The _Æneid_ was solemnly devoted to the altar of Rome and Augustus. Homer was the Greek model here, as Theocritus had been for the _Bucolics_ and Hesiod for the _Georgics_. The origin of Rome was to be linked on to the Trojan story as had already been done by the inventive Greeks. Æneas had fled from Troy to Italy, and had left his son Julus (the eponymous hero of the Julian house) to found an heroic kingdom in Italy long before the genuine Roman heroes. Thus the humble native story of Romulus was superseded. Piety was to be the great virtue honoured by this poem, for piety towards the memory of Julius Cæsar was the principal title upon which Augustus rested his claim to honour. There were other analogies, perhaps. Dido most probably suggested Cleopatra to the Roman reader. But it is to the praise of Rome, to the glorification of that sense of filial duty which the Romans called “piety” that the great epic is mainly devoted. Here again, though the eloquence is so splendid and the versification so majestic, the _Æneid_ like its predecessors is a work of the study quite clearly written to order. The plot is carelessly constructed. Æneas himself, with all his piety, never for a moment lives. The religious motives which led to his desertion of Dido barely satisfy us. Æneas makes the speeches, and the gods continually intervene when danger threatens him. Our sympathies are generally with the enemy, with Turnus or Camilla. Æneas is as chilly and statuesque as Augustus himself. It is in the famous Sixth Book, which tells of the descent to Hades, that the praise of Rome is most elegant and most explicit. Here we are shown the heroes of Roman history side by side with the heroes of the Greeks, and here the young Marcellus, lately dead, is introduced in those immortal and touching lines which caused Octavia his mother to swoon when the poet recited them. Here too the poet pronounces in very significant language the Roman idea of the destiny of his race. excudent alii spirantia mollius æra, credo equidem, uiuos ducent de marmore uoltus, orabunt causas melius, cælique meatus describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; hæ tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem, parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.