subject. We have more than once had occasion to notice the growth
of individualism in the last two centuries B.C. Beyond doubt personal
character had a great interest at this time for thinking men, apart from
its development; the world was ruled by individuals, and at no time has
so much depended on the disposition of individuals. Men had long begun
to take themselves very seriously, and to write their own biographies.
So entirely had the individual emancipated himself from the State, that
he had almost forgotten that the State existed and claimed his _pietas_;
he worked and played for his own ends.[884] Even the armies of that
melancholy age were known and thought of, not as the servants of the
State, but as Sullani, Pompeiani, and so on. This almost arrogant
self-assertion of the individual was a fact of the time, and could not
be suppressed entirely; it was henceforward impossible to return to the
old times when the State was all in all and the individual counted for
little.

But in the _Aeneid_, if I am not mistaken, there is an almost perfect
balance between the two conflicting interests. The State is the pivot on
which turns all that is best in individual human character; in other
words, Aeneas is not playing his own game, but fulfilling the order of
destiny which was to bring the world under Roman dominion. Individualism
of the wrong type, that of Dido, Turnus, Mezentius, has to be escaped or
overcome by the hero, for whom the call of duty is that of the State to
be; but, all the same, the hero is an _individual_, and one conceived
not merely as a type or a force. True, he is typical of Roman _pietas_,
and bears his constant epithet accordingly; but if we look at him
carefully we shall see that his _pietas_ is at first imperfect, and that
his individualism has to be tamed and brought into the service of the
State _with the help of the State's deities_. This is what makes the
_Aeneid_ a religious poem; the character of Aeneas is pivoted on
religion; religion is the one sanction of his conduct. There is no
appeal in the _Aeneid_ to knowledge, or reason, or pleasure,--always to
the will of God. _Pietas_ is Virgil's word for religion, as it had been
Cicero's in his more exalted moments. In the Dream of Scipio we read
that "_piis_ omnibus retinendus est animus in custodia corporis: nec
iniussu eius a quo ille est vobis datus, ex hominum vita migrandum est,
_ne munus humanum adsignatum a deo defugisse videamini_."[885]