d as the Reason in the universe, could
really help him in the conduct of his life _qua_ individual. It is
only as the source of legalised morality that we can think of Varro's
Jupiter as "making for righteousness."

Less than twenty-five years after Cicero's death, in the imagination
of the greatest of Roman poets, Jupiter was once more brought before
the Roman world, and now in a form comprehensible by all educated men,
whether or no they had dabbled in philosophy. What are we to say of
the Jupiter of the _Aeneid_? We do not need to read far in the first
book of the poem to find him spoken of in terms which remind us of
Varro: "O qui res hominumque deumque Aeternis regis imperiis," are the
opening words of the address of Venus; and when she has finished,

Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum
Vultu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat,
Oscula libavit natae, dehine talia fatur;
"Parce metu, Cytherea, manent immota tuorum
Fata tibi."

Jupiter is here, as in Varro's system, the prime cause and ruler of
all things, and he also holds in his hand the destiny of Rome and the
fortunes of the hero who was to lay the first foundation of Rome's
dominion. It is in the knowledge of his will that Aeneas walks, with
hesitating steps, in the earlier books, in the later ones with assured
confidence, towards the goal that is set before him. But the lines
just quoted serve well to show how different is the Jupiter of Virgil
from the universal deity of the Roman Stoic. Beyond doubt Virgil had
felt the power of the Stoic creed; but he was essaying an epic poem,
and he could not possibly dispense with the divine machinery as it
stood in his great Homeric model. His Jupiter is indeed, as has been
lately said,[569] "a great and wise god, free from the tyrannical and
sensuous characteristics of the Homeric Zeus," in other words, he is a
Roman deity, and sometimes acts and speaks like a grave Roman consul
of the olden time. But still he is an anthropomorphic deity, a purely
human conception of a personal god-king; in these lines he smiles on
his daughter Venus and kisses her. This is the reason why Virgil has
throughout his poem placed the Fates, or Destiny, in close relation to
him, without definitely explaining that relation. Fate, as it appears
in the Aeneid, is the Stoic [Greek: eimarmenae] applied to the idea of
Rome and her Empire; that Stoic conception could not take the form of
Jupiter, as in Varro's hands, for the god h