210 DanteSexcentenaryLectures
between Dante and, for instance, Benoît of Sainte-Maure.
The poems of the latter are absolutely Unclassical : his
heroes are medieval knights; Greece, Troy, and Rome do
not seem to have any more definite meaning for him than
Bagdad or Trebizond. For Dante, on the contrary, Virgil
is in truth the “sweet father” with whom he has consorted
for years on terms of tender and familiar veneration.
But, once more, this is no case of a prophetic dawn.
Dante may be radically different from Benoît of Sainte-
Maure; he is not different from his Italian contemporaries.
Italy was still living consciously in the interminable twilight
of Rome. Everywhere else the empire, the Latin language,
the Latin myths and traditions, had been more or less pain-
fully imposed upon alien populations—they could recede
and disappear during the Dark Ages, leaving the faintest
memory behind. In Italy, in spite of corruption and inva-
sion, the Roman tradition had never been quite broken.
Noble families still claimed shadowy descent from the patri-
cians of old; cities still cherished as their Palladium some
ancient statue, like that of Mars in Florence. Although
crumbling under the pick-ax of the quarryman, the for-
midable works of ancient Rome were still awe-inspiring in
their mass and beauty; between the daily speech of the com-
mon people in Imperial times and the medieval Italian dia-
lects there had been no abrupt transformation. So medieval
Italy remained classical to a degree unsuspected in the
North; and, conversely, the most typical forms of medieval
civilization, chivalry, feudalism, Gothic architecture, re-
mained foreign elements in Italy. Italy evolved no medieval
hero of her own to serve as the center of a national cycle;
when she borrowed the heroes of the Carolingian cycle, she
treated them in the freest spirit of banter. The Æneid was
still the national Italian epic and Virgil the national Italian