acher, and thought of his
Aeneid, not as a sermon, but as a work of art. Had he thought of it as a
sermon he could hardly have wished to deprive the Roman world of it. The
true poet is never a preacher except in so far as he is a poet. If the
Greeks thought of their poets as teachers, says the late Prof. Jebb,
"this was simply a recognition of poetry as the highest influence,
intellectual and spiritual, that they knew." "It was not merely a
recreation of their leisure, but a power pervading and moulding their
whole existence." Surely this is also true of Virgil, and of the best at
least of his Roman readers. No one can read the sixth Aeneid, the
greatest effort of his genius, without feeling that poetry was all in
all to him; that learning, legend, philosophy, religion, whatever in the
whole range of human thought and fancy entered his mind, emerged from it
as poetry and poetry only.[899]

NOTES TO LECTURE XVIII

[869] Sellar, _Virgil_, p. 371.

[870] Sainte-Beuve, _Etude sur Virgile_, p. 68.

[871] Horace, _Epode_ 16, where, however, he is not
quite so much in earnest as in _Odes_ iii. 6. Sallust,
prefaces to Jugurtha and Catiline: these do not ring
quite true.

[872] _Georg._ iv. 511 foll.

[873] _Georg._ iii. 440 foll. The famous lines (498
foll.) about the horse smitten with pestilence will
occur to every one.

[874] _Aen._ vi. 309.

[875] _Op. cit._ p. 231. He cites _Georg._ i. 107 and
187 foll.

[876] Sellar, _Virgil_, p. 232.

[877] _Georg._ iv. 221 foll.

[878] _Georg._ ii. 493.

[879] Prof. Hardie recently asked me an explanation of
the double altar that we meet with more than once in
Virgil in connection with funeral rites: _e.g._, _Ecl._
5. 66; _Aen._ iii. 305; v. 77 foll. Servius tries to
explain this, but clearly did not understand it. Of
course I could offer no satisfactory solution. Yet we
are both certain that there is a satisfactory one if we
could only get at it.

[880] Much has been written about the part of the Fates
in the _Aeneid_ and their relation to Jupiter. See
Heinze, _Vergils epische Technik_, p. 286 foll.; Glover,
_Studies in Virgil_, 202 and 277 foll. I may be allowed
to refer also to my _Social Life at Rome in the Age of
Cicero_, p. 342 foll.

[881] _Aen._ i. 257 foll., vi. 756 foll., viii. 615
foll.

[882] _Suggestions prelimina