"In short, Virgil performed the miracle of making heroic poetry flourish from the bosom of a mature conscience, nourished by historical experience and philosophy. The difference from the Homeric model could not be more profound. Homer aimed, more than anything else, at the representation of external facts, while illuminating them with a high pathetic sense of humanity; Virgil, on the other hand, turns his attention to the psychological motives to the spiritual travails, to the mysterious, eternal laws that govern the facts and the becoming of history. Therefore we find in the [[Aeneid our poet, in his most personal and evocative aspects; We find him tormented by the sense of pain, anxious for peace, for revelation. (p. 166)"