The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil

by W. Y. Sellar

Miratur, videt Iliacas ex ordine pugnas

Bellaque iam fama totum volgata per orbem[605];

of the great dome under which the throne of Dido is placed—

media testudine templi, etc.;

the description of the Temple of Apollo at Cumae,—the account of the banquet in the palace of Dido with its blaze of ‘festal light’—

dependent lychni laquearibus aureis

Incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt[606],

(a picture partly indeed, like that in Lucretius—

Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes, etc.,

suggested by the imaginative description of the banquet in the Palace of Alcinous)—appear to owe their existence to the impression produced on the mind of Virgil by some of the great architectural works of the Augustan Age—such as the Theatre of Marcellus, the Pantheon, the Temple of the Palatine Apollo, and by the spectacle of profuse luxury which the houses and banquets of the richer classes at Rome exhibited.