Multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
Inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum
Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae[471].
The difference in character of the two epics is perceptible in the very sound of their opening lines. While the Latin moves with [pg 313]stateliness and dignity and is weighty with the burden of the whole world’s history, the Greek is fluent and buoyant with the spirit and life of the ‘novitas florida mundi.’ The greatness of Aeneas is a kind of ‘imputed’ greatness; he is important to the world as bearing the weight of the glory and destiny of the future Romans—
Attolens humero famamque et fata nepotum.
Odysseus is great in the personal qualities of courage, steadfastness of purpose and affection, loyalty to his comrades, versatility, ready resource; but he bears with him only his own fortunes and those of the companions of his adventure; he ends his career as he begins it, the chief of a small island, which derives all its importance solely from its early association with his fortunes.
The double purpose of the Aeneid, and its contrast in this respect with the Homeric poems, is further seen in the statement of the motives influencing the Divine beings by whose agency the action is advanced or impeded. As in the opening paragraph Virgil had the opening lines of the Odyssey in view, in the second, which announces the supernatural motive of the poem—
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso—
he had in view the passage in the Iliad beginning with the line—
τίς τ’ ἄρ σφωε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι;