not so much "curious," I think,
as sympathetic, and his delight in these religious details arises from
his love of Italy and all that man did in it. He caught the spirit of
the old Italian worship, which, as we saw, demanded that each act should
be performed accurately according to rules laid down. He recognises the
necessity, and with true Italian instinct he acts upon it as he writes.
He knows that these acts of cult are one outward expression of that
quality which had made Rome great--_pietas_, the sense of duty to
family, State, and Deity.

So far I have been considering what I may call the psychological basis
of Virgil's religion--the man's sympathetic nature and wide outlook,
which included in its love of Italy even the old practical worship of
Italians. I have now to go on to the poet's greatest work, in which the
idea of duty was not merely recognised in religious acts but exemplified
in an ideal Roman. It is mainly in the _Aeneid_ that we see him looking
forward as well as backward, for it is there that we have the chart of
the Roman's duty drawn to the scale of his past history, and meant to
guide him in the future in still more glorious travel.

There are two ways in which we may contemplate the _Aeneid_ as a whole
and the teaching it offered the Roman of that day. We may think of it
(if I may for a moment use musical language) as a great fugue, of which
the leading subject is the mission of Rome in the world. Providence,
Divine will, the Reason of the Stoics, or, in the poetical setting of
the poem, Jupiter, the great protecting Roman deity, with the Fates
behind him somewhat vaguely conceived,[880] had guided the State to
greatness and empire from its infancy onwards, and the citizens of that
State must be worthy of that destiny if they were to carry out the great
work. This mighty theme pervades the whole poem and, like the subject of
a fugue, enters and re-enters from time to time in thrilling tones. It
is given out in the prophecy put into the mouth of Jupiter himself at
the beginning of the first book; it is heard in still more magnificent
music from the shade of old Anchises in the last moments of the hero's
visit to Hades in the sixth book, and again in the description of the
shield which Venus gives her son.[881] Though the poem is unequal and
some parts of it are left without the final touches, yet whenever the
poet comes upon this great theme the tone is that of a full organ. This
is, I think, apa