ry to a Study of the
Aeneid_, p. 36.

[883] It is not likely to strike us unless we read the
whole _Aeneid_ through, without distracting our minds
with other reading, and this few of us do. I did it some
ten years ago; before that the development of character
had not dawned on me fully. I later on found it shortly
but clearly set forth in Heinze's _Vergils epische
Technik_, p. 266 foll.; and this caused me to read the
poem through once more, with the result that I became
confirmed in my view, and read a paper on the subject
to the Oxford Philological Society, which I have in part
embodied in this lecture.

[884] This is dwelt on in _Social Life at Rome in the
Age of Cicero_, p. 124 foll.

[885] _De Republica_, vi. 15.

[886] It may be as well to note here that the actual
representation of God in the _Aeneid_ is its weakest
point. It was an epic poem, and could not dispense with
the Homeric machinery: hence Jupiter is practically the
representative of the Stoic all-pervading deity, with
the Fates behind him. But it is not unlikely that Virgil
may thus have actually helped to make the way clear for
a nobler monotheistic idea by damaging Jupiter in the
course of this treatment; see _Social Life at Rome in
the Age of Cicero_, p. 341 foll.

[887] On the Homeric Aeneas there are some good remarks
in Boissier's _Nouvelles Promenades
archaeologiques_ (_Horace et Virgile_), p. 130
foll. Of all the Homeric heroes he seems to come
nearest, though but slightly sketched, to the Roman
ideal of heroism.

[888] Heinze, _Vergils epische Technik_, p. 17.

[889] I should be disposed to consider this passage as
decisive of the point, but that it immediately follows
upon the doubtful lines 567-588, in which Aeneas is
tempted in his mad fury to slay Helen; and if those
lines are not Virgil's, we have not sufficient
explanation of the rebuke which Venus here administers
to her son. On the other hand, if they were really
Virgil's, and omitted (as Servius declares) by the
original editors Tucca and Varius, we should have a
convincing proof that the poet meant his hero, in these
terrible scenes, to come so short of the true Roman
heroic type as to be capable of slaying a woman in cold
blood, and while a suppliant at an altar of the gods.
Into this m