"Does [Aeneas] really resemble Odysseus at any point? No—there is no greater difference within the whole compass of ancient literature; and to understand that is to see how absurd are those critics who would dismiss Virgil contemptuously as a mere plagiarist and imitator of Homer. There is no more profound or astonishing originality in all the literature of antiquity than Virgil's; and that precisely because it operates within the limits imposed by the inherited and traditional forms, which it reverently observes."