"Sacra deosque dabo; socer arma Latinas habeto." [66]
This then being the lofty origin, the immemorial antiquity of the national faith, the moral is easily drawn, that Rome must never cease to observe it. The rites to import which into the favoured land cost heaven itself so fierce a struggle, which have raised that land to be the head of all the earth, must not be neglected now that their promise has been fulfilled. Each ceremony embodies some glorious reminiscence; each minute technicality enshrines some special national blessing.
Here, as in the _Georgics_, Cato and Varro live in Virgil, but with far less of narrow literalness, with far more of rich enthusiasm. We can well believe that the _Aeneid_ was a poem after Augustus's heart, that he welcomed with pride as well as gladness the instalments which, before its publication, he was permitted to see, [67] and encouraged by unreserved approbation so thorough an exponent of his cherished views. To him the _Aeneid_ breathed the spirit of the old cult. Its very style, like that of Milton from the Bible, was borrowed in countless instances from the Sacred Manuals. When Aeneas offers to the gods four prime oxen (_eximios tauros_) the pious Roman recognised the words of the ritual. [68] When the nymph Cymodoce rouses Aeneas to be on his guard against danger with the words "_Vigilas ne deum gens? Aenea, vigila!_" [69] she recalls the imposing ceremony by which, immediately before a war was begun, the general struck with his lance the sacred shields, calling on the god "_Mars, vigila!_" These and a thousand other allusions caused many of the later commentators to regard Aeneas as an impersonation of the pontificate. This is an error analogous to, but worse than, that which makes him represent Augustus; he is a poetical creation, imperfect no doubt, but still not to be tied to any single definition.