Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/262

 244 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. may find therein some phase of pathos hardly to be found in a Greek poet. Moreover, Virgilian pathos usually differs from prior modes of emotional expres- sion in that the pathos of the individual situation is deepened by its suggestiveness of the woe of the whole world, whereof it is part. Yet the mode of expres- sion always embodies the Greek qualities of control, modulation, clarity, and beauty. Inasmuch, however, as Virgilian pathos has broader range than pathos in Sappho or Homer, it is not quite so definite and finite in its expression.^ Thus Virgil is Greek, and something more. The intense passion of other Latin poets also presents qualities of the metres used and of the sentiments expressed in the Greek poems written in them. Lucre- tius' contempt and pity seem never to break the roll of his hexameters. Catullus' expression of emotion has the Greek qualities of definiteness, adequacy, point, and necessary limitation. The Greek control is pronounced in Horace, with whom the emotional ele- ment is at times hardly strong enough to make his verses poetry. There is genuine feeling whenever he touches upon themes of mortality ; but the classic modulation of expression never fails. The time of a new religion was at hand, and novel thoughts, changed views of life, and modes of emotion heretofore unfelt were soon to seek appropriate poetic forms. Such forms did not exist in the opening cen- turies of the Christian era. The old metres were no longer in accord with actual speech. The Christian 1 Cf. Taylor, Ancient Ideals, II, pp. 32-40, and examples of pathos from Homer and Virgil there cited.