Qualem saepe cava montis convalle solemus
Despicere[413], etc.,
and again the opening scene of the poem, at i. 43,
Vere novo gelidus canis cum montibus umor
Liquitur, et Zephyro putris se glaeba resolvit[414],
familiar to Roman readers. And while the ‘caeli indulgentia’ characteristic of the Italian climate is felt as a pervading genial presence through the various books of the poem, the sudden and violent vicissitudes to which that climate is especially liable form part of the varied and impressive spectacle presented to us. The passage i. 316–321,
Saepe ego cum flavis ... stipulasque volantis,
records a calamity to which the labours of the Italian husbandman were peculiarly exposed. In the description of the storm of rain, immediately following, the words ‘collectae ex alto nubes’ remind us, like the description of a similar storm in Lucretius (vi. 256–261), that Virgil, as Lucretius may have done, must often have watched such a tempest gathering over the sea that washes the Campanian shores. The inundation of the Po is described among the omens accompanying the death of Caesar, in lines which may have been suggested by some scene actually witnessed by the poet, and which with vivid exactness represent for all times the destructive forces put forth by the great river that drains the vast mountain-ranges of Northern Italy:—
Proluit insano contorquens vertice silvas
Fluviorum rex Eridanus, camposque per omnes