The poem, although laying no claim to the perfection of epic form, had thus something of the genuine epic inspiration. While treating both of a mythical past and of real historical events, it was pervaded by a living and popular idea,--faith in the destiny of Rome. It was through the power and presence of that same idea in his own age, that Virgil was able to impart a vital and enduring meaning to a fabulous tradition, and to create, out of the imaginary fortunes of a Trojan hero, a poem most truly representative of his age and country. It is the absence of any such living idea which renders the artificial epics of refined and civilised eras,--such poems, for instance, as the _Thebais_ of Statius, or the _Argonautics_ of Valerius Flaccus,--in general so flat and unprofitable. Regarded, on the other hand, as a historical poem, the Annals was written under more favourable conditions than the _Pharsalia_ of Lucan, or the _Punic Wars_ of Silius Italicus--in being the work of an age to which the past had come down as popular tradition, not as recorded history. The imagination of the poet employs itself more happily and legitimately in filling up or modifying a story that has been shaped by the fancies and feelings of successive generations, than in venturing to recast the facts that stand out prominently in the actual march of human affairs. By treating of contemporary events, the poem must have receded still further from the pure type of epic poetry; yet the later fragments of the work, while written with something of the minute and literal fidelity of a chronicle, may yet lay claim to poetic inspiration. They prove that the author was no unconcerned spectator and reporter of the events going on around him, but that his imagination was fired and his sympathies keenly interested by whatever, in speech or action, was worthy to live in the memory of the world.