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religious teaching had wonderful effect. The "Æneid," published with the special sanction of Augustus, had a send-off, if I may use the term, such as no other of the world's great poems ever had. We must not push back into the Augustan age ideas of the fewness of copyists and the large price of books which belong only to the dark ages that came after.

In Virgil's time there were publishing houses at Rome in which the new work of a poet could be put into circulation almost as quickly, though not with the same number of copies, as it can be to-day. There were great rooms filled with the desks of scribes; from an elevated pulpit or platform the poem was dictated word for word, and if need be, letter by letter; fifty or a hundred copies were made at once; the scribes were slaves, and slave labor was cheap. Martial, a century after, tells us that the first book of his "Epigrams" could be bought for five denarii, or for less than a dollar. Imagine, now, the rapidity with which Virgil's " Æneid” was multiplied, with all the prestige of imperial favor to give it a start in the race for fame. It attained at once a circulation and an influence entirely unexampled in ancient times. It was the means of bringing about a marked change in the beliefs of all classes of the Roman people.

The nature of that change will be understood if we compare the times of Cicero, just before Virgil wrote, and the times of the Antonines, two hundred years after. Though Cicero had talked publicly and officially of the gods and of immortality, he was by no means. sure of either. He wrote the "De Natura Deorum," yet privately and at heart he was a skeptic. In his letters

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there are no allusions to the gods. Nor does he in his letters, even when he is in greatest affliction, draw any consolations from the life to come. In "De Senectute," it is true, he finds the discomforts of old age relieved by the anticipation of speedy reunion with lost friends. Yet in another place he says: "Upon this subject I entertain no more than conjectures." When he reads. Plato's argument for immortality he seems to himself convinced, but when he has laid down the book he finds that all his doubts have returned.

Cicero is the type of his time, a time when Epicurus is the reigning philosopher and Lucretius is the reigning poet. But before two centuries have passed, Marcus Aurelius, the type of his time also, writes letters full of religious sentiment; in almost every sentence he recognizes the gods; the future life gives him hope. Virgil, more than any other single influence, brought about this revival of old religion; showed how much literature could do to change the course of human thought and feeling. It showed how much literature could do, but it also showed how little literature could do. It could quicken conscience; it could inspire hope; it could not give certainty; it could not impart life. Neither Virgil's legal nor his prophetic utterances could do the work of the gospel, but they could and they did do something in preparing the world to accept the Christian faith.

It is not wonderful that the Middle Ages came to regard Virgil both as a saint and as a wizard. Magister Virgilius came to be not only master of all human science-mathematics, mechanics, architecture, and medicine-but also master of evil spirits, conjurer,

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necromancer, and magician. Tunison has shown that these stories are not a sort of folklore that grew up spontaneously in Italy. Naples, the city of Virgil's chief residence, has none of them. They were the fruit of conscious invention. They had an exclusively literary origin. They came from the North, not from the South. We must remember that the poems of Virgil became the school-reader of all the world. For nineteen hundred years his influence has been continuous.

Homer was lost to the Western world for centuriesonly the bringing of Greek books from Constantinople, and the revival of Greek learning after the Crusades, brought back Homer to his place of power. But from the day that the "Æneid" was given to the public until now, no ingenuous youth has had a liberal education. without being compelled to read Virgil. What Aristotle became in logic and philosophy, Virgil always was in the more elementary training-the text-book of supreme authority.

Grammarians wrote such commentaries on his works that, if those works should themselves be lost, every line could probably be recovered from their citations. Noble ladies had their Virgil clubs, and injected mysterious meanings into his words, even as now they sometimes deal with Robert Browning. The "Æneid" was used to conjure by, and in the time of Hadrian fortunes were told by the Sortes Virgiliana, or by seizing upon the first word that presented itself ad aperturam libri, just as the Bible is used by some superstitious people to-day. As the Latin language gradually was displaced by the popular corruptions of it, it came to be regarded

as a mystery, both in church and school. To the vulgar, "hoc est corpus" became "hocus-pocus." A magical efficacy was attributed to learning. Friar Bacon and Dr. Faustus alike, when they dived too deeply into science, were thought to be in league with the devil.

The chroniclers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had no very clear ideas of the dividing line between history and fable, and they too often fed the popular appetite for the marvelous with concoctions of their own imagination. Because Virgil had risen at a bound from a modest fortune to wealth and the favor of princes, it was inferred that something more than natural agents must have been at his bidding. Because he was master of all the learning of his time, the conclusion was drawn that the spirits of evil instructed him. Italy, to those far-away medieval gropers, seemed a fairy-land, and classic times were the early ages of enchantment.

About this period, moreover, the returning Crusaders brought back from the East the wonderful tales of Constantinople and Cairo and Bagdad, which, a century or two after, took form in the "Thousand and One Nights." The German, French, and English romancers wrought over the same raw material with which Moslem sheiks were entertained in the desert. The genii of the East became the demons of the West, Virgil became a classic Friar Bacon and Dr. Faustus all in one, and all the stories of magic art crystallized about him.

Like Aladdin, Virgil found a demon in a cave and pressed him into his service. He imprisoned familiar spirits in bottles, like the Arabian fisherman. At Naples he had a magic garden, wherein grew all manner of plants for healing and for charming men. This

STORY OF THE SALVATION OF ROME

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garden was protected by an immovable atmosphere, as by a wall; and upon a bridge of air Master Virgil could pass at will, and in a moment, whithersoever he would, even to the most distant lands. Petrarch tells us that in his time Virgil was thought to have excavated the grotto of Posilippo by his spells. There was a bronze statue which he set up to watch Vesuvius and to check its eruptions. Whenever the mountain began to groan and to threaten the town, the statue shot an arrow at it and compelled it to cease its throes, or to pour forth its ashes and lava in the opposite direction.

But Virgil's chef-d'œuvre as a magician was the tower or palace which he constructed at Rome. As Amphion of old had, by the music of his lyre, compelled the very stones to build themselves into his city wall, so Virgil used his poetry with similar effect to raise an edifice for the protection of the imperial city. John Desborcke, the chronicler, gives the story as follows:

The emperor asked of Virgilius how that he might make Rome prosper, and have many lands under them, and know when any land would rise against them; and Virgilius said to the emperor : "I will within short space that do." And he made, upon the Capitolium, what was the town-house, made with carved images, and of stone, and called the Salvatio Roma; that is to say: This is the salvation of the city of Rome; and he made, in the compass of it, all the gods, that we call idols, that were under the subjection of Rome; and every one of the gods, that there were, had in his hand a bell; and in the midst of the gods made he one god of Rome; and whensoever there was any land would make war against Rome, then would the gods turn their backs toward the god of Rome; and then would the god of the land that would stand up against Rome clink his bell that he hath in his hand, till the senators of Rome heard it; and forthwith they