[Footnote 207: Arist. _Pol._ iii. 12; Juv. viii. 20.--(W.)] [Footnote 208: Witte refers to Dante's commentary on his own Canzone in the _Convito_ iv. 3, and the _Parad._ xvi. 1.] To be preferred, therefore, is, according to reason, the fitting reward of the noble. And since rewards must be measured by desert, according to that saying of the Gospel, "with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again;" therefore to the most noble the highest place should be given. The testimonies of the ancients confirm our opinion; for Virgil, our divine poet, testifies throughout his _Æneid_, that men may ever remember it, that the glorious king, Æneas, was the father of the Roman people. And this Titus Livius, the famous chronicler of the deeds of the Romans, confirms in the first part of his work, which takes its beginning from the capture of Troy. The nobleness of this most unconquerable and most pious ancestor not only in regard to his own great virtue, but also to that of his forefathers and of his wives, the nobleness of whom was combined in their descendant by the rightful law of descent, I cannot unfold at length; "I can but touch lightly on the outlines of the truth."[209] [Footnote 209: "Sed summa sequar vestigia rerum." Virg. _Æn._ i. 342 ("fastigia" in all good MSS. and edd.).] For the virtue then of Æneas himself, hear what our poet tells us when he introduces Ilioneus in the first _Æneid_, praying thus: "Æneas was our king; in justice and piety he has not left a peer, nor any to equal him in war." Hear Virgil in the sixth _Æneid_, when he speaks of the death of Misenus, who had been Hector's attendant in war, and, after Hector's death, had attached himself to Æneas; for there Virgil says that Misenus "followed as good a man;" thus comparing Æneas to Hector, whom[210] Homer ever praises above all men, as the Philosopher witnesses in his _Ethics_, in what he writes to Nicomachus on habits to be avoided. [Footnote 210: _Æn._ i. 544, vi. 170. _Il._ xxiv. 258, quoted in Aristotle, _Ethics_, vii. 1.--(W.)]