despair he usually resorts to the hypotheses of some personal intrigue
for an explanation of their powerful influence.

It is in truth very likely that had Roman literature been permitted to
run its own natural course, without being overwhelmed, as was the Italian
literature of the renaissance, it would have progressed much farther on
the road to Romanticism. Apollonius was far more a restraining influence
in this respect than an inspiration. As it is, Vergil's first and fourth
books are as unthinkable in Greek dress as is the sixth. They constitute
a very conspicuous landmark in the history of literature.

Vergil does not wholly escape the powerful conventions of his Greek
predecessors: in his fourth book, for instance, there are suggestions of
the melodramatic "maiden's lament" so dear to the music hall gallery of
Alexandria. But Vergil, apparently to his own surprise, permits his Roman
understanding of life to prevail, and transcends his first intentions
as soon as he has felt the grip of the character he is portraying. Dido
quickly emerges from the role of a temptress designed as a last snare to
trap the hero, and becomes a woman who reveals human laws paramount even
to divine ordinance. Once realizing this the poet sacrifices even his
hero and wrecks his original plot to be true to his insight into human
nature. The confession of Aeneas, as he departs, that in heeding heaven's
command he has blasphemed against love--_polluto amore_--how strange a
thought for the _pius Aeneas_! That sentiment was not Greek, it was a new
flash of intuition of the very quality of purest Romance.

The _Aeneid_ is also a remarkably religious poem to have come from one
who had devoted so many enthusiastic years to a materialistic philosophy.
Indeed it is usual to assume that the poet had abandoned his philosophy
and turned to Stoicism before his death. But there is after all no