Post tergum nodis, fremet horridus ore cruento[483].
After this digression the action proceeds according to Homeric precedents. Mercury is sent to Dido, as Hermes is sent to Calypso in the fifth book of the Odyssey. Then follows the meeting of Venus with Aeneas and Anchises, the picturesque and poetical features of which scene are suggested by a passage in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, describing the meeting of the goddess with Anchises. The Trojan heroes pass on to Carthage concealed in a mist as Odysseus makes his way to the city of the Phaeacians. The pictorial representation of the events of the Trojan war on the walls of the temple of Juno is suggested partly by the pictorial art of the Augustan Age, and partly by the song of the bard in the eighth book of the Odyssey, celebrating the
νεῖκος Ὀδυσσῆος καὶ Πηλείδεω Ἀχιλῆος.
So too the later banquet in the palace of Dido is suggested partly by the feast in the hall of Alcinous, partly by the magnificence of Roman entertainments in the Augustan Age, such as those referred to in the lines of Lucretius—
Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes, etc.
Finally, the device by which Venus substitutes Cupid for Ascanius is borrowed from the Argonautics of Apollonius; the introduction of the various suitors of Dido is suggested by the part which the suitors of Penelope play in the Odyssey; and the request of Dido to Aeneas to recount his past adventures owes its origin to the similar request made by Alcinous to Odysseus.
It is in the first book that Virgil adheres most closely to his Greek guides; yet even in it we observe many traces of modern invention, which give a new character to the representation. The thought of Italy in the immediate future—
Est locus, Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt,
Terra antiqua, potens armis atque ubere glaebae;
Oenotri coluere viri; nunc fama, minores