omnipotence (II. 689, IV. 220, VIII. 398).1 But very often we get language of the greatest vagueness: 'fata deum, fata deusque' or 'fata' and 'numina' together (III. 717, VI. 376, VIII. 512, 575), or such combinations as 'fata,' 'deus' and 'fortuna' (XII. 676-7).

Not even in the lines (XII. 725-8) where Zeus is seen weighing the fates of Aeneas and Turnus must he be looked on as the superior of the fates. The passage is a manifest imitation of Iliad XXII. 209 sqq. and too much stress therefore need not be laid on it; in it lies rather the imitation of the artist than the originality of the thinker. Yet it does fit into the general scheme, for the weigher is only the agent, after all; it is not he who can determine on which side the scales shall sink. It is the weights inside the scales, the fates of Aeneas and Turnus, which make them to sink or to rise: he who holds the scales is only an agent, a pivot, powerless in himself, a mere instrument.2

There is one other point to notice about the fates, an important one. I have spoken of them as endowed with a power of choice: they are not mechanical: but neither are they capricious. On the intellectual and moral side they work through the gods; on the physical side they work through nature, and nature is a system, not a chaos. That is why they set their decree against magic (see supra pp. 16, 17) and why in the Aeneid we have none of those extraordinary pictures to which Vergil treats us in the Eclogues of yellow and purple sheep (Ecl. IV. 42). Such would be incompatible with his incomparably loftier conception of the course of nature in the Aeneid. The fates are an 'order,' to which is subordinated all things on earth and in heaven, the feebleness of man and the anger of mighty gods: such anger is the lever which they use for their great ends:

haec responsa dabat, uel quae portenderet ira

magna deum, uel quae fatorum posceret ordo.

(V. 706)

This more magnificent Stoic conception of the fates as the rule of order, immanent also in the physical phenomena of nature (in IV. 519 the stars are 'conscious' of fate), may be called the major conception of the Aeneid; it reconciles the conflict of the gods, and it must in some way reconcile the separate conflicting personal fates of an Aeneas and a Turnus: but into that Vergil does not deeply probe. Indeed he never entirely loses himself in the remote Stoic abstraction of the eiμapμévn; perhaps it would have been better if he had; but the Homeric tradition lay too heavy on him. Against the background of his fates his gods have no power: yet he trifles with the thought that they have. He could have left to them, even without power, dignity and worth his genius was peculiarly fitted to have given us a series of beautiful figures like Milton's Archangels: but he is distracted by the ancient demand

1 'Omnipotens' of Juno, but only in the eyes of Allecto (VII. 428), of Apollo, in the eyes of Arruns (XI. 790, cf. summe deum' in 785). Here Juno and Apollo replace Jupiter to their own particular protégés. For these references,

see Heinze, op. cit., p. 286, n. 2 and 3.

2 Other arguments and passages, tending to the same conclusions, in MacInnes, op. cit., P. 171-2.

for 'variety,' for the interposition of lively episode in an epic, and he almost succeeds in spoiling his own magnificent human seriousness by the shallowness of the gods whom he evokes.

THE POSITION OF MAN.

'Fortuna omnipotens et ineluctabile fatum:' 'all-powerful Fortune and unavoidable Destiny' (VIII. 334), one of the finest rhythmic lines in the Aeneid, and certainly one most typical of its thought. Fate, though perhaps not per se predestined, is inevitable for men and uncontrollable by them: this is a thought that haunts the Aeneid; Vergil is always fighting against it, and always slipping into it; once at least he arrives at the extreme logical position of the uselessness of prayer (VI. 376).

And Aeneas has always been reproached by his critics for his ultra-patient nature. The reproach is a merited one: a little of the sacred fire of rebellion would have carried him to our heart of hearts. It is clear that almost always he is unable to resist his own fates. This appears in the description of the last scenes of Troy. There he would infinitely rather have died with his fellows in the horrors of those last hours; but the fates intervened; they had reserved him for other uses, and therefore rush as he might into the mêlée, all weapons were harmless against him:

testor... nec tela nec ullas

uitauisse uices Danaum, et si fata fuissent

ut caderem, meruisse manu,

(II. 432-4).

The same in IV. 340; in fact, he is the victim, as well as the nursling, of his fates. Once only does the compulsion take an obvious or open form, when fates and gods 'stop up the man's pitiful ears' from listening to the pleadings of Anna (IV. 440).1 As a rule, the compelling force is more insidiously suggested, glossed over, or disguised; but it is there at all times, and the general effect is that Aeneas can never lift himself out of what we may justly call the degrading atmosphere of compulsion.

Perhaps this is an overstatement: he could resist. He did resist when he rushed into the murderous fray of Greeks to seek his death. He was not prevented from this, but the weapons themselves were turned away from him; on them, inanimate things, the compulsion was exercised, and thereby the man's action not forbidden, but frustrated. It is a nice point, but not unimportant, and it is to be noticed that Aeneas once very distinctly says that he could resist his destiny, if he chose; he could 'forget his fates and stay in the land of Sicily' (V. 700-703). He has the power to disobey.2

But he does not exercise the power. He does not exercise it, because he does not choose to exercise it. In the eyes of Aeneas it is not so much impossible, as wrong, to resist his fates. This is clear in his answer to Dido's

1 Rather like the hardening of Pharaoh's heart in the Bible.

2 The same results, with other arguments and examples, in MacInnes, op. cit., p. 173.

long reproach, the only argument that gives his pleas any dignity at all. The wrong done would be in the first place to his own son, Ascanius, 'whom even now I am spoiling of his kingdom in the West and the lands allotted to him by the fates' (IV. 355). But that would be only a small symptom of the great wrong done by him to others, to the future above all; and therefore it is just and right that a god of warning should stand in flaming light to drive him along the path to Italy: the path to Italy is the path of duty; 'not of mine own desire do I seek Italy': 'Italiam non sponte sequor ' (IV. 361); and yet it is of his own desire. He hates the horrida belli fata,' but-he follows them.

A definition of this attitude of the voluntary spirit acting within the circle of compulsion, of obedience completing and perfecting, making valid, the dictates of fate, is given by Nautes in Sicily in his advice to Aeneas; at this point the action has paused, before the second great half of the poem is inaugurated by the descent into Hades:

nate dea, quo fata trahunt retrahuntque sequamur;

quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est (V. 709).1

Fate is to be conquered' by obedience.

An instructive case is that of Latinus. He desires to co-operate with the fates, but has not the strength of will to do so against the wishes of his people, who are tempted by Juno. He knows that war against Aeneas is wrong, 'infandum contra fata deum' (VII. 583); yet he gives his consent to it. And at the moment of his yielding he cries out that he is being broken by the fates': 'frangimur heu fatis' (VII. 594). Thus do the fates instantaneously destroy those who dare to cross their path. They require an obedience which may involve an almost supreme effort, so tremendous are their demands; and where obedience is not freely given, it may be obtained by force.

Nevertheless, they do not demand an automatic, mechanical obedience, but reasoned and deliberate action. They never once demand what is morally wrong, and they do not destroy needlessly or without excuse. I do not know whether Vergil, if pressed, could have been got to subscribe to the Jewish doctrine that all suffering was the result of some human defect; the instinct of his nature would have been against so hard a faith. But he does take some trouble to show how certain notorious cases of apparently unmerited suffering were due to no heartless decree from above: the will of man had also been involved in bringing them about. Laocoön would have saved Troy by persuading the Trojans to open the Wooden Horse 'had not the fates of the gods, had not our minds been astray' (II. 54, cf. I. 34). This I conceive to mean not an alternative, but a cooperation: both the fates of the gods' wished evil to Troy, and also the minds of the Trojans 'were astray.' Without the sin2 of the Trojans the gods could not have destroyed Troy, just as without

1 Noticed by Warde Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity, p. 77; and cf. Aen. VIII. 131.

2 For an analysis of the 'sin' of the Trojans,

see Professor Conway, op. cit., p. 32. He defines

it as the selfishness and cowardice of leaving Laocoon to his fate.

the obedience of Aeneas they could not have made Rome. Note that here the fates are credited with evil intent. This may have been in pursuance of some vaster, greater moral end, some final salvation of the world. Vergil never says so, and I am inclined to believe that in this a part of the story the old idea of fate as an evil, malignant pursuer is fairly prominent, and only modified insofar as man is shown to have at least contributed to the causes of disaster. This part of the story is one which Vergil would be the least able to alter. At the same time, we must suppose that to Vergil's mind the fates would have dealt with an innocent Troy innocently. The fact remains that the mind of Troy was 'astray.'1 A similar explanation applies to the plaint of Deïphobus: My fates, and the dreadful crime of the Spartan woman overwhelmed me in this ruin' (VI. 511), which also assumes the guilty human will (of Helen) to have cooperated with fate. So too, in more general terms, the mind of a reckless man is defined as doomed to ruin, because ignorant of his future lot, but also because it cannot keep free of arrogance brought by prosperity (X. 501); ignorance by itself would surely have been innocent.

In the case of Deïphobus it becomes apparent that the guilt of one person may involve the ruin of another; this goes far to throw out the working of the law, and to explain the tragic misadjustment of the world as it exists. But even making all allowances for this, we have a haunting feeling that we are not at the bottom of things yet. Brought to book on the question of Troy, pausing at the crucial moment, the entry of the Wooden Horse, Vergil deliberately gives us an Aeschylean faith which asserts the moral governing of the world and the allotted place of suffering in that moral scheme, though he does not specifically accept the Aeschylean idea of the educative value of suffering; suffering, in the case of Troy, was merely punishment, disproportionate punishment; it could not educate the Trojans, for it destroyed them. Whenever Vergil speaks of the fates, he has this moral government of the world in his mind. But (in this case very noticeably) he is much more apt to sympathize with the victim, than to justify the law. I believe he is at bottom inconsistent, and that his logic and his instinct cross each other and pull him different ways.

And supposing Troy had remained innocent, what then? This would be a very hard nut for the Vergilian philosophy to crack. We cannot help seeing that it was extremely convenient for the gods (who had made up their minds to destroy the city), that the Trojans should have been ' astray.' Supposing a Troy innocent ad infinitum? I have postulated that in that case the gods would have to respect its innocence; but I think the immediate answer of Vergil would be that there never is a Troy innocent ad infinitum. Always at some point, the will of man takes a false step; always he gives the gods the fatal opportunity they desire. Without that opportunity they could not act: the that moment; it could have been saved for at least another ten years.

1 We know from VIII. 398-9 that it was not absolutely fixed that Troy must be destroyed at

fates would not allow them: because the rule of fate is the rule of justice. But that is all that fate can do for man; in the duel between man and gods (Nature, Fortune, Circumstance), man always throws away his vantage, and in pursuance of their own moral law the fates, far from siding with him, have to side against him.

Obedience is the final victory; the right state of mind is a joyful acquiescence (VIII. 133), and there is something approaching wickedness even in desiring anything except what fate means to send. To Palinurus, who desires the crossing of the Styx which fate cannot give him, the Sibyl's rebuke is stern (VI. 376). And though this need not prevent man from praying to fate (VIII. 575),1 yet it is only the obedient man who is victorious, where the disobedient man, acting under compulsion, is a victim. Such a victim is Turnus, who in the end, in spite of all his rebellion and his courage, yields to his fates: 'iam iam fata, soror, superant, absiste morari; quo deus et quo dura vocat fortuna, sequamur' (XII. 676). It is clearly not the intention of Vergil to suppose that Turnus is as Aeneas, or that because both in the end do the bidding of fate therefore their actions are alike. Such a late yielding on the part of Turnus has little value, whereas the will of Aeneas had throughout co-operated with fate and is a part of the universal scheme, a necessary part if that scheme is to be completed. Only when the last of men has willingly obeyed, can the Perfect Will of fate be fulfilled; and therefore the disobedieuce of Turnus is a world-tragedy and a personal tragedy together.

Thus, in the situation between man and the fates, we have a repetition of the situation between gods and the fates: man, like Juno, learns by experience that he must obey. Yet his obedience is not valuable until it is freely given a compelled obedience the result of force majeure—is a merely barren result. But Vergil has contrived to invest the human struggle with a dignity lacking to the divine; Aeneas and Turnus are worthier figures than Venus and Juno.

In Vergil's eyes the disobedience of man is the most tragic thing in the universe. For it is just this discrepancy between the will of the whole and the disobedient wills of men which in a certain sense makes the action of fate necessary. Fate, as we have already seen, is the best possibilities of life (XI. 160). Fate includes the moral force which is continually at work trying to adjust what is still discrepant to itself, that desire or instinct of all things to seek their Téos or appointed end, which both Plato and Aristotle postulated as the basis of their thought; perhaps just because it is so forcibly moral, so vehemently desirous for the approach of harmony, it becomes compulsive, almost tyrannical. This idea, a kind of rampant optimism, lies at the back of Vergil's tyranny of fate, I feel sure. But it is continually being crossed by the melancholy arising from the contemplation of the jar, the agony, which accompanies these inspiring and yet suffering processes of readjustment. At present the world is full of cruelty. So the fates are 'cruel,' ' crudelia' (I. 221),

1 Yet cf. VI. 376, quoted on p. 19.