hero seems only to have attempted a picture of a primitive king of the
heroic age. Indeed Aeneas is perhaps more of an autocrat than are
the Homeric kings, but that is because the Trojans are pictured as a
migrating group, torn root and branch from their land and government, and
following a semi-divine leader whose directions they have deliberately
chosen to obey. In his references to Roman history, in the pageant of
heroes of the sixth book, as well as in the historical scenes of the
shield, no monarchial tendencies appear. Brutus the tyrannicide, Pompey
and Cato, the irreconcilable foes of Caesar, Vergil's youthful hero,
receive their meed of praise in the _Aeneid_, though there were many who
held it treason in that day to mention rebels with respect.

It is indeed a very striking fact that Vergil, who was the first of Roman
writers to attribute divine honors to the youthful Octavian, refrains
entirely from doing so in the _Aeneid_ at a time when the rest of Rome
hesitated at no form of laudation. Julius Caesar is still recognized as
more than human,

vocabitur hic quoque votis,

but Augustus is not. The contrast is significant. The language of the
very young man at Naples had, of course, been colored by Oriental
forms of expression that were in part unconsciously imbibed from the
conversations of the Garden. These were phrases too which Julius Caesar
in the last two years of his life encouraged; for he had learned from
Alexander's experience that the shortest cut through constitutional
obstructions to supreme power lay by way of the doctrine of divine
royalty. In fact, the Senate was forced to recognize the doctrine before
Caesar's death, and after his death consistently voted public sacrifices
at his grave. Vergil was, therefore, following a high authority in the