In Dido Roman poetry has added to the great gallery of men and women, created by the imaginative art of different times and peoples, the ideal of a true queen and a true woman. On the epi sode of which she is the heroine the most passionate human interest is concentrated. It has been objected that Virgil does not really sympathize with his own creation, that he gives his approval to the cold desertion of her by Aeneas. But if he does not condemn his hero, he sees in the desertion and death of Dido a great tragic issue in which a noble and generous nature is sacrificed to the larger purpose of the gods.
Virgil brought the two great instruments of varied and con tinuous harmony and of a rich, chastened and noble style to the highest perfection of which the Latin tongue was capable. The rhythm and style of the Aeneid is more unequal than the rhythm and style of the Georgics, but is a larger and more varied instru ment. The note of his supremacy among all the poetic artists of his country is that subtle fusion of the music and the meaning of language which touches the deepest and most secret springs of emotion. He touches especially the emotions of reverence and of yearning for a higher spiritual life, and the sense of nobleness in human affairs, in great institutions and great natures; the sense of the sanctity of human affections, of the imaginative spell exer cised by the past, of the mystery of the unseen world. This is the secret of the power which his words have had over some of the deepest and greatest natures in all ages. (W. Y. S. ; X.) Vergiliana.—Under this collective name there are current several poems of some little length and some groups of shorter pieces, all attributed to Virgil in antiquity. Virgil wrote a Culex, but not the Culex now extant, though it passed for his half a century after his death. The Aetna, the Giris and the Copa are clearly not Virgil's. The Moretum is said to have been translated by him from a Greek poem by his teacher Parthenius; it is an exquisite piece of work, familiar perhaps to English readers in Cowper's translation. The case of the Catalepton (Kara Xv.-7-6v) is peculiar. Two of these little poems (Ite hinc manes and Villula, quae Sironiseras) are generally accepted as Virgil's; opinion varies as to the rest, with very little to go upon, but generally rejecting them. The whole are printed in the larger editions of Virgil. For English readers the'most
obvious edition is that of Robinson Ellis (1907), who has also edited the Aetna separately.
Manuscripts.—Gellius (Noctes Atticae, ix. 14, 7) tells us of people who had inspected idiographum librum Vergilii, but this has of course in all probability long since perished. There are, however, seven very ancient MSS. of Virgil. (I) The Mediceus at Florence, with a note purporting to be by a man, who was consul in 494, to say he had read it. (2) The Palatinus Vaticanus of the 4th or 5th century. (3) The Vaticanus of the same period. (4) The "Schedae Vaticanae." (5) The "Schedae Berolinenses," perhaps of the 4th century. (6) The "Schedae Sangallenses." (7) The "Schedae rescriptae Veronenses" —the last three of insignificant extent. For a fully detailed account of the MSS., see Henry, Aeneidea, i., and Ribbeck, Prolegomena ad Verg.
Ancient Commentators.—Commentaries on Virgil began to be written at a very early date. Suetonius, V . V erg. 44, mentions an Aeneidomastix of Carvilius Pictor and other works on Virgil's "thefts" and "faults," besides eight "volumina" of Q. Octavius Avitus, setting out in parallel passages the "likenesses" (6/20,67-1)res was the name of the work) between Virgil and more ancient authors. M. Valerius Probus (latter part of ist century A.D.) wrote a commentary, but it is doubtful for how much of what passes under his name he is responsible, if for any of it. At the end of the 4th century come the commentaries of Tiberius Claudius Donatus and of Servius, the former writing as a teacher of rhetoric, the latter of style and grammar. The work of Servius was afterwards expanded by another scholar, whose additions greatly added to its worth, as they are drawn from older commentators and give us very valuable information on the old Roman religion and constitution, Greek and Latin legends, old Latin and linguistic usages. In this enlarged form the commentary of Servius and the Saturnalia of Macrobius (also of the end of the 4th century) are both of great interest to the student of Virgil. There are, further, sets of Scholia in MSS. at Verona and Bern, which draw their material from ancient commentaries. See H. Nettleship, Essays in Latin Literature, xi. and Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages (1875 ; trans. 1895) , ch. 5 (1885; 2nd series, 1895).