Vos silvae amnesque Lycaei-- vocat alta voce Cithaeron-- O, ubi campi Spercheusque, et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis Taygeta, etc.,
seem to bear with them faint echoes from a far-off time, of some ideal life of poetry and adventure in the free range and 'otia dia' of pastoral scenes,--of some more intimate union of the human soul with the soul of mountains and woodland than is granted to the common generations of men. On Virgil himself, to whom the whole of Greek poetry and legend was an open page, the spell which they exercised was of the same kind as that exercised by the magic of classical allusion on the poets and painters of the Renaissance.
The contrast between Lucretius and Virgil, as regards their relation to the ancient mythology, has already appeared in the examination of the Invocations to their respective poems. This contrast is still more brought out by the large use which Virgil makes of mythological allusions in the body of his poem, as compared with the rare, and generally polemical, references to the subject in Lucretius. Virgil recalls the tales and poetical representations of mythology sometimes by some suggestive epithet, or other qualifying expression, as in speaking of 'poppies steeped in the sleep of Lethe,' 'Halcyons dear to Thetis,' 'the Cyllenian star,' 'the slow-rolling wains of the Eleusinian mother,' and the like. More frequently however he does this by direct mention of some of the more familiar, and occasionally of some of the more recondite, tales which had supplied materials to earlier poets and painters. Thus, in connexion with the topic of lucky and unlucky days, he hints at the tale of the war of the Giants with the Olympian gods, at that of Scylla and Nisus in connexion with the signs of the weather, at that of the Centaurs and Lapithae--the 'brawl fought to the death over the wine cup'--in the account of the vine, at that of the daughter of Inachus tormented in her wanderings by the vengeance of Juno in connexion with the plague of flies with which cattle were afflicted, etc. etc. Less familiar stories, of picturesque adventure or of a kind of weird mystery, are revived in the passages--
Talis et ipse iubam cervice effudit equina Coniugis adventu pernix Saturnus, et altum Pelion hinnitu fugiens implevit acuto(357),
