Victor habet. Tum moesta phalanx Teucrique sequuntur
Tyrrhenique omnes et versis Arcades armis[672].
In the employment of illustrative imagery Virgil is much more sparing than Homer. The varied forces of Nature and of animal life supplied materials to the Greek poet by which to enhance the poetical sense of the situation which he de[pg 414]scribes; and all these forces are apprehended by him with a vivid feeling of wonder, and presented to the imagination with a truthful observation of outward signs, and with a sympathetic insight into their innermost nature. Virgil is not only more sparing in the use of these figures; he is also tamer and less inventive in their application. In those drawn from the life of wild animals he, for the most part, reproduces the Homeric imagery, though we note as one touch of realism in them that the wolf, familiar to Italy, frequently takes the place of the lion, which was probably still an object of terror in Western Asia at the time when Homer lived. Another class of images reproduced from Homer is that of those in which a mortal is compared to an immortal, as at i. 498—
Qualis in Eurotae ripis, aut per iuga Cynthi,
Exercet Diana choros, etc.,
though in this some variations are introduced from a simile in Apollonius. Another passage of the same kind is immediately derived from the Alexandrine poet—
Qualis, ubi hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta[673], etc.
There is, however, another class of ‘similes’ used by Virgil in his epic, after the example of the Alexandrines, which can scarcely be said to fulfil the function of a poetical analogy, but merely to give a realistic outward symbol of some movement of the mind or passions, without any imaginative enhancement of the situation. Such, for instance, is the comparison at vii. 377, etc. of the mind of Amata to a top whipped by boys round an empty court,—a comparison suggested by a passage in Callimachus[674]; and that again at viii. 22, etc. of the variations of purpose in the mind of Aeneas, produced by the surging sea of cares besetting him, to the variations of light reflected from the water in a copper cauldron,—a comparison directly imitated from Apollonius (iii. 754, etc.). There are others again of [pg 415]what may be called a somewhat conventional cast, which acquire individuality from the colour of local associations, such as the introduction (at xii. 715) of two bulls battling together (as they are also described in the Georgics)—
ingenti Sila, summove Taburno;
the comparison (at xii. 701 etc.) of Aeneas, towering in all his warlike power, to Athos or Eryx—