ole mass of his
work. His Roman readers, whose state and empire had been brought to the
verge of ruin by the exaltation of individual passions and ambitions,
would look for these constant allusions and understand them far better
than we can.

I maintain, then, that the poet adopted his version of the story of Dido
not simply as an affecting and pathetic episode, but (in keeping with
his whole design) to emphasise the great lesson of the poem by showing
that the growth and glory of the Roman dominion are due, under
providence, to Roman _virtus_ and _pietas_--that sense of duty to
family, State, and gods, which rises, in spite of trial and danger,
superior to the enticements of individual passion and selfish ease.
Aeneas is sorely tried, but he escapes from Dido to perform the will of
the gods; it is Jupiter, ruler of the Fates and the Roman destinies, who
rescues him, and thus the divine care for Rome, an idea of which
Augustus wished to make the most, is carefully preserved in the tale. If
for us the character of Aeneas suffers by his desertion of Dido, that is
simply because the poet, seized with intense pity for the injured queen,
seems for once, like his own hero, to have forgotten his mission in the
poem, and at the very moment when he means to show Aeneas performing the
noblest act of self-sacrifice, renouncing his individual passion and
listening to the stern call of duty, human nature gets the better of
him, and what he meant to paint as a noble act has come out on his
canvas as a mean one.

In Virgil's story, then, we have in contrast and conflict the opposing
principles of duty and pleasure, of patriotism and selfishness, and the
victory of the latter in the person of Aeneas by the help of the great
god who was the guardian of the destinies of Rome, and of the goddess
who was the mother of the hero and the reputed progenitor of the Julian
family. When once this great trial is over, the way is clear for the
accomplishment of Aeneas' mission, though he still has trials to face,
and as yet is not fully equipped for meeting them.

Whoever, after reading the stormy scenes of the fourth book, will go
straight on to the fifth, cannot but be struck with a change of tone
which would have been doubly welcome to a man of that true Roman feeling
which Virgil was counting on as well as inculcating throughout his
work--doubly welcome, because he would find it not only in the
incidents, but in the character of Aeneas. We h