saevae iamque altius irae
Dardanio surgunt ductori[640].
The occasion in which he seems most worthy of his place as a leader of men is after the death of Mezentius, where the self-restraint of his address contrasts favourably with the intemperate ardour expressed in some of the speeches of Turnus—
Maxima res effecta, viri: timor omnis abesto[641].
He appears as a passive recipient both of the devotion and of the reproaches of Dido. He undergoes no passionate struggle in resigning her. The courtesy and kindliness of his nature elicit no warmer expression of regret than the words—
nec me meminisse pigebit Elissae,
Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos regit artus[642].
The only exercise of thought required of him is the right interpretation of an omen, or the recollection of some dubious prediction at some critical moment. Even the strength of affection which he feels and which he awakens in the hearts of his father and son does not move us in the way in which we are touched by the feelings which unite Odysseus to Penelope and Telemachus, to Laertes and the mother who meets him in the shades, and tells him that she had ‘died neither by the painless arrows of Artemis nor by wasting disease’—
ἀλλά με σός τε πόθος σά τε μήδεα, φαίδιμ’ Ὀδυσσεῦ,
σή τ’ ἀγανοφροσύνη μελιηδέα θυμὸν ἀπηύρα[643].