It is clear then that while the
conceptions of destiny and free-will found in the _Aeneid_ are at
variance with Stoic creed at every point, they fit readily into the
Epicurean scheme of things as soon as we grant what any Epicurean poet
would readily have granted that the celestials might be employed as
characters of the drama if in general subordinated to the same laws of
causality and of freedom as were human beings.
What then are we to say of the Stoic coloring of the sixth book? In the
first place, it is not actually Stoic. It is a syncretism of mystical
beliefs, developed by Orphic and Apocalyptic poets and mystics from
Pythagoras and Plato to a group of Hellenistic writers, popularized by
the later less logical Stoic philosophers like Posidonius, and gaining in
Vergil's day a wide acceptance among those who were growing impatient of
the exacting metaphysical processes of thought. Indeed Vergil contributed
something toward foisting these beliefs upon early Christianity, though
they were no more essential to it than to Stoicism.
Be that as it may, this mystical setting was here adopted because the
poet needed for his own purposes[8] a vision of incorporated souls of
Roman heroes, a thing which neither Epicurean nor orthodox Stoic creed
could provide.
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