a common 
 origin; but Mr. Page quotes a line from Persius 
 (ii. 66) in which it is used of iron manufacture, 
 though inaccurately, I think: " Stringere venas 
 ferventis massae crudo de pulvere." Servius, too, 
 on this line says that strictura is " terra ferri in 
 1 Fragm. 105, Baehrens. 
 80 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 massam coacta," which agrees with the language of 
 Varro just quoted. Perhaps on the whole it will be 
 safe to translate " smelting " with Mr. Page, though 
 we do not know exactly what the process was which 
 is indicated. 
 
 Line 427. — The thunderbolts, Virgil tells us, 
 might be hurled by Jupiter from any quarter of the 
 sky {" toto quae plurima caelo deicit in terras "). 
 Conington remarks that toto carries out the idea of 
 plurima. Servius knew better; he says that it 
 means all the sixteen parts or regions of the sky. 
 I think he remembered the Etruscan lore, which 
 Virgil had picked up from Varro, Nigidius, or some 
 such authority. Jupiter was said to dwell in all the 
 sixteen regions,^ and if so he could certainly shoot 
 from them all. 
 
 Lines 454-456: 
 
 " Haec pater Aeoliis properat dum Lemnius oris 
 Euandrum ex humili tecto lux suscitat alma 
 et matutini volucrum sub culmine cantus."^ 
 
 There has been a most amusing controversy about 
 these Unes, in which I feel not incompetent to take 
 a part. Reading without commentators, I should 
 
 1 Martianus Capella, i. 46. See Thulin, " Die Gotter 
 des Martianus Capella und der Bronzeleber von Piacenza " 
 {" Rel. Versuche und Vorarbeiten," III. i. 16 ff.), who 
 quotes Servius on this passage as good authority. 
 
 2 I do not need to point out the wonderful contrast 
 between these lines and the fierce forging scene which 
 precedes them; in no part of the poem is such another 
 contrast to be found. 
 
 81 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 never have doubted that the birds alluded to are 
 the swallows feeding noisy nestlings on the beams 
 of the roof of a windowless humble dwelling, know- 
 ing well as I do how loud and vigorous their chatter- 
 ing is as the light begins to show in the east. But 
 Heyne asked whether swallows can wake up a 
 sleeper, and whether we should not think of cocks, 
 which had already been suggested by Servius. 
 Wagner in his edition of Heyne's Virgil solemnly 
 remarks that he had heard " homines rusticanos " 
 aifirm that they have been awakened by swallows, 
 and decides in favour of the swallow tribe. 
 
 On this, Henry, who liked to be by himself or in 
 a minority, remarks that " cock-crow not swallow- 
 crow is meant, according to immemorial saws, and is 
 already indicated in the verse itself by sub culmine, 
 the culmine being from all time the cock-roost, 
 while the swallows were content to lodge under the 
 eaves." But for this use of culmine " from all time " 
 he only quotes Corippus,^ who in the sixth century 
 A.D. wrote in praise of Justinian. Varro does not 
 use the word in his account of the poultry-yard, 
 and old Cato knew little or nothing of poultry-yards. 
 But, Henry goes on, the matter is placed beyond 
 all doubt by Silius, xiv. 20 (of the Straits of Mes- 
 sina) : 
 
 " Sed spatium quod dissociat consortia terrae 
 latratus fama est (sic arta intervenit unda) 
 et matutinos volucrum transmittere cantus " 
 
 1 For Corippus, see Wilamowitz in " Kultur der 
 Gegenwart," vol. viii., p. 202. 
 
 82 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 — " Where he must be a very determined swallowite 
 who takes the meaning to be that the twittering of 
 swallows can be heard across the straits." No 
 doubt, Silius is thinking of Virgil's line, but his 
 words have no force in determining Virgil's meaning. 
 If he meant cocks, it does not follow that Virgil did. 
 Certainly the swallows could not be heard across 
 the straits, and I imagine it is doubtful whether 
 cocks could be heard, either. 
 
 Henry adds that the cock's " song " is pre- 
 eminently the morning song with all poets, ancient 
 and modern; which is a strong statement, seeing 
 that there are no cocks in Homer or in Hesiod. 
 But he quotes from Sophocles a passage which 
 I have known by heart for more than half a 
 century, yet never dreamt that cocks were alluded 
 to in it: 
 
 (OS i^/iiv rjSr] Xajj/TTphv ■qXiov creXas 
 Iwa Kivet (j)0£yiJuxT' opvWiov (ra<j>7j. 
 
 (Electra i8.) 
 
 Nor did Sophocles so intend it, I am sure. Long 
 after Sophocles a schohast said so, alas ! and that 
 is a very different thing. Sophocles knew little or 
 nothing about fowls, while the scholiast did. The 
 domestic fowl did not reach Greece till the sixth 
 century B.C., and was not introduced into Italy 
 until the fifth century at earliest.^ Cato in the 
 
 1 Newton, "Dictionary of Birds," p. 291; D'Arcy 
 Thompson, " Glossary of Greek Birds," pp. 20 jjf. ; Storr- 
 Best, " Varro on Farming," p. 291, note. 
 
 83 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 second century only just mentions it.^ Probably 
 the advance in fowl-keeping after the time of Cato, 
 and especially under the early Empire, unduly 
 associated the cock with the dawn in the minds of 
 learned commentators who had never heard the 
 morning songs of wild birds in the country, as un- 
 doubtedly Virgil had. I may just add that cocks 
 do not necessarily begin to " sing " at dawn, as 
 swallows do. A cock may begin at midnight or at 
 any time, or may, as Marcellus says in " Hamlet," 
 sing all night long. 
 
 I should be ashamed to write thus at length about 
 so trivial a question, if I were not convinced, by 
 realising the out-of-door life of a southern climate, 
 that both Virgil and Sophocles were thinking of the 
 musical chatter of swallows heard through unglazed 
 windows, and not of the raucous and annoying 
 crowing of the domestic cock. 
 
 Lines 447 ff. : 
 
 " Ingentem clipeum informant, unum omnia contra 
 tela Latinorum, septenosque orbibus orbes 
 impediuni." 
 
 These last words have been explained in different 
 ways. The same phrase is used, with alternos 
 instead of septenos, of the movements of the boys in 
 book v. 584, and that passage is not without a 
 
 I De agric, 88. Varro, R.R., iii 9, shows that poultry 
 had become far more important in his day. By his time 
 gallicinium had become a word for the time before dawn, 
 according to Serv., Aen., ii. 268, but is not found in Varro 
 L.L., vi. 4-7. See Marquardt, " Privatleben," 247, note. 
 
 84 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 bearing on this. There, if I am not mistaken, 
 impediunf is used metaphorically in the sense of 
 weaving, for in weaving the threads are fixed so 
 as to hold fast, to prevent their coming loose, 
 and this is undoubtedly the root meaning of the 
 word. In the same way the boys weave an 
 orderly series of movements, held together by a 
 plan. 
 
 In the passage before us it seems to me that 
 impediunf has the meaning of holding together, 
 though not in the sense of weaving ; and, as there is 
 only one way in which the layers of the shield can 
 be held together securely — viz., by a strong rim or 
 circumference — I think Henry is right in taking 
 orbes of the seven layers and orbibus of the rims. 
 " Impedire has here its very usual meaning^ of bind, 
 invest, surround with, in the manner of a hoop or 
 ring. . . . Orbibus means the concentric rings or 
 hoops which bound the body all round the margin, 
 like so many felloes, one overlapping the other 
 round the body, whether solid or spoked, of a cart 
 wheel. Nothing can be more manifest than the 
 necessity of this outer ring or felloe, to keep the 
 seven flat disks in their places, and from shifting 
 or separating at their edges, nothing more happy 
 
 1 Henry does not quote any instances of this usage. 
 Tlie usual meaning of impedire is, of course, to fetter, 
 restrain, a meaning very close to the one given above, 
 as may be seen, e.g., in such a passage as Rhet, ad Herenn., 
 i. I, init: " negotiis familiaribus impediti " — i.e., fixed up 
 at home. 
 
 85 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 than the use of impediunt to express this fact." 
 For the triple rim of a shield he quotes two passages 
 of Homer: II. xviii. 478 (which is more realistic 
 than Virgil's account) and II. xi. 32. 
 
 These words have also been taken to mean that 
 there were circles on the surface of the shield, in 
 which were to be placed the scenes described at 
 the end of this book; but this seems to me to destroy 
 the unity of thought in the lines we are discussing. 
 Virgil could never have thought of jumping from 
 " unum omnia contra tela Latinorum " to patterns 
 on the surface of the shield. 
 
 Lines 520 ^. : 
 
 ' ' Vix ea f atus erat, defixique ora tenebant 
 Aeneas Anchisiades et fidus Achates, 
 multaque dura suo tristi cum corde putabant, 
 ni signum caelo Cytherea dedisset aperto." 
 
 The pathos of this passage, which is very delicate, 
 seems to have been altogether missed. The com- 
 mentators do not seem to have discovered it. Why 
 does Virgil call Aeneas Anchisiades here ? Why are 
 he and Achates sad ? Why is the word putabant 
 used ? 
 
 Evander has just, apparently without misgiving 
 at the moment, given his son into the charge of 
 Aeneas, and seems to lay special stress upon the boy's 
 name, which is the last word of line 519. Pallas 
 was the hope and comfort (514) of his father's old 
 age; and by this time he was weU known to Aeneas, 
 for he was the first to accost the stranger when he 
 
 86 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 reached the site of Rome. Their relation as guar- 
 dian and pupil {contubernium) is beautifully pic- 
 tured in X. isgff., where the voyage from the Etrus- 
 can coast is described: 
 
 " Hie magnus sedet Aeneas secumque volutat 
 eventus belli varies, Pallasque sinistro 
 adfixus lateri iam quaerit sidera, opacae 
 noctis iter, iam quae passus terraque marique."* 
 
 The effect on Aeneas of the death of his pupil 
 and the boy's funeral are told with much touching 
 tenderness later on. Pallas is in some sense the hero 
 of these books (viii.-xi.), and even to the very end of 
 the poem he is not forgotten, for but for him and 
 his belt Turnus might have escaped death. If the 
 books had been thoroughly revised, his importance 
 in the story might perhaps have been still more 
 obvious. 
 
 Now, the poet knew what was coming, while the 
 reader does not; but Virgil wishes his reader to see 
 that Aeneas has an intuition of the boy's fate, an 
 intuition which soon passes to Evander (568 ff.), 
 and he puts in the word Anchisiades with that 
 object. As in the more famous passage in x. 822, 
 
 1 Passages like this go far to convict Sellar of mis- 
 judging Virgil very seriously (pp. 361 ff. of his volume on 
 Virgil). The Scotch critic made the serious mistake, 
 which the Germans and Mr. Gladstone have also made, 
 of judging a poet by comparison with others born in other 
 lands and other ages. That means that they read him 
 with one eye upon Homer, or, strange to say, in this case 
 upon Spenser. 
 
 87 G 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 it betrays what is passing in the hero's mind.^ 
 When Aeneas slays Lausus, pity seizes him for the 
 lad's father, and he thinks of his own father Anchises, 
 who might so easily have lost his son. Here, too, 
 pity seizes him for Evander, for the life of Pallas 
 was in jeopardy, and he was responsible to Evander 
 for it. I believe that the patronymic is used here 
 just as in the tenth book, and that the cloud passing 
 over the hero's mind was mainly anxiety for the 
 son of his host. There was no other real reason 
 for depression, and it is out of keeping with the 
 character of Aeneas after the descent into Hades.^ 
 Just below, after the sign from Venus, he cheers up 
 Evander, yet seems to hint at a possible misfortune 
 which may affect him: " ne quaere profecto Quem 
 casum portenta ferant; ego poscor." 
 
 Putabant dura indicates, I think, a premonitory 
 sadness, of which the death of Pallas would be the 
 explanation. Putabant does not mean that he medi- 
 tated about the perils of the campaign, but that the 
 forebodings about Pallas forced themselves on his 
 mind. Let us look at A^i. 331 j^., where puto is used 
 in the same sense and is also accompanied by the 
 patronymic. Aeneas is contemplating the unhappy 
 fate of the unburied dead: 
 
 1 " At vero ut vultum vidit morientis et ora, 
 ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris. . . ." 
 
 1 can never forget the thrill that went through me when 
 the meaning of Anchisiades was first made plain to me by 
 my tutor, H. Nettleship. 
 
 2 See " Rel. Exp.," p. 422. 
 
 88 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 " constitit Anchisa satus et vestigia pressit 
 
 multa putans sortemque animo miseratus iniquam." 
 
 Why Anchisa satus ? His father was safe in his 
 grave, and has just been placated; but he is thinking 
 of what might have been, and of his own possible fate. 
 He sees two Trojans whom that fate had overtaken 
 in their wanderings; but between him and his 
 father, by the grace of the gods, the relation was 
 still intact. Then Palinurus salutes him and begs 
 for the burial of his body, and, divining the current 
 of his thoughts, calls him by his father's name (348). 
 The meaning of the patronymic here is made certain 
 by line 364, in which he appeals to Aeneas not 
 only by his father, but also by his young son.^ I 
 may mention two other passages in which the 
 patronymic is used with much the same object. 
 In vi. 126 Aeneas has been telling the Sibyl all about 
 his father in terms of tender affection, so that she 
 appropriately addresses him as Tros Anchisiades. 
 And again in x. 250, when the Nymphs into which 
 the ships have been changed have been talking about 
 theur home on Mount Ida, and his mind goes back to 
 the pld days and the old haunts, no wonder Virgil 
 caUs him Tros Anchisiades ! 
 
 The tender relation of father and son is, of course, 
 strong throughout the Aeneid — nay, is one of the 
 leading thoughts in it;^ the word pietas contains 
 
 1 " Per genitorem oro, per spes surgentis lull, 
 eripe me his, invicte, malis." 
 2 Even Mezentius felt it in his passionate way (x. 844 jf.) 
 a noble passage, every word in which is worth careful 
 weighing. g^ 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 that meaning as well as devotion to the decrees of 
 Fate or Jupiter. The affection of mother and son 
 is less obvious, but not absent, if we think of Eurya- 
 lus in ix. 287, who could not bear to see his mother 
 in tears, and left her without a farewell embrace when 
 he went out to face a deadly peril. This was not 
 cowardice, or dulness of heart, as Dr. Heru'y seems 
 to think; it is Virgil's knowledge of a boy's mind 
 that is here shown. The same thing has happened 
 many times, I am sure, in the present war. With 
 full acceptance of his boyish friend's feeling, the stiU 
 younger Ascanius sheds tears as he thinks of the 
 love of his own parents: 
 
 " atque animum patriae strinxit pietatis imago," 
 
 where patria pietas is no doubt the love of both 
 father and mother, the family affection. Roman 
 virtues were masculine rather than feminine, but 
 the loving care of a mother is not wanting in Roman 
 story (cp. ix. 473 ff.); and at this very moment 
 Augustus was doing his best to restore the old 
 family life in Roman society.^ 
 
 There is yet another sacred relation to be remem- 
 bered here, that of hospitium. What made the 
 death of Pallas so painful to Aeneas was not only 
 the thought of fatherhood, and of the trust with 
 which Evander had charged him, but the fact that 
 Pallas and his father had been the first of all Italians 
 
 1 There are some interesting remarks on this subject 
 in the last few pages of Lecky's " History of European 
 Morals," vol. ii. 
 
 90 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 to welcome him to their home and to form a per- 
 sonal and political alliance with him.* For we 
 know on good old Latin authority that the relation 
 between host and guest was a stronger bond than 
 any other but that of the relation of father and 
 son.2 These old Italian blooms unfold themselves 
 in Virgil's poetry if we read it with a knowledge of 
 things Roman, as weU as with a knowledge of 
 human nature. 
 
 Lines 524 ff.: The Heavenly Sign given by 
 Venus. — Much has been written about these lines, 
 and many questions raised. Conington has for 
 once an interesting note, referring to Mr. Gladstone's 
 strictures on Virgil for allowing Venus to send 
 lightning.^ Gladstone was right even from an 
 Italian point of view, in complaining that Venus 
 could not do such work, or at any rate never did 
 it; the Etruscan lore of lightning shows no trace 
 of her as a thunderer. But Conington is equally 
 right in arguing that she could easily get Jupiter, 
 
 1 See X. 515 #.: 
 
 " Pallas, Evander, in ipsis 
 omnia sunt oculis, mensae quas advena primas 
 tunc adiit, dextraeque datae." 
 
 ' To realise the force of hospitium, the best way is to 
 read Gellius, Noct. Att., v. 13, with its quotations from 
 Cato and Masurius Sabinus {temp. Tiberius). The latter 
 wrote: " In of&ciis apud maiores ita observatum est, 
 primum tutelae, deinde hospiti, deinde clienti, turn 
 cognato, postea adfini." 
 
 ' " Studies," vol. iii., p. 523. 
 
 91 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 the chief dealer in these munitions, to do the job 
 for her. We certainly need not make a difficulty 
 here if Virgil did not. 
 
 Nor, again, in the grand line 526 (" Tyrrhenusque 
 tubae mugire per aethera clangor ") need we trouble 
 ourselves about the word Tyrrhenus. Mr. Page says 
 that the epithet here is used " merely to give literary 
 ornament, though somewhat awkwardly, as there 
 has been so much reference to the actual Etruscans." 
 Henry thinks of one individual Tyrrhenus who in- 
 vented the trumpet, and appeals to Silius v. 10. 
 Let me once more protest against his use of the 
 later poets in explaining Virgil; they had not Virgil's 
 mind, and they, too, often spoil him by their bor- 
 rowings and allusions. Henry is quite wrong here, 
 as anyone will allow who knows the frequent allu- 
 sion in the Greek dramatists to the Etruscan origin 
 of the trumpet.^ In any case an epithet like this 
 is not otiose or flat because it is conventional; on 
 the contrary, it carried the bilingual Roman back 
 to the Greek literature on which his literary in- 
 telligence was built; and it is a grand word, placed 
 emphatically at the beginning of the line. 
 
 One other point before we leave this episode. 
 Does Virgil mean that the arms destined for Aeneas 
 were themselves actually shown him in the sky ? 
 Henry emphatically says No; all that Virgil means 
 is the shape and sound of battle in the sky, so often 
 reported both in ancient and modern history, and 
 
 ^ Many of them are collected in Miiller-Deecke's 
 " Etrusker," vol. ii., p. 207, esp. note 6. 
 
 92 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 described by Milton in " Paradise Lost," book ii. 
 533 ff. But commentators from Servius down- 
 wards have recognized the arms of Vulcan, and 
 line 535 supports them. Whether the actual 
 material armour was up there in the cloud, or only 
 a semblance and promise of it, does not much matter. 
 The reader may take his own view of the spirit of the 
 passage, and will doubtless remember that he is 
 reading poetry, poetry which at this point is alter- 
 nating with curious effect between the realistic and 
 the subUme, the human and the supernatural. 
 
 Lines 541 ff. : 
 
 ' ' Haec ubi dicta dedit, solio se tollit ab alto 
 et primum Herculeis sopitas ignibus aras 
 excitat, hesternumque larem parvosque penatis 
 laetus adit; mactat lectas de more bidentis 
 Euandrus pariter, pariter Troiana iuventus." 
 
 These lines present several small but serious difh- 
 culties. To begin with, where was the altar with 
 the " Herculean " fire ? Let us be clear what has 
 happened. In 465 ff., Aeneas and Evander meet 
 after rising, and sit down for a talk mediis aedibus — 
 i.e., either in the house of Evander or in that where 
 Aeneas was lodged; it matters little which. While 
 they were talking appeared the sign from heaven, 
 which they saw through the open door or went out 
 to see; again it matters little which. But as in 541 
 Aeneas is said to have risen from his seat, they seem 
 to have been indoors during the thunderstorm, or 
 at the threshold. Certainly they were on the Pala- 
 
 93 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 tine, if I was right in my description of their walk, 
 and the altar spoken of cannot be the great altar 
 of Hercules, which was far away by the river; 
 Virgil would never have allowed a stranger to offer 
 the morning sacrifice there. And the Lar and 
 Penates must be those of Evander, in his house on 
 the Palatine. 
 
 Then, what does the word Herculeis mean ? 
 Remembering that Hercules had been in that house, 
 and had left his traces there in many ways,^ I can 
 understand the word, though not without difficulty. 
 But in the next line ' hesternum larem ' is to me 
 still more difficult. It was apparently so puzzling 
 to Roman readers that another reading, ' externum,' 
 had appeared before Servius' time, which he rightly 
 rejects, interpreting ' hesternum larem ' as the lar 
 to whom sacrifice had been offered the previous 
 day; in other words, Aeneas, leaving his own lodging, 
 went to the house of Evander, where they sacrificed 
 together. This is certainly possible. But a passage 
 in book v. (743 ff.), which closely resembles the one 
 before us, has raised a suspicion in my mind which 
 I feel rather unwillingly compelled to mention here. 
 
 " Haec memorans cinerem et sopitos suscitat ignes 
 Pergameumque larem et canae penetralia Vestae 
 farre pio et plena supplex veneratur acerra." 
 
 ^ See R. Peter in Myth. Lex., s.v. Hercules, pp. 2291 
 and 2901 ff. One story was that Pallas was the son of 
 Hercules (Dionys., i. 43). He was also believed to be the 
 ancestor of the gens Fabia (Ov., ' Fasti,' ii. 237), through 
 a daughter of Evander (Silius, vi. 627). 
 
 94 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Is it possible that a displacement of two words 
 in two successive lines found its way into the text 
 in viii. 542-43, and that we should read 
 
 " et primum hesternis sopitas ignibus aras 
 excitat, hercttieumque larem parvosque penates 
 laetus adit"? 
 
 If so, lar would have an epithet attached to it 
 after Virgil's own manner in the Aeneid; cp. ix. 259: 
 ' Assaracique larem et canae penetralia Vestae.' 
 The metaphorical use of lar (as in Georg. iv. 43, of 
 the bees' home) is not, I think, to be found in the 
 prophetic poem of the Roman state. Lar in the 
 Aeneid is a word of serious religious and historical 
 import. 
 
 Line 562 : 
 
 " scutorumque incendi victor acervos." 
 
 This Une shows that the custom of destroying 
 booty, and especially arms, which has only lately 
 been satisfactorily explained, was still known in 
 Virgil's time, or he would not have alluded to it. 
 Strange to say, S. Reinach in his ample discussion 
 of the question does not mention this passage.^ 
 He gives us, however, a sufficient amount of evi- 
 dence, partly from Roman authors, partly from the 
 Bible, that spoils were taboo and could not be used 
 by their captors, but must be hung in the air, or 
 thrown into water, or burnt. He gives us, also, 
 
 1 " Cultes, Mythes, et Religions," iii. 223 ff. and reff. 
 The passage in Orosius, v. 16. 5, is especially interesting. 
 
 95 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 examples of the breaking of this taboo and its con- 
 sequences/ and of the gradual wearing away of the 
 old scruple under stress of circumstances, as in Livy, 
 xxiii. 14. He acknowledges his debt here to the 
 Danish antiquary Worsaae, who has thus explained 
 the great quantity of mutilated armour found in 
 Danish peat-bogs. 
 
 Reinach gives his explanation on p. 243, and it is 
 probably the right one. These arms were supposed 
 in primitive times to be possessed of magical and 
 mischief -making powers; they belonged to strange 
 people of whom one knew little or nothing — any- 
 how, nothing good. The feeling is, in fact, the same 
 as that about the captives, of which I have written 
 in an article called " Passing under the Yoke."^ 
 If the captive strangers were subjected to a magical 
 ceremony, they might be dismissed without doing 
 harm to their captors ; and so, if you destroyed the 
 arms, there was an end of their mischief-making 
 power. 
 
 Line 574: " Numina vestra." — As in i. 666, I 
 imagine that in the plural the word means " acts 
 of will "; in the latter passage — nay, in both — there 
 is a reminiscence of the true nature of the old 
 Italian deity, who was thought of rather as a series 
 of manifestations of will-power than as a personal 
 god. (See " Rel. Exp.," 118.) 
 
 ^ See his paper, p. 233. 
 
 '^ Classical Review, March, igi^. 
 
 96 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 Line 578: 
 " sin aliquem infandum casum, Fortuna, minaris." 
 
 Though I am keeping a consideration of Fate for 
 the end of the book, I may here notice that this use 
 of Fortuna is interesting, as immediately following 
 a prayer to Jupiter. For Evander, Fortuna was 
 omnipotens in line 334, and apparently equivalent 
 to Fatmn. So here Fortuna is a force beyond the 
 power of Jupiter to control, and, in fact, seems to be 
 Fatum viewed in the concrete rather than the 
 abstract, Fatum in action at a given moment. It 
 is very nearly the Polybian use of tu^'?, for which I 
 may refer to my " Roman Ideas of Deity," p. 69. 
 Here, too, note that Virgil seems to dislike to attri- 
 bute evil, at any rate unnecessary evil, to Jupiter, 
 and that Fortuna saves him from the necessity. 
 The word infandum could not be used of anything 
 Jupiter does,^ but we have it used here of a possible 
 action of Fortuna. 
 
 The speech of Evander which contains these hues 
 is very interesting, not only because of its pathos 
 and tender Italian feeUng, but because it helps to 
 link together the points of the story that is coming. 
 Pallas is fixed henceforth in the reader's memory, 
 and when his sad story is taken up again in the 
 
 1 Cp. vii. 583, and i. 251, where the word is used of 
 events contrary to the will of Jupiter. The unnecessary 
 loss of a son could hardly be attributed to him. On 
 Jupiter's goodness, see Dr. Glover's " Virgil " (ed. 2), 
 pp. 2^^ff. 
 
 97 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 tenth book, this picture of the old father remains 
 with us. 
 
 Then follows the last of the succession of scenes 
 in which the story of this book is told. We have 
 had the voyage up the Tiber, the sacrifice to Her- 
 cules (with the tale of Cacus), the walk round the 
 site of Rome, the morning service, the heavenly 
 sign from Venus, the return to the boats, and the 
 prayer of Evander. Now we have in the last place 
 the march out. to Agylla, on which Henry has an 
 excellent note. He compares it with a parallel 
 scene in the fourth book, where Dido and Aeneas 
 set forth in perfect happiness and splendour of 
 equipment to the hunting-party that was to prove 
 so fatal. On both scenes the poet has lavished his 
 powers of description. " To a reader unacquainted 
 with the sequel both pictures are as gay and ex- 
 hilarating as they stand to him who reads the story 
 for the second, or it may be for the hundredth time, 
 in the saddest contrast to the grim catastrophes 
 by which their sunny morning brightness is so 
 soon, so very soon, to be overcast, and for ever 
 extinguished." 
 
 Lines 600 jf. : 
 
 " Silvano fama est veteres sacrasse Pelasgos, 
 arvorum pecorisque deo, lucumque diemque, 
 qui primi finis aliquando habuere Latinos." 
 
 What exactly Virgil meant in using the name 
 Pelasgos here it is impossible to say. In the second 
 
 98 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 book he seems to use it for Greeks ;i and here he 
 may perhaps be supposed to use it for Etruscans. 
 But whether he uses it in a racial sense at all may 
 be doubted. Dr. Leaf seems to me to have shown 
 that in Homer it has no racial meaning, but indi- 
 cates, hke the word " Welsh " in its various forms, 
 the relation between an invading and an invaded 
 people, in the tongue of the former. ^ Virgil may 
 simply mean that an invading people — ^Etruscans, 
 perhaps — found a clearing here, made by primitive 
 inhabitants, who had set up a festival to the half- 
 wild deity Silvanus, one that always seems to haunt 
 the borderland between woodland and cultivation.^ 
 There was an old tradition of Pelasgoi in this south- 
 west corner of Etruria, which is preserved by Diony- 
 sius;^ but this is not the place for any discussion of 
 the many passages which bear upon this old 
 ethnological puzzle. It will be found discussed in 
 Modestow's " Introduction a I'Histoire Romaine," 
 pp. 439/- 
 
 Lines 621 ff. : 
 
 " loricam ex aere rigentem, 
 sanguineam, ingentem, qualis cum caerula nubes 
 solis inardescit radiis longeque refulget." 
 
 1 ii. 83 and 106. 
 ^ " Troy," chapter vii., passim. 
 3 For Silvanus, see "Rel. Exp.," 132, 142. 
 * Dionys., i. 27, and Modestow, p. 444. See also Korte 
 in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Etrusker. 
 
 99 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Conington tells us that this simile is from Apol- 
 lonius Rhodius, iv. 125, where of the golden fleece 
 it is said that it was 
 
 . . . ve^eAij ivaX.iyKiov, tjt aviovros 
 rjiXiov <l)Xoyiprj(Tiv kpevdirai aKTivecra-iv. 
 
 I suppose we may assume that Virgil had this 
 passage in his mind; but he has improved on it in 
 a subtle manner. ApoUonius likens the fleece to a 
 cloud " that blushes red with the fiery beams of the 
 rising sun." Virgil is not thinking of a fleece, but 
 of a supernatural breastplate of bronze; and bronze 
 is a material that (even without being supernatural) 
 can take a variety of tints according to the light in 
 which it is seen. Thus, Servius thought of the 
 rainbow in the cloud, and the idea is worth considera- 
 tion. But on the whole I think that what the poet's 
 mind saw was a grey-blue ground colour shot through 
 with blood-red light. ApoUonius thought of a red 
 cloud at sunrise; Virgil thinks of a dark cloud with 
 ruddy light flashing through it. 
 
 Henry says of Virgil's Unes that the final m 
 occurring nine times in two lines and a half has a 
 bad effect, but that it may have been meant to 
 inspire awe of the cuirass. I think it probable that 
 some effect was intended; whether successfully or 
 not may be doubtful. 
 
 Line 626 to end of book: The Shield of Aeneas. — 
 I am strongly of opinion that it is futile to deal with 
 this description on plastic principles, and to look 
 
 100 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 for divisions or compartments on the surface of the 
 shield, into which the various scenes might be 
 fitted. The same may be said, in my view, of the 
 shield of Achilles in the Iliad, and certainly of the 
 mantle of Jason in ApoUonius Rhodius,^ which last 
 is a comparatively feeble performance. Once we 
 lose the right mood in reading the Homeric shield, 
 we spoil it, and surely the right mood is that of 
 interest in human life actually going on, as it were, 
 under our eyes. He who allows himself to try and 
 puzzle out how these scenes of human life could be 
 compressed into a metallic surface is simply wasting 
 his time. In Virgil's shield the attention of the 
 Roman reader was to be absorbed by successive 
 pictures of Roman history, and that reader would 
 be the last man to inquire how they fitted in within 
 the shield's rim; nor need we attempt that un- 
 necessary task.^ 
 
 The main point of distinction between the shields 
 of Achilles and Aeneas has been well put by Sellar :^ 
 " The Shield of Achilles presents to the imagination 
 the varied spectacle of human life — sowing and 
 reaping, a city besieged, a marriage festival, etc.; 
 the Shield - of Aeneas preseBts-thejiQst m^omenLous 
 crise s in the annals of Ro nie. ^nlminating in tlua — 
 great triumph of Augustus." Virgil's scenes can 
 
 ^ Book i. 720 ff. 
 
 ^ See Heinze, " Vergil's epische Technik," p. 394, who 
 quotes C. Robert to the same effect in regard to the Homeric 
 shield. 
 
 3 " Roman Poets of the Augustan Age": Virgil, p. 323. 
 
 lOI 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 never for non-Romans have the same charm as 
 Homer's; they lack the universal element. But if 
 only, when we reach this point, we have clothed 
 ourselves to some extent with the Roman spirit, 
 they may warm us with a sense of human achieve- 
 ment such as they were certainly meant to inspire. 
 The best way to acquire this sense of things Roman 
 is to read straight through the poem untroubled by 
 commentators; and how few of us ever do that ! 
 I have done it more than once, just as I have read 
 through Shakespeare's plays and poems almost un- 
 harassed by other reading; and the two undertak- 
 ings have been great epochs in my life. 
 
 ^nan achievement, theiij though^oman 
 onlv. is for-jtooZni LhieeTeasons worth most carefu l 
 attention. As Dr. Glover has remarked, Virgil here 
 -gave for the first time its li terary expression to_ the 
 friirmph^ nf a natinn p nli tTcally. racially ^and geo- 
 ""graphicall y one ^_o yer clan and city. " ItlTnot the 
 "vicEory of Rome so much as of Italy that Virgil 
 thinks of in describing the Battle of Actium.''^ 
 This sudden rise of a principle of nationality, glori- 
 fied by Virgil, might be compared with the rise of 
 the German Empire in the nineteenth century, and 
 the extravagant self-praise of her Professors and 
 men of letters, but for two circumstances which 
 saved the Roman poets from anything so poisonous 
 as German Chauvinism. One of these is the sad- 
 
 1 " Virgil," (ed. 2), pp. 106 ff. In 678 Augustus 
 leads " Italos in proelia"; in 715 he " dis Italis votum 
 immortale sacrabat." Cp. xii. 827. 
 
 102 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 ness of the time, and the entirely wholesome feeling 
 of relief, not of triumph, that succeeded. A second 
 circumstance was that, unlike Germany, Rome 
 recognised and revered her teachers. Greece was 
 always before her, supplying ideas and models, and 
 the Romans could not claim the great Greeks as 
 belonging to their own race, as the modern German 
 childishly deludes himself into fancying that Dante 
 and Shakespeare, and apparently all great men, 
 must be Germans, because Germany alone is capable 
 of producing them. 
 
 Now I wish to ask the question. On what prin- 
 ^ijple does Virgil choose the scenes from Roman 
 history represented on the shield ? He might have 
 chosen great victories, such as Beneventum, Zama, 
 Pydna, Magnesia, but passed them over; was it 
 only because they did not offer him scenes suitable 
 to the kind of dramatic representation that he 
 wished for ? Certain it is that he did not choose 
 either victories or triumphs until he came to his own 
 time. Even in the sixth book, in the great list of 
 Roman heroes, conquerors of the triumphant sort 
 are not too prominent, and it ends with the escape 
 of Rome from the dire attack of Hannibal, and with 
 lamentation over the Civil War.^ Here in the eighth 
 
 1 The strange misreading of vi. 847 ff. by Professor 
 Haverfield in " Some Roman Conceptions of Empire " 
 (Occasional Papers of the Classical Association, No. 4) 
 hardly needs refutation. It is at once and finally 
 refuted by the well - known fact that Virgil read 
 these lines to Augustus, the pacator orbis tevrarum, then 
 
 103 H 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 book we have a long list, not so much of triumphs, 
 as of esca pes from terrible perils both moral and 
 material, ending with, the Battle of Actium, the 
 most wonderful escape-of all, the esca.pe from a"^ 
 laroken empire and the threatened dominionToT^jif" 
 iI)xien;Kt3ti5en In ^ alliance^ with an unscrupulous 
 Roman,., the impersanation of -self-S£eking_ magnifi- 
 cence, of individual passion as against the wisdom 
 ~5ji?^~r.r4f-r^a£-:t^g-gtate: ^^- 
 
 These ^apes or critical moments are as foUows; 
 they are introduced, we may notice, by the super- 
 natural escape of the twins from destruction: 
 
 I. The escape of the Romans of the Palatine from 
 
 engaged in organising the Empire on a principle of local 
 freedom ; the attempt to dissociate Virgil from the Augustan 
 policy, to attribute to the tender-hearted poet a savage 
 Hunnish attitude towards the peoples of the Empire, should 
 therefore never have been made by one to whom we look for 
 right historical thinking. It involves him in a misunder- 
 standing of the Virgilian use of words like imperium and 
 parcere (see for the latter Henry's note on x. 880, and 
 Professor Conway in Classical Review for February, 191 7), 
 and in such strange conclusions as the assumption that Virgil 
 denied to the Romans all artistic gifts — nay, even forbade 
 them to use such gifts. What of Roman poetry, of 
 Lucretius and Catullus, and his own modest genius ? 
 What of oratory and Cicero ? of whom, by the way, the 
 Professor says strange things on p. 10, which I will leave 
 to his historical conscience to repudiate. The meaning 
 of these lines will remain what scholars have always 
 known it to be, I am absolutely confident ; and if 
 they have been quoted too often, which I secretly sus- 
 pect is the real cause of this assault upon them, that is 
 
 104 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 the fruit of their own unscrupulousness, by a treaty 
 with the more civilised and moral Sabines, con- 
 firmed by sacrifice at the altar of Jupiter. 
 
 2. The escape of Rome from the attempt of Mettus 
 of Alba to destroy her by treachery, which meets 
 with due punishment. 
 
 3. The escape of Rome from the Etruscan yoke 
 of Tarquin and the attack of Porsena: Rome fight- 
 ing for liberty, and barely escaping at the bridge. 
 
 4. The escape from the Gauls on the Capitol, 
 which illustrates the good fortune rather than the 
 conquering spirit of Rome. 
 
 5. After an awkward interruption about religious 
 
 no reason why they should be misinterpreted. Virgil and 
 Augustus were entirely at one ; an end had to be made to 
 the endless and needless wars of the Mediterranean, which 
 had depopulated Greece and laid civilisation open to 
 barbarism. The process leading to this result is the work 
 of the Roman, the result itself is imperium, a word which 
 the poet has just used, in 812, of the beneficent religious 
 rule of Numa. The process is pacification, and when 
 Virgil wrote pads imponere morem he used pax in its 
 proper and Augustan sense of covenant for the good of 
 mankind; assuredly not such a peace as " Tacitus damned 
 in his famous epigram." I speak with intentional frank- 
 ness when I affirm that the Professor's criticism, whether 
 from the point of view of history or language, is wholly 
 misleading. 
 
 " Our war to-day is that we may destroy war," said 
 the American preacher at St. Paul's yesterday (April 
 20). " The one thing to do with war is to hunt it to its 
 death." This is " pacis imponere morem, parcere subiectia 
 et debellare superbos." 
 
 105 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 matters comes the escape from Catiline and revolu- 
 tionary anarchy. We may note that Augustus was 
 
 > born in that year of salvation. 
 
 6. Last and greatest, the escape from Oriental 
 monarchy, foreign religion, a Roman renegade, and 
 a fatal division of the Empire. Xhejtriumph at the 
 endj2I4j7^-) is a triumph over barbanai^_ who we re 
 menaciiig~tEe~R^iaH-_sy stem^the n jw_ Augustan 
 
 ^^^systg nr^^oT jeace and__mQ;^Iity. " By none so 
 well as by^ Va:gil_ffias voice giveiiPEoTiieTnipmng 
 expecta4ion-,"that thB^omaff^EmpiiS^ might become, 
 i>y~rig_hteousness, the shaping mould of humanity; 
 
 ~ai]d4f-lfaE""pfopEec3rwa5°Tttrt=faiiii 
 wag r.nnr.mvpfl, yftt np,it]Tgr ji^d it fall to the ground."^ 
 The last sixty lines, containing the Battle of 
 Actium and the triumph, are full of enthusiasm, 
 and seem to be highly finished work. Henry 
 Nettleship threw out a suggestion that they may 
 have been written soon after the battle, and adapted 
 from a poem in praise of Augustus which Virgil 
 seems to have projected when he wrote the intro- 
 duction to the third Georgic: {46 jf.)' 
 
 " mox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnas 
 Caesaris et nomen fama tot ferre per annos 
 Tithoni prima quot abest ab origine Caesar." 
 
 I think there is a good deal to be said for this 
 conjecture, though more than conjecture it can 
 never be. In my view, there is a curious contrast 
 between the finished workmanship of these last 
 
 * Verrall, op. cit., p. 13. 
 106 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 sixty lines, and what I may almost call the ragged 
 condition of the presentation of the earlier scenes. 
 I am disposed to look upon that presentation as 
 unfinished work; and will point out two or three 
 reasons for this conclusion. In the first place, line 
 654^ is quite out of place, and Ribbeck's suggestion 
 that we should place it after line 641 hardly mends 
 matters. To me it seems a line left on the margin 
 for insertion if occasion served, which has crept into 
 the text in the wrong place. Again, lines 663-666^ 
 come in very abruptly and awkwardly. Servius 
 saw this, and tried to explain it by saying that 
 priests very properly follow closely on temples. But 
 they do not follow closely; the Capitoline temple is 
 mentioned ten lines back, and is there introduced 
 somewhat awkwardly. These lines look to me as if 
 Virgil had put in the ancient priesthoods and their 
 attributes, not for Servius' reason, but at the re- 
 quest of Augustus, bringing his scenes from old 
 Roman history to a sudden end for this purpose. 
 Between the attack of the Gauls in 390, and the 
 conspiracy of Catiline in 63 B.C., there is a big gap; 
 and the most wonderful escape that Rome experi- 
 enced, that from Hannibal's invasion, is left a com- 
 
 1 " Romuleoque recens horrebat regia culmo." 
 
 2 " hie exsultantes Salios nudosque Lupercos 
 
 lanigerosque apices et lapsa ancilia caelo 
 extuderat, castae ducebant sacra per urberti 
 pilentis matres in mollibus." 
 
 The passage usually quoted here, Liv. v. 25, has no 
 relation to the invasion of the Gauls. 
 
 107 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 plete blank. It is just possible that Virgil, finding 
 at line 663 that he was getting into difficulties, left 
 his historical scenes rather abruptly, sketched a 
 conclusion for them with Catiline and Cato, and 
 went on to add the sixty lines he had finished long 
 before, leaving the transitions to be worked up 
 later — a task to which he never returned. 
 
 Lines 666 jf.: 
 
 «" " hinc procul addit 
 Tartareas etiam sedes, alta ostia Ditis, 
 et scelerum poenas, et te, Catilina, minaci 
 pendentem scopulo, Furiarumque ora trementem, 
 secretosque pios, his dantem iura Catonem." 
 
 On the introduction of Catiline and Cato, Dr. 
 Glover has a good remark.^ He suggests that, as 
 Virgil was seven years old in the year of the con- 
 spiracy, it may have been the first public event of 
 which he took any notice; for there was some dis- 
 turbance in Cisalpine Gaul at the time, and there 
 may have been an expectation that Catiline would 
 break through in that direction.^ " As he grew 
 older, Virgil would learn more of what CatiUne's 
 rising had meant, and with other Italians he would 
 learn to hate Sulla and SuUa's men. And then, as 
 the star of the first Caesar rose, Virgil with all the 
 Transpadanes would watch with eager interest the 
 career with which their own destiny, their Roman 
 citizenship, was involved." 
 
 ^ " Virgil " (ed. 2), p. 23. 
 2 Sail., Cat., 42 and 56. 
 108 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Dr. Glover does not notice in connexion with 
 these Unes the famiUar fact that Caesar was prac- 
 tically on the same side as Catiline in that year, and 
 that Cato was always his bitterest enemy; so that 
 it would seem rash to introduce Catiline as a criminal 
 and Cato as a hero immediately before the great 
 victory of Caesar's adopted son. But the fact is 
 ^ thaJLCatiline represen ted_jtIie caiise^3r"3TscrrdFr~?mjd=: 
 -seGiaLan^;chy7wEiSS^^irQs-4-n-iii&4ater y^brs, and 
 A ugustus~througnout ms lil e;_were systematirattv" 
 ^crushing ou t; while Cato was the" hero ofihe cause 
 _of order and" moraUty'"wh fcfar"Apgtr5tus~was trying" 
 —^-Q-a^j^nri ate with his own government, ifTi Dt-witfair 
 , that of Julius. And we must remember that the 
 death of Cato had greatly impressed the Roman 
 world, and that such feelings could not well be 
 repressed even if the poets had wished it. Horace 
 in the first ode of his second book marks the popular 
 view, which passed on into succeeding generations, 
 as may be seen in Plutarch's Life of Cato.^ 
 
 Line 671: 
 
 " Haec inter tumidi late maris ibat imago 
 aurea. ..." 
 
 yir gil's idea j gems to be that the^tw o sc enes of 
 the Roman priests and the regions of Tartarus were 
 
 1 I assume that the younger Cato is meant. Valerius 
 Maximus expresses the same feeling about Cato in many 
 passages in the next generation, and Velleius (ii. 35) has 
 much to say of Cato's virtue, though, oddly enough, 
 nothing of his death. 
 
 109 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 ^_^lo££osite_sides_«f--the--Shield7- and -that -betaeen^ 
 
 them there was an open space of se a, surrounded 
 
 ~~15y~a-- circlG of livc i ry~dotphins, witlpthe battle going 
 
 ' oiTwithin th e cifcIeT The sea was golden; the foam _ 
 
 and the dolphins were silver. 
 
 Lines 678 ff. : 
 
 " Hinc augustus agens Italos in proelia Caesar 
 cum patribus populoque, penatibus et magnis dis, 
 stans celsa in puppi, geminas cui tempora flammas 
 laeta vomunt patriumque aperitur vertice sidus." 
 
 These lines are interesting for several reasons. 
 First, their stern simplicity is in keeping with the 
 habits and wishes of Augustus, and in striking con- 
 trast with the varied magnificence of his enemies. 
 But the divine attributes of the conqueror are 
 obvious, in the shape of the double flame and 
 the star, the religious electricity, as Henry calls it, 
 of the favoured of heaven. He, by the way, is 
 quite right in insisting that this double flame be- 
 longed to the temples, and not to the helmet of 
 Augustus (cp. 684, of Agrippa). The word geminas 
 indicates duplication, as so often in religious matters; 
 we have just seen the matrons doubling their vows 
 (line 556), and the duplication of altars and victims 
 is familiar to us in Virgil.^ The star is also a sign 
 of divinity; it belongs more especially to Julius, as 
 Servius tells us in his notes on i. 287 and on this 
 passage, but there was also a legend of a star which 
 
 ' Eel. V. 65; Aen. iii. 66, 315, v. 77. Cp. th,e gemini 
 angues of 697. 
 
 no 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 had guided Aeneas to Italy, and was thus a part of 
 the family tradition of the Juhi.^ 
 
 This religious electricity is expressed also in the 
 word augustus, which properly means " sanctioned 
 by religious authority," and therefore of good omen.^ 
 I should myself prefer to write it here " augustus," 
 as an adjective and not as a name.^ It is too far 
 away from Caesar in the line ; and the name Augustus 
 was not assumed until more than three years after 
 the battle of Actium — i.e., in January, 27 B.C. 
 Virgil does not use Augustus as a name in the 
 Georgics; the hero is simply Caesar. Now, if, as 
 Nettleship suggested, this part of the Shield was 
 in its original form written for another poem soon 
 after the battle, the word may have been placed 
 where it is simply to give religious colouring to the 
 whole passage, which it does most effectually. 
 " Hinc augustus agens Italos in proelia Caesar. ..." 
 I am not in the habit of indulging in conjectures, 
 but I may express an opinion that this line may in 
 fact have been responsible for the adoption of the 
 famous name. If Caesar knew the passage, he must 
 have instantly seen how well suited to his policy 
 the epithet was. 
 
 1 See Servius (from Varro) on Aen., ii. 801. 
 " Ovid, Fasti, i. 609 : 
 
 " Sancta vocant augusta patres. Augusta vocantur 
 
 templa sacerdotum rite dicata manu." 
 3 Norden on Aen., vi. 792, is of opinion that there, 
 and in our line, and in Hor., Od., ii. 9, 19, the word was 
 felt still as an appellative. 
 
 Ill 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Professor Conway tells me in a letter that he is 
 delighted with the suggestion that the lines should 
 be written " Hie augustus agens Italos in praeha 
 Caesar." He adds that " it may be helpful to 
 remember that augustus in this picture probably 
 represents a physical (but of course significant) 
 largeness of the figure in the representation, like 
 the figures of the chiefs in the Shield of Achilles: 
 
 KaXu) KoX jiteyaAa) crvv Tev'^ecnv (Ss Te Oeii Trep, 
 'A/x<^is api^-qXio • Xaot S' lis-' oAtfoves Tjirav. 
 
 — just as arduus agmen agens of Agrippa, a few lines 
 farther on, represents his outstanding position high 
 on the poop of the Admiral's ship. The adjective 
 in both places is exactly the right part of speech. 
 The connexion with augeo, always present, and 
 paralleled by the far more than physical meaning 
 of auctus [honorihus, etc.), preserved the original 
 notion of greatness, physical and other, which is 
 that of the Vedic ojas, neuter substantive, identical 
 letter for letter with Latin augus." 
 
 On the words cum patribus populoque Servius has 
 an unusually good note. He says that the poet is 
 taking pains to show that the war is iustum helium 
 — i.e., that it is one against the external enemies of 
 Italy, who are threatening to destroy her;i ^he 
 Senate and People are therefore represented as 
 supporting the champion of the State, together with 
 the gods who are more especially bound up with its 
 life. If there were ever any doubt in the mind of a 
 
 ^ See Greenidge, " Roman Public Life," p. 157. 
 112 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Roman as to the justice of the cause that was vic- 
 torious at Actium, these four lines should have dis- 
 pelled it. 
 
 Line 679: " Penatibus et magnis dis." — Virgil 
 gives Augustus the same religious outfit that he had 
 given to Aeneas when leaving Troy (iii. 12). Much, 
 but to little purpose, had been written about Aeneas 
 and the Penates, till in 1886 Wissowa cleared up the 
 whole question by carting away rubbish and apply- 
 ing good criticism to what remained. This criti- 
 cism he has lately reprinted in a volume of collected 
 papers ;i I can here only briefly indicate the result. 
 In the temple of the Penates on the Velia (just 
 where stood the house of Evander) were two figures 
 representing the Penates of the Roman State in 
 the guise of the Dioscuri, according to the common 
 practice of using Greek artistic types to represent 
 Roman deities. But the Dioscuri were known in 
 Greece as the Great Gods,' and this same title natur- 
 ally attached itself to the Penates, for Varro tells 
 us that there was an inscription on the base of the 
 statue, Magnis Dis.^ A story, apparently starting 
 from the annaUst Cassius Hemina in the time of 
 the younger Scipio, identified both Penates and 
 Dioscuri with the magni di of Samothrace ; and other 
 stories arose explaining how Dardanus took them 
 
 1 " Gesammelte Abhandlungen," pp. 95 ff. 
 
 2 Pausanias, i. 31, viii. 21, 4. 
 
 2 Serv., Aen., iii. 12: "Varro quidem unum esse dicit 
 penates et magnos deos, nam in basi scribebatur Magnis 
 Diis." 
 
 113 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 from Samothrace to Phrygia — i.e., Troy — and how 
 Aeneas again took them from Phrygia to Italy.^ 
 Virgil seems to distinguish Penates and di magni; 
 Varro identified them. What is more important is 
 that they are identified with the Penates of the 
 Julian family, and these, again, are identified with 
 the Penates of the Roman State, according to the 
 shrewd policy of Augustus, exemplified also in his 
 dealings with the Lares. 
 
 Lines 696, 697: 
 
 " regina in mediis patrio vocat agmina sistro, 
 necdum etiam geminos a tergo respicit anguis." 
 
 This means literally twin snakes, as in 289 of this 
 book and ii. 203; and behind it is, no doubt, the 
 widely spread superstition about twins, of which I 
 have said something elsewhere.^ I entirely agree 
 with Henry that Virgil is not here thinking of the 
 asp with which Cleopatra committed suicide, for 
 that was neither a twin nor one of two ; nor could it 
 act as an omen, any more than the single snake 
 which Allecto put into the bosom of Amata. I am 
 glad to see that Mr. Page, in the last and best school 
 edition of these books, says that Henry's view 
 
 1 Macrobius, iii. 4, 7 ff. Another form of the story 
 identified the magni di with the Penates of Lavinium, the 
 reputed rehgious mother of the Roman State (Preller, 
 " Rom. Mythologie," 681 jf.), which were said to be small 
 sigilla — i.e., aniconic images of a mysterious character. 
 (See Wissowa, op. cit., p. no.) 
 
 ^ " Virgil's Gathering of the Clans," p. 52. 
 114 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 "deserves consideration." But he does not quote 
 what seems to me Henry's most convincing evi- 
 dence, the " respice ad haec " of vii. 454.^ " Look 
 behind you," that is, " at what I have to show 
 you — viz., the ominous horrors, and above all the 
 twin snakes, foreboding war and death for Turnus," 
 as in our passage the twin snakes forbode death to 
 the Queen, and as in the second book the twin 
 serpents meant death to Laocoon. Whoever will 
 read carefully the whole passage about AUecto 
 (445-455) will in all probability come round to the 
 view that twin snakes are a mysterious omen of 
 death. I add the following from Henry (p. 776): 
 " Even modern superstitions are not without their 
 two snakes, apparitors of heU and Satan, as in the 
 Christmas carol of Dives and Lazarus : 
 
 " ' As it fell out upon a day 
 
 Dives sickened and died, 
 There came two serpents out of hell 
 Thereto his soul to guide.' " 
 
 Compare the two devouring serpents, which were 
 fed with daily oblations of human blood, in the 
 Emir's tale in Scott's " Talisman," ch. iii. 
 
 1 " turn iiammea torquens 
 lumina cunctantem et quaerentem dicere plura 
 reppulit, et geminos erexit crinibus angues, 
 verberaque insonuit rabidoque haec addidit ore : 
 ' en ego victa situ, quam veri efEeta senectus 
 anna inter regum falsa formidine ludit: 
 respice ad haec : adsum dirarum ab sede sororum, 
 bella manu letumque gero.' " 
 115 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Lines 698, 699 : 
 
 " Omnigenumque deum monstra et latrator Anubis 
 contra Neptunum et Venerem contraque Minervam." 
 
 In the first of these lines I am inclined to accept 
 Lachmann's conjecture (or suspicion) that Virgil 
 wrote Niligenum, as M^ has nigenumque. The 
 choice of Neptune, Venus, and Minerva, to repre- 
 sent Italian deities, is rather puzzling; but (i) they 
 were all also Trojan deities (Serv., Aen., ii. 241 and 
 iii. 3; and for Minerva Pallas ii. 188), and (2) we need 
 not be thinking too much of antiquities: Actium 
 was the beginning of new things. Apolln_aiid_Nep- 
 tutte-gtand-respectively-fef-j^est ern cult ure andjthe 
 
 GommaruLoLthe Mediterranean, while Minerva pro- 
 
 Imbly means wisdo m~aitd~rea;son, as o ppgsed-loIlEg 
 irratio nal crowd of Egyptian deities. She had been 
 for some time treated as Athene rather than the old 
 Italian Minerva.^ 
 
 Line 701. — " Caelatus ferro:" with iron, not gold 
 or silver, to suit the fierce and warUke nature of the 
 god. " Tristes ex aethere Dirae:" spirits of evil 
 omen hovering in the air. Virgil may, as Heyne 
 thought, hav. remembered the Keres of Hesiod's 
 Shield, line 24fc>, present at a battle and contending 
 for the possession of the fallen. (See Conington's 
 note, and for the Keres, Gilbert Murray, " Four 
 Stages of Greek Religion," p. 48.) 
 
 1 See Wissowa, Rel. und Kult., ed. 2, p. 255. 
 116 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Lines 711-714: 
 
 " Contra autem magno maerentem corpora Nilum 
 pandentemque sinus et tota veste vocantem 
 caeruleum in gremium latebrosaque flumina victos." 
 
 The peculiarity of these lines is that they will 
 apply equally well to a statue of the Nile, such as 
 the famous one in the Vatican, or to the actual 
 river itself. Henry's very long note on this passage 
 is well worth careful reading, though he does not 
 seem quite to grasp this fact. Think of the re- 
 clining statue, and all the language fits it, for tota 
 veste means that the folds of the drapery are open 
 wide to receive the fugitive fleet; think of the river 
 itself, and these words mean that the fleet might 
 find refuge in its creeks and recesses, clothed with 
 reeds and other cover. Those who read the accounts 
 of the destruction of the German cruiser Konigs- 
 berg in the sinus of the East African river in 1915 ' 
 will at once recognise the appropriateness of Virgil's I 
 language to a flying ship making for the protection f 
 of a sedgy river. I will hazard the conjecture that^ 
 the poet originally wrote the lines in this latter 
 sense, and later on adapted them to the shield — i.e., 
 to the necessity of imagining a statue of the river. 
 
 Lines 714 ff. : 
 
 " At Caesar, triplici invectus Romana triumpho 
 moenia, dis Italis votum immortale sacrabat, 
 maxima ter centum totam delubra per urbem. 
 laetitia ludisque viae plausuque fremebant: 
 omnibus in templis matrum chorus, omnibus arae: 
 ante aras terram caesi stravere iuvenci." 
 117 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 Heyne was here guilty of an absurdity; he fan- 
 cied that, in the first three Hnes quoted above, 
 Virgil made Augustus consecrate, on the days of 
 his triumph, all the temples that he was destined 
 to consecrate during the remainder of his reign — 
 i.e., during the next forty years. Now, the triumph 
 took place in August, 29; and only one temple was 
 consecrated at that time, and that one not to an 
 Italian god, but to Divus lulius. True, the next 
 year, in his sixth consulship, Augustus began to 
 restore the old temples, and accomplished this work 
 to the number of eighty-two. But the lines quoted 
 above absolutely forbid us to think of consecra- 
 tions understood (so to speak) proleptically; they 
 form a graphic account of what happened on the 
 three days of the triumph and no others. And 
 apart from this, sacrare votum cannot, in my humble 
 opinion, based on a large experience of Roman 
 religious language, mean " consecrate temples (or 
 anything else) that you have vowed." Votum 
 sacrare can only mean " to make a solemn vow with 
 special religious meaning or sanction " ; as legem 
 sacrare (in the form lex sacrata) is "to make a 
 solemn covenant with another party," or as foedus 
 sacrare (Liv., xxxviii. 33^) is " to make a treaty, and 
 secure it by some religious form." 
 
 We are not told that Augustus made such a vow, 
 either by Dio Cassius or Suetonius, or by himself 
 in the " Monumentum Ancyranum"; what these 
 
 ■ " Foedus quod in Capitolio, quod Olympiae, quod in 
 arce Athenis sacratum fuisset." Cp. Aen. xii. 141. 
 
 IlS 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 accounts tell us is naturally the fulfilment rather 
 than the undertaking of vows. But that he did 
 form the intention, at this time, of restoring old 
 temples and building new ones there is no doubt; 
 whether he fixed his intention by a votum is uncer- 
 tain, but likely enough. My own opinion is that 
 these lines were written before the return of Caesar 
 in 29 (see below on 720), and that Virgil was imagin- 
 ing things which may or may not have happened at 
 the time of the triumphs. In any case we may trans- 
 late thus: " He made a solemn vow for the eternal 
 glory of the Itahan gods, that he would erect shrines 
 three hundred in number in all parts of the city." 
 
 I maintain that the picture conveyed in these 
 lines is greatly ennobled by this interpretation of 
 vohim immortale sacrabat. The joy in the streets, 
 the resounding cheers, and the religious enthusiasm, 
 follow naturally, not only on a sense of deliverance 
 from the menace of Oriental tyranny, but on a 
 conviction that a new pax deorum is about to be 
 estabKshed.^ And the same picture is cleared of 
 the absurdity of supposing that Caesar actually 
 dedicated an immense number of temples in a single 
 day, or even in three days. 
 
 Line 718: 
 " Omnibus in templis matrum chorus, omnibus arae." 
 
 Perhaps a warning may not be out of place against 
 the notion that in templis necessarily means inside 
 the temple building. It woiold, of course, have been 
 ^ See " Rel. Exp.," p. 431. 
 
 119 I 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 impossible for matrons to dance and sing, or altars 
 to reek with sacrifice, within the temple, as we under- 
 stand that word. In front of all temples, so far as 
 we know, was an open space, sometimes called area, 
 as in the case of the Capitoline temple, where was 
 the altar of sacrifice; tables (mensae), for " un- 
 bloody" offerings might be within the building 
 itself. The word templum, too, did not necessarily 
 imply that the limits of the sacred enclosure coincided 
 with the walls ; not only in front, but all round the 
 building, there must have been a space consecrated 
 by the pontifices after inauguratio by the augurs.^ 
 
 The matrum chorus reminds us of the prominent 
 part taken at the ludi saccular es in 17 B.C. by 
 matronae : see the Acta of these games {C.I.L., vi 
 32,323, sees. 108, 112, 123). I doubt if there is any 
 direct reference to the forms of supplicatio, as is 
 generally assumed by commentators. 
 
 Lines 720 ff. : 
 
 ' Ipse sedens niveo candentis limine Phoebi 
 
 dona recognoscit populorum aptatque superbis 
 postibus: incedunt victae longo ordine gentes," etc. 
 
 '■ On this subject see Marquardt, " Staatsverwaltung," 
 iii. 163 and 156, note 5. Mark especially the reference to 
 Vitruvius, iv. 5 (the sacrificer faced east, so as to see 
 orientem caelum) : Wissowa, Rel. u. Kult., ed. 2, p. 475, 
 and Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Ara. So, in the ritual of the 
 Fratres Arvales, the arae were not in aede: Henzen, Acta 
 19 and 143. Even in the oldest places of worship in the 
 city, sacella, as they were most usually called, the altar 
 was in the open: Gell. vii. 12, 5, from Trebatius. 
 
 120 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 These lines have a decided resemblance to those 
 already referred to, at the beginning of the third 
 Georgic. Both are imaginative pictures, and both, 
 if I am not mistaken, date from about the same 
 time, the picture in the Shield being, of course, the 
 later of the two. In the Georgic, Virgil imagines 
 great games like those of Greece going on beside 
 the river Mincius, with Caesar as the presiding 
 genius : 
 
 " in medio mihi Caesar erit templumque tenebit; 
 illi victor ego et Tyrio conspectus in ostro 
 centum quadriiugos agitabo ad ilumina currus." 
 
 And again: 
 
 ' ' ipse caput tonsae f oliis ornatus olivae 
 dona feram. iam nunc sollemnis ducere pompas 
 ad delubra iuvat caesosque videre iuvencos," 
 
 Then come the pictures of battles and conquests 
 carved on the doors of the temple, in Egypt with the 
 Nile conspicuous, and in the Far East. Then the 
 poet announces his intention of keeping for the 
 present to woodland and pasture, yet, 
 
 " mox tamen ardentes accingar dicere pugnas 
 Caesaris, et nomen fama tot ferre per annos 
 Tithoni prima quot abest ab origine Caesar,'' 
 
 where the words of the second of these lines may 
 perhaps remind us of the last line of the eighth book. 
 In the Shield the grand show is in Rome, and 
 seems to be a triumph, yet has some of the features 
 of a supplicatio ; its centre point a temple, not yet 
 dedicated at the time of the actual triumph, where 
 
 121 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 the conquered peoples freely offered their gifts, as 
 Virgil had pictured himself doing in the third Geor- 
 gic. This picture is, surely, not to be taken his- 
 torically any more than the other. 3Qrgil could put 
 wha tever j iejiked on the Sliieldi_aiidJie^^GliDSfi=lD _ 
 put Augustus enthroned in an unfinished_ temple, 
 
 '"""'accepttn g'Ihe "wj jjn^^ 
 
 v ^rom the far „liniltsof the Empire. 
 
 The question may be asked whether this grand 
 picture was drawn before or after the return of 
 Augustus in 29 B.C. and the triple triumph that 
 followed. I am disposed to think, as I have already 
 said, that it was a fragment of the poem projected 
 in the third Georgic, line 46, and that it may in its 
 original form have been written between 31 and 29 
 B.C. — i.e., before the triumph.^ ■ The year 29 was 
 one of general holiday, and Virgil's tone, both in the 
 third Georgic and in the Shield, resounds with joy 
 and exultation; both pictures seem to me to have 
 the same stamp of vigorous freshness, suggesting 
 that they belong to that year of happiness and 
 rejoicing. 
 
 Lines 729-731 (the last lines of the book) : 
 
 " Talia per clypeum Volcani, dona parentis, 
 miratur rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet 
 attollens huraero famamque et fata nepotum." 
 
 I have postponed a note on the difficult subject 
 of Virgil's idea of Fate till we have come to the last 
 
 1 See H. Nettleship, " Vergil," p. 71, and " Ancient 
 Lives of Vergil," p. 58. 
 
 122 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 of the ten occurrences, in this book, of the words 
 fatum or fata. These will be found in lines 12, 133, 
 
 292, 334. 398. 477. 499. 512, 575, 73i- In the 
 Classical Quarterly for January, 1917, there appeared 
 a careful and interesting discussion of this subject 
 by Miss L. E. Matthaei (pp. T-iff.). In the Classical 
 Review for 1910 (pp. 169 ff.) there was a shorter 
 paper full of valuable naaterial, on " The Conception 
 of Fate in the Aeneid," by Professor Maclnnes. 
 Still further back, in a paper on the teaching of 
 Virgil, Professor Conway (pp. 14, 15) touched on 
 this question, and has added to the remarks he 
 then made much illuminating matter both in 
 correspondence and in personal intercourse with 
 me. Thus, even in England alone, without having 
 recourse to German learning, I have been a]3le to 
 find much to add to what I have already written 
 on the subject.^ 
 
 The ten passages in our book are all very much ( 
 of the same kind; they represent the Stoic idea of 
 Fate, " the...^sitive principle which _brings -order-;-'' 
 ''ntO-lh£ _ liTiivPT^^^ ~'''T^P^ " riesire'nf instinct of all 
 things to seek their reXo? or appointed end, which 
 both Plato and Aristotle postulated as the basis of 
 their thought. "2 What was, in Virgil's mind, the 
 origin, meaning, nature, of this force, and how far 
 he identified it with a personal deity, we cannot be 
 sure; he had not fully faced the problem, but was 
 postponing it till his poem was completed, when he 
 
 1 "Rel. Exp." 411, 424: " Roman Ideas of Deity," 77. 
 * Matthaei, op. cit., pp. 22, 23. 
 12^ 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 would be free to turn his mind to philosophy.^ Miss 
 Matthaei does indeed write of the " philosophy of 
 the poem," as if Virgil had really tried to formulate 
 some scheme. But these great problems of human 
 life and thought cannot be neatly dealt with by 
 any of us, least of all by a poet like Virgil, who had 
 a constant sense of mystery in the universe, finding 
 expression in many different ways. 
 
 As the Aeneid grew in the course of years, the 
 point of view from which the poet looked on Fate 
 changed from time to time, according to his own 
 mood while writing, or to the context immediately 
 in hand, and he not unfrequently puts into the 
 mouth of a speaker in the action a view which need 
 not be assumed to be his own. Very often, as in 
 several passages of this book, there is distinct 
 reference to oracular utterances, partial revelations 
 of a will of which the secret and essence is unre- 
 vealed; in these the woTdfatum shows traces of the 
 influence of its etymology, as the spoken word. 
 Once more, as in the last line of this book (" attoUens 
 humero /flwflwque etfata nepotum "), there is often 
 a close relation implied between the divine and 
 human action which together bring about a result; 
 " famam et fata " seem to indicate, as also in vii. 79, 
 the divine and human aspects of the same glorious 
 deeds (R.S.C.). And^ lastly it is clear that fo.r 
 ■--,JVirgiL.Eate,_was a^morgFToTeer if only^we^allow^ 
 v^deyelopment of Rome~ana~lLaly, as d'foiceln the 
 <lwQrldt to.be,.O.ae. f or.;gaQia3Sd.Tiot-fgr ^yiT. Virgil 
 
 1 Suet., " Vita Vergilii," ch. 35. ^ 
 124 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 like Augustus and most of his contemporaries, 
 recovering from the pessimism of the previous 
 generation, undoubtedly held this destiny of Rome 
 to be a force for good, in spite of many back-currents. 
 His optimism begins with the fourth Eclogue, is 
 strong in the Georgics, stronger still in the Aeneid ; 
 this is one side of the meaning of " famam et fata " 
 in 731. He believed in the genial destiny of Roni^> 
 as a Jew believedTn "the kingdom of the Messiah. J 
 But there is another way of looking at the 
 philosophy of the Aeneid, on which Miss Matthaei 
 has laid almost too much stress. She calls Virgil 
 a pessimist, and the Aeneid a pessimistic poem.' 
 What she means is that, apart from the Fate which 
 brings order into the universe, we find in the Aeneid 
 that individual human beings have their own fates, 
 often running counter with each other, some of them 
 benevolent, others cruel. In the eighth book it is 
 a cruel fate that is hanging over Pallas and threaten- 
 ing his father in his old age with the death of a 
 beloved son. No doubt, this cruelty of fate is 
 baffling, and, as so often in the present war, seems 
 thus to increase the poignancy of human suffering.^ 
 But this does not make either Virgil or his poem in 
 
 1 Op. cit., p. 13, twice over. 
 
 ^ Professor Conway reminds me that, at the funeral of 
 Pallas (xi. 164 ff.), his father claims that the lad's life is 
 not thrown away: " caesis Volscorum millibus ante Ducen- 
 tem in Latium Teucros cecidisse iuvabit." It is thus that 
 he seeks to adjust the fate of the individual to the Destiny 
 which is a force for good in the world, as we are so many 
 of us doing at the present hour. 
 
 125 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 any true sense of the word pessimistic — a word so 
 much in vogue just now that incautious writers are 
 apt to employ it without mature reflection. And 
 the individualisation of the idea of destiny was 
 surely a feature of our poet's time; it was entirely' 
 in keeping with current ideas of the individual^oufl 
 and the astrology that was then beginningTo 
 exercise great power over men's minds. In the 
 previous two or three generations there had been 
 so many sad examples of the cruel fate of individuals, 
 often men and women of great gifts and virtues, 
 that in such a poem as the Aeneid it was impossible 
 that such shadows should not be reflected.^ The 
 greatest example in the poem is of course that of 
 Dido, who rebelled against her fate and defied it 
 by suicide. But these shadows, though here and 
 there they darken the water, have no effect what- 
 ever on its clear and refreshing substance. The 
 " sweet sense of futurity " which I have noticed in 
 the eighth book runs all through the poem, filling 
 the mind of the Roman reader with hope and 
 confidence. 
 
 1 Cp. " Roman Ideas of Deity," p. 72, for the influence 
 of fortuna on such a man as Cicero. I may here note that 
 the editor of our Oxford text has sought, with doubtful 
 success, to distinguish between Fortuna as almost equiva- 
 lent to Fatum, and fortuna in the ordinary sense of the 
 incalculable element in human life, by printing the word 
 Fortuna and fortuna respectively. Cp. in this book 334 
 and 578, with 15 ("si fortuna sequatur "). It would 
 perhaps be safer to write both fatum and fortuna con- 
 sistently without the capitals. 
 
 126 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 In the eighth book there is no question of passionX 
 or rebeUion against fate. We see Aeneas sub- ' 
 mitting himself to a power which is here almost 
 the same as his own conscience; affected once or 
 twice, as any other human being would be, by a 
 momentary anxiety, yet looking steadily forward 
 to the goal in front of him, sure of his own righte- 
 ousness in the conduct of an arduous life, -fa- 
 Uno I a h e asserts that he is claimed by the fates as 
 King of Latium ; iii ij,i he adds that his own virHis 
 and the holy oracles of the gods have brought him 
 a willing traveller and guest to Evander's doors. ^ 
 hi 334 Evander claims the same authority for his 
 position in Latium, and the whole context shows 
 that in obeying the decrees of fate he, too, has 
 followed his own conscience. All this is excellent 
 Stoicism, fif we choose to call it sq^but it is also the 
 natural instinct of humanity responding to the call 
 of that stern lawgiver who " wears the Godhead's 
 most benignant grace." The Stoic believed in 
 destiny, and yet refused to be a slave to it. ^^" The 
 rational will of man has power to recognise the 
 rational order of the world, and to adopt it as his 
 own. By the exercise of his own powers, the 
 authority which reason gives him, he is able to con- J 
 trol his own inner life and to accept events as the/ 
 
 1 " Sed mea me virtus et sancta oracula divum 
 cognatique patres, tua terris didita fama, 
 coniunxere tibi et fatis egere volentem." 
 
 SeeMatthaei, op. cit., 20; Fowler, " Roman Ideas of Deity, 
 p. 70. 
 
 127 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 outcome of God's will, and by this attitude to attain 
 Vto perfect freedom. "W 
 
 ^In the last Une of the book Fate is again a moral 
 force, but is looked at from the point of view of Virgil 
 himself, as one living when the destiny of Rome is 
 already largely accomplished. It is a glorious line, 
 and to write more about it is quite needless for those 
 who have entered into the spirit of the whole poem. 
 All I will say is this, that those who are members of 
 a great Empire, now struggling for the principle of 
 liberty and civilisation, conscious of a great mission 
 in the world, and of an overwhelming claim upon 
 them to blot out the shortcomings of the past by 
 a sense of duty ever more enlightened, will recog- 
 nise that the philosophy of the Aeneid and its reli- 
 gion are not things peculiar to Hellenistic Greece or 
 Imperial Rome, but represent the finest instincts of 
 hmnan nature striving to realise the will of God by 
 faith and obedience. They are not merely matters 
 of curiosity and research, but stand for an abiding 
 principle of human life. Many of us may have felt 
 our faith wavering in hours of sadness and bereave- 
 ment, when we see our loved ones sacrificed for a 
 result still doubtful: what cruel fate has done this ? 
 we ask, sorrowing, as Evander and Aeneas sorrowed 
 bitterly for the death of the boy Pallas. But 
 it is no conflict of the individual with Fate that 
 pains us; it is the loss of a precious life used and 
 
 1 Matheson, Epictetus (translation). Introduction, p. i8; 
 Glover, Virgil, p. 200. So exactly in Wordsworth's " Excur- 
 sion," near the end of " Despondency corrected." 
 
 128 
 
Aeneas at the Site of Rome 
 
 spent in the service of the everlasting Righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 I write these last lines on the day which has brought 
 
 us the welcome news of the adhesion of the great 
 
 '^•^^ RepubHc of the West to our just cause, an event 
 
 which gives us fresh confidence in its justice, fresh 
 
 hope for humanity. 
 
 April 4, 1917. 
 
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