Blest pair! if aught my verse avail,
No day shall make your memory fail
From off the heart of time,
While Capitol abides in place,
The mansion of the Æneian race,
And throned upon that moveless base
Rome’s father sits sublime.[64]
The Æneid closes with the death of Turnus, the chief opponent of the Trojans in Italy. Virgil in the Middle Ages. In spite of its obvious imperfections, it is the greatest poem in the Latin language; and no later epic poem in any language equalled or even approached it in excellence until the appearance of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It is not to be wondered at that throughout the Middle Ages Virgil was regarded as the impersonation of all that was great in poetry; nor is it strange that the poet whose verses breathe such an indescribable, sweet sadness, who sings in lofty, inspired language of that Roman greatness which was ever present to the mediæval imagination, who describes the dwellings of the dead, and who was even believed to have foretold the coming of the Messiah, should have become in mediæval legends the possessor of all wisdom and all magic power. It is natural that Dante chose Virgil as his guide through hell and purgatory, and would gladly have admitted him to paradise had his theology allowed him to do so.
