Note 55 — Chapter IV

Another of the most impressive passages in the early books of the Aeneid—the dream in which Hector appears to Aeneas55—was evidently suggested by the description which Ennius gave of the appearance of the shade of Homer to himself. Some of his dramatic fragments, also, as for instance the scene between Hecuba and Cassandra already referred to, show a real power of conceiving and representing passionate situations.