Abstract

Vergil has a strong idea of personal fate. A certain fate becomes attached to a certain person and follows him all his life; then the fates are spoken of as the fates of that person. As a parallel one might quote the idea in Maeterlinck's essay ‘La Chance’ . For both Maeterlinck and Vergil men are marked out, one might almost call it annexed, by good or bad fortune; yet both authors refuse to endow this good or bad fortune with personality: they deal with personal fates which yet lack personality