Apparet Camarina procul, campique Geloi,
Immanisque Gela, fluvii cognomine dicta.
Arduus inde Acragas ostentat maxima longe
Moenia, magnanimum quondam generator equorum[620], etc.
These and similar passages—such as that describing the moon-light sail past the enchanted shores of Circe—remind us of the great change which had come over the world between the age [pg 388]of the Odyssey and that of the Aeneid. The one poem is pervaded by the eager curiosity of the youthful prime of the world, attracting the most daring and energetic spirits to the discovery and peopling of new lands; the other by that more languid curiosity, awakened by the associations of the past,—by the longing for some change to break the routine of a too easy life,—and by the refined enjoyment of beauty, urging men to encounter some danger and more discomfort for the sake of visiting scenes famous in history, rich in natural charms, or in works of art, the inheritance from more creative times.
In his scenes of battle, Virgil is as inferior to the poet of the Iliad as he is to the poet of the Odyssey in those of sea adventure. In the details of single fights, in the account of the wounds inflicted on one another by the combatants, in the enumeration of the obscurer warriors who fall before the champions of either side—
his addit Amastrum
Hippotaden, sequiturque incumbens eminus hasta
Tereaque Harpalycumque et Demophoönta Chromimque[621],
he follows closely in the footsteps of Homer. He is, however, more sparing of these details, so as to avoid the monotony of Homer’s battle-fields and single combats. The Iliad was originally addressed to a people of warriors—