The most frequent examples of Vergil’s subordination are in his fine art of description. Picturesque with brilliant color, as well as with the Homeric light and motion,[15] and as precise as they are vivid, his descriptions are rarely separable. Not only are they contributory to the action; they are also inwoven.[16] Vergil’s sensitiveness to the details of nature transpires in a sentence, even in single words,[17] which describe while they narrate. Here he discerned the artistic rightness by which Homer describes every thing movable as in motion,[18] and applied the principle with more careful attention to narrative continuity. He dispenses with Homer’s superfluous mechanism of transition.[19] Memorable as are the descriptions—and nothing in the _Æneid_ is better remembered—very few can be detached from the context for separate admiration.[20] The detailing of architecture and decoration, though it unduly seized the fancy of the middle ages, is hardly an exception. The Carthaginian pictures of Troy, the palace of Latinus, are there not for scene-painting, but for historic suggestion. They serve the story. Thus Vergil’s descriptive art is at once less ample than Homer’s and more specifically subsidiary. The Hellenistic tableau—ἔκφρασις is its ominous name—appears in the glittering conventional pauses of Ovid. Vergil had put it aside. This is the more remarkable because the ancients seem generally to have regarded certain scenes—battle, for instance, conflagration, storm, thwarted love—as rather description than narration.[21] Vergil, while he works even more than Homer to make us realize a scene by sharing in it as actors,[22] works also to avoid interruption of the story. Similar is the constant care to avoid interruption of time or place.[23] Vergil’s unremitting prevision and revision have obviated any time-lapse that is insignificant for the action. The Homeric device of bringing in antecedent action by retrospective narrative is used more artistically. While it covers ground, extending the time-lapse beyond the stage, the narrative of Æneas heightens the love of Dido before our eyes. She loved me for the dangers I had passed; And I loved her that she did pity them.