"
Jupiter is here, as in Varro's system, the prime cause and ruler of
all things, and he also holds in his hand the destiny of Rome and the
fortunes of the hero who was to lay the first foundation of Rome's
dominion. It is in the knowledge of his will that Aeneas walks, with
hesitating steps, in the earlier books, in the later ones with assured
confidence, towards the goal that is set before him. But the lines
just quoted serve well to show how different is the Jupiter of Virgil
from the universal deity of the Roman Stoic. Beyond doubt Virgil had
felt the power of the Stoic creed; but he was essaying an epic poem,
and he could not possibly dispense with the divine machinery as it
stood in his great Homeric model. His Jupiter is indeed, as has been
lately said,[569] "a great and wise god, free from the tyrannical and
sensuous characteristics of the Homeric Zeus," in other words, he is a
Roman deity, and sometimes acts and speaks like a grave Roman consul
of the olden time. But still he is an anthropomorphic deity, a purely
human conception of a personal god-king; in these lines he smiles on
his daughter Venus and kisses her.
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