Italiam dixisse ducis de nomine gentem[484]—
and the remoter vision of the ‘altae moenia Romae’ remind us that we are contemplating no mere recast of a Greek legend, but a great national monument of the race which during the longest period of history has played the greatest part in human affairs. The old gods of Olympus appear on earth once more, and now with all the attributes of Roman state, as ‘principalities and powers’ contending for the empire of the world, and as instruments in the hands of destiny for the furthering of the great work which was only fully accomplished by Augustus.
In the recital of the fall of Troy, which occupies the second book, Virgil is said by Macrobius to have adhered almost verbally[485] to the work of a Greek poet, Pisander, the author of a poetical history of the world from the marriage of Jupiter and Juno down to the events contemporary with the poet himself. There seem to have been three Greek poets of that name, and the only one of them who was likely to have treated at any length of the events of that single night recorded in the second Aeneid is said to have lived after the time of Virgil. It seems impossible that any earlier poet could have assigned so much space as that demanded by the statement of Macrobius to the personal adventures of Aeneas. We are on surer ground in recognising the debt which Virgil owed to the account of the wooden horse in the Odyssey, to some of the lost plays of Sophocles, which told the tale of the treachery of Sinon and of [pg 320]the tragic fate of Laocoon, and to some of the lost Cyclic poems and the Ἰλίου πέρσις of Stesichorus. The vision of Hector to Aeneas reminds us of that of Patroclus to Achilles; but in this resemblance we recognise also the difference between the poem founded on personal and that founded on national fortunes. The care which summons the shade of Patroclus to the couch of his friend is the care for his own burial; the care which brings Hector back to earth is the care for the salvation of the sacred relics of Troy in view of the great destiny which awaited them. There is more of human pathos in the vision of Patroclus; more of a stately majesty in that of Hector. And as in other passages where Virgil wishes to produce this effect, we note that he avails himself here of the language of Ennius,—
Hei mihi, qualis erat.
So too, near the end of the book, where the shade of Creusa gives to Aeneas the first intimation of his settlement in a western land,—
Et terram Hesperiam venies, ubi Lydius arva
Inter opima virum leni fluit agmine Thybris[486],—
the same antique associations are appealed to[487]. So also in describing the destruction of the palace of Priam, Virgil is said to have imitated the description by Ennius of the destruction of Alba[488]. And that feeling of ancient state and majesty with which the memory of Troy is invested in such lines as
Urbs antiqua ruit multos dominata per annos[489],
had been first expressed in the ‘Andromache’ of the older poet.