68 Making of the Complete Citizen
days of Pericles they were remarkable for constancy of
purpose and the steadfastness of their ideals. They stood
on the ancient ways, and it never occurred to them to aban-
don the tradition of their fathers, their business was to
carry it forward to perfection.”1
No finer representative of Roman civilization and culture
at its highest can be found than Virgil. He gathered up in
himself the noblest ideals of his day, was a fervent prophet
of the empire as the guardian of the order of the world,
felt deeply the sorrows of human kind, expressed in match-
less form the purest aspirations of his age, and even in his
own lifetime became the teacher of the rising generation,
a place which he held in Western civilization for a thou-
sand years, and from which even yet he has not been en-
tirely dethroned. It is needless to remind you that the
Aeneid, and the Georgia as well are religious poems. Vir-
gil’s purpose is to show that the destiny of Rome has been
determined for her by high Heaven, and that in the ob-
servance of pietas, or loyalty to a divine order, and justifia,
she will work out her purpose for mankind and bring in a
golden age. If man goes about his labor in reverent per-
formance of his duty to the gods, he will find that in spite of
all its sorrows, hardships, and failures, his lot has been
cast on a land that is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.
But Virgil also was burdened by the sin of his age and
hoped for redemption from it. So much was his mind felt
to be Christian by nature that St. Augustine held him to
be a prophet of the Gentiles, and Dante approaching Virgil
with reverence took him as his guide in everything but su-
preme religious truth.
Turning now to the Middle Ages: it is obvious that the
most marvelous and original creation of architecture after
ɪ Blomfield, Legacy of Greece, 404f.