INTRODUCTION
The Æneid
When Rome, torn and bleeding from a century of civil
wars, turned to that wise judge of men, the second Cæsar,
and acquiesced as, through carefully selected ministers,
he gathered the reins of power into velvet-clad fingers of
steel, she did wisely. Better one-man power than anarchy!
It became the part of true patriotism for the citizen
and of statesmanship for the politician to bring to the
aid of the First Man of the state all the motives that could
harmonize the chaotic elements, and start Republican
Rome on the path of a new unity—the unity of the Empire.
For already "far away on the wide Roman marches
might be heard, as it were, the endless, ceaseless monotone
of beating horses' hoofs and marching feet of men. They
were coming, they were nearing, like footsteps heard on wool;[1] there was a sound of multitudes and millions of
barbarians, all the North, mustering and marshalling her
peoples." In his great task Augustus, with the aid of
Mæcenas, very cleverly drew to his help writers whose
work has since charmed the world. We can almost pardon
fate for destroying the Republic—it gave us Virgil and
Horace.
Pleasant indeed had it been for Virgil to sing in emulation of his great teacher Lucretius! "As for me," he says, "first of all I would pray that the charming Muses, whose minister I am, for the great love that has smitten
- ↑ "Like footsteps upon wool."—Tennyson, Œnone.
