Another passage in which the appearance of the Olympian deities produces the impression of awe and sublimity is that in which Venus reveals herself to her son in her divine proportions—
confessa deam, qualisque videri
Caelicolis et quanta solet[572]—
and, by removing the mist intervening between his mortal sight and the reality of things, displays the forms of Neptune, Juno, Jove himself, and Pallas engaged in the overthrow of Troy,—
Apparent dirae facies inimicaque Troiae
Numina magna deum[573].
But there are traces in the Aeneid of another religious belief and practice more primitive and more widely spread than the worship of the Olympian gods, or of the impersonal abstractions of Italian theology. The religious fancies which originally united each city, each tribe, and each family into one community[574], had been transmitted in popular beliefs and in ceremonial observances from a time long antecedent to the establishment of the Olympian dynasty of gods. This brighter creation of the imagination did not banish the secret awe inspired by the older spiritual conceptions. Invisible Powers were supposed to haunt certain places, to protect each city with their unseen presence or under some visible symbol, and to make their abode at each family hearth, uniting all the kindred of the house in a common worship.
These survivals of primitive thought appear in many striking passages in the Aeneid. The idea of a secret indwelling Power, [pg 370]identified with the continued existence and fortunes of cities, imparts sublimity to that passage in Book VIII. in which the Roman feeling of the sanctity of the Capitol obtains its grandest expression—
Iam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestis
Dira loci; iam tum silvam saxumque tremebant.