In fact, Livy, who gives the more usual Roman version, says
nothing of the Greeks, but joins Latinus and the Latian aborigines to
Aeneas while he musters the Etruscans under the Rutulian, Turnus. The
explanation for Vergil's striking departure from the usual patriotic
version of the legend is rather involved and need not be examined here.
But we may at any rate remark his wish to recognize the many races that
had been amalgamated by the state, to refuse his approval of a narrow
urban patriotism, and to give his assent to a view of Rome's place
and mission upon which Julius Caesar had always acted in extending
citizenship to peoples of all races, in scattering Roman colonies
throughout the empire, and in setting the provinces on the road to a
full participation in imperial privileges and duties. With such a policy
Vergil, schooled at Cremona, Milan, and Naples, could hardly fail to
sympathize.
It has been inferred from the position of authority which Aeneas assumes
that Vergil favored a strong monarchial form of government and intended
Aeneas to be, as it were, a prototype of Augustus. The inference is
doubtless over-hasty. Vergil had a lively historical sense and in his
hero seems only to have attempted a picture of a primitive king of the
heroic age.
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