he Technik_, pp. 82 ff.]

[Footnote 11: This Vergil indicates repeatedly: _Aen_. V, 737; VI, 718,
806-7, 890-2.]

It has frequently been said that Vergil's philosophical system is
confused and that his judgments on providence are inconsistent, that in
fact he seems not to have thought his problems through. This is of course
true so far as it is true of all the students of philosophy of his day.
Indeed we must admit that with the very inadequate psychology of that
time no reasonable solution of the then central problem of determinism
could be found. But there is no reason for supposing that the poet did
not have a complete mastery of what the best teachers of his day had to
offer.

Vergil's Epicureanism, however, served him chiefly as a working
hypothesis for scientific purposes. With its ethical and religious
implications he had not concerned himself; and so it was not permitted
in his later days to interfere with a deep respect for the essentials of
religion. Similarly, the profoundest students of science today, men
who in all their experiments act implicitly and undeviatingly on the
hypotheses of atomism and determinism in the world of research, are
usually the last to deny the validity of the basic religious tenets. In
his knowledge of religious rites Vergil reveals an exactness that seems
to point to very careful observances in his childhood home. They have
become second nature as it were, and go as deep as the filial devotion
which so constantly brings the word _pietas_ to his pen.

But his religion is more than a matter of rites and ceremonies. It has,
to a degree very unusual for a Roman, associated itself with morality and
especially with social morality. The culprits of his Tartarus are not
merely the legendary offenders against exacting deities:

Hic quibus invisi fratres, dum vita manebat,
Pulsatusve parens et fraus innexa clienti,
Aut qui divitiis soli incubuere repertis
Nec partem posuere suis, quae maxima turba est.

The virtues that win a place in Elysium indicate the same fusion of
religion with humanitarian sympathies:

Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi,
Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat,
Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti,
Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artis,
Quique sui memores aliquos fecere merendo:
Omnibus his nivea cinguntur tempora vitta.

His Elysium is far removed from Homer's limbo; truly did he deserve his
place among those

Pho