and, as in the older poet also, with the distractions, the restless passions, and the crimes of ambition. Virgil, as in other passages, compresses into a few lines the thought which Lucretius with simpler art follows through all its detail of concrete reality. Thus the
Gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum[392]
of Virgil is intended to recall and be explained by the more fully developed representation of the old cruelties of the times of Marius and Sulla, contained in the lines—
Sanguine civili rem conflant divitiasque
Conduplicant avidi, caedem caede accumulantes;
Crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris;
Et consanguineum mensas odere timentque[393].
In their protest against the world both poets are entirely at [pg 258]one. But the ideal of Virgil’s imagination, on its positive side, is more on the ordinary human level than that of lonely contemplation in accordance with which Lucretius lived and wrote. The Virgilian ideal, like that of Lucretius, recognised a heart at peace and independent of Fortune as a greater source of happiness than any external good. But this peace the one poet sought for in a superiority to the common beliefs of men; the other rather in a more trusting acceptance of them. Some other elements in Virgil’s ideal Lucretius too would have ranked among the supreme sources of human happiness. The lines
Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati,
Casta pudicitiam servat domus[394],