In the three cardinal passages which remain to be considered, in the composition of which the deeper elements of Virgil's nature were powerfully moved, the impression which the changing state of the national fortunes produced upon him is vividly stamped. The first of these (i. 464 to the end) was written in the years of uncertainty and alarm preceding the outbreak of the last of the great Civil Wars. The unsettlement all over the Empire, from its eastern boundary to its furthest limits in Europe,--the agitation and impetuous sweep of the river before plunging into the abyss,--is described and symbolised in the concluding lines of the Book:--
Hinc movet Euphrates, illinc Germania bellum; Vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes Arma ferunt; saevit toto Mars impius orbe: Ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigae, Addunt in spatia, et frustra retinacula tendens Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas(381).
This state of alarm is shown to be connected with the great national crime which Rome was still atoning,--the murder of Julius Caesar. The episode arises immediately out of the enumeration of the signs of the weather, which, from their importance to the husbandman, are treated of at considerable length in the body of the poem. As the sun is the surest index of change in the physical, so is he said to be in the political atmosphere. The eclipse which occurred soon after the murder of Caesar is regarded as a sign of compassion for his fate and of abhorrence of the crime. Then follows an enumeration of other omens which accompanied or preceded that event,--some of them violations of natural law, such as those which occur in the narrative of Livy, when any great disaster was impending over the Roman arms,--
pecudesque locutae, Infandum-- Et maestum inlacrimat templis ebur, aeraque sudant(382):--
others arising out of a great sympathetic movement among the spirits of the dead,--
Vox quoque per lucos volgo exaudita silentis Ingens, et simulacra modis pallentia miris Visa sub obscurum noctis(383);
others showing themselves in ominous appearances of the sacrifices, or in strange disturbance of the familiar ways of bird and beast,--
Obscenaeque canes importunaeque volucres Signa dabant-- Et altae Per noctem resonare lupis ululantibus urbes(384);