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FORS et VIRTUS: the Human Condition
In Ovid's Metamorphoses 13.128 ff. Ulysses is described with the contrasting pairs of terms ingenium-facundia et genus-merita-virtutis honor-opera (137-159), consilioque manuque (205), virtutem voce (235), sapienter-audax (377-8), the second of which (except in example 3) is the only attribute of Ulysses' opponent, Ajax. Ovid assimilated the Homeric "deeds" and "words" to the classical "goodness" and "knowledge"; indeed, Plato in the Laches did much the same thing with Laches and Nicias at 188D where Laches says he looks for a life consonant in words with deeds:
Plato makes it clear that in the dialogue Laches Laches represents deeds (or temperamental goodness) while Nicias represents words (or knowledge). Although Plato never makes it explicit, the implicit conclusion of this aporetic dialogue is that Socrates is the harmonious combination of both, the Homeric goal for Achilles:
And yet Socrates is as Cicero describes him at Tusc. Disp. 1.42.100: a man outstanding because of his fame for goodness and knowledge (virtutis et sapientiae gloria), however one construes his habit of irony or his paradox that virtue is knowledge. The discussion of the relationship of goodness and knowledge has a long history.

It is interesting to note that a line of this passage in Ovid (Met. 13.363) describing Ajax (tu vires sine mente geris) seems to imitate Horace, Odes 3.4.65 (vis consili expers). "Vis" as power in Horace seems to shade into a sense of overt action in Ovid, at least in this context. In this ode of Horace the invocation of the Muses and their leader Apollo to refresh or 'recreate' Caesar and inspire him with lene consilium or goodness and knowledge combined seems to introduce a tableau of benevolent government versus mindless chaotic force with a picture of the gigantomachy after the thematic axioms of this stanza: 
                  Vis consili expers mole ruit sua:
                  vim temperatam di quoque provehunt
                     in maius; idem odere vires
                        omne nefas animo moventes.

                        Horace, Odes III.4, 65-8
Horace paints power tempered by benevolent knowledge as opposed to mindless or even evil-minded force. This contrast is reminiscent of that in ps.- Aeschylus' Prometheus Vinctus where brute force is represented by young Zeus and his minions, while intelligence is represented by Prometheus. The P.V. looks forward to a time when Zeus becomes vim temperatam This then becomes the paradigm for Plato's Republic in which power is married to philosophy which is the fruitful union of goodness and knowledge to produce the Philosopher Regents. This all must be part of Horace's inclusive allusion.

Vergil must have had much of this in mind when he wrote the conclusion of the Aeneid and encapsulated the history of Rome with the memorable phrase which also describes the final duel of Aeneas and Turnus to determine the future of Latium and Italy: 
 
                           FORS ET VIRTUS

            atque illi, ut vacuo patuerunt aequore campi,
            procursu rapido, coniectis eminus hastis,
            invadunt Martem clipeis atque aere sonoro.
            dat gemitum tellus; tum crebros ensibus ictus
            congeminant; fors et virtus miscentur in unum.

                   Vergil, Aeneid 12.710 ff.
Vergil's virtus here must be a composite of goodness, knowledge, and power. That is, his virtus must represent the best man can do to control his environment and shape his world. This is what Thucydides meant with his word gnome, and he also saw history as an interplay between gnome and tyche. Of course, it is expected that the Roman Vergil, trained as a philosopher, should name this vis temperatam leni consilio not just ingenium or even sapientia but that mature Roman virtus that has assimilated knowledge and power and operates as the final cause guiding their deployment.
              cf.Lowell Edmunds, Chance and Intelligence in Thucydides, Harvard UP, 1975
We have seen Vergil weaving the strands of philosophy deep into his poetry, especially in Books IV and VI. All the more we should expect something of his philosophic vision to infuse the climax of his epic. Here he in humility admits that the best that Man, as exemplified by RoMan, can do is a struggle with Chance that can not achieve perfection, certainly not the perfection of the other world that is briefly imagined in book IV and seen in book VI. It is as Platonic a vision as a Roman of Vergil's time can countenance.
              cf.Allan Wooley, "Ideographic Imagery in Aeneid 4 and Vergil's Philosophizing," New England Classical Journal XXV.4, May 1998,
              pp. 114-130. Although Vergil started out as an Epicurean, by the time of the Aeneid he had moved on to a more ecumenical stance, and I
              argue on pp. 124-7 that he was a close reader of Plato's Republic.