In his eschatology he is no less conservative than in his descriptions; witness the judgment of the dead by Minos (431 _sqq._) and Rhadamanthus (567-9); the Fate of the Giants (580 _sqq._), and other great offenders against the persons of the gods (601 _sqq._), etc. etc. Like Plutarch, he inflicts heavier penalties upon those who have not expiated their guilt in this life (569). Moreover, he adopts, without being able to reconcile, the two conflicting theories held by his Grecian predecessors, and succeeds no better than Plato and his followers in fusing into a consistent scheme the theory of perpetual rewards and punishments, and the collateral theory of the metempsychosis. In his treatment of the whole subject he betrays the influence of several of the later schools of Greek philosophy, and appears as a disciple of the Pythagoreans and Stoics as well as of Plato. At the same time, he displays his modernity alike in this eclectic and combining method, and in his general design, which is mainly artistic and literary; the Vision legend is not introduced with any hortatory or epideictic purpose, but, as in the earlier epic, forms merely a part of the general machinery of the poem, the several pictures and descriptive incidents of the Otherworld serving as frescoes and statues and gargoyles to adorn the main body of the edifice. An instance of this occurs in the picturesque grouping of the monsters and personified abstractions about the gates of Hades (_Æn._ vi. 273-294), which is conceived in a purely artistic spirit, no less than similar descriptions in Ariosto, Spenser, and Milton--we might almost add the Rape of the Lock. The same may be said of the City of Dis (548 _sqq._). In such passages as these, Virgil indulges the Roman love of classification which appears in that tendency of the national religion to apportion all phases of nature and humanity among countless ‘departmental deities,’ ridiculed by several of the early Christian fathers, and notably by St. Augustine.[48] In short, Virgil pressed into his service ideas, beliefs, and speculations drawn alike from the popular creeds and traditions, and from the philosophers of his own and earlier times. These he blended with consummate art into one harmonious whole, uniting antiquity of matter with modernity of treatment; and this completeness, aided by the combination of circumstances which led him to be regarded, in after times, as at once the epitome and the consummation of the Wisdom of the Ancients, and as, moreover, the divinely inspired herald of the coming transition from Paganism to Christianity, fitted him, at a time when the higher achievements of the human intellect had to be sought in classical antiquity, to become the _duce_, _maestro_, _guida_, that Dante found in him. 2. THE ORIENTAL TRADITION