"Puppesque tuae plebesque tuorum
Aut portum tenet aut pleno subit ostia velo."
Here the word capere is fixed to mean "settling on the ground" by the words portum tenet. Once more in Aen. xii. 725:
"Quem damnet labor, aut quo vergat pondere letum,"
the difficulty is solved both by the iteration in the line itself, by which damnet labor = vergat letum; and also by its close parallelism with another (v. 717), which is meant to illustrate it:
"Mussantque iuvencae
Quis nemori imperitet quem tota armenta sequantur."
This feature in Virgil's verse, which might be illustrated at far greater length, reappears under another form in the Ovidian elegiac. There the pentameter answers to the second half of Virgil's hexameter verse, and rings the changes on the line that has preceded in a very similar way. A literature which loves the balanced clauses of rhetoric will be sure to have something analogous. Our own heroic couplet is a case in point. So perhaps is the invention of rhyme which tends to confine the thought within the oscillating limits of a refrain, and that of the stanza, which shows the same process in a much higher stage of complexity.
NOTE IV.—On the Legends connected with Virgil.
Side by side with the historical account of this poet is a mythical one which, even within the early post-classical period, began to gain credence. The reasons of it are to be sought not so much in his poetical genius as in the almost ascetic purity of his life, which surrounded him with a halo of mysterious sanctity. Prodigies are said, in the lives that have come down to us, to have happened at his birth; his mother dreamt she gave birth to a laurel-branch, which grew apace until it filled the country. A poplar planted at his birth suddenly grew into a stately tree. The infant never cried, and was noted for the preternatural sweetness of its temper. When at Naples he is said to have studied medicine, and cured Augustus's horses of a severe ailment. Augustus ordered him a daily allowance of bread, which was doubled on a second instance of his chirurgical knowledge, and trebled on his detecting the true ancestry of a rare Spanish hound! Credited with supernatural knowledge, though he never pretended to it, he was consulted privately by Augustus as to his own legitimacy. By the cautious dexterity of his answer, he so pleased the emperor that he at once recommended him to Pollio as a person to be well rewarded. The mixture of fable and history here is easily observed. The custom of making pilgrimages to his tomb, and in the case of Silius Italicus (and doubtless others too), of honouring it with sacrifices, seems to have produced the belief that he was a great magician. Even as early as Hadrian the Sortes Virgilianae were consulted from an idea that there was a sanctity about the pages of his book; and, as is well known, this superstitious custom was continued until comparatively modern times.
Meanwhile plays were represented from his works, and amid the general decay of all clear knowledge a confused idea sprung up that these stories were inspired by supernatural wisdom. The supposed connection of the fourth Eclogue with the Sibylline Books, and through them, with the sacred wisdom of the Hebrews, of course placed Virgil on a different level from other heathens. The old hymn, "Dies irae dies illa Solvet saeclum cum favilla Teste David cum Sibylla," shows that as early as the eighth century the Sibyl was well established as one of the prophetic witnesses; and the poet, from the indulgence of an obscure style, reaped the great reward of being regarded almost as a saint for several centuries of Christendom. Dante calls him Virtu summa, just as ages before Justinian had spoken of Homer as pater omnis virtutis. But before Dante's time the real Virgil had been completely lost in the ideal and mystic poet whose works were regarded as wholly allegorical.
The conception of Virgil as a magician as distinct from an inspired sage is no doubt a popular one independent of literature, and had originally a local origin near Naples where his tomb was. Foreign visitors disseminated the legend, adding striking features, which in time developed almost an entire literature.