It may be remarked, as a strong proof of the hold which their mythology had on the minds of the ancients, that men so sincere as Ennius and Lucretius, while openly expressing opposition to that system of religious belief, cannot separate themselves from its influence and associations in their poetry. But it is not to be supposed that Ennius, in the passages just referred to, was merely using an artificial machinery to which he attached no meaning. In this representation of the councils of the gods, he embodies that faith in the Roman destiny, which was at the root of the most serious convictions of the Romans, in the most sceptical as well as the most believing ages of their history. This, too, is the real belief, which gives meaning to the supernatural agency in the Aeneid. Aeneas is an instrument in the hands of Fate; Jupiter merely foreknows and pronounces its decrees; the parts assigned to Juno and Venus, in thwarting and advancing these decrees, seem to be an artistic addition to this original conception, suggested perhaps as much by the experience of female influence and intrigue in the poet's own age as by the memories of the Iliad.
Homer makes his personages known to us in speech as well as in action. Among epic poets he alone possessed the finest dramatic genius. But over and above the natural dialogue or soliloquy, in which every feeling of his various personages is revealed, he has invested his heroes with the charm of fluent and powerful oratory, in the council of chiefs and before the assembled people. The words of his speakers pour on, as he says of the words of Odysseus,—
νιφάδεσσιν ἐοικότα χειμερίῃσι,
in the rapid vehemence of passion or the subtle fluency of persuasion. The fragments of Ennius, on the other hand, scarcely afford sufficient ground for attributing to him a genuine dramatic faculty. But, as the citizen of a republic in which action was first matured in council, and living in the age when public speech first became a recognised power in the State, it was incumbent on him to embody in 'his abstract and chronicle of the time' the speech of the orator no less than the achievement of the soldier. In his estimate of character this power of speech is honoured as the fitting accompaniment of the wisdom of the statesman. In the following lines, for instance, he laments the substitution of military for civil preponderance in public affairs.
Pellitur e medio sapientia, vi geritur res:
Spernitur orator bonus, horridu' miles amatur:
Haut doctis dictis certantes, sed maledictis
Miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes;
Non ex jure manu consertum, sed magi' ferro