Note V.
Embrace again, my sons! be foes no more;
Nor stain your country with her children's gore.
And thou, the first, lay down thy lawless claim,
Thou of my blood, who bear'st the Julian name.—P. 420.
This note, which is out of its proper place, I deferred on purpose, to place it here, because it discovers the principles of our poet more plainly than any of the rest.
Tuque prior, tu parce, genus qui ducis Olympo:
Projice tela manu, sanguis meus!
Anchises here speaks to Julius Cæsar, and commands him first to lay down his arms; which is a plain condemnation of his cause. Yet observe our poet's incomparable address; for, though he shews himself sufficiently to be a commonwealth's man, yet, in respect to Augustus, who was his patron, he uses the authority of a parent, in the person of Anchises, who had more right to lay this injunction on Cæsar than on Pompey, because the latter was not of his blood. Thus our author cautiously veils his own opinion, and takes sanctuary under Anchises; as if that ghost would have laid the same command on Pompey also, had he been lineally descended from him. What could be more judiciously contrived, when this was the Æneïd which he chose to read before his master?