Visa sub obscurum noctis[383];
others showing themselves in ominous appearances of the sacrifices, or in strange disturbance of the familiar ways of bird and beast,—
Obscenaeque canes importunaeque volucres
Signa dabant—
Et altae
Per noctem resonare lupis ululantibus urbes[384];
others manifesting themselves through great commotion in the kingdom of Nature,—earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, great floods,—
‘The noise of battle hurtling in the air,’
lightnings in a clear sky, and the blaze of comets portending doom. These all succeed one another in Virgil’s verse according to no principle of logical connexion, but as they might be successively announced to the awe-struck citizens of Rome. The whole passage is pervaded by that strong sense of awe before an invisible Power—the ‘religio dira’—by which the Roman imagination was possessed in times of great national calamity. The issue of all these portents appeared in the second great battle in which Roman blood fattened the Macedonian plains. Then by a fine touch of imagination, and looking far forward into the future, the poet reminds us of the contrast, indicated in other passages of the poem, between the peaceful and beneficent industry of the husbandman and the cruel devastation of war:—
Scilicet et tempus veniet, cum finibus illis