οἶσιν ἄρα Ζεὺς
ἐκ νεότητος ἔδωκε καὶ ἐς γῆρας τολυπεύειν
ἀργαλέους πολέμους, ὄφρα φθιόμεσθα ἕκαστος[622].
And although through the mouth of the wisest of his heroes, Homer expresses some sense of weariness of the
‘war and broils, which make
Life one perpetual fight’—
αἶψα τε φυλόπιδος πέλεται κόρος ανθρώποισι—
yet all accepted this life as their destiny; and those who first listened to the song of the poet would feel no satiety in the details of battle and records of martial prowess, glorifying perhaps the reputed ancestors of those chiefs whom they themselves followed to the field or to the storming of cities. To Virgil’s readers, the record of such a time as that described in the Iliad would come like echoes from an alien world. In so far as the Romans of the Augustan Age had any vital passion corresponding to the interest with which Homer’s Greeks must have witnessed in imagination the spectacle of wounds and death in battle, it was in the basest form which the lust of blood has ever assumed among civilised men,—the passion for the gladiatorial shows. It is clear that Virgil himself, though he can feel and inspire the fire of battle at some critical moment—
ingeminant hastis et Troes et ipse
Fulmineus Mnestheus[623];