Sua cuique exorsa laborem
  Fortunamque ferent.  Rex Jupiter omnibus idem. 
  Fata viam invenient. (X, 112.)

And here the scholiast naively remarks: 

  Videtur his ostendisse aliud esse fata, aliud Jovem.[6]

[Footnote 6:  Serv. ad loc.  MacInnis, Class.  Rev. 1910, p. 172, cites several other passages to the point in refutation of Heinze.]

Again, contrary to the Stoic creed, the poet conceives of his human characters as capable of initiating action and even of thwarting fate.  Aeneas in the second book rushes into battle on an impulse; he could forget his fates and remain in Sicily if he chose (V, 700).  He might also remain in Carthage, and explains fully why he does not; and Dido, if left nescla fati, might thwart the fates (I, 299), and finally does, slaying herself before her time[7] (IV, 696).  The Stoic hypothesis seems to break down completely in such passages.

[Footnote 7:  See Matthaei, Class.  Quart. 1917, p. 19.]

Can we assume an Epicurean creed with better success?  At least in so far as it places the foedera naturae above the gods and attributes some freedom of will and action to men, for as we have seen in both of these matters Vergil agrees with Lucretius.  But there is one apparent difficulty in that Vergil, contrary to his teacher’s usual practice, permits the interference of the gods in human action.  The difficulty is, however, only apparent, if, as Vergil does, we conceive of these gods simply as heroic and super-human characters in the drama, accepted from an heroic age in order to keep the ancient atmosphere in which Aeneas had lived in men’s imagination ever since Homer first spoke of him.  As such characters they have the power of initiative and the right to interfere in action that Epicurus attributes to men, and in so far as they are of heroic stature their actions may be the more effective.  Thus far an Epicurean might well go, and must go in an epic of the heroic age.  This is, of course, not the same as saying that Vergil adopted the gods in imitation of Homer or that he needed Olympic machinery because he supposed it a necessary part of the epic technique.  Surely Vergil was gifted with as much critical acumen as Lucan.  But he had to accept these creatures as subsidiary characters the moment he chose Aeneas as his hero, for Aeneas was the son of Venus who dwelt with the celestials at least a part of the time.  Her presence in turn involved Juno and Jupiter and the rest of her daily associates.  Furthermore, since the tale was of the heroic age of long ago, the characters must naturally behave as the characters of that day were wont to do, and there were old books like Homer and Hesiod from which every schoolboy had become familiar with their behavior.  If the poet wished to make a plausible tale of that period he could no more undertake to modernize his characters than could Tennyson in his Idylls.  The would-be gods are in the tale not to reveal Vergil’s philosophy—­they do not—­but to orient the reader in the atmosphere in which Aeneas had always been conceived as moving.  They perform the same function as the heroic accoutrements and architecture for a correct description of which Vergil visited ancient temples and studied Cato.