coniunx ubi pristinus illi
Respondet curis aequatque Sychaeus amorem[585]—
the Roman poet is moved by the tender affection of his own nature, and follows the light of his own intuition.
Ancient commentators have drawn attention to the large place which the account of religious ceremonies occupies in the Aeneid, and to the exact acquaintance which Virgil shows with the minutiae of Pontifical and Augural lore. It is in keeping with the character of Aeneas as the hero of a religious epic, that [pg 375]the commencement and completion of every enterprise are accompanied with sacrifices and other ceremonial observances. M. Gaston Boissier[586], following Macrobius, has pointed out the special propriety of the offerings made to different gods, of the peculiar use of such epithets as ‘eximios’ applied to the bulls selected for sacrifice, of the ritual application of the words ‘porricio[587]’ and ‘porrigo’, and of the words addressed to Aeneas by the River-Nymphs[588],—‘Aenea, vigila,’—which would recall to Roman ears those with which the commander of the Roman armies, on the outbreak of war, shook the shields and sacred symbols of Mars. Other passages would remind the readers of Virgil of the ceremonial observances with which they were familiar, as for instance that in which Helenus prescribes to Aeneas the peculiarly Roman practice of veiling the head in worship and sacrifice—
Quin, ubi transmissae steterint trans aequora classes,
Et positis aris iam vota in litore solves,
Purpureo velare comas adopertus amictu;
Nequa inter sanctos ignis in honore deorum
Hostilis facies occurrat et omina turbet[589].
There are traces also of a worship, which from its wider diffusion, and its late survival, seems to belong to a remoter antiquity than the peculiar ceremonial of Rome,—as in the prayer offered to the god of Soracte—