t hours of national trial Roman seems to
say to Roman, "O passi graviora, dabit Deus his quoque finem." It is to
this "end" that the wanderings of AEneas, like the labours of consul and
dictator, inevitably tend, and it is the firm faith in such a close that
gives its peculiar character to the pathos of the AEneid.

Rome is before us throughout, "per tot discrimina rerum tendimus in
Latium." It is not as a mere tale of romance that we follow the
wanderings of "the man who first came from Trojan shores to Italy." They
are the sacrifice by which the father of the Roman race wrought out the
greatness of his people, the toils he endured "dum conderet urbem."
"Italiam quaero patriam" is the key-note of the AEneid, but the Quest of
AEneas is no self-sought quest of his own. "Italiam non sponte sequor,"
he pleads as Dido turns from him in the Elysian Fields with eyes of
speechless reproach. He is the chosen instrument of a Divine purpose
working out its ends alike across his own buffetings from shore to shore
or the love-tortures of the Phoenician Queen. The memorable words that
AEneas addresses to Dares, "Cede Deo," "bend before a will higher as well
as stronger than thine own," are in fact the faith of his own career.

But it is in this very submission to the Divine order that he himself
soars into greatness. The figure of the warrior who is so insignificant
in the Homeric story of the fight around Troy becomes that of a hero in
the horror of its capture. AEneas comes before us the survivor of an
immense fall, sad with the sadness of lost home and slaughtered friends,
not even suffered to fall amidst the wreck, but driven forth by voices
of the Fates to new toils and a distant glory. He may not die; his
"moriamur" is answered by the reiterated "Depart" of the gods, the "Heu,
fuge!" of the shade of Hector. The vision of the great circle of the
gods fighting against Troy drives him forth in despair to a life of
exile, and the carelessness of despair is over him as he drifts from
land to land. "Sail where you will," he cries to his pilot, "one land
is as good as another now Troy is gone." More and more indeed as he
wanders he recognizes himself as the agent of a Divine purpose, but all
personal joy in life has fled. Like Dante he feels the bitterness of
exile, how hard it is to climb another's stairs, how bitter to eat is
another's bread. Here and there he meets waifs and strays of the great
wreck, fugitives like himself, but w