Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 3.djvu/364

838 that instead of Titaniaque Astra, he writ Titanaque & Astra; and ac­cording to those words I have made my Translation. 'Tis most cer­tain, that the Sun ought not to be omitted; for he is frequently call'd the Life and Soul of all the World: And nothing bids so fair for a visible Divinity to those who know no better, than that glorious Lu­minary. The Platonists call God the Archetypall Sun, and the Sun the visible Deity, the inward vital Spirit in the Center of the Universe, or that Body to which that Spirit is united, and by which-it exerts it self most powerfully. Now it was the receiv'd Hypothesis amongst the Pythagoreans, that the Sun was scituate in the Center of the World: Plato had it from them, and was himself of the same Opinion; as ap­pears by a passage in the Timaeus: From which Noble Dialogue is this part of Virgil's Poem taken.

L. 1157. Great Cato there, for gravity renown'd, &c. Quis te, Magne Cato, &c.

There is no Question but Virgil here means Cato Major, or the Cen­sor. But the Name of Cato being also mention'd in the Eighth Aeneid, I doubt whether he means the same Man in both places. I have said in the Preface, that our Poet was of Republican Principles; and have given this for one Reason of my Opinion, that he prais'd Cato in that Line,

Secretisque piis, his dantem jura Catonem.