Vos etiam, gemini, Rutulis cecidistis in arvis,
Daucia, Laride Thymberque, simillima proles,
Indiscreta suis gratusque parentibus error[632].
The emotions awakened by the deaths of Mezentius and of Turnus are of a sterner character. So too the poet’s compassion for the heroine of his later books, Camilla, falling by the hand of an ignoble antagonist, is mixed with a sense of scornful satisfaction at the retribution which immediately followed—
Extemplo teli stridorem aurasque sonantis
Audiit una Arruns haesitque in corpore ferrum.
Illum expirantem socii atque extrema gementem
Obliti ignoto camporum in pulvere linquunt;
Opis ad aetherium pinnis aufertur Olympum[633].
Virgil’s susceptibility to local associations and to impressions of a remote antiquity must also be taken into account as supplying materials and stimulus to his inventive faculty. No poet so often appeals to the imaginative interest attaching to the earlier condition of places or things of old renown or famous in the later history of the world. Thus the building of Carthage, the first view of the Tiber—