was his grasp of the psychological problem which explains his reorganisation of religion.  A century of civil war had totally destroyed the spirit of unity and created an infinite number of petty hatreds between man and man.  Men had looked so long at their individual interests that they had almost forgotten the existence of the state.  But if the spirit of patriotism could be quickened into a new life, then men would think of the state and forget themselves, and united in their love of this one universal object of devotion they would learn a lesson of union which might gradually be extended to their whole life.  But the state must be presented not as it was in all its wretchedness, lacerated by civil struggle; the sight of the present would serve only to start the quarrel over again; instead it must be the ideal state, a state so far away, so distant from all the citizens, that they all seemed equally near.  If this state were to be something more than a mere abstraction, it could be clothed only in the reverential garments of the past, it must be the Rome of the good old days.  Yet if they were not for ever to mourn a “Golden Age” in the past and a paradise that was lost, there must also be a hope for the future, a paradise to be regained.  In a word the belief in the eternity of Rome must be instilled into men’s hearts.  Thus was the idea of the “eternal city” born, and it is no mere coincidence that the first instance of this phrase in literature occurs in Tibullus, a poet of the Augustan age.  Once convinced of the eternity of Rome men could look at the past for inspiration in full confidence that the beauties which had been could be obtained again.  But Augustus was more than a sentimental enthusiast, and he saw that it was not enough for men to drop their swords at the epiphany of “Roma Aeterna,” that their eyes would grow weary and looking to earth would behold the swords again.  These swords must be beaten into ploughshares and pruning hooks; the deserted farms of Italy must be filled again, and the stability of the state must be increased by an enlargement of the agricultural community.  But for the accomplishment of these reforms something was needed which was at once gentler and stronger than legal enactments.  The poet must make smooth the way of the law.  It was the poet who could best interest men in the past; and thus Augustan poetry was encouraged and directed by the emperor, that by pointing out the glories of old Rome it might inspire men to make a new Rome more glorious than the old.  Practically every poet of the age was directly or indirectly under the influence of the ruler.  It was the emperor’s counsellor, Maecenas, who encouraged Virgil to write his Georgics, and these glowing pictures of farm life did quite as much to carry out the emperor’s plans as the Aeneid later.  And Virgil was not alone in writing of country life; Tibullus, even more gentle than the gentle bard of Mantua, was telling the same story in another form.