etor Hispalus.

[866] Plutarch, _Marius_, 42.

[867] Suet. _Aug._ 1. I have seen a learned work about a
century old, now entirely forgotten, in which it is
maintained that Virgil's fourth Eclogue is simply a
genethliacon of Augustus; the arguments, which are
ingenious but futile, are drawn from the poem of
Manilius.

[868] Tacitus, _Hist._ i. 22.

LECTURE XVIII

RELIGIOUS FEELING IN THE POEMS OF VIRGIL

My justification for devoting a whole lecture to Virgil must be that
this great poet, more warmly and sympathetically than any other Latin
author, gives expression to the best religious feeling of the Roman
mind. And this is so not only in regard to the tendencies of religion in
his own day; he stands apart from all his literary contemporaries in
that he sums up the past of Roman religious experience, reflects that of
his own time, and also looks forward into the future. No other poet, no
historian, not even Livy, who sprang from the same region and in his
tone and spirit in some ways resembles Virgil, has the same broad
outlook, the same tender interest in religious antiquity, the same
all-embracing sympathy for the Roman world he knew, and the same
confident and cheerful hope for its future. Each of the Augustan
poets--Horace, Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus--has his own peculiar gift and
charm; but those who know Virgil through and through will at once
acknowledge the difference between these and the man possessed of
spiritual insight. They are helpful in various ways to the student of
Roman religion, and Tibullus especially has a simple reverence for the
old religion which has inspired a few exquisite descriptions of this
aspect of Italian life. But, if I may use the word, they had no
mission; they were true poets, yet not poets of the prophetic order;
they had not thought deeply and reached conviction, like Lucretius and
Virgil. A few words from the conclusion of an Edinburgh professor's
admirable work on Virgil will sufficiently express what I mean. "His
religious belief," says Sellar, "like his other speculative convictions,
was composite and undefined; yet it embraced what was purest and most
vital in the religions of antiquity, and in its deepest intuitions it
seems to look forward to the belief which became dominant in Rome four
centuries later."[869] In fact, Virgil gathers up what was valuable in
the past of Rome and adds to it a new element, a new source of life and