used in the schools, a kind of summaries of the Trojan War, written by
Latin grammarians under the odd pseudonyms of Dares the Phrygian and Dictys
of Crete. But these abridgments were very dry for an imagination like
Augustin's. He much preferred the _AEneid_, the poem admired above all
by the Africans, on account of the episode devoted to the foundation of
Carthage. Virgil was his passion. He read and re-read him continually;
he knew him by heart. To the end of his life, in his severest writings,
he quoted verses or whole passages out of his much-loved poet. Dido's
adventure moved him to tears. They had to pluck the book out of his hands.

Now the reason is that there was a secret harmony between Virgil's soul and
the soul of Augustin. Both were gracious and serious. One, the great poet,
and one, the humble schoolboy, they both had pity on the Queen of Carthage,
they would have liked to save her, or at any rate to mitigate her sadness,
to alter a little the callousness of AEneas and the harshness of the Fates.
But think of it! Love is a divine sickness, a chastisement sent by the
gods. It is just, when all's said, that the guilty one should endure her
agony to the very end. And then, such very great things are going to arise
out of this poor love! Upon it depends the lot of two Empires. What counts
a woman before Rome and Carthage? Besides, she was bound to perish: the
gods had decreed it.... There was in all that a concentrated emotion, a
depth of sentiment, a religious appeal which stirred Augustin's heart,
still unaware of itself. This obedience of the Virgilian hero to the
heavenly will, was already an adumbration of the humility of the future
Christian.

Certainly, Augustin did not perceive very plainly in these turbid years
of his youth the full religious significance of Virgil's poem. Carried
away by his headstrong nature, he yielded to the heart-rending charm of
the romantic story: he lived it, literally, with the heroine. When his