There is another element in the poem that is as significant as it is
prosaic, a spirit of carping at poetic custom which reminds the reader of
Philodemus' lectures. Philodemus, whether speaking of philosophy or music
or poetry, always begins in the negative. He is not happy until he has
soundly trounced his predecessors and opponents. The author of the
_Aetna_ has learned all too well this scholastic method, and his acerbity
usually turns the reader away before he has reached the central
theme. There is of course just a little of this tone left in the
_Georgics_--Lucretius also has a touch of it--but the _Aeneid_ has freed
itself completely.

The compensation to the reader lies not so much in episodical myths,
descriptions, and the story at the end, apologetically inserted on
Lucretius' theory of sweetened medicine, as rather in the poet's
contagious enthusiasm for his science, the thrill of discovery and the
sense of wonder (1. 251):

Divina est animi ac jucunda voluptas!

Men have wasted hours enough on trivialities (258):

Torquemur miseri in parvis, terimurque labore.

A worthier occupation is science (274):

Implendus sibi quisque bonis est artibus: illae
Sunt animi fruges, haec rerum est optima merces.

And science must be worthy of man's divine majesty (224):