What are we to say of the Jupiter of the _Aeneid_?
We do not need to read far in the first book of the poem to find him spoken of in terms which remind us of Varro: "O qui res hominumque deumque Aeternis regis imperiis," are the opening words of the address of Venus; and when she has finished, Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum Vultu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat, Oscula libavit natae, dehine talia fatur; "Parce metu, Cytherea, manent immota tuorum Fata tibi." Jupiter is here, as in Varro's system, the prime cause and ruler of all things, and he also holds in his hand the destiny of Rome and the fortunes of the hero who was to lay the first foundation of Rome's dominion.

It is in the knowledge of his will that Aeneas walks, with hesitating steps, in the earlier books, in the later ones with assured confidence, towards the goal that is set before him.

But the lines just quoted serve well to show how different is the Jupiter of Virgil from the universal deity of the Roman Stoic.

Beyond doubt Virgil had felt the power of the Stoic creed; but he was essaying an epic poem, and he could not possibly dispense with the divine machinery as it stood in his great Homeric model.

His Jupiter is indeed, as has been lately said,[569] "a great and wise god, free from the tyrannical and sensuous characteristics of the Homeric Zeus," in other words, he is a Roman deity, and sometimes acts and speaks like a grave Roman consul of the olden time.