The failure of Aeneas to excite a lively personal interest is not to be attributed solely to a failure of power in the poet’s imagination. In the part he plays he is conceived of as one chosen by the supreme purpose of the gods, as an instrument of their will, and thus necessarily unmoved by ordinary human [pg 399]impulses. In the words of M. de Coulanges, ‘Sa vertu doit être une froide et haute impersonnalité, qui fasse de lui, non un homme, mais un instrument des dieux[644].’ The strength required in such an instrument is the strength of faith, submission, patience, and endurance; and it is with this strength that Aeneas encounters the many dangers and vicissitudes to which he is exposed, and withdraws from the allurements of ease and pleasure. The very virtues of his character act as a check rather than as a stimulus to those natural impulses out of which the most living impersonations are formed. To compare great things in art with what are not so great, the impression produced by the superiority of Aeneas to ordinary passion is like the impression produced by the superior tolerance and enlightenment of some of Scott’s heroes, when contrasted with the more animated impulses and ruder fanaticism of the other personages in his story. That he is, on the one hand, the passive receptacle of Divine guidance, and, on the other, the impersonation of a modern ideal of humanity, playing a part in a rude and turbulent time, are the two main causes of the tame and colourless character of the protagonist of the Aeneid. And as loyalty to a leader is the sole form of political, as distinct from patriotic virtue which Virgil acknowledges, the other Trojan chiefs—the faithful Achates, the speaker Idomeneus, the more martial figures of Mnestheus and Serestus—do little more than play the part of the ἄγγελος or of the κωφὰ πρόσωπα in a Greek tragedy. The interest awakened by Anchises arises solely from the halo of sacred associations investing him. Iulus, as the eponymous ancestor of the Iulii, seems to be a favourite of the author; yet he fails to interest us as a youth of high spirit and promise. Telemachus we know and sympathise with in his rising rebellion against the insolence of the suitors—
νῦν δ’ ὅτε δὴ μέγας εἰμί, καὶ ἄλλων μῦθον ἀκούων
πυνθάνομαι, καὶ δή μοι ἀέξεται ἔνδοθι θυμός[645],
in his longing for the return of his father to redress his wrongs, in his kindly hospitality, and sense of the outraged honour of his house—
νεμεσσήθη δ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ
ξεῖνον δηθὰ θύρῃσιν ἐφεστάμεν[646].
That Iulus fails to awaken a similar interest, that we do not share his ardour in the chase or the glow of pride with which he lays his first enemy low, is due to the fact that the poet’s imagination fails in the vital realisation of his conception.
Most of the minor characters who appear in the Aeneid require no analysis. Creusa, Anna, and Andromache are vague impersonations of womanly tenderness and fidelity of affection. Lavinia, the shadowy Helen of the story, appears only for a moment, and though she is described by images suggestive of beauty and of a delicate nurture—
mixta rubent ubi lilia multa
Alba rosa[647],