rt from those exquisite beauties of detail which are for
those only who have been initiated in the Virgilian mysteries, what
chiefly moves the modern reader of Virgil. There are drawbacks which,
for us moderns at least, detract from the general effect: the
intervention of gods and goddesses after the Homeric manner, but without
the charm of Homer; the seeming want of warm human blood in the hero;
the stern decrees of Fate overruling human passions and interests; but
he who keeps the great theme ever in mind, watching for it as he reads,
as one watches for the new entry of a great fugue-subject, will never
fail to see in the _Aeneid_ one of the noblest efforts of human art--to
understand what makes it the world's second great epic.

But this great destiny of Rome has been accomplished by the service of
man; by his loyalty, self-sacrifice, and sense of duty; by that quality
known to the Romans as _pietas_; and the second lesson or reminder of
the _Aeneid_ lies in the exemplification of this truth in the person and
character of the hero. We moderns find it hard to interest ourselves in
the character of Aeneas. But as Prof. Nettleship remarked long ago,[882]
a Roman reader would not have thought him dull or uninteresting; if that
had been so, the poem could hardly have become popular from the moment
of its publication. I am inclined to think that the _development_ of the
character of Aeneas under stress of perils, moral and material, was much
more obvious to the Roman than it is to us, and much more keenly
appreciated. For him it was the chief lesson of the poem, which makes it
as it were a "whole duty of the Roman"; and as this lesson is really a
part of Roman religious experience I am going to occupy the rest of this
lecture with it.

The development of the character of Aeneas, under the influence of
perils and temptations through which he is guided by Jupiter and the
Fates, is not a subject which has received much attention from modern
criticism.[883] Yet to me, at least, it would be surprising if the
leading character of the poem were, so to speak, a statue once and for
all conceived and executed by the artist, instead of a human being
subjected to various experiences which work upon his character as well
as his career. There were circumstances in Virgil's time which made it
natural that a poet of a serious and philosophical turn of mind should
be interested in the development of character and make it part of his
great