Note 104 — ÆNEÏS, BOOK V.

A great part of this book is borrowed from Apollonius Rhodius; and the reader may observe the great judgment and distinction tion of our author, in what he borrows from the ancients, by comparing them. I conceive the reason why he omits the horse-race in the funeral games, was, because he shows Ascanius afterwards on horseback, with his troops of boys, and would not wear that subject thread-bare, which Statius, in the next age, described so happily. Virgil seems, to me, to have excelled Homer in those sports, and to have laboured them the more in honour of Octavius, his patron, who instituted the like games for perpetuating the memory of his uncle Julius: piety, as Virgil calls it, or dutifulness to parents, being a most popular virtue among the Romans.